88CET Ear Training CDs, Part 2

Microtonal Ear Training: How?
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Also in analogy with learning an instrument or many other things in
life, you'll have days where you can sing 7:6s, 11:9s, 9:7s, 7:4s, 11:6s,
and 15:7s all within a few cents, but other days when you can't seem to
stop confusing perfect fifths for perfect fourths! Or similarly, I
sometimes have days where I'm doing great at recognizing block harmonies,
but not at melodic dictation.

So there's a lot of value in ear-training aids that fairly easily
tailored to particular levels or types of skill, or particular sorts of
exercises.

And along related lines, we should also be acutely aware that ear
training has to be learned, and then maintained. Ear training is not like
the old addage about never forgetting how to ride a bike once you learn.
Well, I'll grant you that some such skills do stay with you more or less
forever, but I for one have found that vastly more of them require periodic
refreshing than don't.

So ear-training tools are especially valuable if can be used for the
proverbial "refresher course", as well as for initial learning.

When it comes to maintenance, finding the time is often a big problem in
itself, but one thing that's great about ear training is that you don't
need to make it formal at all. Some of my most powerfully-learned lessons
in ear-training have come from just humming and singing to myself while I
clean the house or drive to work. Unlike practicing an instrument, you
don't have to spend any time taking your ears out of a case or cleaning
them out after you're done. Well, I don't anyway! And your ears are
always there when you want to try something out.

So if an ear-training tool can be used during those few minutes here and
there, like while you're driving to work, exercising, working the garden,
or whatever, would be very valuable.



Solution: Ear-Training CDs
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In the words of a certain US ex-President, "let me make one thing
perfectly clear". At least one person has interpreted "ear-training CD" to
mean an interactive computer CD-ROM-based presentation. No, what I'm
talking about here is a bit less of a production than that, and it's not
really the sort of thing that I'd be likely to sell either.

But being less of a production can good too, because without a great
deal of effort, you can taylor such a CD to your own particular interests
and needs. Although I'll use my 88CET ear-training CDs as an example, my
main goal here is a much more general one: I'd like to give you ideas for
what you can do on your own such CDs, to help you become fluent at your own
favorite tunings, and to give you the most practice on what you in
particular are weakest on.

Or another way you can customize them is to your own vocal range. That
might seem at first like a minor thing, but it makes a lot of difference!
It's especially important in sight-singing pitch accuracy. After all, in
the microtonal realm, we're talking about much finer pitch distinctions
than in the 12TET world. You need to get your pitch right in both
scenarios of course, but in the microtonal world, all of your mistakes have
potential microtonal meaning!

And it makes an even bigger difference still with nonoctave tunings,
because singing up or down an octave to bring an answer tone into your
vocal range ultimately comes down to singing a note that's not even in the
tuning system! For some simpler exercises you can say, "everything's just
down an octave from the answer on the tape", but for others, like when
you're fitting a note harmonically into a chord, you're pretty much giving
the wrong answer!