 Hi guys, this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this lesson, it's going to be a year training tutorial to identify all the elements of music, not just what we think is year training or what an app generally tells us is year training. We try to identify pretty much all the properties of music in this lesson. And hopefully in this lesson, it's a roadmap for you to start your journey or carry on your journey in a more efficient way, perhaps, or if you already know songs or learn songs by year, hopefully you can get a bit more efficient by watching this particular lesson, right? So, first off, what is year training? Year training, I usually tend to call it mind training because it's to make things efficient for what you listen to and to also use theory, by the way, to get, ultimately, there is a song out there, the song has chords, the song has a melody, the song has rhythm. Your year is not the only tool to decipher information. Your year will hear stuff, but then your mind has to also know what it heard. Did you hear a specific chord degree? Did you hear a specific subdivision of the beat? Or did you hear a specific interval of a specific scale? So, in a sense, year training is not just about hearing a B-flat and saying, oh, it's B-flat, which some people call as perfect pitch, right? So, year training goes hand in hand with music theory. Music theory will give you the final answer. Your years will just say, okay, I heard something, I heard a chord, I heard this kind of chord, but what is the chord? Your year may still know, but that's always because of theory. So, that's the first point I wanted to make very clear, year training and theory go hand in hand. So, first of all, what are the myths of year training? The general myths of year training, what people think is year training is, how do I get perfect pitch? So, perfect pitch, first of all, I think people get only at a very, very young age, usually kids under the age of 10. My argument is, if someone were to teach me colors right now, this is purple, this is pink, blue, and I'd never learned that in my life, I think it would be very tricky as an adult or even someone who's above the age of 10 or 12. So, by that analogy, I don't think people will get perfect pitch, like get to know what is B-flat, what is G or what is A-flat, until they've used it and worked with it from the childhood. And also, even if you've passed your childhood years, the only way you can get perfect pitch or even know pitches is to use the pitches with musicians regularly in studio environments, in jam rooms, and at concerts, because you're speaking the lingo, you're telling each other, you're playing the wrong note, it's not B-flat, instead go and play a C instead. So, until you speak the language, you're not going to gain the knowledge of perfect pitch. So, this perfect pitch concept will again be a combination of the theory, you know, because you have to identify that note by a certain name based on a scale and so on and so forth. And also, perfect pitch may not be useful in musical cultures like the country I am part of, India, where everything is relative. So, if I give you a root, in this case, it's E-flat, but in India, you could just call it a Sa. So, Sa, and with respect to this Sa, we have a concept called relative pitch or in India, we say, these are the swaras based on a root, in this case, E-flat. So, you have different intervals, for example, Sa-pa, which is the perfect fifth, which is that. Now, how do you know it's actually the B-flat with respect to E-flat? Well, that's theory, isn't it? Your ears had nothing to do with that answer. So, don't think that ear training is, I need to know what's B-flat, I need to know what is F-sharp. I don't think even I know that to be completely honest, even I feel that I go by relative pitch, and when I have a very heated musical session or if I'm teaching for many hours or if I'm gigging or jamming or especially recording, we talk and we hear these pitches very often. So, then I kind of get to know that, oh yeah, you played a B-flat major or go to a G-mine and I can sing it or if someone else plays it, I know. But that's because of experience and exposure to the elements over that session. And you have that real-time recall because it just happened, you know, you've been with music for so long over the session or over the day. So, that's generally one myth of ear training, perfect pitch. The other thing is scales and chords. Don't just think that I have to know notes. No, you have to know scales. You have to identify a class or a group of notes. So, in other words, what I'm trying to say is don't listen to songs and go by a point-by-point analysis. In other words, G, B-flat, E-flat, no, you should listen to it in a cluster, maybe and you'll identify a scale which is built around those four notes and it's a lot easier on the brain, right? And ear training, what we need to realize about ear training is we think ear training is just for pitch. Can you tell me the scale of the song by ear instantly? Or, you know, we have these certain ideas which are conveyed over numerous YouTube videos, but let's not forget rhythm. Rhythm is something you have to hear. That is the foundation of everything. So, if you don't know your time, if you don't know your pulse, if you don't know how to count, if you don't know how to move with the song playing, which you've chosen to play, you're not really going to get anywhere. And then we rely on things like apps, which I think for this particular topic, ear training, I think apps generally suck. You should not be using apps. People before the era of apps, which is about just about a decade before where we are now, have been very successfully training their ears each and every day, including people maybe from a century ago or 300 years ago. I'm sure they figured out ways without apps. We don't need them. So, while I'm on the topic of not forgetting stuff, it'll be awesome if you guys can hit that subscribe button if you've forgotten to and turn on that bell icon for regular notifications and give the video a like. If you like the lesson, of course, leave us a comment with stuff you'd like to learn in the future and share the video with your musician friends. Now, back to the lesson. So, let's first look at the three pillars of music. The three pillars of music are the melody. When you hear a song, it's what you remember out of the song generally. Now, melody can usually be a higher melody sung by a singer or played by a violin or it could even be a riff played by a low end instrument like a bass guitar, for instance. And a normal melody could be something sung by a vocalist. Of course, even played on the right hand of the piano. So, that's what you're looking at. Melody, what you sing to, rhythm is how you move and it's that element of music or the pillar of music which makes people move. And harmony is the emotion creator. Harmony is also your chords, your chord progression. So, you need to feel that and most of the ways in which we hear the elements of music are how our audience will feel those elements. So, you should also feel the elements before trying to detect them and hear them. For example, if you have to know that a chord is E flat minor major 7th, you know. You should first feel the fact that it's a, you know, it's, I would say, I will call that a James Bond chord which is maybe used in that song or that movie theme score or that ad jingle or something. Hey, I heard it there or maybe I hear this chord. You're like, oh darling. That's the oh darling chord. You identify it in some way or maybe this chord. What you could call the Jimi Hendrix chord. He uses that in a lot of his songs. You could even call the chord Jimi even though it's a 7 sharp 9 as we learn in the theory. So, the three pillars of music are very important to be observant of when you're getting into the process of year training, rhythm, melody and harmony. Now, the next chapter in this tutorial would be the difference between macro and micro year training. So, macro, if you look at it from each of the pillars which I talked about, let's say from the point of view of rhythm, macro rhythmic sensibilities would be to figure out the general tempo of the song to move to the pulse of the song, 1, 2, 3, 4, to know the time signature of the song. Is it 3 by 4? Is it 4 by 4? Is it 7 by 8? Is it going with your head in the first place or is it a by 8 or by 16 and so on and so forth? Then what is the time feel of the song? Time feel is just a word I kind of use. Time feel in the sense how the beats are being divided. Is it being divided into two parts? Is it being divided into three parts? Triplets is being divided into four parts. Is it swinging versus straight which would be or is it versus straight? So, you need to sort the macro properties of your song rhythmically speaking and then I would say you are allowed to get into the micro world of that particular pillar which is rhythm. The micro world will just transcribe bar after bar. It will tell you in beat one you have a crotchet. In beat two you have two quavers. In beat three you have a quaver rest and then two semi-quavers. In beat four you have a dotted quaver and then followed by a semi-quaver beamed up together so to speak. So, there you actually get into the you pinpoint exactly what you heard but before you do that you need to look at a flow chart of operation rhythmically speaking and then if we look at it from a melodic perspective I would imagine that it's pretty much the same deal. When you are listening to the song you need to first find out the scale of the song and it's not just the scale which we deal with. We need to know the scale. We need to know the key. We may need to know the mode. We may need to know the raga if we are listening to something eastern or Indian in nature and we've done quite a few theoretical lessons on exploring the differences between scales, key signatures, keys, modes, ragas etc. I suggest you watch them. We'll link it up in the description. So, in a nutshell, the scale will tell you if it's major or minor. So, major or minor with all those minor intervals of thirds, minor third, minor sixth, minor seventh. While major scale will have major third, major sixth, major seventh. So, that's the scale. Now, the scale is different from key because the key is your tonal center of your song. Is it D major or is it E flat or rather is it in the key of D in which case it could be the D major, D minor. Of course, minor has different options, harmonic, natural, Dorian and melodic minors. You have a lot of those flavors. So, you need to know the scale and you need to know the key and in some cases if the music is a bit more niche or more advanced to listen, you will have to figure out the mode and the raga. The mode will be a particular degree of the scale from where the root is built. The raga will have directional properties. So, when you're hearing the melody, it goes up a certain way with certain scale degrees or certain intervals and it goes down a completely different way. You may have some intervals going down which you did not have going down. You may have some intervals going in the ascending or the arohan fashion while you may not have some of those intervals in the descending or the arohan fashion. So, you need to figure this out. So, for a melody, the macro perspective would be the scale, the key, the mode or the raga or the key signature. You may want to write that down before you note it. Then after that, again, you need to develop a flow chart. After this stuff is over, you need to then do what I call as melodic curves which is to hear a simple piece of music like and figure and just notate it pitch wise. That's going higher. So, even if I didn't know that the first note was C, as you saw, I got C sharp by mistake. That's fine. I don't have perfect pitch. That's fine. So, it's kind of what I sang. So, it went in the ascending direction while if I do, there we go. So, for me to even match that on the piano or try to match it or attempt to match it, I need to know the orientation of notes with respect to the notes prior to them. So, that would be a melodic curve. So, going higher, coming down lower or maybe a melody like this. And this way, you'll also, after knowing that it is going high, low, it could also be same. A song like that's G, G, twinkle, lala. So, you could have notes which are same. And the point I'm trying to make here is before you get into the actual notes, you need to at least know note with respect to note. One note is gone higher than the other. One note is lower than the other. One note is same as the other. So, after you do that, you can then figure out, okay, how high did it go? I would first say it's high and then how high? And then you see, okay, it was a fifth higher or it was a third higher. Then you ask yourself, what are the kinds of thirds? Major, third, minor, third. Maybe a diminished third if you like to use that. And then you ask yourself, did it go down a fourth or did it go up a fourth? And so on. Or did it just go and hit the next octave? Or did it stay unison? Those are the decisions you make. And finally, in this so-called melodic flow chart of melodic transcription flow chart, you'll learn or realize that now I know my intervals. So, I now rely on my theory. And if I identified a melody which is 1564, which on C would be C, G, A, F, I need to know what 1564 was if it's any key. For example, if it's the key of E flat. And if you don't know what is 1564, well, your years won't help your theory needs to help. So E flat is the one B flat is the five, C is the six and A flat is the four. So that's the flow chart. So we looked at a rhythmic flow chart, we looked at a melodic flow chart. So before you actually try to play the melody on the piano or the guitar or whatever you play, you need to kind of punish yourself in a way, keep a notebook and the song with you. And that's, you should put off your instrument. Don't listen and quickly try to sneak in or try to find your tune. That's also kind of disrespecting the process of figuring things out in the first place. The song is there. It's hitting your years. And then you need to write what you heard in your book. And then you play what from the book goes to the piano or the guitar. And this will be a lot more knowledgeable of a process if you ask me. So come, so we've looked at melody and rhythm. Now let's look at chords and harmony and the general workflow for knowing your chords and progressions. First of all, when you're listening to a chord, it's good to listen to it in a sequence. Sometimes it's good to listen to it at a point sometimes. So if you're listening to a chord, let's say a chord can be heard in three ways. One is you could figure out what is the degree or what is the scale degree of the chord. So if I'm in the key of C major and I heard a minor chord, first of all, you know, in a major scale theory tells us that the minor chords of a major scale are the second, the third and the sixth degree. So if ever you heard a minor chord, and if you've triangulated that the scale is C major, then the possible minor chords would only be D minor, E minor and A minor. Now it's one of those three. Then when you listen to it, you figure out which degree is it. The degree can be easily figured out using a little bit of technology to kind of cheat, which I'm sure our musicians of the yester year would have never had. That would be the power of using an equalizer in your Spotify or in your computer or in your car audio system or wherever, where you can boost the base of your listening environment. And let's say you think it's D minor. If the prominent note which you heard at the time is D, then it has to be D minor. But then if you think it's D minor and if the prominent base note you heard was A, for all you know, minor was right, but A minor is wrong or rather D minor is wrong and it is thus A minor. So when you're listening to a song, a tip would always be get the equalizer working and try to adjust what you're trying to hear for. If you're trying to hear for chords, I would definitely keep the bass up. And in some instances, I may even go beyond one step and beyond in a sense and go for some ultimate cheating with where you download the song and import it into a software. There's a software which is really good, which I use sometimes for transcription called Moises. You can get it at their website Moises.ai. And there they actually have a system where you can remove the vocals. You can isolate the drums, you can isolate the bass. So it's a very useful tool, not only for beginners, even for people like me. And these days with technology bands are also using it to give them a metronome, build backing tracks, the use cases go on. So check out Moises. It's quite a nice app. So we looked at degree for the chord. You can also look at the type of the chord. So you hear a chord off the bat, major, minor, diminished, augmented, dominant, suspended, sus four, sus two, these are the basic chord qualities. Then you go to major seventh, minor major seventh, dominant seventh, then you have minor seventh, then you have minor seventh flat five or the five half diminished chord or the diminished seventh chord. So that's what you build towards you try to build towards what you're hearing for here an app may actually help. So use these pieces of technology just for what they are useful for. So an app will keep giving you these repeated chords and you have to guess and it helps but the real world of doing it with an actual song is always the most helpful. So the other strategy when you're figuring out a chord is what is the purpose of the chord is the purpose of the chord to be at rest or is the purpose of the chord to be a tense or a bridge or a magnet which locks onto or resolves to or is unstable and thus goes back to the home chord and usually those numbers or those functions we call this functional harmony lot of theory lessons are in the description do check them out and it'll really help you move forward from this particular lesson and we've done a ton of ear training videos on our channel and on our website as part of the members only package. So you have a structured set of ear training videos a structured set of music theory videos waiting for you it's all linked in the description. So there's a lot of stuff in the description for you to check out. So we've looked at the methods of hearing chords which are the chord degree the chord type and the chord purpose which is called functional harmony. So these are how you can arrive or how you can strategize your workflow while you eventually transcribe what do you eventually need to do what is your end goal with ear training. Your end goal is you have a song playing and you're very happy with what's going on you can identify everything out there even if you hate the song you know which we all have a right to do I hate a lot of songs which you may like and I hope we'll still be friends. So you can hate a song but still like it musically what I mean by that is or appreciate it musically what I mean by that is you can listen to a song not to enjoy but you can listen to a song to learn. So you could listen to a complex piece of music which is a language unknown to you which doesn't even have vocals it's a song you just don't like at the moment but so what it's a song you're going to learn from. So as a musician you need to have this mindset I need to spend time with ear training and maybe the song I really like is not good for ear training maybe it's too easy maybe it's just a one five six four chord progression or something. So you need to try to listen to high density music as I call it density is a word I use just as a general comparison between songs you know like you take a two bars of a Bach classical Braden a composition from maybe one of the Bradenberg concertos I'm sure the density of that will be equal to maybe an entire album worth of a pop artist today. I'm just saying but I'm sure you'll agree that I may be right you know so that's what I mean by music density so try to listen to higher dense higher information high information content so to speak it also helps with kids if you have kids who are very young you need to play them a variety of music that really gets them gets their brain flowing and gets them to think and I'm sure what you think is popular for a kid or yourself may not actually be true it's it's ultimately what that individual likes free from a community pressure or free from social pressure saying you have to listen to that because it's in your language the words are as per that parental requirement so because of that I'm going to get you to only listen to that song not really you can listen to instrumental music where whatever goes I guess anything goes so you could have a playlist try to work on a good playlist maybe have a jazz song have a funky song have a gospel song have every genre maybe you can listen to some of my riffs that'll be fun head over to my riff website and see how that goes so I've almost come to the end of my lesson I just wanted to talk about a few things which are important for you to strategize or plan ahead first of all organic ways to get better at year training the three things I would say is listen you have to listen a lot and when you listen don't forget about the simplest of things if you're trying to figure out the melody of a song what if you can just start the process of everything of year training or transcription by just taking a piece of paper and writing all the instruments you have heard you know for example if you're listening to the simpsons theme you would have no vocals you'll have different types of drums you'll have a timpani you'll have a symbol you'll have tuned percussion you'll have untuned percussion tuned percussion could be the glockenspiel the the celesta or the marimba or the vibraphone untuned percussion could be drums kick drum snare drum tambourine symbols etc then you look at what family of instrument you're hearing are you hearing an instrument from the string family the wind family the horn family or the miscellaneous family where instruments like the piano the harp and the guitar fall under string family will have pitch ranges right and also different visual sizes violin viola cello double bass string family then you have your wind family which could start with the flute the the clarinet the oboe the bassoon the real bass instruments the contra bassoons and so on even in indian flutes they don't call it by these names but the size of the flutes shows you the pitches you choose i guess and then of course the horn family the brass family will have the trumpets the saxophones the tuba the french horn so you need to know how these instruments sound you're trying to go there diving in to a pool where you should at least need you need to know what's in it you need to know what are the types of instruments used and how they are playing with each other and then you know hey i just heard a trumpet doing something you could mumble a few things like he's doing pa pa pa pa pa pa and then a marimba is doing something like that you can just act like you're playing these instruments the the the snare drum is going doing some kind of a role the the violin is going is playing and then there's this bass thing which is going stuff like that so try to mimic your instrument and you'll realize each instrument also plays in a specific way like violin you may have the staccato violin where the notes are choppy you may have the legato violin where it's just smooth you may have the the spiccato violin where it's it kind of starts very heavy and then kind of tails and sustains you may have the pizzicato violin where they play with their fingers for the most part you may have the tremolo violin where they're literally trembling on the instrument so the styles of playing the instruments are very important so be very curious is in a nutshell what i'm trying to say so don't just think that an app is going to help you it's not going to help you apps generally don't help so be a bit curious when you're listening to a song and a general word of advice is if i'm a guitar player or if i'm a piano player and if i'm trying to learn a song the last thing which you should try and hear is your own instrument so if you're a singer listen to the vocals last use an app to kind of remove the vocals try it out if you're a pianist well wait listen to everything first write it down in a book then listen to piano last okay and also another great way to to improve your ear training i'm telling you this from a personal perspective is the power of is the power of working jamming and collaborating with other human beings with fellow musicians i see a lot of students who i teach who just learn their piano in their bedrooms in their halls or living rooms or wherever just play in the house you know music is an entertainment field it's an art form you do this for others is what i believe and when you do it for others when you do it with others bandmates and so on you're going to learn a lot more because they also have skills they also are gifted musicians or you both could be learning together y'all will be in the same boat trying to help each other to not to float and not sink so to speak so work with other people whenever you get an opportunity to jam with someone play with a choir jam with a band play with just a singer you know do a small gig near you do it right so be very and and try to get into some recordings as well recordings get you to kind of really listen to every ingredient because it's all track based isn't it a recording will show you that you know there are about 100 plus tracks used in the song so you can get to see exactly isolated what is each one doing and lastly i'd like you to think about a strategy to get better as a musician in terms of not your instrument not your exercises and all that that whatever you have to do you'll do what i'm suggesting is an approach now normally how do we learn music one one opportunity or one methodology would be you read something from a piece of notation and you play you read and play now is that going to actually train your ear or is that going to train your eyes think about that i think it's just going to train your eyes because your focus too much this sense organ is doing everything so this sense organs pretty much sleeping so then it's just eyes muscle memory technique and could be robotic at times think also about watching youtube videos even people like me included when you watch a youtube video you're watching and playing you're not really listening you're you're following an instruction which i tell you and then you just do it my advice is to think about that as well are you watching too much and mimicking are you puppeting are you a puppet in you know the game so to speak you don't want to always do that and another thing you need to probably think if you're learning music by ear are you hearing it and directly playing it i would encourage you to think about that as well and what i suggest at the end of this whole rant is hear music write music and then play music so if you're playing by ear don't hear and play hear right we call it transcription and then you're allowed to play do not play until you've written down what you're going to play or at least in the crudest of forms in your paper or tablet or whatever that i think will help you train your ear and become a more all-round musician and this is with no disrespect to the art of reading and playing to the art of watching us folk on youtube and playing there's nothing wrong with that but there's nothing wrong with also listening and playing which is a serious skill and also i don't want to forget singing is also an important skill as you play the piano so as you sing the sounds are getting registered better in your brain so don't just play the piano or the guitar without singing try to sing as much as possible and get into also sight singing that may be a good skill to start off i will try and do a few videos it's a if ever i read music these days this is how i like to read i like to read the the notation script and i like to sing what's in the book or in the paper i'm not a fan of playing it on the piano that much because i believe my ears can do that and i've got to a point where you'll also see with our youtube videos most of the lessons we do we give you the sheet notation the handwritten notes now that's something we do on our own so we don't rely on any external resource we do it we hear it or we have an exercise we notate it and then we practice it and then we teach it so that's a culture i've generally tried to follow if i hear a song i want to notate it i don't want to go and download it from somewhere or and that's another problem with notation right how do you know that colplay notation you type fix you by colplay and you want to play some song how do you know that's right one way to figure it out is go and ask colplay themselves did you contract this individual to write that notation for you the odds are not so high in fact most musicians don't know how to read and write music even i didn't i got to it much later in my career so be a bit careful with notation because it looks very fancy at times or most of the time it just looks like this very overwhelming way of learning music so you follow it like the gospel so to speak you just look at it and you believe it and then as it turns out you perform it in front of people and then it's not there are some glitches here and there that's another reason why you need to get your songs done and dusted with just your year a book and a piano completely old school if you think about it and even notation if you think about it most of the classical composers maybe 200 300 years ago for all you know why did they use notation did they use notation because they wanted to read it or did they use notation because they wanted to remember their own songs in the first place before taking a nap or passing out after a hard day's work and after their dinner imagine the feeling if they forgot their song in the morning so maybe they composed it quickly needed to write it down write it down neatly invent the system of notation and also collaboration to give it to their orchestra people who are going to meet them maybe the next morning maybe that's why we had notation in the first place for a couple of hundred years before it kind of became very systematic exam driven read that pass your exams and you're a genius or something like that just some stuff to think about guys hope you found this particular lesson useful and to supplement this there are a lot of other videos waiting for you in the description for year training as well as music theory don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already thanks a ton for supporting the channel hit that bell icon for regular notifications cheers and catch you in the next one