Yes, i had the same problem. I STILL try to believe i`m not not tone deaf! LOL But i can seriously say that ear training helps a lot. Through years of practice and my sight-singing class, I found out that, because of my BLUES ear, I have a HARD time in singing the major third and perfect fourth of the major scale.  The half-step between both really confuses my ear. I`m used to the whole step between minor third and perfect  fourth of minor tonalities. I also discovered i can sing the minor scale so easily because of the music i hear all the time, being blues, rock and stuff. Goddamn minor third.

Anyway, to overcome that, I started to associate the intervals to melodies  I knew and that became a great tool. Now i know the the perfect fourth is the beginning of the melody from the Force theme of Star Wars and i never confused my perfect fourth and major thirds again going through ear training practices in websites like www.teoria.com. I believe now i have a good ear when playing the guitar. I can hear a note in my head before playing it. But that`s a progress that comes with time. Before I couldn`t tune my guitar, couldn`t find out the key of a piece. Its nice to begin to hear and notice development. Today, with the guitar on my hands, i can even find out which pitches birds are singing or a dog is barking, etc. I say keep at it and, through practice and training, you`ll become better.

With that in mind, i believe that Ear training works better when you study theory at the same time. Both complement each other and that`s probably the problem you have with the keyboard.

Keep at it. A good ear training software is Ear Master. Other than that, i`d say the relative pitch and perfect pitch courses by David Lucas Burge. You can find them somewhere the net

I said that because, IMO, it is stupid to know the minor third JUST from an ear-training perspective and not know what it means from theory point of view. I, for example, don`t get satisfied with INCOMPLETE answers. I want to know it all and that is the thought that brought me a lot of respect and good playing.

Last edited by Uaala (Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:13:56)

I said that because, IMO, it is stupid to know

Please let's be careful to not get ourselves caught up in a unfriendly rant about wright/wrong/stupid. We had that happening before and don't like it at all

ok, great

Still...  it's only a friendly pointer..  I love to keep my normal shoes on and not have to fetch my mod-boots 

just answering your email, but... GO

HalfBlindLefty wrote:

ok, great

Still...  it's only a friendly pointer..  I love to keep my normal shoes on and not have to fetch my mod-boots 

just answering your email, but... GO

Thank you HBL (x2).

Thanks for all the good suggestions.  It's time to get started with ear training.

VikingBlues, the CD you recommended sounds great - and it's not too expensive.  I checked out both the MonkeyLord site and found another Rob Chapman site called Listening Academy that distributes the CD.  I've written to ask how the CD is distributed in the U.S.

The cool thing about this business of learning music is that each time you encounter a difficulty it pushes you to a higher level of understanding. 

I get frustrated because I can't tab out a simple lick.  So I start thinking I need ear training on intervals so I can identify notes.  Then I realize that the blue note only sounds blue in the context of its scale - in other words, the intervals it creates with other scale notes.  So notes are not blue, intervals are.  Within a scale what are the intervals that sound good when playing blues?  And how do all the intervals in the scale work?  I've learned scales but I haven't focused much on intervals.  I'd better go back and re-read some theory on intervals.  And my one-note-at-a-time solos are getting boring.  If I want to add some double stops or partial chords into my playing it means two or three notes at a time - intervals.  What intervals would I choose?  And where are they on the fretboard?  I'd better get back to learning the notes on the fretboard.  I'd better pick up the guitar to incorporate this new thinking into my practice sessions.

Each problem you tackle raises your awareness, moves you to a slightly more sophisticated level of thinking, improves your skill and also reveals the next challenges.   There's a great sense of satisfaction to be taken from this process.  I'm lovin' it!

Giant_Rick, Uaala, weelie - thanks for the pointers on where to look for good material.  I'm getting to be a junkie on educational material (both free and paid for).  But you can never have too much good information.  It's a good thing I'm retired or I would never get around to working with all of it.

Last edited by JimRR (Fri, 19 Mar 2010 18:19:29)

weelie wrote:

Vikingblues,
The thing is people who know AND understand a theory concept, will see that it is a simple thing, meant to make things easier. People who don't, will see just a big mountain climb ahead. SO the key is finding theory in a way you are able grasp it and not suffocate. No, I have no answers or steps to accomplish that.

That`s exactely it. Theory is there to help your playing and help you be able to playing your heart more efficiently. People don`t need to study 8 hours of theory straight and that isn`t really helpful too. But a good 15 minutes everyday is not THAT HARD and you`ll become better in a shorter amount of time, trust me on that. Didn`t mean to sound harsh but i`ve chosen my words wrong.

Answering to the question about good intervals for blues, i`d say something between a minor third and a major third. That`s the real blue note there. For example, Play an A note and then after it, bend a C note almost to C# but not quite there something like 3/4 of the way. You`ll see the effect it causes. Also, the augumented fourth or diminished fith and the minor seventh. Those are the essentials.

Last edited by Uaala (Sat, 20 Mar 2010 21:03:36)

Good luck weelie and JinRR with the CDs - I hope they do something for your playing after the big build up some of us have given them. I didn't expect much and was wondering for a while why i was doing these exercises from the CD - it was a pleasant surprise when as if by magic I could hear in a different way. How I wish that sort f surprise happened more often.

Uaala wrote:

But a good 15 minutes everyday is not THAT HARD and you`ll become better in a shorter amount of time

I can't fault your logic Uaala and i was thinking on this while dog walking this morning.

I think to some extent its an age thing for me.   A long time ago - I can just about remember it - I was young, enthusiastic, full of energy, and willing to learn and work at learning. I am now a lot older, noticing how much nearer to my own age friends and relatives who die are, increasingly weary, my head feels as if its overflowing with "knowledge" (most of it useless) and it's becoming increasingly difficult to remember what I already know, let alone getting more new knowledge on board. I'm in a job, working for people I wouldn't consider pi**ing on if they were on fire, which stifles creativity in any way at all and takes up so much time that it's not an easy task to switch the brain to its creative side when I eventually get home. I have to stick at the job as I'm not qualified for anything else and am too old to be considered for jobs elsewhere (believe me, I have tried, and wasn't that humiliating), and I have to fulfil my responsibilities to keeping my family housed, educated and fed etc.

I am going through this phase of my life with a wife that is also my best friend - that is what makes it worth it all.

I will seriously consider the suggestion though despite all this - is there any EASY TO UNDERSTAND theory guide that anyone knows of that would lend itself to being a 15 minutes a day exercise? I find it easier to learn by examples of sound that you can hear being played by someone else, rather than by page after page of musical notation you're expected to make sense of yourself and text full of technical terms. I've only tended to see the page after page type and it has really put me off theory BIG TIME. The best guitar teacher I have learned from (Hawkeye Herman ) goes out of his way to show by example rather than get caught up in pure theory - this is a major reason I have learned so much from him and so little from others.

VikingBlues wrote:

I am now a lot older, noticing how much nearer to my own age friends and relatives who die are, increasingly weary, my head feels as if its overflowing with "knowledge" (most of it useless) and it's becoming increasingly difficult to remember what I already know, let alone getting more new knowledge on board.

....it's not an easy task to switch the brain to its creative side when I eventually get home.

VikingBlues, I know where you are coming from.  I also have the "age syndrome".  It seems much harder to keep anything new in my feeble old brain. 

BUT ....  take heart.  I retired in May of 2009 and took up guitar in August of that same year (at the ripe old age of 61).  With retirement all that stress goes away and you will actually WANT to learn new things, although they still come at a slower pace than when we were younger.  We can certainly tell, by your excellent playing that you are very talented and YEARS ahead of many of us.  As Uaala just said...

Uaala wrote:

But the beauty of music and education is that it keeps us younger and take all the stresses from our everyday life away.

Hang in there and keep plugging away....

Last edited by Golfxzq (Sun, 21 Mar 2010 23:30:55)

I guess we constitute the geezer contingent of the forum.

I retired a few years ago and I'm 67 now.  I've been playing for a little less then a year.  My fingers may not be as fast as a young person's but I my mind is just as sharp as ever - probably better.

I find everything about learning to play blues entirely absorbing and fascinating.  Sure, I hit plateaus, get frustrated when I struggle to learn something and I miss having the background, history and knowledge that long time players have.  But older is wiser and I when I get frustrated I eventually just smile at myself for my fit of pique. 

I have more patience and don't wander up so many blind alleys.  I'm able to notice that my progress is steady and to take satisfaction from that.  My appreciation for blues increases as I listen to more players (new and old).  My ear for the blues (and music in general) becomes more discerning and discriminating as I practice and listen. 

If a practice session goes especially well I can live off of the glow for days.

And I have a lot more time and some discretionary savings to put into the effort.  I'd love to get good enough to join a geezer blues band (or a younger band).  People around my age have been there for the entire modern blues era.  How cool is that!

All in all, this is a great time of life and learning to play the blues is great fun.  Geezers Rock!!

Last edited by JimRR (Mon, 22 Mar 2010 10:22:34)

A wise old music professor told me this analogy:

Imagine that you are going on a road trip, you have the choice of traveling by bicycle, or in a luxury RV. You have a week to travel as far as you can. If you chose the bicycle, you chose interval training, if you are riding in the RV you have opted to study scales.

It's one of the few instances in music education that the easiest way is the best way. You can go a lot further with studying scale relations than you can with interval training, and its a lot less painful in terms of practice. By this I mean learning any scale you know in all keys, then moving on to learn new scales once again in all keys. By doing this and repeating it over and over and over again you will naturally start hearing the intervals that interval training would teach while also reinforcing their practical aspect as well as building up your guitar playing.

To really reinforce the hearing aspect of studying scales, practice them in a dark room, While laying in bed staring at the ceiling, whistle/hum along with your playing.

Also to take away the 'sterility' of playing scales over and over again, find yourself some exotic drum beats and play along. I really found scales boring until my prof gave me a cd of flamenco drummers to play the scales along with.

All of that goes to say, don't bother with aural interval training, go for the scales, its easier and it'll take you way farther musically.

Uaala wrote:

I think a good way to start is this website www.essentialguitar.com

I said I would have a look-see at this link. I have done and I'm liking what I see.

I immediately starting paying extra attention when in the introduction page I came across:-
"I have come to the conclusion that most of what is taught is over-complicated, confusing, and not all that helpful in the real world of creating music.
What I have attempted here is to get to the root of fundamental music principles and relate them to the guitar in a way that will make sense, be useful and allow you to develop your own playing style. There are no ego-inflating descriptions of 7th scale harmonized minor scales here, and no '101 Essential Blues Licks' to learn."

That - if you will excuse the pun - hit a chord. Not to mention being music to my ears.

Cutting a long story short - I have bookmarked the site, have started on the exercises and will be paying as regular visits as my time allows. Thanks Uaala.