Ear Training – What is it?
Ear training is the process of adapting your ear to understand different notes. This means that you can correctly identify a sequence of notes. This is the basis of using ear training software like EarBoost. Let’s look at an example
Sequence 1: C-D
Sequence 2: C-E
Both simple sequences here have only two note and both start with a C note. The second note of Sequence 1 is D, but an E in Sequence 2.
Therefore the second note in the second sequence will sound higher or have a larger gap between the two notes (C-E). If you imagine the keys of a piano you would see this:
The distance between a C note and a D note is known as a major second. The distance between a C note and an E note is known as a major third.
With a trained ear you will be able to recognize these different distances. Here is a list of all interval distances
Intervals for ear training
You may be wondering why I’m talking about the distances between notes and the actual notes themselves. This is an important point on being able to recognize intervals and note just specific notes.
Lets look at the keys again you can also see that as the D key is one key up from the C, also the E key is one key up from the D. This is because the distance between the D note and the E is a major second also.
Therefore the sound between C-D and D-E are related, as the interval distance is always a major second apart. This allows the knowledge to be applied to separate sequences of notes.
Now that we have an understanding what is ear training, an even more important question needs to be answered why do ear training?