The Trane Project's Guide to Learning Music by Ear

Introduction

This document describes a process of transcribing music with the purpose of learning it by ear. This process is not my creation, but rather a distillation of the ideas of many musicians who have come to their own conclusion about how music is learned by ear. The result is a process that it is effective and fun.

This process is very similar to what is commonly referred as transcription. Transcription is well-known to lead to great results, but it is thought of as difficult and frustrating. The process described here is a modified version of transcription intended to reduce the difficulty of the common methods.

Transcription

First, let's introduce the specific meaning of the term transcription that will be use from now on. Normally, transcription refers to the process of either writing down a piece of music or playing it on an instrument as it was played in a recording.

The instructions are usually as follows:

  1. Listen to a piece of music several times until you can sing or hum it comfortably.
  2. Try to play it back on your instrument.
  3. Optionally, write it down in musical notation.

The most common problems that students find when trying this method are:

  1. Beginners often find it very hard to find the exact notes that were played.
  2. One is often told to listen to the recording, stop it, and then play the notes back. This relies on the student's musical memory, which is not very reliable at the beginning, adding to the frustration.

For our use case, we'll need a wider definition of the term. The process described above is included in this expanded definition, but it's only the last part of it. Furthermore, writing down the music is not required at all, although students are free to do so.

The problem with the first definition is that the process is too focused on the exact notes that were played. There is a lot more to the music than that. Each piece creates a musical context that the perspective student must first learn to navigate. Our process begins by playing within this context without many regards for the intricacies of what was actually played. It is only after this context has been sufficiently approximated by the student that the focus can narrow down to the notes that were played. However, the focus is always kept slightly open. The end goal is not perfectly accurate reproduction of the music, but its full internalization into the personal style of the student.

Materials

The materials needed for this process are:

  1. Your instrument.
  2. The recording of a song you want to learn.
  3. A music player. The recommended music player is Transcribe!. This is a specialized music player for transcription that allows for looping sections of a song, slowing it down, and shifting the pitch up and down. It is paid software, but it is well worth the price.

Process

There are four main phases in the process, each of which builds on the previous ones:

  1. Singing
  2. Transcription
    • Depends on sufficiently mastering the singing phase.
  3. Advanced Singing
    • Depends on sufficiently mastering the singing phase.
  4. Advanced Transcription
    • Depends on sufficiently mastering the advanced singing lesson and the transcription lesson.

For all of these phases, you first practice them with the music playing in the background, and then without the music once you are comfortable. Doing things in this order removes the initial frustration of having to remember the passage and keeps the music in your ear without much effort. You can focus on different elements or sections each time you practice each phase.

Singing

First listen to the musical passage until you can audiate it clearly in your head. Then sing over the passage. At this stage it's not required to be accurate as possible. Rather, learn to sing the main elements of the passage and experiment with different melodies over it. The goal is to learn to navigate the context implied by the passage using your voice. You can use your instrument to keep you in check.

Transcription

With the basic context implied by the passage now internalized in your ear, try to play over it using your instrument. The goal at this point is not to accurately reproduce the passage, but rather about learning to navigate that context and use it as a basis for improvisation. Feel free to experiment, and find out for yourself what works and what doesn't.

Advanced Singing

At this stage, you should sing the passage with more detail and precision using solfège. You also pitch the music up and down a random number of semitones to practice in a variety of keys. However, while the focus is narrower, you should still experiment and play with the music.

The recommended solfège system is movable do, with a la-based minor. In this system, the note for the root of the key is always represented by do, and the modes are represented by the different syllables. The minor mode, for example, starts with the syllable la. This system has the advantage that the same syllables can be used for all modes. For the syllables used in the recommended solfège system, see this link.

Advanced Transcription

At this stage, you play over the passage, and sing it with more detail and precision. It's at this point that you can engage in what is traditionally called transcription. You should also transpose the passage up or down a random number of semitones. The passage is still used as a basis for improvisation, but the focus is much narrower than in the basic transcription lesson, and more attention is paid to details such as articulation, phrasing, etc.

Transcription Tips

In regard to what notes to play, the best way to start is to play any note. Most music you will want to learn is based on a variation of the Major scale. If you play any note, you either landed on a note in the key or the two notes surrounding your guess are in the key.

This tip, simple as it might appear, is very profound. In practical terms, this tip means that you can navigate almost any melodic and harmonic situation without fear of getting lost. If you do get lost, all you have to do to regain your footing is to once again play any note, hear if you are on or off-key, and act accordingly. You are never more than a half step away from a note in the key.

Initially you have a perception of a note being on or off-key. As your ear develops, you will start to notice the degree of the note.

More Resources

Here are some resources that I've found useful when figuring this out.

  • Improvise For Real: A method for learning to improvise by ear. It's the first place where I was told that trick about playing any note. Practicing this exercise over a long weekend unlocked me mentally and allowed me to jam and have fun with music. As such, it gets the first mention.
  • Hal Galper - The Illusion of an Instrument: A mind-blowing master class by Hal Galper. The core of this process is contained there, although I was not ready to understand it when I first saw it.
  • The Music Lesson: This book by Victor Wooten contains a lot of the same ideas, and focuses on a lot of elements that are normally not touched on in other books. Also found the tip on playing any note here, although after finding it in the IFR method.
  • Interview with Hal Galper: A full interview with Hal Galper. It's an hour long but worth it. Goes through similar material as the master class, but in full detail.
  • Interview with Mike Longo: An interview with Dizzy Gallers' pianist, Mike Longo. He's mentioned in the previous interview. Here he talks about the apprenticeship model. Full of gems.

Slides

Below is a deck of slides that contain the same ideas as this page, including more historical background and how to use Trane to help you with this process.

Video

Below is a video of the slides being presented with some additional commentary and musical examples.