88CET Ear Training CDs, Part 7

Know Thy Limits
---------------

OK, enough of the 88CET mechanics for this series. Don't feel like you
have to master all of that; again the point of this series is to use my
88CET ear-training CDs as an example to guide your own such CD projects.

Before I launch into the that though, let me make clear that there
certainly are limits to what you can do with these CDs.

First and foremost, let me acknowledge right up front that these CDs -
or at least the ones I've produced - have a very major weakness.

****** They concentrate much more
on pitch than on rhythm. ******

This is a very common weakness; far more ear-training curricula fall for
this pitfall than don't! And most any music teacher will agree that not
only do students have more problems, on the whole, with rhythm than pitch,
but rhythmic mistakes are usually *much* more discombobulating in nature,
and more difficult to recover from.

In my defense, I'll do a little more than acknowledge this flaw: I'll
also point out that it's much more difficult to dream up rhythmic exercises
that can be exercised on the CD medium. For reading, and for composition
(on paper anyway), the problem is inherently an audiovisual one. I'll also
admit that I've only attempted to devise a handful of rhythmic ear-training
exercises on tape, so perhaps methods exist that I haven't discovered.
I'll also point out that rhythmic skills are universally important, and not
specific to any particular tuning system, so perhaps this is the wrong
place to look for rhythmic help!

Another limitation, perhaps some of you are asking about is this: Given
that a series of exercises could take up just a few minutes on a CD, how
long would it take before you just simply memorize - consciously or not -
the sequence of answers rather than figuring out the answers one by one?
That is certainly a valid concern. Consider though, that in three minutes,
you can usually get around 45 individual questions out. It's not all that
easy to memorize 45 individual answers, especially if you're making a
conscious effort to answer them by method rather than memorization.

That is a definite risk though, which means that ear-training CDs of
this nature are better used for improving your breadth of knowledge -
learning a variety of skills - than your depth of knowledge - working on a
single skill intensively for hours. I have nevertheless made ear-training
tapes of somewhat similar nature for intensive training purposes. And for
that, by the way, tapes work great, because you'll be going from beginning
to end without much need for skipping around.

But even in a short session, there is a very simple and effective way to
minimize that risk: Don't leave any distinctive markers in your narration.
In a few of my earlier (12TET) ear-training tapes, I would occasionally
inject a side thought or joke here and there. But I found that I ended up
- again, consciously or not - just always knowing the first two or three
answers after that event! So always speak in about the same tone of voice,
and change timbres on your pitch sources either very frequently or very
rarely. Once per exercise-type is often a good approach.

I'll have some more thoughts along these lines in the conclusion section.

With regard to these CDs specifically, they do not exercise block-chord
harmony very much. It's especially weak with regard to root movement
between chords. Although that's a very basic point in traditional diatonic
harmony, I haven't found it to be quite as big a concern in 88CET harmony.
Perhaps that's because it's a big piece of establishing tonality, which is
the historical norm for traditional harmony, but not really for 88CET. (By
the way, 88CET nevertheless can do tonal music, and even traditional
harmony.) I've been thinking about doing a fourth CD in the series
specifically for that sort of topic matter.