Best Ear Training for Jazz Musicians: Developing Great Hearing - More Than Just Chords and Intervals

We've all heard and seen the most amazing jazz musicians (and vocalists) create spectacular improvisations with ease. We have heard them interact with other performers in such extraordinary ways that it seems like sheer magic, or at least, some level of ESP (extra-sensory perception). The boundless spontaneity, and an ability to make it all seem so effortless, are key components of the art of jazz improvisation. When a serious musician decides to pursue jazz or any largely improvised creative music, these are the skills he/she wants to develop. These skills are largely based on jazz ear training!

It's not ESP that makes musicians find the same musical zones at the same time --and with the amount of focused work that it takes to develop -- it's definitely not magic. (That said-- music will always have its completely wonderful, unexplainable moments!) What is being displayed is more than technical expertise and fluency on an instrument: it's jazz-specific ear training. It's a lifetime of accumulated focus on the greatest tool an improviser has -- the ears!

Here are some thoughts and ideas related to jazz ear training, although these would also greatly benefit pop/rock, classical, folk, and world musicians. Serious musicians in any genre, over time, must create a practice regimen that includes focused work to develop their listening, their recognition-reaction-subtle hearing, and use every possible opportunity to work on the progress of their ears. Every practice session, jam, gig, performance, or concert is a chance to change your current level.

Levels/Gradations of Hearing:

Just Listening: This is how most musicians find their basic approach to playing or singing -- simply by emulating others. These lessons can be from performances by live musicians, or from new or classic recordings, but so many of the skills needed by jazz musicians can be learned and assimilated just by listening. Without specifically practicing anything, many musicians gain new ideas, learn and identify solutions (like intros and endings and more), hear issues (time, beat, subdivisions, arrangements, etc.), consider concepts (intensity, range, space, register), and develop a wide range of approaches just from structured listening to others. We are always being influenced - both by what we are drawn to, and also by what we dislike.

The most amazing part of just listening as a path of development is that by maintaining a wide range of influences, your concepts combine into an eclectic, distinctly personal set of knowledge-based ideas. It's almost statistically impossible that anyone else has processed the range of musical influences in the exact same way that you have, and combined them with your own personal approach, skills, technique, and ideas. It can often help to keep a listening log, to chronicle your organized listening, and to have a centralized place to comment on your observations.

Hearing to Recognize/Hearing to React: Many aspiring jazz musicians consider ear training to just be largely about recognition. What is that interval? Was that a major ninth or minor seventh chord? While this is important, and will continue to develop in all your practice and performance situations, this is only one part of your many ear-training goals. Jazz musicians want to be able to hear certain intervals or chords as clues to form, and hear certain tensions (9,11,13) as clues to improvised reharmonizations. But the main reason to develop the recognition ability is to be able to react in the moment to those changes being made. For example, many musicians, while lost in their improvisations, can attest to times when they were saved "by their ears" when they heard, recognized, and reacted to the first harmony of the bridge section of a song form.

When music is transformed live in musicians' hands, spontaneously and in the moment, ear training helps close the gap with the reaction time or "latency period". For example, if it takes a full five seconds to understand that what just happened was a sharp nine chord instead of lydian dominant harmony , the moment has passed and perhaps it's too late to matter.

Subtleties of Hearing: Master musicians also develop the ability to attack their notes on a few places on a downbeat, and make micro-adjustments to that beat placement in real-time. Whether their improvised lines land before the beat, on the beat, or just on top of the beat is a display of precise rhythmic control. This kind of ear training is about controlling the smallest, finest adjustments of time subdivisions to move from a very relaxed feel to a more aggressive, leading/pushing attack. These subtleties are about an energy of phrasing that is still "in time", and not rushing or dragging, but about controlling beat placement for an emotional response. For example, think of an imaginary soloist playing laid-back, syrupy eighth-notes at the beginning of an improvised solo, developing into a crisp sense of time 'on the beat' in the middle, changing to a slight "on-top push" for excitement, all within one improvisation. Master musicians and singers can control these details.

SUMMARY:

Just by becoming aware of these somewhat elusive concepts, you will be better prepared to develop them. By identifying which ones are already among your strengths, you can easily focus your efforts on those areas that need more time and concentration. Best of luck working on your listening, hearing, and jazz ear-training skills.