 Hi guys, this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music in this tutorial We are going to brainstorm five ways to train your melodic here now There is no one way which may work for or should work for everyone Which is why I think these five ways or these five approaches might guide you towards Overall improving your melodic here. Yes, there are some steps involved. You need to first do the basics, right? So I'm not going to cover the basics like finding the scale of the song You can find that in our detailed members only tutorials where we've of course, we are allowed to play songs We can't play songs on our YouTube channel. Otherwise, it'll take the video down or give the channel some kind of a strike as we Know of it. So for the detailed ideas of how to find the actual scale the key The pitch the melodic curves as I call it We have our website which can help you or on our YouTube channel in the members only portals Do check that out. However in this lesson, I'm just going to show you the five strategies Hopefully where they've also emerged from and historically how people like me have also grasped it So I will tell you what I know and if you think there are other ways to train your melodic here Do feel free to leave them in the comments and I'll be happy to research it and maybe even make a tutorial on that So before we get started, there are a lot of learning resources waiting for you on our patreon page to help Find tune your melodic here even more if you will So do consider heading over there and supporting us for just five dollars a month And also it'll be great if you can consider hitting that subscribe button and turn on that bell icon for regular notifications Let's get cracking the first type of melodic ear training which seemed to work for me during my formative years as a musician and even now was the Tape machine approach as I call it or the cassette player approach which I call as pitch freezing So pitch freezing basically means hitting pause on your tape recorder or your Spotify player or whatever You're playing your song from now that two ways you can do this especially in a DAW Recording software of today you can play from the previously played location Or you can play from the currently stopped location. So softwares like Reaper have that option You can hit spacebar to play from the currently Played point or you can hit return to pause and then play So there's pause play and there's stop play so to speak right now in the era of tapes which I Guess is long gone. Some of you may not have even seen at Cassette in your life. Maybe you might want to go to a museum and find one I guess so in this era what used to happen is you put the tape in and I'm not that old So I don't know what the previous era was with with LPs and your big discs and so on But ultimately all music which has ever been recorded was printed and has been printed on some kind of Magnetic storage medium right so when the when the cassettes were there You put it into the cassette player and you rewind and you fast forward and unless you're at the very beginning You're not going to know which song of the album itself. You're in you Won't know if you're in track this or track that so it's very crucial to use those rewind and fast forward buttons and Speed up the tape and go go to the next part of the song so to speak So what I used to do to learn specific notes if I take a scale, let's say I'm on the D flat major scale Five flats D flat E flat G flat A flat B flat That's your D flat major scale If you have some kind of a melody running, let's say So Now at any given point you can freeze frame these melodies Which is a sense very equivalent to pausing the tape player or the CD player or even Spotify or YouTube which you can do right now And what is that note now? You know what that your root is D flat? And you ended your tape on this note So that ends up being a major second. So maybe it's and a drill like this Stopped at the Na na either go down to the major seventh or That's one more way to get to the major seventh Sunny if you want to call major seventh is need Okay, so all of this could be with respect to the root of the song You could also be with respect to the chord, you know That's the third with respect to a flat That's the ninth with respect to E flat, isn't it? That's the five and that's the nine But that's also the with respect to the So different ways you can call out the interval so training the melodic ear You need to know intervals you need to know what is that note and each note you hear Is based on the previous thing you heard and going to be based on the next thing that you're going to hear this time flows So melodic ear will be trained first of all the grassroots are intervals and then you divide your intervals to say okay There's this is a consonants. This is a dissonance among the consonants You have the rather emotionless consonants is namely the perfect fifth The unison same thing Octave pretty much the same thing then you have the emotions of the with cons consonants is with emotions major third Minor third and then you'll have the dissonances the dissonances I tend to divide into three categories the absolute tensions the Miner seconds the major seventh and of course our infamous Tritone Very evil kind of sound as they call it. I think it's pretty nice Usable anyway, then you have the anticipations as I call them which want to lead back to the 10th resolutions the anticipations in music could be considered as the flat seven very famous wants to go to the 6th, then you have the Perfect fourth wants to go to the Perfect fourth likes to go to the third or even the Okay, you could have the seconds See these anticipations don't feel Very tense and dissonant that way, you know in a very annoying chaotic way like the tensions as I'm calling them but the anticipations you can be there, but it eventually resolves to a Resolution which could be a third Unison or the octave or the fifth and so on the stable intervals and now the last kind of dissonances if you will would be your Sixes now I tend to call the sixes as mysteries Because in some context they could be pretty stable, you know Like a major 6th chord in this case, but if you think about it you can do And if you propel it with a Which is the plagal cadence At the intervallic relationship on the top would be There we go Minus 6th is also very cool. You can do That's your minus 6th Minus 6th kind of feels stable but also feels very eerie very mystical and it also kind of resolves to the Okay, so that's what you need to do when you freeze the pitch See what the type of interval is with relation to the root or with respect to each other and this tape machine Concept is very simple play the song, you know, let the song Then it ends there That's a minus 6 to figure out this approach It might help to even follow me on Instagram where we do weekly quizzes, right? So moving forward the next kind of melodic ear training, which I recommend for all Instrumentalist maybe even vocalist to some extent, but more so instrumentalist piano players guitar players violin sacks Hon whatever it may be is now you want to learn your intervals or you want to learn a note and You have a fair idea of the root In this case, it's D flat And now some music is playing and you heard a note in the song, you know You can play the But I am not gonna allow you to play that note on the piano just yet you have to sing it first of all This could be a note you heard in a song or an interval or your bandmate played that or you're just having a challenge with yourself really And you just happen to sing this note now you want to detect or guess or plot out what this note is What could it be? Now one way to do this is to sing the scale up which can be a rather long approach And you get to your two eventually should also feel this and say that feels like a major six because Way up high somewhere over the rainbow does that doesn't it So I kind of know it's a major sixth, it's not a That would be a minor sixth. So Major sixth But what is the major sixth now? I know I'm pointing that for you on the piano, but you should know that on all the 12 keys So this will be a very 3d approach as I call it 3d meaning you're hearing the thing You're singing the thing which is some form of execution because it's also hearing and Finally you're playing the thing but in order to play the thing you have to know the thing, right? So knowing is theory knowing is means in the D flat major scale. What is the sixth note? Well, the answer is B flat. It's not It's not be it's not it's not a it's That's your major six with respect to D flat D flats major sixth is B flat and that's how you do it. So let's try another case study. I'll stick on D flat Feel stable But has an emotion has a rather sad emotion. So we could call this a minor Stable what's minor stable minor third now? What's the minor third of D flat also known as C sharp? C-sharp minor third is E Before playing E sing it before you test it out find the E Check your answer. It should match with your voice and your answer is correct. Well done So that's pretty much the 3d approach towards ear training great for anyone So if you're playing it on a trumpet you or anywhere you've got a note going you want to name that interval It's great on a what you see is what you get instrument like a piano or a saxophone where you have to literally find the note But on a guitar, it's more pattern based So maybe you could play the interval on the guitar and then work on singing it and figure out which part of the three Dimensions you're not so good at so the 3d approach in a nutshell would be hear the thing your training Know the thing music theory and play the thing. That's your technique or your execution We've done a detailed video on the 3d approach to your training. I suggest you check it out. We link that in the description so moving on to a very historically Important or rather the only tool which some of the great classical musicians the jazz musicians of yesterday or or at least hundred years minimum ago where the ability of Recording was not available. You didn't have this technology to record it on a storage medium So when was that during the time of well the classical era for a start? So what if you just imagine what would mr. Mozart or Beethoven or Bach or all these great Composers have done back in the day. How do they compose a 25 or 30-piece orchestral performance? How do they do a string quartet arrangement? How do they compose for a choir? How do they do those fancy piano sonatas? Well If I were to go back in time and imagine or put myself in those shoes Let's say I was composing something at about 8 p.m. Or 8 30 p.m. Just before my dinner Now I'm making a song. I've kind of played it on the piano But then I have to make a lot more parts. I have to compose it for a 30-piece orchestra or a choir So how do I do that? Well, this is where notation came into being Notation was the only tool classical musicians had because they had ink and a Paper and the feather which you write on the paper. Isn't it back in the day? Feels pretty cool. Actually, I may want to watch that Mozart movie again. I'm a deus I think it's called pretty cool movie. So if I go back in time I would imagine someone, you know with an ink and paper and that if you ask me I would consider that to be the world's first DAW or the world's first recording software because that is how Musicians recorded their music. They recorded it on paper and they had to make the notation form as visually appealing to them as possible because they would have had to Remember how can even Mozart and Bach were only human. How could they have remembered their ideas the next morning? They wake up the next morning and it's gone And that can also be very depressing because you know that you came up with with an with so much of art With a amazing piece of art a masterpiece the previous night You have deadlines also because the church would have wanted Bach to come up with that piece for the mass Mozart was pushed by his king as you know the ruler in that palace. So there's so much of Deadlines so much of work needed to be done and so much creativity because these guys Were not even allowed to repeat their songs during their gigs. You don't have this whole era where oh, I like that Taylor Swift song so I want to hear only that all the time or I'm a fan of smoke on the water That's literally the only thing I want to hear of Deep Purple. That's not how the classical era was They had to make new songs each and every performance or showcase and it had to keep being Historically it had to keep being different and innovative Just why those guys wrote so many songs in the first place. Okay, so Music notation was born then and the next morning if I were to imagine, you know Being in the shoes of a Mozart or a Bach or any of these composers They would go back to the paper stare at it and they have to know how it sounds So they would need that ability to read notation and sing it back at the bare minimum Because playing it on a piano you can only play one or two parts But how do you communicate that to your entire orchestra? Your entire orchestra comes for a rehearsal time is money as you know, so how do you figure that out? So even in today's world the importance of sight singing is very important if you look at a a church hymn four-part harmony a string quartet Essentially you need to learn how to read that and sing it because it's very complex and in my formative years I started off as a choir singer singing in my grandad's and then my mom's choir So that was how we were brought up in music We didn't have year training exercises or apps, which I'm also going to talk about It was just us in a church with a with a hymn book and my mom or granddad Would say would tell us during the rehearsal. Okay, Jason you sing the alto you do the Someone else does the tenor and I was very Blessed to have done a lot of parts in the choir or maybe I was Like an annoying kid back then where I was curious to get into everyone's shoes so to speak I was always bored with the soprano part. So the alto was a lot of fun the When my voice changed By the age of 11 or 12 I would then do tenor Then I went to bass then I came back to alto because we didn't have alto So it was really cool to be able to do all the parts and I feel those Those occasions helped build up not only my harmonic here But most definitely my melodic here and I could recognize pitches because in the book We are at literally reading d and singing d, you know, so How do we learn color perfectly? How do we say that is orange that is pink that is blue Someone tells us that some teacher would come to us and say, okay boss That is blue keep repeating that and they show you different things which Signify the color blue. We don't really have that in our music education system as kids growing up, right? So luckily for me, there were there were people in my life who kept saying, you know, sing an f Sing a b flat. So in a sense, you get that perfect pitch as we call it Which I still don't believe I have but I kind of have it because I'm involved with these notes So if ever you want to build perfect pitch, you need to call these notes by their name. So f sharp f F And so on C and so on That's you need to be involved with the notes by their name You can't just play them and not call them something you have to call them and then you get that perfect pitch So I would imagine that all these composers back then had that perfect pitch or at least the the relative pitch Which is ability to find it with respect to the root of the song So I'll just give you a few Scenarios and we have a few things notated for you where you can practice some sight singing So in this exercise you see here first, let's get the root That seems to be the root and the first line seems to be just going up the minor scale. So That's your natural minor then there's some playing around in line two so to speak That's bar one of the line one. Let's just see if that Can even sing the note names Test it out bar by bar, that's a good approach if like g f g If let f g Then if like t g Then if like b flat if like g f g b flat t c g c G f if don't play the piano while you sing that's cheating you have to sing it and then check Like the 3d thing which I showed you earlier g f e flat t c f C e flat f g e flat b flat e flat b flat c b flat t c a f c F c minimum bit slow That's a nice one there G e flat dc b flat a flat b flat c b flat dc b flat g e flat c d e flat f g b flat a flat b flat c b flat c close Okay, so that's one way you can practice some sight singing exercises And another way is to do it with if you follow church hymn music you can follow a hymn book I'm just going to walk you through a great church hymn all hail the power of jesus name So the melody goes It's on b flat as you can see two flats, right? That's the top line That's a quick one with a dotted quaver It's a three by four I should have mentioned that And then we can do the the the bass line Like the bass line is beautiful I kind of remember that from Crown crown him and crown him lord of all So your s a t b as they call it soprano Being the main melody alto being under that tenor being under that usually what the male vocals would sing I would consider myself more of a tenor and then you have the bass In the lower register regions, right? So you can build a choir out of any group of people It's a lot of fun singing in a choir. You should try it So sight singing in a nutshell is the tool which probably made notation as we know it And notation made music happen as we know it because it was the only medium to Communicate ideas amongst fellow musicians It was the only way for a individual musician to remember his or her works or compositions And it was the only way to pass one's legacy down to the next person How would we have ever known the compositions of these greats from the past if they had not Notated it or I'm guessing their students notated it because teaching music was a very common thing back then Still is but it was very common back then almost all the composers Would teach or they would still be learning. Okay moving forward. This is Something which really works for me to train the year and it's worked for a lot of my students If I give you a small fragment of a tune, let's say if I do Okay, I'm on D flat So if I give you this fragment And tell you just ascend and climb and continue diatonically and see how it goes. So That's one two three of the scale then it goes That's two three four and try to predict as it goes forward ascending So Now Incontinue There we go. Now once you've got this predictive movement, you know, maybe, try. What I like to do is, and then I like to just hold down the chords, the diatonic chords, play the two chord. F minor. Now that you've gone ascending, figure out a way to also go descending. So we'll become. So you can also jumble that up, maybe. It becomes very melodic in nature. You can improvise like that. Anytime you play the one chord, go to the four chord, five chord, six, maybe some opposites or jumbles of each other. These are what we call melodic patterns and it's important for you to sing as you play these particular ideas. So practice your melodic phrases. A phrase could be related with the chord. It could just be a scale going up and down or a scale going in some kind of an interval. And don't limit yourself to just the major scale. It could so easily be the, maybe the harmonic minor. So harmonic minor is another nice scale to practice because of the jump between the sixth degree, which is a flat six, and the natural raise seven. Okay. And last but not least, we have a bunch of apps out there. As you know, it's 2024. There has to be some technology to help us train our ear. I'd like to point out that the apps are not to make your life easier. The apps sometimes can, you know, guide you or they may give you the right answer. You have apps which can literally tell you the names of the chords as you import the song into it. You know, there's no end to where this is going to go. You can isolate the vocals and this is great. I love technology. I love the fact that the audio quality nowadays, when you slow things down, no longer gets degraded by a noticeable amount. You can change the pitch. You can change any aspect of the song. You can individually listen to each element. I love all that. But when it comes to ear training, you need to do it organically and you need to work at it. So an app which perhaps gives you these quizzes or tests may be very helpful. You can get any kind of mobile ear training app. A lot of them are free. The one I'm using because I'm more of a browser person is the Beato ear training app, which has a lot of options, a lot of things to practice, not just intervals. There's also some harmonic stuff. There's rhythmic stuff. So let me walk you through a few kinds of things. First of all, when you're listening to an interval using the app, it's going to give you a bunch of random examples. The key will change. The root may change and the interval could be given to you either harmonically or melodically. And when it's melodic, it would be ascending melodic or descending melodic. So harmonically is just one because it's together ascending melodic descending melodic. Let's look at a few examples with this app. So that's that seems to be going down, right? So it's a descending interval and it appears to be a very close one. It's almost the closest it can possibly get. So if it was wider, it's probably a minor second going down. Let's look at the answers. There is a flat two. Let me take it. I hope I get this right. Yes, I've got it right. That's a tricky one. It feels a bit unstable. Let's play that again. Let's listen to that once more. There's a refresh button. Now this feels like an anticipation. It feels unstable. So I'm going to go with definitely no fifth note. But then the question is, is it a fourth or a major second? Because a fourth is also an anticipation doesn't feel like a fourth doesn't feel like a second feels like a very wide interval. So what's a anticipation but not a tension, which is a wide interval? That would be a minor seventh. I think let's look at a you could also flip that around and go could also sing a chord. If you are aware of the dominant seventh chord, it's a very famous chord. Let's hope we've got this right. Flat seven. Let's wait for it. Yes. Similarly, you can train your harmonic here. Seems to be first try to capture the two notes melodically when you hear it harmonically, which is tricky. So you should figure out the lower one and the higher one. Right. So the lower one seems to be this and the higher one seems to be that. So quite a stretch. So let's look at an interval if we got to to maybe sing a familiar interval like a fifth. That's a fifth twinkle, twinkle. And then now you hear this. It's a bit higher, isn't it? So what's the immediate jump after a perfect fifth? You could argue major sixth. It's not that's a minor six. It's a major six. Let's hope we got that right. There is major sixth in here or just a six. I'm going to let's hope this answer is right. Nice. I think it gave me a green sign. So it means it's going to the next answer. Looks like I'm right. I'm in some kind of practice mode. So I guess when you start the test, the same things happen and it grades you. So you can do a test out of 10, which is a good gamification of the process. Let's do one more harmonic test and then conclude. So the first note is that the second note is that so would be a familiar perfect fifth and would be a fifth plus one. So you could either say augmented fifth, which is a flat five, which is a sharp five. Sorry. I don't seem to have a sharp five in here. They've named it as a flat six. So I'm going to go with a flat six and let's see how it goes. Let's hope we are right. Yes. At least I hope that's a yes because I got a green color. Green generally means right and red usually means wrong. So far we are, let's test this out actually and get a red one. I'm going to choose a seven. Yes, I'm wrong. So then it should be a flat seven and I'm right there. Great. So the app works. What's going on and on. So enough of our study right now. So I hope you've got the five ways in which the year can be tested. First of all, you can freeze the pitch, the old school cassette player mode, pause, listen or stop and play from your originally played location and see what the pitch is, what the chord is, what the beat structure is or maybe a small cluster of three to four notes could be figured out. Then the 3D approach where as a musician, you have to hear the thing, you have to know the thing and only then you should play the thing. Sight singing, very important, very historically important. That's why we have notation in the first place. So I think learn sight singing, which is the ability to see the thing and sing the thing. Sing what you are reading in the sheet paper. Patterns recognize a certain pattern and develop that across the scale, increment it up or down, figure out the opposites of the pattern, jumble it around. And last but not least, you can use apps like the Beato ear training app that I showed you to practice it on the go. Maybe you're in the flight or you just have some time to spend and you have a pair of earphones at your disposal. So it's a nice opportunity to train your ear wherever you are really on this earth. And that's the power of technology. Also, alongside this technology, even when you're listening to songs, use apps which can slow down the song, which can change the pitch, which can, you know, brainstorm the song and allow you to dive into the concept a lot more. Right guys, thanks a ton for watching the video. And if you liked the lesson, don't forget to hit that like button. Leave us a comment with maybe other approaches or other topics that might be challenging you. Don't forget to share the video with your fellow musician friends. And if you haven't already, there's a subscribe button and a bell with regular notifications. Try to ring that bell. It's a lot of fun. I hope YouTube gives a noise when you ring the bell. They don't at the moment. It'll be cool to do that. So ring the bell and cheers. Catch you in the next one.