Ear Training and Sight Singing: The Superpower you get from Music School
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ส.ค. 2018
- Did you hear about the parsley farmer who didn't pay his taxes?
They garnished his wages.
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I studied musicology. One stormy day one of our professors interrupted our course (like he just ripped open the door) to tell us, that the wind was blowing in F minor.
epic
XD awesome
If he were any kind of music professor, he would know that in that context, it's really E-sharp minor.
I once dated a woman with an infant son. When he cried, he maintained a fairly consistent pitch (I suppose all babies do), so I would harmonize with him.
@@sgringo noo that poor woman lol 😂
So it’s my parents fault that I’m not musically inclined
Yep. Tell Officer Krupke all about it:
genius.com/Leonard-bernstein-gee-officer-krupke-film-lyrics
Nope. I have perfect pitch and the only times something like this happened were when I was 3 and 5 and went to 2 violin teachers because I wanted to play the violin, but was considered too young to study, although they did check my ability to recognise notes (where I failed to sing the note back since my pitch control was nearly nonexistent). But maybe it's because I started when I was 6 and it was the thing that did this to me.
Atriya Koller ok boomer
@@flemaster12 should have probably written "r/whoosh" instead 😂
@@atriyakoller136 r/Ihavereddit
“But either way you know it sounds like a perfect fifth.”
Me who thought it was a third: oh yeah definitely
I thought it was too!!! 😭😭😭😭😂😂😂
Lol same
I was happy cause I've apparently gotten good enough at music to know that it was a fifth
Well, he has a sideways alto clef as his logo, alto clef is used for viola music, and strings on a viola are tuned to a fifth apart, and THAT is how he can tell it's a fifth so easily. Plus, the viola section is in between the violins and the cellos, who's strings are ALSO tuned at fifth intervals, so basically every single little tuning session before every single orchestra rehearsal, this guy would be surrounded by instruments with... you get the point.
Think Star Wars Bam ba. Ba ba ba baaaaaa baaa ba ba ba baaaaaa baaa ba ba ba ba.
I want to be reincarnated as a kid whose parents secure that perfect pitch bag.
it's genetic. it won't happen if you don't have the genes no matter how much training or how early it starts
@@Lobstrominous maybe I’ll get better genes in the next life 🤷🏻♀️
@@AnnaKaiye I hope you do but you need to know perfect pitch is not so to be desired, Relative pitch is better and I'm sure you have that and can hugely improve it with training
@@Lobstrominous I crave knowledge of why perfect pitch is undesirable.
@@cillianmaccarthaigh2281 no. That's simply not true. Can't be both can it. There may be environmental factors but if you don't have the genetic propensity then you'll never get it no matter how much training you have or when.
"We only play the white notes because we're racist like chess" LOL
as a chess player i win while im white and try to tie when im black
it doesnt work cuz im asian
I was NOT ready for that punch line 😂
phatato what's a racist?
@@crusaderrjm It's somebody who hates another race
I don't need this nonsense, i play the triangle.
I play the cimbals, so yeah.
Violinists don't need this nonsense either. This literally just exists for the people who can't play an instrument
Ciara.Chaya No matter how good you think you may be. Just know somebody else can put you to shame
Ciara.Chaya Not true. Ear training is important for intonation and timbre. Especially for those who play unfretted string instruments like violin or certain wind instruments like the flute. It's also important for jazz imporvisation.
Davy Göbel they say percussionists need the best ears. i didnt understand until i began playing timpani with mid melodic note changes. and then tuning your drum multiple drums with a starting note.
My college choir director once got the entire choir together in the middle of a retreat just to make us sing the chord he heard from a dying light bulb in the men's room.
And don't tell us, I bet he kept you all in there for hours after the bulb went out. ...
Before they graduate to retail management.
Sick burn.
Yeah, music is fun but you eventually realize how's the job market in the real life and become a Business Analyst.
@@emiliocurbelo8891 Funny that you mentioned that exact job. It's what happened to me last year when the entertainment industry went haywire. Now I'm a shitty musician AND a shitty business analyst.
My good friend, who was about a semester away from getting a music degree from Berklee College of Music when he started doing this, would routinely call music majors or those interested in getting a formal music education, "welfare liabilities".
@@GiantButterKnife BMus grad here, it's honestly not THAT bad.
You need to be flexible, and willing to pivot into whatever is available and whatever pays. If you insist on only taking jobs as a concert soloist, then yeah, you're gonna be eating a lot of ramen. But if you're able to teach, do session work, teach, produce, direct, teach, write/compose, etc, then you'll be fine if you're good at what you do.
Will I ever be filthy rich? Naw. But I'd rather do what I love and drive a used car. My hobbies are all cheap anyway.
As I was nearing graduation from music school, I got recruitment letters for multiple insurance agent jobs. I went on to engineering school instead.
“This is where we get to the nightmare level”
*WE WEREN’T ALREADY THERE???*
Trust me, this is all child's play. If you'd go in my class, you'd leave in the next day.
Well, that's a little condescending
Sn0K Yes, I’m sure you are very smart.
Note to self: teach my kid to have perfect pitch
It can be a gift and a curse. In high school, a strong soprano in A Capella choir had perfect pitch. The rest of the choir went flat. She didn't.
Then they can stoke pillows to get A 440
@@Wrighjj oh dear... that's the the thing with soloists with perfect pitch working with choirs. They have to train themselves to go flat with the choir. Which kinda sucks but must be done 🙈
@@shay3138 She was HS kid and not a soloist, but was very strong in her section.
@@Wrighjj ahhh gotcha! Awh poor thing 😂🙈 it deffo can be a curse sometimes
"and we only play the white notes because we're raccist like chess"
See also: Star Wars and Christianity
white always goes first
Wow
@@reubenm.d.5218 you mean the pastors who made it seem that way
@@reubenm.d.5218 and star wars? Really?
that story about the laptop fan feels like the music school equivalent of when i was on a trip with my art school class and we saw two nearly identical postboxes and started discussing that one of them was a slightly warmer yellow than the other
eyyy fellow art kid
I think that's how you know you've made it. You've gone beyond active interpretation and it becomes a sort of sixth sense.
i hate when this happens and then i tell my sister and she says i’m crazy
"Ear training, and its sister nightmare, sight singing, are the two extraordinarily narrow and archaic techniques that all music students have to master before they graduate to retail manager."
This is literally my life. BM in music education, to Senior Assistant Manager at my local movie theater.
Wow! I'm sad for you!
If it makes you feel better, four years of college, no degree, stay at home Mum/housewife/ homemaker/ homeschool parent/ physical challenge. Now at 62 I am a paid musician, but the quintessential starving artist!
I had to pause the video to laugh
i dont get why my piano teacher pushing me into student debt to get degree in music and then become a retail manager
I’m on My way there my friend
I feel like the sight singing made it all worth it.
"you didn't come here for quality did you?"
subscribed.
SAME
Mood
Omg same, this is the first video is saw that sideways made.
My parents wouldn't let me play with matches while watching power rangers and eating macaroni and cheese.
So now I'm doing all of that in my 20s.
And that’s what I call an epic win
When he said that I thought twinsies
Congratulations :3
@@aidendiamond5793 It is a blessed existence
I have perfect pitch but I never really thought about it and now I'm like "hold tf up was it those xylophones I played with as a kid. _Was it the damn xylophones_ "
Probably not. It is likely something that you're born with. The ability to develop perfect pitch is genetic but actually training and perfecting it takes much practice. It is not something that you just teach your kids, they have to have the ability to differentiate notes without a reference tone. If they don't, they'll never learn it.
It was the damn xylophones my guy
It could always been a glockenspiel!!
/Laughs in Duetsch
It probably was. I've noticed people who studied piano as children are much better at identifying the notes because they had the visual of the note on the keyboard as well as the sound, over and over and over you get the idea. Wish I would have had that kind of training!
@@Dong_Harvey Baby glockenspiel, glockenspiel are actual intruments used to add a little bit of flavour in acoustic music '-'
Imagine what we could do if we all had a photographic memory and perfect pitch.
I would be cringing 24/7 over old memories I could never forget
@@freepotatoez1189 I do that now and have neither.
His name is Mozart :)
I have a photographic memory but not perfect
Pitch
i have photographic memory lmao
Ohmygod I'm suddenly scared of every musical student I've ever met
*I WANT TO BE YOUR FEAR* 👁👄👁
Shiver ya timbers because I've been im music school for 10 years now 👻👻👻
@@Jen_TheSnail well, just enroll in music academy... Apparently that's the scariest thing you can do wtfff
@@Phage_of_Phages ö pls no
I've been in music school longer than normal school and that's not an overstatement
As someone who has been learning music for just over 10 years, ever since I was 5, this still confused me. This still might have taught me more than my teachers have in 10 years.
If you enjoy it, don't make the same mistakes I did. Start ear training and functional theory early. It's one of the few regrets I have in life and will serve you as a musician amazingly well.
@@johnathanrhoades7751 Especially if you play an instrument with multiple notes per finger arrangement, like most of the brass section, or some weird strings. For example, the tunes played on remembrance day or veterans day wer played on a bugle, with no valves. All of it was embrasure, how good your lips held up that day, and how good your ear was.
@@collinbarker yeah. I've always admired buglers for that reason.
Star Wars ends with Rey. LOL. No I get it I will show myself out.
XDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
Excellent please stay
I thought that too lmao
Glad everyone now knows how music school is a lengthy process of going insane that you pay for.
Then again, aren't most artistic degrees just paying to go insane?
@@agustinvenegas5238 That's why the insane people are "prodigies"
how much do you pay in your country? In mine music schools are like between 18€ and 48€ a year
@@glacecoco Tuition + dorm cost & food comes to around $26k a year. I don't go to a conservatory either
@@austin5920 duuude where do you live they are stealing your money
man this is really interesting and helpful and all but,,,do you need a hug
Anyone willing to subject themselves to solo queue is in need of at least a hug.
internet hug
his professor that taught him what was in this video recently passed on. and he made this video in honour of him.i think he needs a hug too.
I said basically this whenever my college roommate described her theory homework.
Bishika who was this professor?
This guy just taught me what my music teacher in Elementary never could.
Disappointed my teachers never tortured me with the full scale of solfege
Fun things to do with perfect pitch:
-Take AP music theory and then sleep in class
-Play random songs off the top of your head
-Transpose all of your music a half step down to make your friends mad
-Memorize all of your music so you don’t have to worry about a music binder
-play the other instruments parts in a band entirely by ear
-Bet random unsuspecting people $1 that you can guess the note
-write entire songs by memory using Minecraft noteblocks
-listen to the person ahead of you play the sight reading piece in an audition, then finger along so you know the piece before you audition
-determine the note that the fluorescent lights in your local Walmart buzz at
-memorize the frequencies that correspond with each note, and use that to determine the rpm of a car engine and other various objects
-find the chord that your car horn makes
So many of these things are things that would be easier to do with good relative pitch
So many of these things are why I consider perfect pitch the fast pass of the music world
The car engine thing would be cool as heck
Datmexican0143 I have good relative pitch and synesthesia, so I’ve mastered quite a few of these as well. I reckon I’ve cheated the system.
I can move small objects with my mind and teleport anywhere within 10 meters. Never found a practical use for those IRL.
I just started learning piano and stumbled across this video; I'm currently very confused and scared.
Me too. I'm teaching myself Moonlight Sonata. Don't be scared, it's fun.
I’m a self thought pianist and this killed me, have a good life.
Lol in fact I was a self thought pianist now I want to learn it the traditional way of learning:/ but still this thing’s gonna keep me up all night.
All the poor children out there who found this video who just barely have a grasp on music theory
@@jumperstartful hows the third movement coming along
@@grandpanoogie2665 come on thats mean
Then there's me "developing" perfect pitch from age 15 by recognizing that the first note in Megalovania is D
Well...didn´t you then just did something similar to what the video explained: Found a reference point and did go from there?
mine one is C4 is dont know why its just there in my mind
That's not perfect pitch. It's a technique people use to practice Relative pitch
@@isaigi97 em what is your question?
I'm pretty sure the most common one is recognizing the first note in welcome to the black parade is g.
That bit at the end about hearing music differently really touched me because I think I've finally found someone who has put my thoughts about computer fans and pop songs into words.
me, a European, upon hearing “ti” instead of “si”: *unconsciously cringes*
wh- what about so
same as an hispanic it’s so WEIRD but. thas how america works ig
Lol same
EXACTLY
IKRRRRRRR
I remember I was in my bathroom and I farted and the fart caught me by surprise so I clenched my buttcheeks a bit and that made the fart go higher in pitch, and I heard a perfect fourth interval between both farts.
Never did I think that ear training could pay off to such glorious degrees.
I laughed so hard I farted 😂
Dang how much air was in there you had the juice for tuning it
It happened over the span of like a second, it was very surreal
+
I didn't, god bless you
I'M HAVING FLASHBACKS TO SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO AND MY TEACHERS ARE YELLING AT ME THAT I JUST DON'T GET IT. BUT NOW I DO AND I ALMOST WISH I DIDN'T.
Okay... I feel better now. I am so sorry for yelling in the comments section, but holy god, it's insane how much I didn't get, that I never thought I would. I didn't think about it for years, because I just HATED how it felt at the time. I traumatized myself for the love of music, then ran. Finding your channel this last year, and slowly working through your videos, is possibly one of the best things to come out of 2020 for me. I rediscovered everything that made me passionate about theory, about composing, and it's been amazing.
I'm so glad there's someone with the same experience as myself, music school was very traumatic to me and very stressful for no good reason at all
For me, they just told us to sing or to hear and write it down. But they never actually explained this whole medhanism. It was like some magic. If only we had built our ears interval by interval... crappy teachers man
@@jovis6995 They delight in sucking all the joy out of it and turning it into math equations just because they can.
I don't have a collegiate-level music education, but I did choir from age 7 through the end of high school and a few years in college, I think a total of 12 years. I am endlessly grateful to my first choir for making us learn the basics of music theory, because it transformed my whole life. I don't remember a time where I could listen to music and just *feel* it without thinking about it too much. In college I became a leader in our musical theater troupe and an a capella group because I could sightread so well. Maybe I'll never be able to recognize a major 13 sharp 11 on the spot, but I can pick up a piece of sheet music and sing it, and that makes me happy.
Music is a language. You have to learn it for years and years to become fluent.
I totally agree with this comment! I started doing choir in 8th grade and am now a junior in high school. All throughout elementary and middle school I had a music teacher who would teach us the fundamentals of music theory, and as we got to the end of middle school she'd give us a bit more complex stuff. She'd also have these programs twice a year where most classes would sing, but in 7th and 8th grade, you'd compose drum rhythms and piano melodies respectively for one of those programs (never got to finish the piano composition due to covid but we started at least and stuff happens ofc.) It's so nice to have the formative music knowledge that I got from having it drilled into my mind from kindergarten through 8th grade. And my choir teacher now in high school makes a point to give us sight reading training at at least a fundamental level. We didn't really do it too much my freshman year (I think mainly because of covid) but last year she started giving us exercises almost every class. I auditioned for all state and I didn't quite make it, but my sight reading was perfect other than one measure. So glad to have the ability to read music. Might not have a huge impact on my future career, but it's a nice skill to have regardless
So like, if you have perfect pitch, you're already 90% of the way done with this.
ApricotPit perfect pitch is actually very useless by its self I used to think that too
@Mekal Covic Person with perfect pitch here, yeah that's pretty much it.
There are some practical uses also though. perfect pitch lets you ear train in a month or two with very little effort. Also, it lets you play songs by ear very effectively. If you know a song well, you will also know all of the notes, and if you know an instrument, you can simply play the notes by ear and-congratulations, you just learned an entire song without sheet music or practice.
@Mekal Covic your'e not wrong!!! everyone says how cool it is that i have it, and i'll admit it's handy at times, but it's mostly a party trick
@@Datmexican I can do that without perfect pitch, I think it just makes it a bit easier, in fact I prefer learning by ear rather than with sheet music, as long as I know the song fairly well.
oh. this is why my dad, a musician and composer, deeply hates "simple repetitive pop songs"...
Does he hate repetitive simple classical music as well? **hears faint sound of Beethoven crying under ground somewhere**
@@DoubleplusUngoodthinkful I am honestly not sure... I've never heard him about that being a problem...
This is why bands like Pink Floyd are cool - cos they don’t just use the same I, IV, V, (maybe VI) chords throughout all their songs which makes them quite interesting.
@@DoubleplusUngoodthinkful It's all trash
@@alihughes3728 except pink floyd is just bouncing between i and IV for 7 minutes or more
me, a brazillian, upon hearing “ti” instead of “si”: *que porra é essa?*
In Spanish too 😉
@@mariaclaramurray6492 tlgd
tava c preguiç de digitar e soh copiei outro comentario de um europeu ae
toallitas de bebe
same for me, except i'm Polish
In Romanian also. 😂 I was like “ wtf? Who is ti?” 😂😂😂
0:00-10:50 me: oh this makes sense so glad I took all those lessons
10:51 me: *internal screaming*
"You didn't come here for quality."
* shows alto clef *
As a Viola player I feel attacked lol
Theodora A. Oof I forgot violas need to read alto clef aha
I don't think that's what he meant, but XD
Ling ling's assemble, viola- nah
@@xinkage9429 We violists will not stand for this hate. We violists will become ling lings of our own. Who will be saying the nahs then...
No he showed it because that’s his logo
It was a self deprecating joke
Yknow, as someone who is not a music student, nor has ever been a music student, nor musically inclined and is extremely confused as to what any of this actually means, I'd just like to say that I think you did a pretty good job with this video. I definitely learned something from it - even if I don't know what that something is ^^
Being bombarded by incomprehensible terminology does not qualify as learning just because it feels "smart"
@@purungo I never said it was incomprehensible; I said the opposite. Please leave.
@@exscidium9782 to quote from your own comment, "I definitely learned something from it - even if I don't know what that something is" absolutely implies that you don't necessarily understand everything in the video *AND* that you learned from something whose meaning you don't understand. What I said is that this doesn't qualify as learning
@@purungo Oh just stop being a pedantic ass, will you?
@@purungo take your elitism and get the fuck out
I am currently stu(dying) music in my country (composición musical), and i was barely crying because all of this pandemic got the worst of my institute and well, i got an exam in a couple of hours but this video helped me a lot (more that 1 year and 3 classes) and light me up a little bit. Thanks and amazing video!
I'm so glad my Theory teacher did sight singing quizzes in his office NOT in front of the class.
Must be nice 😭😭😭
When he said *_"Mi Re Re"_* I felt that
OnyxOwl70
beat me to it
Same fam... same
"Is that an F sharp?"
"No that's a 383+(1/3) hertz note."
*confused screaming*
LOL
No it‘s a g flat
E double sharp, you plebs lol.
@@Jozenchill Are you challenging me?
I discovered that ”The Rains of Castamere” had a minor 6th interval, that’s how I learned it.
A little late, but a tip: "The Entertainer" by Scott Joplin is a great source for a Minor 6th
I also use 'The Entertainer' for a minor 6th.👍
Brother Louie?
i just think of it as an upside down major third
I used that in music school too! And the fire nation theme from Avatar for the minor 6th down
Note to self: music is not a viable backup
David Mollon Hah, note
Had the same thought process. There goes that I guess
Unfortunate how people figure that out way late into the game.
You only do it if you have to, TBH
i actually almost started to cry at the anxiety of having to learn all of this and i'm not even in music school
you need to work on your psyche.
I 100% cried in music theory on accident my first year 😅 but it gets better with practice 😂
@@roselittleaxe4652 in the future it won't be an accident anymore.
It's really fun though :( I loved music theory while I was in music school
I had vivid flashbacks of my Latin teacher dumping all of Latin grammar and tenses and whatnot in front of us as a threat in our first year (we were ELEVEN) during that whole video, it was intense
Edit: Grammar, ironically
If no one else already gave an example, the synth melody in Ushers "Yeah" goes from Root to the Perfect 5th and then from Root to the *Minor 6th* !!!
From root to minor sixth?
I found one, it’s in the chorus of “Adore You” by Harry Styles.
I'm a music minor and it surprised me how much I understood from this video. I once heard a note in a song that sounded similar to a different song, played them both back-to-back, and guessed that the two notes were a minor third apart. imagine my joyful surprise when they were!!
Half way through I realized... "Oh, Sideways isn't exactly teaching us... He's letting out years of stress and mania"
(This was very informative though)
I didn’t read the title, I actually just saw the chord and was like “ooh music”
Lmao same
Eyyy same
I actually read eat training instead of ear training idk why🤦♀️😅
@@shreyachekkala3434 wow :v 😂🙌
@@samueljsusanto486 ikr😂
"Before they graduate to retail manager"
Thanks for the motivation
Bruh I’m so mad I’m studying music and I don’t have perfect pitch so I have to learn intervals and it’s super fucking hard. My friends out here with perfect pitch and he hasn’t even learned intervals. Mans just figured out what the two notes are and counts the distance between them smh
Lol, I could always tell which interval it was but never on which note it started (unless it was c) cuz my wonderful teacher loved to torture us and always use a different starter note
Bro don't be mad. I'm a professional working musician and trust me - perfect pitch will NOT get you that far. The skill you are learning is a skill that you need to have.
Late reply, but Adam Neely has a great video called "Why you DON'T want perfect pitch"
Great video, I highly recommend it
Keep working, you'll get there.
@@RobinNashVideos Yessss! That video was awesome. I hope more people see it
"I never found one for the minor sixth..."
Doctor Who Theme: am i a joke to you?
Lol
The first big leap in the Entertainer is one too I think
No, that's like... I don't even know what to call that. It's one half step above an octave joke. It's mi to fa'.
@@AtlanticGiantPumpkin
Typically that would be called a minor ninth, an augmented octave, or a compound minor second
@@AtlanticGiantPumpkin
Typically that would be called a minor ninth, an augmented octave, or a compound minor second
I felt special for the first 30 seconds of the video and then you called me out for feeling special
Wow, that's awesome man. Thanks for the complete comprehensive overview. I'm definitely going to put all that stuff into my long term, bit by bit, practice routines (no hurry, just enjoying it).
This just makes me depressed that my parents didn’t train perfect pitch to me. Would be really nice having as a musician
I chose to play an instrument because I cannot sing. I get to theory and what do I have to do? SING
Shardonic x2 jaja 😹
haha exactly what i'm thinking rn xD
Isaac Thompson NOPE
Me too. I hate singing and I'm always like 😤😩😩 when ever I have to sing back notes
"Teenagers on FL Studio that make more money than you."
As a musician, this is the bane of my existence.
Hey cheer up, I am a teenager who uses FL Studio and I have a negative income
As musicians, for a lot of those teenagers, that is their existence
Hey, don't worry. You're not alone!
I'm in Computer Science and things like Flappy Bird (remember that?) are the bane of my existence.
Not sure if that's a proper equivalent analogy though...
Oh god... Flappy Bird
Hello I exist
This is totally spot on. Had to use this to explain to my 12 year old student that music class will never end. It’s only just the beginning...
Dude!! This was the most entertaining explanation of ear training and sight singing I've ever heard! LOVED it!
Sir--
Good video. Here's a way that I've taught it to many students over the years. It's not important that you know all these tunes, but here are some examples I used to use:
Unison---One Note Samba, a Bossa Nova by Antonio Carlos Jobim
Ascending Minor Second--Jaws Theme
Descending Minor Second---Hernando's Hideaway (The Pajama Game)
Ascending Major Second--Do, A Deer (Sound of Music)
Descending Major Second--Cheek to Cheek, Satin Doll
Ascending Minor Third--In The Mood, main theme (Glenn Miller)
Descending Minor Third--The Star Spangled Banner
Ascending Major Third--The Marine's Hymn
Descending Major Third--Good Night, Ladies, theme from Beethoven's Fifth
Ascending Perfect Fourth---Here Comes the Bride
Descending Perfect Fourth--I've Been Workin' On the Railroad
Ascending Tritone--Cool (West Side Story)
Descending Tritone--Something's Coming (West Side Story)
Ascending Minor Sixth--Black Orpheus (another great Bossa Nova)
Descending Minor Sixth--Theme from the movie Love Story
Ascending Major Sixth--Take the A Train (Duke Ellington)
Descending Major Sixth--Music of the Night (Phantom)
Ascending Minor Seventh---Somewhere (West Side Story), I'll Close My Eyes
Descending Minor Seventh--Something Wonderful (The King and I)
Ascending Major Seventh--The Pajama Game
Descending Major Seventh---the beginning of the last line of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas on the words "So have yourself a...."
Ascending Octave--Somewhere Over the Rainbow, My Sharonna
Descending Octave--Seven and a Half Cents (Pajama Game), the lead in to the verse on the lyrics "I figured it out..."
Each example starts with the interval listed. If you have other tunes that you find easier to remember that's ok. It's important that they are tunes you know well.
As far as solfege goes, or solfeggio as they call it in Italian, the names Do, Re, Mi, Fa, etc., are the actually names of the notes. The A, B, C thing is a later development and is basically kind of a North American thing, if I remember correctly. The Italians always call Do (our C) Do. You never move it in their system. (And remember, they are the ones who thought this up.) Also, if the Do is flat (Cb), they still only sing "Do." The have a word for flat (bemole) and sharp (diesis) but they only teach that to the kids when they're young. Otherwise the syllables for the Cb, C, and C# major scales are all Do, Re, Mi, etc. The flat or or sharp parts are just understood. So......there is NO movable Do. You are IN the key of Do (C) or the key of La (A) or Fa diesis (F# minor) and so on.
In America we have the two schools of thought---fixed Do and movable Do. The idea with fixed Do is that you learn that each note has a different name Do, Di, Re, Ri, etc., and you learn that the intervallic structures are always the same. In other words, Do is always a major sixth below La, or a minor third above it. Di is always a minor sixth below La or a major third above it. And you learn about enharmonics (Di and Ra, etc.) and enharmonic keys (key of Se vs the key of Fi) and everything relates back to the center, even in an atonal piece. The counter argument on the side of moveable Do is that the intervallic relationships between, say, Do and La are always the same in every key, so you start associating that sound with those syllable names. There are merits to each approach.
Lastly, learn to sing all major triads (up to the octave and down) minor triads, sixth chord arpeggios, sevenths, ninths, elevenths, and thirteenths. Learn to sing these in all twelve keys with the notes both altered and unaltered. And learn to sing all major scales, minors, and modes in all twelve keys. Learn to tack them together in cycle of fourths and fifths and chromatically.
I realize that for a many people this will seem like a LOT of work. But these are the basic building blocks of music for a large majority of classical works and most of the pop music in the West. (Meaning Western Europe and the Americas. Asia, Oceana, etc have somewhat different rules.) And even if you don't really want to use the material like a jazz musician would on a gig in improvisation, just doing this opens up your ears immensely, like you said in the video.
Good job and thanks for posting!
Respectfully,
Peter M. Harrison
MSgt(ret)
USAF and US Army Bands, 1981-2009
BA Music Theory, SUNY Potsdam, NY, 1980
MM Jazz Studies, New England Conservatory of Music, Boston, MA, 1994
Owner, Quality Music Services, Huntsville, AL
No wonder I find Black Orpheus so hard to pitch without my guitar and need to practice it each time it gets added to a set list. Minor 6 is a tough one for me.
thanks love u
i feel like he took a breath when he said sir than quickly said all of that
k.
Think I'll stick with I,V,
iV in the key of C.
I recently started taking my music training seriously (self taught) and there's an app that practices my pitch. I keep getting the f# note right away because it's the first note to all star by smash mouth and is engraved in my musical memory
Sabina Thanks for the tip! 😄
What's the app name?
nobody who's ever been through an emo phase can forget what a g sounds like
The app's name?
App name?
Hey, great video. I like your balance between humor and serious material - you really hit the mark for me. Content is great too.
I freaking love your videos, all of them (and appreciate how hard you try to pronounce German words) but this here? It’s amazing. So amazing. I learn so much from your videos!
I haven't even gone to music school, but as someone who plays classical piano as a hobby, it's scary how my mind had an involuntary thought 'fifth' as soon as you played that interval. Just makes you think about how musical theory was drawn out of our humanity, it was always there even when we didn't know it. Maybe that's what makes people go crazy, becoming so intimate with one aspect of human nature, it's like unweaving the rainbow.
same with math, the language of the universe
@@tobitt8157 I'm a very mathematical/scientifically oriented person, and yeah. Although really I see two discrete realms of the human condition and nature, the intuitiveness of music to the former, and mathematics to the latter, is quite similar.
Unweaving the rainbow? You genius.
Damn
sweetheart, who taught you that playing classical piano is a hobby? are they in jail yet?
bcs if my piano teachers through the years have taught me anything is that playing the piano is the main reason you are alive, school, sports, homework, exams, breathing come all second
Once during a high school band practice, the fire alarm was being tested for like 20 minutes and after 5 the band started debating what note it used. We never reached an agreement.
oh my god that happened to me too with a friend who is in choir with me, we found that our fire alarm is an F# lol
There's some weird psychology behind it, but in my high school the alarms would play different pitches on different floors
We were playing our christmas parade tune and when we got to Jingle bells, the fire alarm went off. We didn't know at first bc it was the same exact note that we were playing (G). I just thought someone was off from the conductor or was playing the wrong rhythm
Mine just had multiple frequencies at once
Ok band kid
It's super weird watching this video as a current music theory student just knowing that rn we are doing aural training and listening to my teacher play a random rhythm on the piano and us having to write down the rhythm AND the note qualities. Thank god I've been a choir student for 8 years.
My dude, you're ON FIRE in this video! You're covering some great info, don't get me wrong, but your humor is so on point that I'm actively having to pause and cackle! Thanks so much for this.
Are we going to ignore the, “I’m having a crisis, this is a cry for help” ?
Yes.
Yes we are.
that was highly unexpected 😳.
I greatly appreciate your correct use of punctuation.
This is normal for music majors
He seems fine
I have never been so hopelessly confused by a TH-cam video in my life. I love it.
Watch "history of the entire world I guess"
me at that school
lmao 😂👌
samee
just think, we'll never get that 30 minutes back!
Informative, well paced, nicely illustrated, well edited both clip and sound -today I've stumbled upon the perfect TH-cam clip. Wow.
This is an awesome video that struck a note with me. Reminded me of sight screaming and ear straining classes at North Texas back in the 80s. Everything you said is entirely 100% entirely true, I feel your pain. I sympathize and empathize. Thanks for bringing a smile to my face after years of therapy trying to get over the torture of my musical education. ;)
Dear Mr Sideways,
We love you.
My brain hurts.
Katy Wade me too
Stop drinking
Mark Jackson [a great Australian musical talent]: Me Brain Hurts.
It's a good pain. Like after a good training.
same...
your amazing explanation with your amazing humour just gained you a sub, keep it up
Hey! You! Refresh my music school memory!! Miss you Sideways. I still use thia video to study.
Video : *C D E F G A B C*
Subtitles : *fedora foss hola tito fahmy faure lot a doe tail uh sophie mere a doe*
See, even them have given up
@@smorpd does it really matter
hola
I feel like this is Garrett Watts ear training and teaching me to sight read and I honestly love it so much.
Wot
I can't unhear it 😂😂
Oh wow that's so true
He must've taught Drew everything he knows
Lol fr😂
Hey, Go Rams! Love your videos but I kept doing a double take when you’d show your music building. It’s supper cool to see someone so interesting with a fascinating take on things come from my alma matter. Keep up the good work!
Oh my God, you just enflamed a Passion I didn't know existed!
I just wish this happened in grade school
This entire video felt like someone pulled a hyperfixiation infodump buffed by years of learning musical theory straight from my brain but somehow structured it in a logical way
that's exactly what he did
Idk why this was recommended for me. I know jack shit about music or music theory. But 10:49 minutes into the video "the real fun begins" and I'm still trying to figure out how 3rds and 5ths make an 11th.
LOL
Don't worry man, I studied piano for seven years, my teachers told me I was a natural talent, but I don't know shit about music theory to this day.
(I halfhassed my way through piano because my mother forced me to take lesson and still somehow managed to receive compliments on a daily lmao)
its a 3rd above an octave (octave = an 8th) so 8 + 3 is 11, music theory is pain someone please end my suffering
An octave is scale degree 8 (ie C to C) a ninth is just the second up an octave C to D, same goes for the 11th C to E
Shouldn't actually 3rd and 5th make a 7th? In 3rd you go up 2 notes. In 5th you go up 4 notes. In total you go up 6 notes, which makes it a 7th.
Now if my music theory teachers could explain ear training and sight singing like this, I would be so much more interested in it!
This was fun and way to much for me to learn more thst a basic idea, but you have my goal straight on as at the end, I want to appreciate what is around me more.
My second year at Humber music starts in four days and this video got me pumped as hell
Saaaame, see you in the mods
Yeet see u tomorrow
*Good luck tomorrow, man.* I start Humber in January.
LOL, how did so many Humber cats find this one comment on this one particular video? The answer is Adam Neely. Adam Neely is the gateway to all other music theory videos. See ya in the mods lmao
Not taking ensemble this year!
Holy shit that last bit is the most relatable thing/rant/descent into madness I've heard in a very long time.
You don't really catch yourself doing it until you're sitting in the shower and humming intervals above and below the pitch of your bathroom fan and making melodies around it and then suddenly that precise interval sounds exactly like a song you heard the other day so you go to a website where you can hum into your mic to find the name of songs and sure enough you find that specific one, and its in the exact same key as your humming-bathroom fan YIKES I need help.
me, with no training, but, according to my 5th grade piano teacher, "an exceptional ear"; i understand nothing but this note and this note smashed together just so sure do sound nice!
I've been recently really motivated to get started in learning music, and I know I'm signing up for a world of pain, but I didn't imagine I'd be this masochistic :^)
I used to think perfect pitch was some holy grail thing--not anymore. Relative pitch is arguably more useful. If you understand how pitches are relative to each other... that's essentially the bulk of what a melody is... Perfect pitch or not, gotta know your intervals. Even without perfect pitch, I can tell when pitches are off and I can still learn songs by ear without an issue. There are a few songs that I have memorized the starting notes and keys of. So, using that, I can figure out other pitches / notes relative to that ones I do know by memory.
Also, could you imagine being a piano tuner with perfect pitch? Sometimes, tuning is not about having everything perfectly 'in tune', but rather finding the optimal tuning since everything is relative to each other.
I never plan to go to music school, in fact I want to be a nasa engineer, but I have pretty good relative pitch which is why my mom forced me to play French horn in 4th grade onward but it’s utterly useless to me unless I hear a song and want to play the melody on the piano.
Perfect pitch, as I have experienced it, is definitely NOT a blessing, or grail, or (insert term here). I'd much rather have very good relative pitch, and pull out a tuning fork or an app on my phone when I need to tune something or identify a pitch.
I almost never go to live music performances that's not in a classical setting, and I have to resist the urge to stick my fingers in my ears whenever I walk past most street musicians. Not because I'm snobby, but because in most non-classical settings, the instrument/singer will usually be slightly out of tune. Perfectly acceptable to most people because the intervals are accurate and so it sounds good, but in my head I'm going "was that an A or a G sharp? make your bloody mind up!" Perfect pitch, more often than not, causes me to fixate on this kind of quirk and stops me from enjoying the rest of the music.
As an aside, if a piano tuner mainly worked on pianos (and based his reference on pianos as a result), it wouldn't be a problem at all. I was trained with pianos until about 16 years old, and couldn't understand why barbershop singing sounded out of tune to me at the higher ranges until someone explained that the same note in barbershop singing is not at the same frequency as on a piano. Because I was trained to accept standard piano tuning as 'correct', barbershop singing always sounds slightly out of tune to me.
@@paulturtle92 Have you ever listened to Jacob Collier? He plays with tuning systems and microtonal modulation in his songs, so you may encounter a major chord with just intonation in G-half-sharp and that sort of thing, next to equal-tempered jazz chords. Maybe you could enjoy the "wrong" tune if it is a deliberate choice by the artist? (he also has perfect pitch). Or maybe it would just drive you completely insane, I don't know :D. If you are interested check out his cover of moon river (and tell me how it went!).
@@simivb I have, actually, and it's really interesting! I especially like one track, "Hideaway", where the entire scale is pitched down slightly in the beginning (relative to A=440Hz), and gradually adjusted upwards toward A=440Hz over the course of the track. I couldn't put my finger on it for the longest time until I read the comments on the video!
As someone who was raised with the Italian system Ti hurts my ears. IT'S DO RE MI FA SOL LA SI!
Vroni Fangirl 🙌
YES!!
Russia also sings "Si". Not only that, but we actually sing " Sol' " instead of just So.
YES
Yeah me too.
been playing guitar for 10 years, and piano for a few months.. this was the most educational and helpful video I’ve EVER seen!
I’m the opposite lmao! (First piano now guitar) Good luck 😌🤚🏻
This is hands down the funniest video sideways has ever put out
I’m watching this at 1 am and it’s hurting my brain
dont worry, music is still fantastically scary
04:17 am, big mood, should go to sleep, and do the things I don't like... tomorrow
Hey same!
same xdxd
Studying music was a satisfying mistake
Mellonote perfectly explained
Your speech about the way in which you listened to music changed made me think of two things...
First,
I'm an amateur writer and my appreciation for specific songs changed in the last few years. Songs I disliked before are suddenly fine, ones I loved are kind of iffy now.
Because my understanding of writing and story-telling developed a lot. And I use those songs as a sort of reference for characters. Moods. Emotions. Scenes. I build playlists named things like "the lonely swamp" or "rebellion", or a zillion playlists for specific characters, character relationships, and plots I'm working on.
I now find myself breaking down songs for how well they convey a mood I want to capture, or fit an element of a character's personality I couldn't quite put into words. Maybe the song grates on my ear a bit but it's just the PERFECT feeling of how char1 feels about char2. Or I hear a song first and go "Oh god I need that mood for one of my stories. How do I translate the particular emotional ache this song gives me into prose?".
Second,
The writer thing again.
My god. The way I just CANNOT watch a movie or read a book without analyzing the writer's choices in pacing, plot events, character tropes...
And then trying to explain it to someone not eyeballs deep in fragments of story-telling building blocks and if you're lucky they're at least an artsy type so if they don't really understand the particulars they can at least see the overall shape of what's got you so worked up...
I was talking to my mom the other day. I'm a prose writer, she's done some poetry. I was telling her about my agony needing to take a whole plot event out of a story and all the work I was going to have to do stitching up the hole it was going to leave... I bet there's something in music that would invoke the same flavor of stress but I don't know enough to even guess at a working example. :p
One of the many things i'm grateful to my parents for is giving me music lessons as a little kid lol
And one of the things I hate myself for is giving up my music lessons when I was 6
I didn’t start official classes till I was nine
@@wanderingrandomer Same, I started piano lessons when I was 5, but I was a terrible student and never practiced and then quit when I was 9 (would have stopped sooner, but my parents really wanted me to keep going). I regret it so much now. 😅 All I really got out of it was knowing how to read music and understand basic terminology -- which I am glad to have at least. I can sight read decently if I go slowly on one hand, lol, but that's about it.
1:54-2:08 Summed it up perfectly.
I am a vocalist and the minute I'm asked to sight read, I mentally shut down. Even if I've seen the music before and know it. The very concept of doing so in front of a panel of my peers frightens me more than performing in front of an audience of thousands.
ceres090 I do the exact same thing and I think the reason is because sight reading implies that you don’t have time to prepare as you would for a performance
@@Jsyah2001 I never thought of it that way. That's very insightful.
damnnothingworks that’s a terrible assumption to make of a vocalist just based on how they perceive the act of performing in front of their peers. Performing in front of people you know can be terrifying for anyone, and being a vocalist doesn’t automatically alleviate the fear of performing. You have no idea how experienced or how inexperienced this person is and how far they’ve come in being a vocalist, so to make an assumption that they must be a bad vocalist is an unfair and frankly, baseless accusation.
when you never got the chance to get involved with a musical instrument until age 12 and can only sing back a note when played, but not tell what note it is or literally any other skill he listed
I took up playing an instrument at 25 and didn't take it seriously for at least 5 years after that. The more I work at it the easier relative pitch gets. Over time I've improved my pitch recognition drastically. Now when I put new strings on the guitar I check how close I get (with no tuner or recent reference note) and it is rarely more than a half step. away and usually still A 440Hz. I still can't sing a note if it called but muscle memory is pretty clever. If a song has a vocal anacrusis and I have rehearsed it well and know the song, like really know it, the note is right there. I don't have perfect pitch but I do have some muscle memory. Working on it is most definitely worth it to me.
That is literally me! I started piano last year and I'm 13 right now and can could repete a note or short song/part of song, but I'd have no idea what notes I'm singing or anything, as you said. 😅
Amen brother, amen
Just give it time and allow yourself to be challenged :) I took up the the violin at 16 as my first ever instrument, and have wasted a lot of my time feeling 'doomed' because I didn't start as early as most of my musical friends (I did go on to do a music degree at age 20 too, so you can imagine what a small fish I felt like!). But you just have to immerse yourself. Also, singing in a choir helps (especially singing a harmony part) - then you have to pitch intervals etc off the page, just like in the video, and if you've never done it then it's REALLY hard at first but it does get better!
that´s nonsense
Don’t you love it when you can hear all the pitches and melodies going on around you and your mind just can’t stop 🥲
Great summary man it is the best explanation I have ever heard, I hope I can develop my ear training abilities