An ear for music is not exclusively an innate ability. It can be formed already in adulthood, the only difference is that children learn easier and faster. With enough effort and patience, you can learn to hear music, the main thing is to stop imposing on yourself that nothing will work out for you just because there is no talent from birth.

Hearing, like any other ability, develops when you actively use it. This means that the more you practice, the stronger it will be. improve your hearing. In order to develop an ear for music, we need to develop a sense of rhythm in ourselves, cultivate melody and open our inner ear.
We train rhythm and sense of pace, start with light rhythms and slowly, then accelerate:

1. We read poems in syllables to the music.
2. We clap to our favorite and well-known melody.
3. We create a rhythmic pattern, we march at the same time. The score is 1-4, on the first and third hit we stomp harder, then we change and focus on the second and fourth. Practice to different music.
4. Listen to melodies with complex rhythms.

In order to form melody in oneself, it is necessary to understand the structure of the melody, the movement of music. Distinguish when the melody goes down and when it goes up and by how much. To develop a melodic ear, you need to do solfeggio. If you are unable to work with professional teacher, use specialized sites or programs (for example, a simulator for the development of musical ear). Inner hearing is your perception and recreation of music in your head, thoughts, fantasies. How do you imagine music, how do you feel and remember it. To do this, it is necessary to develop memory, imagination and musical taste. And also solfeggio will help you. You need to learn by ear to identify intervals, rhythms, notes, chords.

If you do not have the coordination of voice and hearing, roughly speaking, you sing out of tune, then this is already testifies that you definitely have an ear for music. You hear that you sing past the notes . But learn to keep up with the music really. What is needed for this? First, stop thinking about elephants and bears that have gone over your ears. You have a rumor. Secondly, train coordination. First of all, you need to learn musical literacy and learn to sing in notes within one octave:

1. We sing the scale: do, re, mi, fa, salt, la, si, do and vice versa. Repeat at least 20 times until you fix the sound of each note in your memory.
2. Chromatic scale - movement in semitones or consisting of semitones. Semitones are the closest sounds. We press all the keys in a row. To sing them cleanly requires tremendous concentration and attentiveness.
3. Study classical music, it has the most expressive and rich melody.

ready to train every day. You have to translate your skills into skills and bring them to automatism.
Good luck and inspiration!

If you think that “an elephant stepped into your ear” and you will never be able to perceive the sounds around you the way people who are gifted with an ear for music from birth perceive them, then you are deeply mistaken. develop ear for music not as difficult as you think. And today we will give you some tips to help you do it.

First, let's look at the types of hearing. To develop an ear for music, we need to hone:

• Rhythmic hearing. That is, learn to hear and feel the rhythm.
• Melodic ear - the ability to understand the movement and structure of music and hear its subtleties.
• Relative - hearing, which allows you to understand the magnitude of musical intervals and pitch.
• Inner hearing - that is, hearing that allows you to clearly represent music and individual sounds in your thoughts.
• Intonation ear, which allows you to understand the nature and tone of music.

Of course, there are many more types of hearing, but we will focus on these five, as there are enough of them to gain an ear for music.

So, what do we need to do to train these types of hearing.

1. Musical instrument

The ideal way to “pump” all kinds of hearing is to start learning how to play an instrument. In this way, you will remember how each note should sound, train your sense of rhythm and, in general, begin to understand music better. But since you probably don't have time to learn how to play musical instruments, let's move on.

2. Singing

If you don't have a piano at home, find online version on the Internet and every day several times play scales on it and sing them along with the piano. Once you're comfortable with scales, move on to intervals, chords, and simple melodies. The main thing is not to be shy. If you are afraid that someone will hear you, try to train at a time when you are alone at home. But really, there is nothing to be ashamed of! Remember only karaoke bars, where people, to put it mildly, without a voice and hearing, sing so loudly that they can be heard outside the bar.

3. Meditation

We named this item so because the exercise that we are going to tell you about is very similar to meditation practices for beginners. It will help you develop mindfulness for sounds.

Walk on the street without headphones, trying to catch snippets of conversations, the noise of trees, the sound of cars, the sound of heels on the pavement; the way a dog shuffles its paw on the ground; the way someone shakes out a blanket on the balcony .... you will notice that you are surrounded by so many sounds that it's hard to believe. At home, spend five minutes a day listening to the buzzing of the refrigerator from the kitchen, the sound of water in the pipes, the conversations of neighbors, the noise from the street.

4. Voices

When talking to a person, try to remember his voice. You can also watch movies, memorizing the actors' voices, and then listen to certain parts of the movie and try to name the character based only on his voice.

Try to notice the manner of conversation of your interlocutor, the timbre of his voice; remembering a conversation with someone, try to pronounce the phrases of the interlocutor in his own voice in his head.

5. Learn to hear the music

Of course, it's very nice to listen to music and not think about anything. But if your goal is to develop an ear for music, then try to delve into the music you listen to. Learn to separate one musical instrument from another; study how the guitar sounds under different “bells and whistles” so as not to confuse it with other instruments; also learn to distinguish different modes of the synthesizer from other musical instruments; listen to how real drums and electronic drums sound.

This practice will help you not only develop an ear for music, but also teach you to hear music more subtly, which in turn will give you even more pleasure from listening to it. There is one by-effect in this practice - most likely later you will not want to listen to what you are listening to now, you will want something more complex and voluminous. And this is great, because isn't this the main indicator of your progress?

6. Rhythm

There is such a cool thing called a “metronome”. You can purchase it for yourself or find an online version on the Internet. Practice every day with the metronome by tapping with your finger (hand, foot, whatever) the rhythm it gives you.

When you feel comfortable with the metronome, move on to recognizing the rhythm in the music. Start with the music in which there are drums, it is easier to determine the rhythm from them. And then move on to work with music that does not contain noise instruments, allowing you to easily determine the rhythm (classical music, for example).

Another fun way to improve your sense of rhythm is dancing. Sign up for dance studio or dance at home to your heart's content.

7. Sound source

If you have an assistant for this task, great! Close your eyes and ask someone to walk around you in and out of the room and make sounds (voice, clap, ringing a bell, etc.). And every time your assistant makes a sound, you should try to understand which side it comes from. Pretty easy if you and your assistant are in the same room, but once they start walking around the apartment, you'll notice that it's harder to tell where the sound is coming from.

If you do not have a person who can help you with this, then you can do the following. Go outside, sit somewhere on a bench and listen to the sounds around you, as in the third exercise. Only this time you will also need to understand from which side this sound is coming.

Programs and Applications

Of course, there are many programs for developing an ear for music, and we have collected the best of them.

1. Earteach

An excellent application containing exercises for scales, chords and intervals. Perfect for those who already have a more developed ear for music. You can also download the PC version.

The principle is very simple - you need to play the melody that you just heard. The app can also be downloaded for Android and iOS.

A simple game that will help you memorize notes. Also on the right you can find many more games for the development of musical ear.

Every person, if he loves to sing, dreams of performing compositions in such a way that the hall will then enthusiastically applaud him. And you need something for this all nothing - to have perfect hearing. But how can this be achieved? Exist special exercises for hearing development.

What are the types of hearing

Oddly enough, but ear for music is a rather complex concept and not amenable to categorical denial or affirmation (“I have a ear / I have no ear”). The fact is that each person can find one or another subspecies of musical ear. Whether it is possible to develop a certain type of hearing cannot be answered unambiguously, since there are a lot of these types.

1) Rhythmic hearing, that is, the ability to feel the rhythm, the emotional component of the melody.

2) Fret hearing, responsible for the ability to understand chords.

3) Intonation hearing, which allows you to understand the nature of the music (cheerful or sad).

4) Inner hearing - the ability to reproduce a musical notation of a melody.

5) Interval hearing - the ability to sing musical intervals and determine the pitch.

6) Absolute pitch - a unique ability to determine the pitch of any sound without comparing it with the reference sound.

How to develop an ear for music

If you do not know how to develop any kind of musical ear on your own, try to do the following exercises daily.

1) To develop rhythmic ear, try to read poetry to music, dance to your favorite music, counting the beats. By the way, we develop musical and rhythmic ear precisely by moving, so the plasticity of the body has no last value for a musician. The reverse is also true: any dancer must have perfect pitch. These are related things.

2) Listen to your favorite songs, short ones are better to start with, and then try to play this thing own voice but no music. Then test yourself by turning on the original.

3) Sing monophonic scales (note series "do - si" and "si - do"), even though it is boring and uninteresting. For the development of hearing, this is an invaluable experience.

4) Sing " chromatic scales” (they are played only on black piano keys in one tone). Such scales help to better develop an understanding of the difference in modes.

5) Pick up your favorite melodies on a musical instrument, even without knowing the exact notes. After all, someday you will be almost indistinguishable from the original.

6) Sign up for music school. Exactly music teachers help develop an ear for music special discipline called solfeggio.

How to develop absolute pitch?

Oddly enough, but no way. With an absolute ear for music, a person can only be born. Therefore, the question of how to develop an absolute ear for music is not entirely appropriate. In the absence of an absolute innate ear for music, it is better to focus on the development of other types of hearing - intonation, rhythm, internal, etc.

Video on the topic of the article

Music is an integral part of many people's lives, but not every person is born musical. It happens that you hear your favorite song and you just want to sing along with your favorite artist, but the fear of hearing disapproving comments destroys the desire in the bud. However, even an ear for music is just a matter of practice and diligent study.

What is hearing?

The simplest explanation is that musical ear is certain skills and abilities that allow you to fully perceive music and hear all its incredible sounds or even minor errors. Not a single musician, sound engineer or even producer can do without such abilities.

Absolute musical ear

It is believed that training absolute pitch impossible, who lives with a person from birth, and the chance to have absolute pitch falls to one person in ten thousand. Which suggests that many truly great musicians did not have absolute pitch. Absolute pitch is the ability to accurately determine the pitch of any sound without the help of standards. Simply put, it is an innate ability to capture the structure of music.

Relative or interval hearing

Allows you to determine the value of musical intervals, as well as play them. in this case, it is determined by comparison with the standard.

inner ear

This type hearing is associated with mental activity. Simply put, imagine mentally the music and its individual components. Often this happens according to music notation or just from memory.

intonation hearing

Allows you to perceive music, determining its character, expression, tone. Most effective method- specialized training course solfeggio. It is important that it be directed to aesthetic education, not technical.

Rhythmic hearing

This is the ability to feel the emotional expressiveness of the rhythm. Everyone can learn to hear and feel the rhythm.

And it's far from full list known to mankind however, these are the important components on which the classical understanding of musical ear is based. Having trained them, a person acquires the ability to hear and understand the melody. However, the question is, if musical taste at specific person, remains open.

The human brain has certain departments that are responsible exclusively for musical hearing. This area is located in the auditory zone, and the more nerve endings it contains, the better a person's hearing is. It is possible to determine how things are with hearing in a particular person at home, without resorting to magnetic tomography. To do this, you can simply try to repeat the melody you heard, let it be the chorus from your favorite song. The main thing is to keep the rhythm. And even if the first time turned out to be a failure, you definitely shouldn’t panic, it’s better to spend your energy on hard work and train more.

How to start listening to music?

Developing an ear for music is a task that is much easier to handle than it seems. Perfect option- go to solfeggio lessons with a professional teacher. The essence of this subject lies precisely in the development of hearing and musical memory. However, if this is not possible, you should stock up on a ton of patience and do it yourself. What is needed for this?

• The first way is any musical instrument. This option is one of the most affordable and effective. Develops all of the above types of hearing. Do you want to train them to the maximum? Learn to play any instrument. Ever dreamed of learning to play the guitar since childhood? It's time to do it. Thanks to the lessons, you will not only remember by ear how each note should sound, but also perfectly train your sense of rhythm and finally begin to understand music. This option is suitable for especially patient and those who have enough time.

• The second way is singing. The easiest and most obvious way to develop an ear for music. This will require the presence of a piano, but do not be alarmed if there is none at home. Fortunately we live in modern world, which gives us the opportunity to take advantage of free online versions, which are a dime a dozen on the Internet. Ear development begins with scales, play and sing them daily with the piano. When the skill is perfected and you feel confident with the scales, proceed to the next step - intervals, chords or melodies. It is important to overcome shyness in yourself, if you do not get rid of this feeling, then classes will be meaningless. Choose a time for classes so that no one is at home.
• The third way is exercises that are very reminiscent of meditation. This method perfectly helps to develop attentiveness to sounds, the ability to listen to melodies and understand them. Used to roam the street with headphones on? It's time to stop this business. Leave your headphones at home, go for a walk without them, trying to listen to all the sounds coming through. It doesn't matter what it will be, fragments of dialogues, sounds big city, the noise of forest trees, the crunch of snow or the rustle of leaves. Only by paying attention to all the surrounding sounds, you will understand how many of them are around. Such an exercise can be carried out at home, do not be too lazy to spend five minutes a day to listen to the noise of the water, the buzzing of the refrigerator, the noise from the street, the barking of the neighbor's dog.
• The fourth way is to listen to the voices. Let even a simple conversation with a person become an exercise. Listen to the voice of your interlocutor, try to remember its sound. Such a manipulation can also be performed when watching movies, remembering the voices of the actors. After that, you can conduct a small exam, trying to guess the actor only by voice.
• The fifth way - think while listening to music, learn to hear it. Almost every modern man will say that he listens to music every day, on his way to work/school/shopping. For many, this is a way to get distracted, and it's great that you can listen to music and not think about anything. But we set a goal to develop an ear for music, so now you need to not just listen to music, but try to hear it, delve into the essence and structure. Practice distinguishing musical instruments from each other. Such an exercise not only contributes to the development of hearing, but also teaches you to hear music more subtly, noticing all the details, which will give even greater pleasure when listening. Subsequently, you will want more complex compositions, and that's great, because it only means that there is progress and you are not standing still.
• The sixth way is to learn to feel the rhythm. For this purpose, a device such as a metronome does an excellent job. Working with this device is extremely simple - tap the rhythm that the metronome sets with your finger or hand. As soon as you start to cope with this exercise perfectly, you should move on to recognizing the rhythm in melodies. You should start with songs that contain drums, so musical instrument recognizing the rhythm is much easier. The most difficult level in rhythm recognition is classical music. An equally effective answer to the question of how to develop an ear for music is dancing. You can practice both in the classroom with a trainer, and at home on your own. While dancing, try to catch the rhythm and move to the beat of the music.

• The seventh way is to look for the source of the sound. You can ask someone from the household to participate in this exercise. The essence of the exercise is as follows: close your eyes and ask your assistant to make sounds from different parts rooms. Your task is to guess where the sound is coming from. Such a simple task is more like a child's game, but the task becomes much more complicated if you ask an assistant to go outside the room and move around the apartment. If there is no assistant, you can just go outside, sit on a bench in a busy place, listen to the surrounding sounds.

Hearing test

In order to reliably determine whether a person has an ear for music, you should contact the teacher, it will not be easy to do it on your own. The presence of hearing is diagnosed according to the following criteria:

• Assessment of intonation.
• The development of musical memory.

Exercises

Testing musical ear consists in the following exercise: the teacher taps a certain rhythm with any object, and the subject must repeat it as reliably as possible. If the rhythm was reproduced flawlessly, this indicates the presence of hearing. Exercises can be made more difficult in order to determine the level of hearing development.

The assessment of intonation consists in the fact that the teacher sings a familiar melody and asks the subject to repeat it. This exercise also reveals vocal abilities. But this exercise is not the main indicator in the hearing test. Even with a weak and not very clear voice, a person can develop excellent hearing, which will allow him to master playing any instrument without any problems.

Still wondering how to test your ear for music? There's an answer: musical memory or the so-called hide-and-seek game. The exercise is extremely simple: the subject turns his back to the instrument, while the teacher presses any of the keys. The task of the person being checked is to find the same key from memory. If a person is able to accurately guess all the notes when pressing a key and listening to a sound, he has an excellent ear for music.

Ear training is a complex process that is accompanied by the inclusion of the brain, and not mindless exercises. This means that even the acquisition of elementary knowledge about music already contributes to the development musical ability. Start simple musical notation, study classical music. The richness of sounds, harmony, the sound of instruments - that is what is so necessary for those who wish to develop an ear for music.

Online game "Absolute Rumor"

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The first 33 questions from this list. The entire list of 55 questions (from 34 to 55 chips with a musical staff) is presented in full version of this game included in the program.

1. BEFORE 2. RE 3. MI 4. SI 5. LA 6. RE 7. MI 8. FA 9. LA 10. SI 11. SALT 12. MI 13. TO 1st octave 14. RE 1st octave 15. MI 2nd octave 16. FA small octave 17. SALT 1st octave 18. LA 1st octave 19. SI small octave 20. TO a small octave 21. RE small octave 22. MI big octave 23. FA 1st octave 24. SALT small octave 25. A big octave 26. SI big octave 27. TO 2nd octave 28. RE 1st octave 29. MI 1st octave 30. FA 2nd octave 31. SALT big octave 32. A small octave 33. SI 2nd octave

34. TO 1st octave + stave 35. SALT small octave + stave 36. A large octave + stave 37. FA large octave + stave 38. RE large octave + stave 39. MI 1st octave + stave 40. TO 1st octave + musical staff 41. SALT 1st octave + stave 42. SI 1st octave + stave 43. RE 2nd octave + stave 44. MI 2nd octave + stave 45. FA 2nd octave + stave 46. ​​SALT 2nd octave + stave 47. SI 2nd octave + stave 48. TO 3rd octave + stave 49. TO 1st octave + stave 50. A small octave + stave 51. FA small octave + stave 52. RE small octave + stave 53. SALT of the big octave + stave 54. MI big octave + stave 55. BEFORE a large octave + stave

Alexey Ustinov, 2011-12-30

Game updated 2013-11-30

Teacher's comment

Absolute musical ear - the ability to determine the pitch, regardless of other tones, i.e. without comparing sounds with each other and, as a result, assigning a note name to this sound. The nature of this phenomenon has not been sufficiently studied in the circles of musicologists and, apparently, therefore, it is represented by different points of view. But it is even less familiar to practitioners. At the same time, the skill of "absolute musical ear" constantly remains in the focus of both interest and controversy among almost all musicians. It is generally accepted that all string players (violinists, cellists) have such an ear, but this is not so! On the contrary, it seems that the pianist does not need it at all - however, those who have this skill say that it helps a lot, for example, when reading scores ... Another often discussed question is whether it can be developed, or is it something is it innate?

What to do with a child who easily picks up any melody and does not want to look at the musical text at all? How to develop ear for a student who knows musical symbols well, but can play false notes, memorizes them and the teacher cannot help him by any means?

One day my second-grade student asked me to play for him Gennady Sasko's piece "Blues", which is quite complex in rhythm, with a passage at the end. Played it three times... and in the next lesson he played the Blues without notes and at the same tempo as the piece sounded. The case with this boy was for me an example of my incompetence in working with a gifted student with absolute pitch... There were not many children with absolute pitch in my teaching practice. And most often these children did not graduate from music school. From the very beginning, they could memorize and play pieces by hand, "by ear", but reading a complex text caused them resistance and, as a result, they lost interest in learning.

In other words, the skill of "absolute pitch" is not something separate in the learning process, unambiguously positive or negative. Both the presence and absence of it require additional attention from the teacher and a special approach to the student. And yet, this skill is highly desirable!

In order to help my students, and not to repeat the mistakes of my youth myself, now I use the method of Maltsev S.M. - the author of a comprehensive methodology for teaching piano playing, as well as solfegging, synchronous with piano playing. This method helps me to identify already in the first year of education children with good developed hearing and constantly work with them by reading music from a sheet.

Most students and those who want to master the wisdom of music, easily learn and play their favorite melodies on the piano or guitar, still need to develop their ear. And the game "Absolute pitch" is an excellent tool for this. It is suitable for all ages.

Small children, who cannot even read, will guess the right answer from the pictures. (Only they need help - first play the game NOTES - PICTURES so that the child gets acquainted with the notes hidden in simple words: HOUSE, TURP. In the same place, he will get acquainted with the sound of notes.).

Older kids and adults will discover when they play that they HAVE perfect pitch and that this skill is developing - tested!

Of course, someone might say that there are no semitones (more precisely, a full chromatic scale) in the game. Yes, the game only includes white piano keys, i.e. in fact, we are in a major (DO) or minor (LA) fret ... Someone may note that the steps of the fret and intervals play a role here ... Absolutely right! But, start with simple tasks, achieve confident recognition of these notes, and you will take a big step in improving your musical ear. Believe me, you will get great pleasure when you find out that you identify the name of the note by ear!

Krivopalova L.N.
Piano teacher, Palace of Creativity for Children and Youth, Tomsk
01.05.2011

The Virartek team expresses its gratitude to Lyubov Nikolaevna Krivopalova, who took an active part in the creation of this game and in its testing. THANK YOU! Good luck to you and your students!