A good ear is the key to success!

This lesson looks at online resources for training your musical ear. Very few people have perfect pitch, very few people are actually tone deaf. There is, therefore, a good chance that you fall somewhere in the middle of the tonal awareness spectrum.

So the good news is that your hearing is something you can develop. It has been proven that just 10 minutes dedicated practice every day can drastically improve your listening skills. The bad news is that it can be a frustrating and long journey depending on what you want to achieve.

A good start is to find some music that you enjoy and just enjoy it. Find a quiet place and time to listen to it and experiment with different volumes. You will find that sometimes you can hear more with a low volume and sometimes with a high volume.

Protect your ears! If you find yourself playing in a band, the music will be loud to overcome the drums. Investing in a decent set of ear-plugs will preserve your hearing for the rest of your life. I never had such advice and as a result I have real problems following conversations in noisey environments. All is not lost for me, but it could have been a lot worse. If you find yourself without ear-plugs, you can improvise with two (clean) cigarette filters.

Next follows the result of my online search for websites and software that will help you to train your ear. If you find more then don't hesitate to share it with us.

1) Information
www.soundonsound.com has a good article about the subject of ear-training. This article has lots of information about different hearing skills and training methods.

2) Online and interactive
www.wholenote.com has an online program that helps your relative pitch. It gives you a C chord and then playes a random note which you have to identify.
www.good-ear.com has a selection of excersies to help you identify chords, scales and even perfect pitch. Even more useful is the beginner section.
www.Burnmybanjo.com! I developed a guitar tuning test to help you identify out of tune strings. It can be found here. This is very new and I still want to develop it further, but to my knowledge this is the only thing to help you with your tuning acuracy. It does get very difficult very quickly though and if you find yourself struggling on the second stage, don't worry - so do I.

3) Downloadable software
Ear training software can range from a few dollars to a few hundred dollars. Here are a couple that offer a demo version of a fairly cheap program.
www.earmaster.com offers a comprehensive training course for all levels of player. The software is downloadable as a fully functional demo for a few weeks. The design is smart and you have a choice of lesson styles and lesson topics. For example, you can focus on identifying chords and work your way through 20 stages of difficulty all guided by the virtual tutor. If you decide to buy it it will cost around $100 (at the time of writing). This will be money well spent!
I would also recommend visiting www.silvawood.co.uk and check out their 'Absolute Pitch' program. The program is a bargain at around $20 (at the time of writing) but you can download a demo version which is restricted to middle C. With the demo, you will see the potential for developing your tone recognition skills.