10/17/2015 Essential Jazz Ear Training Exercises - The Jazz Guitar Blog

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Ear training is an essential part of a balanced practice routine, but it’s an area that’s oftenavoided by guitarists in their practicing. Whether you’ve struggled with ear training in thepast, or were put through exercises that seemed irrelevant or impractical, many jazzplayers have negative associations with aural skills development.

But, improving your ability to hear jazz melodies, chords, and solos in real time doesn’t have to bea slog. In fact, it can be the most engaging and fun part of your practice routine.

With the right exercises, and direct application of these exercises, you can find yourself spendingtime each day working on ear training in your jazz studies. This time spent will produce results,which will lead to more motivation to practice, and so the cycle continues.

The exercises in this lesson are designed to build that type of positive practice cycle in your playing.They’re effective, efficient, and fun to work on.

Even though you may struggle with some of these workouts at first, keep at it. With time, focus, anddedication, you’ll be transcribing your favorite solos, hearing chord changes in real time, and ableto outline any tune with your voice in no time.

Vocal Jazz Ear Training Exercises

Guitarists often avoid vocal exercises, as they can seem difficult, and often impractical, comparedto your musical goals.

But, with the correct approach and exercises, vocal study will help develop your ear, increaseyour technical knowledge of the fretboard, and increase your ability to jam over jazz tunes all atonce. This will not only provide ear training results, it’ll increase your overall ability as animproviser and accompanist on the guitar.

To begin, you’ll explore three ear training exercises that connect your ears to your fingers on theguitar. Connecting your ears to your fingers is the most important aspect of any solid ear trainingexercise for jazz.

Learning to sing technical items such as scales or intervals on their own will help your ears todevelop (check out our review of Earmaster Pro 6), but singing while playing, or against somethingthat you’re playing, will go a step further and connect your ability to hear directly with the fretboard.

By doing so, as your ears develop your performance ability will develop at the same time, a win­win in the practice room.

The first exercise focuses on singing along with your technical workout on the guitar.

10/17/2015 Essential Jazz Ear Training Exercises - The Jazz Guitar Blog

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When singing any of these exercises, feel free to sing an octave lower or higher than the noteyou’re playing in order to accommodate your vocal range.

Sing along to your scale practice

Sing along with your arpeggio workout

Sing along with your lick practice

Sing along with your improvisational exercises

After singing along with every note you’re playing on the guitar, you can begin to take things a stepfurther as you hold notes or chords on the guitar and sing the notes you aren’t playing. By doing so,you’ll be training your ears to hear the full notes of a chord, even if all you have as a reference is abass note.

As well, you’ll learn to zoom in and hear the important notes of any chord or chord progression,the3rds and 7ths. Hearing guide tones will not only help you learn to hear voice leading movementbetween chords, it’ll allow you to target these guide tones in your soloing lines at the same time.

Hold down a chord and sing the chord tones

Sing only the 3rd and 7th of that same chord

Play the bass note only and repeat these exercises

Play the top note of the only and repeat these 2 exercises

The next vocal exercise connects your voice and fingers to jazz songs you’re working on. Vocalexercises are an effective way to learn any new tune, and are often the most efficient way to getthose tunes memorized and under your fingers on the guitar.

Start with a jazz standard you already know as an introduction, then when you’re comfortable moveon to tunes you don’t know as you expand on this exercise.

Pick a standard you want to learn

Comp the chords and sing the melody line

Sing the bass notes for each chord as you comp

Sing the arpeggios for each chord as you play the changes

Scat sing a solo while comping the chord changes

Backing Track Exercises

10/17/2015 Essential Jazz Ear Training Exercises - The Jazz Guitar Blog

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If you’ve been working on improvisation in your practice routine, you’ll know how valuable backingtracks are for learning to blow over tunes and progressions.

But, did you know you could use these same backing tracks in your ear training exercises? Byworking with backing tracks in your ear training routine, you’ll be connecting your ears directlytopopular jazz chord progressions. As well, you’ll prepare yourself to be able to hear chordprogressions in real time, which is an invaluable skill to have when jamming on jazz tunes,especially ones you aren’t familiar with.

Often times you’ll spend time working on ear training exercises, singing intervals etc., that helpsyour hearing but aren’t directly related to practical situations.

Playing chords and solos over backing tracks by ear is not only beneficial, but it’s directly applicableto jam session and gig situations when you have a new tune put in front of you, or are asked to playa tune without the benefit of a chart to read from.

The first backing track exercise focuses on learning chords and chord progressions by ear.

Now, this type of exercise can be tough at first, but don’t give up. Even if you only get one or twochords by the end of the track correct, that’s a great start. Use those small gains to build up from,not to be negative about.

Start small, try your best, and with time and repetition this exercise can produce noticeable resultsin your ear training and performance ability.

Put on a backing track, don’t look at the chords

Begin to comp along to the track by ear

By the end of the track aim to comp the correct chords

Write the chords down

Check your answers against a lead sheet

The next backing track exercise will focus on the soloing side of ear training. This exercise is similarto the previous one, though now you’re soloing by ear over the backing track.

Again, this can be tough, and frustrating, at first in the practice room. But stick with it, over timeit’llbecome easier and you’ll see positive development in your ability to solo by ear over any tune onthe guitar.

Put on a different backing track, don’t look at the chords

Begin to solo over the track by ear

By the end of the track be able to outline the changes

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Write down the chord progression

Check your work against a lead sheet

Transcribing Exercises

One of the most important jazz ear training exercises that you can do is transcribing. Transcribingis when you learn anything, chords­melody­soloing, from a recording by ear. From there, you canwrite it out, play it on the guitar, or both.

Transcribing is not only a great way to build your ability to hear music quickly and accurately; you’llalso build your vocabulary at the same time.

As you’ve already focused on tune and chord exercises earlier, the following transcriptionexercises are built around learning licks and solos by ear.

This first exercise will introduce you to learning licks and longer improvisations by ear, as well asexpand your soloing chops at the same time.

Go slow with the first part of the exercise, the singing section. If you can get a solo into your ears,singing it from memory with confidence, it’ll be much easier to take it to the guitar than if you skimover the singing part of the exercise.

Pick a Jazz guitar lick or solo to transcribe

Sing along to the recording by memory

Play the solo along to the recording by memory

Sing and play the solo over a backing track by memory

Write the solo down and analyze the notes

In the next exercise, you’ll work on taking material from a transcription and expanding upon it. Thisis a very important step when working on any transcription, as it’s the bridge between learning andapplication on the guitar.

Because it’s such an important approach to learning by ear, it would be best to transcribe oneshort lick and then run it through these exercises, compared to transcribing a long solo and leaving itthere in your studies.

Pick a lick from the solo and sing it while comping the chords

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Repeat in multiple keys

Sing the bass notes to the progression, such as ii­V­I, and play the lick

Repeat in as many keys as you can

Repeat with other licks from the solo

As you can see, these are both great jazz ear training exercises, but learning a whole solo by earcan be intimidating. If you’re new to transcribing, or haven’t done it in a while, it can seem likeadaunting task to tackle. But, you don’t have to start by learning Coltrane solos by ear on day 1.

Instead, start with easier to hear solos and work your way onto more difficult transcriptions from thatpoint. To help you get started with the right transcription for you, here’s a list of different solos fordifferent levels of players that you can transcribe.

Some will be guitar solos, some on other instruments, but all are classic improvisations that areworth learning as you continue to develop your ear training and improvisational skill set.

Beginner Jazz Guitar Transcriptions

Chitlins Con Carne – Kenny Burrell

So What – Miles Davis

Lester Leaps In – Lester Young

Movin’ Along – Wes Montgomery (Single Notes)

Cool Blues – Grant Green

Intermediate Jazz Guitar Transcriptions

You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To – Jim Hall

Says You – Wes Montgomery

Billie’s Bounce – George Benson (Single Notes)

How Deep is the Ocean – Kurt Rosenwinkel

10/17/2015 Essential Jazz Ear Training Exercises - The Jazz Guitar Blog

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A Go­Go John Scofield

Advanced Jazz Guitar Transcriptions

Joy Spring – Joe Pass

Giant Steps – John Coltrane

On Green Dolphin Street – Lenny Breau

Bobo – Adam Rogers

Moment’s Notice – Mike Stern

Jazz ear training is essential study for any guitarist that wants to take their playing to the next levelas an improviser.

While singing intervals and other technical exercises can be helpful, working the practicalexercises in this article will help get you from A to B while building a strong aural foundation at thesame time. Add a few of these exercises to your practice routine and see how they help raise yourgame over the short and long term.

Even a few minutes a day will be enough to see improvement, so get started today!