The Tune Indigo Podcast

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You do well on your ear training drills, but when you set out to learn real music by ear, you get stuck partway in. The skills are in place. What's missing is an order in which to put them to use.

In this episode I lay out the steps I use with my ear training students, from far away, and then we take the first one: the open listen.

In this episode:

• Where students get stuck when learning music by ear
• Open listens: let the music affect you before anything else
• Focus listens, one element at a time: form, then time, then pitch
• Listening for contour, listening for "do", and singing it back in solfège
• Making an assertion before each listen
• Using your eyes, voice, body and imagination
• Letting the music in instead of grabbing at it

Practice for this week: choose a piece you're learning by ear, or one you'd like to learn. Listen to it once, start to finish, with no task in mind. Afterward, name one moment that affected you. That's your first landmark.

Read this news-lesson: [NEWS-LESSON LINK]

Free live webinar, Saturday, October 17, 10:00–11:30 a.m. EDT. Bring a song you love, and we walk through the Holistic Ear Training process together. Save your spot.

Get the news-lesson by email each week:

https://www.tuneindigolearning.com/newslesson-signup-page

READ TODAY'S EPISODE.

Watch the video lessons on YouTube (next Saturday's video walks through every step on a short piece: https://www.youtube.com/@tuneindigomusic

More from Tune Indigo: https://tuneindigo.com

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Struggling to learn melodies by ear? You might be trying to hold too much at once. In this news-lesson, I share the one change that helps my students most: listening with a focus. That means choosing a single feature to listen for, like the highest tone, the sound of "do," or when an instrument drops out, and letting the rest of the music wash over you.

You'll learn:

• Why straining to catch everything at once makes learning by ear harder
• How to "guess, then check" to give your attention something to hang onto
• Why form (what's the same, similar and different) is the most useful focus of all
• A quick form exercise with "Ode to Joy"

🎙️ Free live webinar: Listening and Personal Style Saturday, October 17, 10:00–11:30 AM EDT. Bring a song you love, and we'll walk through the Holistic Ear Training process together on music that matters to you.

Save your free spot: https://www.tuneindigolearning.com/quick-webinar-registration

Also mentioned:

• This week's video, "There's No Shortcut to a Great Ear"
• Tone Hole for iPhone (free levels 127–129)
• This episode for your eyes (It's a news-lesson.)
• Get the weekly news-lesson by email.

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A student brought a Lawrence song into the current Listening and Personal Style cohort, and it turned out to be carrying the very first pattern I teach beginners: "so–do–re–mi." In this episode we listen our way into the intro, sing it, and move it through three keys. Then we go one layer deeper, into the bass line, where something a little spicier is waiting.

Wherever your ear is right now, there's a rung here for you.

LINKS

Webinar info

"Where We Started From"

"You Are My Sunshine"

Tone Hole on the App Store

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Not all half-steps are created equal

Most ear training introduces the half-step as a single thing — usually as danger, with the Jaws theme as the mnemonic. That gets you an interval you can name. It doesn't get you the one thing you actually need when playing by ear: knowing which half-step you're hearing.

In this episode:

• Why "half-step" as a category is too coarse to be useful in real music, and what gets lost when the Jaws theme becomes the reference point
• The mi-fa half-step inside "Ode to Joy" — the same interval, an entirely different tone-feeling
• How fa leans down toward mi, and how mi sits without the same need to move
• A set of transformations that strip the opening phrase down until only mi and fa remain, so the pair concentrates in the ear
• Why you should build your own transformations rather than use mine, and the recipe for doing it
• The second half-step hiding in the same scale — same interval, different gravity

Try this after listening: sing the opening of "Ode to Joy" in solfège, then sing it again leaving tones out, keeping only what belongs to the mi-fa pair. Trade back and forth between solfège and a neutral syllable. Let it settle — no forcing.

Coming up: Listening and Personal Style, a free 90-minute live session — Saturday, October 17 · 10:00–11:30 AM EDT.

Links:

Ode to Joy In Solfège

Play with the mi-fa half-step.

This Episode as a Newslesson (with images!)

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Learn to hear harmonic intervals and understand why they're trickier to identify than melodic ones — plus a look at the science and art behind this week's practice exercises.

In this episode:

• Cohort enrollment now open — Listening and Personal Style, a 6-week ear training cohort starting September 7th. Early-bird pricing ($300) through 8/21, regular price $350 after. 15-seat limit. tuneindigo.com
• This week's video tutorial (audio version): hearing harmonic intervals and the motion between voices that creates them
• News-lesson: why training your ear with a purpose — not just "because you should" — changes how you listen
• Behind the scenes: how Voice Leading: The Science Behind a Musical Art by David Huron shaped the ten listening examples in this week's tutorial

Watch the video: Harmonic Interval Ear Training - How to Hear Motion Where There Is None (add YouTube link)

Join the cohort: tuneindigo.com

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Two chords, three notes each, two notes in common — no wonder iii and vi get confused. This episode starts with the full audio of this week's tutorial, where a single scale degree settles the question for good. Then it's on to the news-lesson.

This week: what happened when a group of Foundations students joined me for impromptu office hours (Carole King, harmonic listening, and some composition practice); news of a small real-time Holistic Ear Training course starting in September; and a look back at the final Compose With Me livestream, where "offloading melodies" turned "Interplanet Janet" into something that sounds nothing like it.

Chapters are enabled — skip straight to the news-lesson if you've already watched the video.

In this episode:

• Tutorial: telling iii from vi in major keys
• Office hours with Foundations students
• The September cohort course
• Offloading melodies, and building a tune from borrowed rhythm

Links:

• Cohort Course INFO
• Compose With Me replay
• Free email Course Info
• Video Tutorial: iii chord vs. vi chord

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Plus a listening guide for a Carole King classic and a 600-year-old composing habit.

LINKS:

Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow

Shirelles 1960 Version

Carole King Version

Compose with Me! Livestream

Tune Indigo on YouTube

tuneindigo.com

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Can you hear what Paul McCartney's bass line is doing under "Eight Days a Week"? In this episode, we chase that bass line to uncover the chord progression driving the whole song — then take those same chords and go hunting for them in four other tunes, from bossa nova to hip-hop.

You'll:

• Sing the root notes of McCartney's bass line against the original recording
• Test your ear by finding do and singing that same bass line over "Exactly Like You," "Take the A Train," "Forget You," and more
• Close with a fully improvised vocal line over a stripped-down version of the progression — no solfège, no chord names, just your ear and your voice

Want to go deeper? The full step-by-step video on learning any song's chords by ear is linked below.

Links:

• Original recording: Eight Days a Week
• Tutorial video: How to Learn a Song's Chords by Ear
• More at tuneindigo.com

Corresponding Newsletter Issue: Chase Bass, Catch Chords