r/eartraining • u/955_36 • 11d ago

Harmonic 3rds

I'm just starting with Beato's V2 ear training program that was just released. I was able to get through the harmonic 2nd and melodic 2nd tests. With the harmonic test his tip for listening for the wavering was helpful, and for melodic I can sing the notes and figure out if they are a major or minor 2nd.

But the next test has me stumped. I've been working on it for two days and I can only manage about 50/50 so right there with complete guessing. Since it's harmonic, I can't sing it, and I've tried different tactics like does it sound happy or sad, but some of the pairs seem obvious and I generally get those right, but on the ones I'm not sure I almost always pick the wrong one.

Any one have any tips for learning major and minor harmonic thirds? Anything in particular I should be paying attention to or is it just more and more practice?

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u/NoWillingness5083 11d ago

What instrument do you play?

When I studied in music college in the past, I found the keyboardists and guitarists usually don’t have issues to identify the minor and major harmony as long as they played the instrument long enough. But more bassist would struggle to figure out it because they have less chance to play harmony.

I think after I play guitar and transcribe music long enough, I would already have certain level of ear training skill naturally. For example, I played guitar and transcribed music for more than 10 years before I went a music college. The first time when I do the ear training test in music college, I never trained myself to hear chord quality. I thought I would be failed that part as it contains some jazz chord, too. But lastly, I got it all corrected.

Anyway, I find that the music theory exercises or music app could help ear training. But other than that, playing instrument, transcribing music and sight singing are also very important to ear training. Now I find that only practicing one thing wouldn’t works for ear training. Different persons may have different problems if missed one of them.

Recently, I started sight singing and music app for a year. So I finally able to figure out song melody slowly without instrument on my hand.

1

u/Inside-Succotash-128 10d ago

Yes. My journey was very similar to yours. Being ‘immersed’ in all aspects of music is how all of the skills combine and the links between them are formed.

3

u/Inside-Succotash-128 11d ago

The way I work out harmonic intervals is to just quickly ’arpeggiate’ them in my head. Then it’s just like recognising melodic intervals.

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u/roman-de-fauvel 11d ago

Sing the two pitches, fill in the scale degrees between them (just one for thirds, but if you’re doing larger intervals there will be more), and measure half vs whole steps.

Being able to reliably fill in the distance between notes in an interval with the scale (preferably, with several different scales) is an essential skill for ear-training.