Category: Ear Training

Another Online Ear Trainer

~ wilktone ~ Leave a comment

I came across another fine online ear trainer, Good Ear.  It includes a variety of ear training exercises, including hearing and identifying intervals, chords (ranging from simple triads all the way up into extended jazz chords with alterations), cadences, and scales.  There are also different options you can use to fix the root of the exercises to always be the same pitch or change, play back in different sounds, and give you the correct answer or not for feedback.  There is even a section that gives you random pitches to test your “perfect pitch” recall abilities.

There are plenty of exercises good for beginners, but I found some ones that kept me challenged too.  I especially want to go back and do more of the jazz chords exercises.  I have a habit of lumping chords with extensions (9ths, 11ths, 13ths) sonically with the basic 7th chord, which gave me some answers that were close, but wrong.  Some chords with alterations are more challenging to identify and some chords are easy to mix up with others (e.g., an A7b9 sounds an awful lot like a C#dim7 because they contain 4 common tones).

It’s a good resource, check it out.

Diatonic and Chromatic Chords: The Blues

~ wilktone ~ Leave a comment

Last Friday I tried to answer a couple of improvisation questions I was emailed by Michael.  He also asked some other very good questions about my Jazz Improvisation For Beginners article on the blues form.

In your “Part 3 – the Blues Form” – something seems off.  You say: “Let’s look at a 12 bar blues in the key of C.”  You then go on to give the chords C7, F7, Dm7, G7, and the note Bb.   I have not heard of a B7 or C7 in the key of C.  Nor have I ever seen a flat or sharp in the key of C.  But there is a Bb, of course, in the key of F.  And the 12 bars you give clearly resolve to the F chord, not the C chord, at least to my ear, which is pitch-perfect.  Isn’t this really the key of F?  Or am I not understanding something here?

As I was putting together a response for Michael I found my answers relied heavily on being able to hear the musical examples, so I decided that a podcast format would be the best way to follow up.  It went a little long, almost 17 minutes, but I started with a brief summary to make sure that most listeners could follow along.

Here’s a link that should give you a direct download so you can listen to it on an MP3 player.  Transcript after the break.

Continue reading “Diatonic and Chromatic Chords: The Blues” →

Mozart or Salieri?

~ wilktone ~ Leave a comment

Many musicians work very hard to develop their listening skills and knowledge of musical styles.  The “drop the needle” or “blindfold test” where you don’t get any knowledge of the music in advance is a common way to test music students’ progress.

Here’s a short quiz you can try out yourself today to see how good an ear for the styles of Mozart and Salieri.  There are 10 excerpts from pieces that were either composed by Mozart or his professional rival, Salieri.

Can you beat 80%?  I have to admit that I guessed on most, but I tried to make them educated guesses.  Probably I got lucky on a few.

Jazz Trombone Transcriptions by “bobilleg74”

~ wilktone ~ 6 Comments

My friend Alan Greene, who plays with me in the Asheville Jazz Orchestra, told me about a great YouTube channel by “bobilleg74.” Bob has has 29 uploads of jazz trombone solos and his transcriptions of them.  There are a handful of solos I’ve already done and several I’ve not heard before.  There are also a few he’s done that were solos I’ve been thinking about transcribing myself.

While it’s tempting to just learn the solos from Bob’s transcriptions (and I’m sure I’ll end up just stealing a lick or three this way), I’m still planning on working on some of those transcriptions myself at a later date.  The benefit from transcribing isn’t just learning what notes and rhythms a great soloist improvised, but training your ear and learning the style through focused and repeated listening.  It’s neat to then compare what you came up with to someone else’s transcription.

Check out this great resource here.

Memorizing Tunes

~ wilktone ~ 7 Comments

Jazz musicians are expected to have a large number of standard tunes committed to memory, and often to be able to transpose these tunes into different keys. Improvisers often find that memorizing the chord changes frees them up to explore different directions in their solos more than reading the progression from the sheet music allows. At “fake gigs” and jam sessions it’s very helpful to have standard tunes memorized as it will save you a lot of time hunting for the right page in the right book.

Admittedly, I started memorizing tunes late. I had been told by many teachers and mentors that it was essential to have standards memorized, but I was usually able to grab a fake book on a gig or jam session and procrastinated committing those tunes to memory. Since making a stronger effort to really learn these tunes, I’ve found that not only has it been beneficial for the reasons I listed above, but it also has made me a better overall improvisor and composer. I wish now that I had started memorizing tunes more seriously back when I was a student. Still, it’s a lot of work memorizing a hundred or more tunes. With so much other things to practice, sometimes memorizing tunes takes a back seat to working on other things. Here are some tricks I’ve picked up that can help you memorize tunes faster.

Continue reading “Memorizing Tunes” →

Practicing With Drones

~ wilktone ~ 6 Comments

Another one that comes via David Valdez at his Casa Valdez Studios blog, Drone Exercises.

Practicing with drones offers a nice way to work on a number of different things at once.  Valdez lists three different exercises that you can do: practicing long tones, pitch bending, and improvising.  While his pitch bending exercises are more specific for saxophonists or other woodwinds, the long tone exercises will be good for any brass or woodwind instrument and improvisation good for any musician.

Continue reading “Practicing With Drones” →

Woody Shaw’s Solo on “The Blues Walk”

~ wilktone ~ Leave a comment

Trumpet player Woody Shaw (1944-1989) was one of the most influential jazz trumpet players of his time.  His solos still sound fresh and innovative to me today.  Which is why I decided to transcribe his solo on the blues in F, The Blues Walk (from Dexter Gordon’s album “Gotham City”) and try to get into some of the harmonic and melodic innovations he was known for.

One thing Shaw was known for doing was employing larger intervals, such as perfect 4ths and 5ths in his melodic lines.  Here’s one example from this solo.


Shaw was also known for utilizing pentatonic scales in an interesting way.  Here’s one example of him using an F minor pentatonic scale over both the Bb7 and F7 chords.

Continue reading “Woody Shaw’s Solo on “The Blues Walk”” →

Online Ear Trainer

~ wilktone ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been poking around I Was Doing All Right for a couple of weeks or so.  Rick posts about jazz trumpet, ear training, and the jazz scene in Atlanta.  Somehow I’ve been completely overlooking an excellent resource he put together, an Online Ear Trainer.

Here’s a screen shot of it, to tempt you to go check it out for real.  Notice that it is highly customizable.  You can restrict it to certain intervals, have it display in different transpositions, play the intervals in different ranges, select ascending, descending, or random, play both pitches simultaneously, play melodies, set up a rhythm section accompaniment with call and response patterns, etc.

An outstanding resource, Rick.  Thanks for making that available!

Be sure to check out some of Rick’s other resources on his web site.

The Modes Part 2

~ wilktone ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday I wrote about the modern modes and explained how to work out the pitches for any given mode by finding the parent major scale.  For example, a D dorian is the same thing as a C major scale beginning on D, but it’s also like a D major scale with a lowered 3rd and 7th.  If this stuff is new to you you’ll want to go back and read through that article before you read this one.

Today I’m going to show the relationship between the modes and certain chords.  For this post I’ll use the modes in the key of B flat major.

Continue reading “The Modes Part 2” →

The Modes Part 1

~ wilktone ~ Leave a comment

In preparing for any business, trade or science, we generally need a great deal of preparation and study.  In painting, literature and music, we also need to learn the tools of our trade.  The artist needs paints to express himself, while the jazz musician uses tonal resources.

The above quote is how George Russell starts his book, The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization for Improvisation.  I’m currently rereading it and plan to post on a few of the concepts he describes.  Before one can follow Russell’s book, though, you need to have a good grasp of the modes.  Many jazz musicians are familiar with modes and use them to derive note choices for particular chords.  They are useful tools for not just coming up with good note choices, but they also can help demonstrate harmonic concepts as well.

Continue reading “The Modes Part 1” →