Allan Chase – Ear Training for Live Performance

The course begins by exploring the melodic possibilities of the major scale, using the solfege technique to identify scale steps. You will also learn to master basic rhythms in common meters of 4/4, 3/4, and 2/4, using conducting patterns to keep your place and subdivide accurately. The course then covers all the forms of the minor scale, the major and minor pentatonic and blues scales, and the modes—Dorian, Mixolydian, Lydian, and Phrygian. In each scale or mode, you will learn to recognize, sing, and play the common melodic patterns and tendencies of the notes. As the course progresses, it adds new rhythms, including syncopated and tied sixteenth-note and eighth-note rhythms, triplets, and swing rhythms. In addition, it examines mixed-mode melodies, using all twelve notes of the chromatic scale, and introduces polyrhythms.

The course uses the classic method of call and response—listening to melodic ideas, singing them in response, and then playing them, gradually building skills to recognize and play back more complex melodic ideas in all keys and scale types. You will practice identifying bass lines, melodies, intervals, scale types, and rhythms by ear, and then transcribing them. You will also perform melodies, rhythms, and melodic duets in a variety of keys and modes. The course features a number of creative ear training exercises, in which you write simple melodies and rhythms and sing or play them, or improvise a melodic idea and then identify the pitches and rhythms. Each lesson will also include sight singing of melodies and rhythms.

The course uses musical examples from many artists, styles, and eras, including John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Keith Jarrett, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, King Oliver, Bessie Smith, and other examples from jazz, blues, rock, R&B, folk, country, classical, and film music.

The goal of the course is to make you better able to recognize the notes and rhythms you hear, play what you imagine, write down musical ideas, and hear the sounds clearly as you read music notation. Performance ear training skills will make you a better performer, improviser, band member, accompanist, songwriter, composer, arranger, producer, and/or teacher.

By the end of the course, you will be able to:

• Recognize, sing, play, and transcribe melodies and bass lines in any key and scale, including major, minor, pentatonic, blues, or modal
• Recognize, perform, and transcribe all the common rhythms in all the common meters, including sixteenth-note syncopations, triplets, and swing rhythms in 4/4, 2/2, 2/4, 3/4, 6/8, and 12/8
• Sight sing melodies and rhythms from notation (if pursuing the optional sight-singing track)

Syllabus

Lesson 1 Building Connections: Inner Hearing, Voice, and Instrument

Lesson 2 Major Scale Interval Exploration

Lesson 3 Minor Keys and Cut Time

Lesson 4 More Minor Scales

Lesson 5 Minor Pentatonic Scale and the Minor Blues Scale

Lesson 6 Major Pentatonic and the Melodic Language of Blues

Lesson 7 The Mixolydian Mode and More Syncopated Rhythms

Lesson 8 The Lydian Mode

Lesson 9 The Phrygian Mode, ♭II and Ra, the Spectrum of Modes

Lesson 10 Mixed Modes

Lesson 11 Mixed Modes, Part 2, and Polyrhythms