Ear Training Exercises for Beginners - Common Mistakes

As a beginner, it can be daunting to try and figure out how to improve your skills as a musician. There are so many different things to practice—pitch, rhythm, technique, scales, chords, sight-reading…the list seems to go on and on!

In this article, we’re going to talk about one of the most fundamentally important things that a beginning musician can practice, and arguably one of the best skills you can develop in order to become a competent musician. That skill is ear training.

Unfortunately, many people—especially beginners—approach ear training from almost completely the wrong direction, practicing things like isolated intervals, or using a trial-and-error approach which not only do not help you develop your inner ear, but can actually hinder your progress.

So what are the best musical ear training exercises? Let’s take a look at some of the common mistakes beginners make with ear training, and some ways in which we can rectify those mistakes and learn a better approach.

What is Ear Training in Music?

Ear training is the process of teaching yourself to identify and reproduce notes and chords purely by ear. It’s the process of connecting music theory to the actual sounds of music. A well-trained inner ear can help you understand how songs are put together, and will allow you to move more freely within a musical context, creating music independently and intutively, rather than relying on rote repetition or other crutches.

What Are Ear Training Exercises?

Musical ear training exercises are exercises that help you develop your inner ear. Your inner ear gives you the ability to hear music in your head, without relying on external sources. The exercises include listening to notes and chords with the goal of recognizing them. There also are exercises where the goal is to recall, imagine, and sing (or just “hum” - if you aren’t a singer) specific notes or chords.

There are good and bad musical ear training exercises for beginners. Some (like isolated interval practice) will only teach you how to become good at the exercises themselves, and others (like trial-and-error methods using an instrument) will lead you to become dependent on an external source, rather than being able to rely solely on your own ears.

Good musical ear training exercises give you a full mental picture of musical elements included in the tonality (scale degrees, chords, etc.), and help you to develop, step-by-step, the cognitive processes necessary to identify and reproduce chords and notes ‘on the fly.’

The Best Way to Get Started With the Basics of Ear Training

One of the best ways to get started with ear training as a beginner is to learn how to sing scales, and to learn scale solfeggio. Yes, even if you are not a singer. Singing is the only way to produce pitches without the aid of an instrument, therefore, it is a crucial skill for all musicians. You don’t need to have a great voice—you just need to produce sound.

If you’ve never learned scales before, you may need to do a lot of pitch matching at first. This means playing the pitch on an instrument like a piano (or a keyboard app if you don’t have access to a physical instrument) and then matching the pitch with your voice. Pitch matching is an important skill and it is the first essential step in developing ear training skills.

As important as pitch matching may be at the very beginning of your journey, it’s important that you don’t rely on it for too long. Your goal should be to move beyond pitch matching to produce pitches independently, without needing to hear them first. If you only practice pitch matching and never move beyond this, you will not develop your skills and you will fall into some sort of “trial-and-error approach”.

This is why it can be useful to have an ear training teacher or a proven method to help you move through exercises in the proper order, and at the correct pace for your level.

Proper Method to Teach Ear Training

When choosing an ear training method, the most important thing to keep in mind is that the method takes a ‘tonal approach’. What does that mean? It means you are not just reproducing pitches or intervals in isolation, but are establishing a key center for those pitches and learning the sonic sensation that pitches and intervals assume within that key.

Why is it important to establish a tonal center? Scientific studies show that our perception of musical pitch is strongly dependent on the context (the musical key and general harmonic enviroment of the musical piece). So the sonic sensation of any musical elements (interval, note, chord, etc.) varies extremely depending on the function it assumes inside the tonality.

This means that the same interval, note or chord assumes totally different sonic sensations depending on the surrounding harmonic context. Scientific studies also prove that we perceive pitches in a “tonal hierarchy.” For example, in the key of C, C is the tonic note, so it has a more “weight” than the other notes in the scale. It feels like the gravitational center of the musical piece. All other pitches in the scale want to resolve to the tonic note—and some want to resolve more strongly than others.

One easy way to approach ear training tonally is to play a I IV V I progression or play and sing the scale before you start your exercises. By establishing a tonal center in this way, you will begin to hear the tonic note as the gravitational center (the note that provides a sensation of total rest or resolution).

Once the tonality is clearly established, you will feel that the tonic note attracts all the other notes/chords within the key. As a consequence of this “invisible attraction force”, notes, chords, intervals, etc. assume a specific sonic sensation depending on their scale degree; some scale degrees are stable whereas other are unstable, some sounds happy and other sad, etc. Internalizing these sonic sensations is essential to the development of your ear training skills and overall musicality. More on this further on in this post.

Ear Training Exercises for Beginners

Many basic ear training exercises for beginners that you find on the internet are ineffective. Simply because they do not take a tonal approach, and most do not build, step-by-step, the cognitive procesess that are necessary to develop your ear.

That being said, there are a few exercises that can help you get started with a tonal approach to ear training on your own. Be aware, though, that ear training is complex, and help from an expert teacher is often necessary to help clear up confusion and allow you to make progress.

Pitch Matching

Pitch matching is a fundamental skill of ear training. In order to produce pitches on your own, or identify pitches in melodies and chords, you must first be able to match pitch. A simple exercise for this is to simply play a note on your instrument and then sing it with your voice. Alternatively, you can also sing along to the melody of your favorite songs.

Singing the Major Scale

Once you can pitch-match a major scale (playing and then singing each note), it’s time to start singing it on your own. Practice until you can sing the whole scale, up and down, independently, without an instrument. Only use the instrument to check if you are singing the scale correctly.

Three Note Dictation

The next step is to begin doing dictation exercises. In musical terms, dictation means listening to notes that are played, then identifying the notes. Start simply — this exercise is a good starting point.

In this exercise, you will hear a drone chord (the I chord of the key) which will help you establish the key in your mind. You will then hear some notes played over the top of the drone chord (to start simple, we stick with just the first three notes of the major scale). Your goal is to identify which scale degrees are played.

How to Choose Ear Training Exercises for Yourself?

Choosing musical ear training exercises on your own can be challenging. Without input from an unbiased observer (like a teacher) you may not know what you should be practicing.

The Main Mistakes of Beginners When Choosing Exercises

One big mistake beginners make when choosing exercises is choosing the wrong exercises for their level. If you jump right into chord progression dictation before you can even match pitch properly, you will have a very hard time. On the other hand, if you only practice pitch matching even though it is easy for you, you will not make progress.

Another mistake beginners make is choosing musical ear training exercises that are not grounded in tonality. Usually, this means doing a lot of rote repetition of intervals outside of a tonal context (for example, listening to and identifying lots of random intervals in isolation by name—like “perfect fourth,” “major sixth,” “minor third,” etc.)

Perfect Pitch

Before we go on—a quick note about ‘perfect pitch.’ Many beginners make the mistake of thinking that they need to have perfect pitch in order to have a good ear, or that there are ‘perfect pitch ear training exercises’ that can help them develop perfect pitch as an adult.

Perfect pitch is a rare skill that can only be developed during very early childhood (according to multiple scientific findings). You cannot develop perfect pitch as an adult, no matter how hard you train your ear. The good news is that it is not at all necessary to have perfect pitch to be a great musician or to have a great musical ear—most professional musicians do not have perfect pitch.

Absolutely Ineffective Exercises for Beginners

Isolated interval practice and the ‘trial-and-error’ approach are two methods that are often used by beginners who are still not experienced enough to realize that they are completely ineffective methods for ear training (especially for beginners).

Isolated Interval Practice

Isolated interval practice (the ‘random interval recognition exercises’ we outlined above) does not help your brain make the connections between tonal context and the pitches within that context. All you will be able to do after practicing these random intervals is identify those intervals, in isolation.

The problem is, the same intervals can assume very different sonic sensations depending on the tonality of the piece. Once you get into an actual piece of music, you might hear a major third between Do and Mi (1st and 3rd degree of the major scale), or between Sol and Ti (5th and 7th degree of the major scale), or between Fa and La (4th and 6th degree of the major scale). Within the context of the music (aka “when a tonality is established”), these intervals have very different sonic sensations and perform very different functions, and you will struggle to recognize them.

Trial and Error

The trial-and-error approach (which involves listening to a song and then randomly hitting notes and chords on your instrument until you stumble upon the right one) is another ineffective method for ear training. When you do this, you are relying on your instrument to find the notes for you.

Using this method, you might eventually be able to find the right pitches, but you will not develop the cognitive or aural processes necessary to build a strong inner ear and develop an intuitive sense of musicality. Long story short, this approach is not going to make you a more musical musician at all!

How to Practice Ear Training Properly?

Here are the five tips that we recommend all beginners incorporate into their ear training practice in order to be successful and make good, steady progress that actually results in improving your inner sense of musicality.

1. Follow a step-by-step method that allows you to work on the right tasks for your current skill level. Exercises like isolated intervals, and the trial-and-error approach are not step-by-step methods at all.

2. Make sure you are following a tonal approach that grounds your ear in tonality everytime you practice an exercise. Scales and solfeggio are tonal. Isolated intervals are not.

3. Seek out an expert ear training teacher that understands the importance of a tonal-based, step-by-step method, and also has an in-depth knowledge of the scientific literature behind the development of ear training skills. This is important especially if you are confused, but anyone (even professionals) can benefit from a good teacher!

4. Practice all the sub-skills that are important in ear training (pitch matching, tonic recognition, tonic retention, short-term musical memory, recognizing chord progressions, melodic recognition, etc.) Many ear training methods, software, apps, etc. out there miss out on some very important ear training sub-skills, causing students to get stuck unnecessarily.

5. Spend at least some time practicing in real-world scenarios where you have to use your skills ‘on the fly’ or react instinctively. This will also allow you to understand whether the ear training method you are following is helping you develop skills you can actually use in real music; we should never forget that this is the main goal of ear training, and it’s what sets a great ear training method apart from an ineffective one!

Conclusion - What Are the Best Ear Training Exercises for Beginners?

The best musical ear training exercises for beginners are tonal exercises (as opposed to interval-based ones) that focus on gradually developing all the cognitive processes involved in performing advanced ear training tasks. It’s essential to be independent from your instrument and to move step-by-step, from the building blocks to advanced skills.

At Use Your Ear, we teach an ear training method that checks all these boxes. Our method has been used by thousands of students who all report seeing real, noticeable and consistent improvement using our courses, where interval ear training or trial-and-error approaches have failed to produce noticeable results for them. The Use Your Ear method is based on rigorous scientific studies that show how our perception of musical pitch really works, and provide evidence behind the effectiveness of our approach.

Our method is tonal-based and 100% step-by-step. We work with students at their level to make sure they are building the right sub-skills, and that what they are learning is relevant and applicable for their current skill-level.

Lastly, we focus entirely on helping students develop cognitive processes that are applicable in real musical situations. They can recognize notes/chords on the fly, have a deep musical dialogue while improvising with other musicians, quickly generate musically pleasing solutions when composing, and more.

We will never ask you to recognize a melody by recognizing one interval at a time! That’s the most tedious and ineffective cognitive process you can ever adopt in recognizing melodies, and great musicians are aware of that - they don’t recognize notes or chords by thinking of intervals!

Relative Pitch Video-Course

Our relative pitch video course uses a rigorously tested, science-based, step-by-step method to help students master their understanding of musical pitch and develop a great inner sense of musicality. Students learn to intuitively recognize melody and harmony and are able to apply those skills to real-life musical situations like jazz jams, choir practice, songwriting, exams, auditions, etc.

Free Use Your Ear Workshop

The free Use Your Ear Workshop is an introductory lesson to our ear training method and allows you to dip your toes into ear training by following an effective, science-based approach. It is a three-hour workshop where you practice real exercises and discover the most efficient, scientifically proven way to train your ears.

It also includes an overview of the most important scientific studies on how our perception of musical pitch works. This will help you to understand what exercises to avoid and why. At the end of the workshop, you will come away with exercises that appropriate for your level, and with tools to continue your own independent practice.

Individual Online Lessons

Individual online lessons offer one-on-one guidance with a professional ear training teacher who can help you tackle concepts that you’re struggling with, provide specific feedback, and point you toward new and more challenging exercises tailored to your particular needs.

Our ear training courses are perfect for beginners and intermediate students of music alike. Anyone who wants to develop a deeper connection with music and a stronger inner ear can benefit from them. Whether you want to be a concert pianist, or simply want to sing better at karaoke next Friday, the Use Your Ear method can help you do it.