liosama Wrote:

KaitouJS Wrote:Ear training, thus far, is incredibly inefficient and takes lots of practice. If you inputted audio samples and then tried to copy those audio samples with whatever instrument of your choice, you could answer accordingly.. music is a tonal language that involves more output sound-wise than written-wise. My analogy is: When we were kids, we spoke more than we listened, but we learned to listen to others and what they were trying to say to us as time went on. Couldn't the same be said for music, but with understanding gained through SRS reviews? So if we build long-term memory around the sounds of a language (which is music) that are more tonal than phonetic, won't we create a better, re-inforced ear?

I think I've stumbled upon something! I'll test this out at some point.

Do you mean training people to get AP? Or just generally training them to get a good ear?

Won't this kill all the precious instrument time that you'll get by playing on the instrument? When you're on an instrument you aren't just learning 1 thing at a time independently, but you are learning many many things.

I mean I'm not sure what a 'trained-ear' actually means, excuse my ignorance. I have an untrained ear, and I've only been learning Oud for a few weeks now and my Oud instructor, though he says I have a 'good ear' I really have no idea what he means by that when he says it. From what I gather, it's when I know that I'm playing a wrong note because I follow after him, and I correct myself after. If that is what a good ear is then I suppose srs would be okay, but I think it'll take the instrument hours away from you, when instrument hours is what you need to become a good player in the first place.

You sound like a well accomplished musician, I really have no idea when it comes to music theory etc, I tried learning the circle of fifths for guitar but I kept getting bogged down , Fat Crabs Go Down And Eat Bugs (at least I remembered that? ^_^). I can't wait till I go for a proper guitar instructor, there are so many questions that I'm waiting to ask him/her T_T

Hahaha, accomplished musician? I'm only 18 years old and I sorta follow my dad around for any possible gig opportunities - there aren't really any good gigs around and I just play to play, having only acted as a stand-in guitar player at events where my dad plays for free or for friends.

Besides, my ear is so incredibly bad that it makes playing with him absolute hell. He's an amazing piano player, and I know when I'm playing a wrong note, but I don't have the impulse to find a right note. I can find a right note within a couple of seconds, but often in music, you don't have that much time..

As for ear training via an SRS, it's not something I'd do 24/7 - this is a very small part of a very big thing. Obviously if one's goal is to get a better ear so they can play with other people or pick up songs faster, they'd have to realize that they can't slip on their playing duties, too. I could see myself doing, I dunno, 30 minutes of ear training a day, but probably split up into 10 minute segments.

If there's one piece of advice that I can give you as one guitar player to another, it's that theory will never completely save you. The circle of fifths is great in concept, but unless I wanted to write a song, I don't think I'd ever recall the circle when playing with someone else. I've heard of some people who are nuts and can actively recognize every note on the fretboard - the circle of fifths might come in handy for them, since they only need to know how many sharps/flats are in a certain key and then they can just count up from anywhere. But those people are friggin' robots!

Personally I'd find more use in knowing all the intervals in any given key to the extent where I can recall it in a split second. Assuming you know nothing about intervals, they're just notes within any given key. The useful thing about knowing your intervals is that you'll know what notes can be bent on or held on. ..in theory this would make you sort of a robot like the people I was talking about before, but it becomes so finely weaved into your guitar playing after a certain amount of time that it's perfectly natural.

concept sounds silly to me... I study 6 - 14 hours a day and 3 hours sounds waay too little. >_>

Sounds made up to me. I hope no one uses this as an excuse to not do more work. If you want to MASTER any skill, you might want to work toward ~16 hours a day. From dancing to language learning.

mafried Wrote:But "studying" Japanese (say, by passive listening) is not an either-or choice. Sitting down at a piano is--it has the opportunity cost of giving up whatever else you could have been doing instead. In that case you can argue that you're wasting time if the opportunity cost is higher than what you're getting out of it. But Japanese isn't like that. You can passively study with it in the background while doing any other thing, so the opportunity cost is effectively zero.

You can passively study music as well (as I've shown above). If you think of sitting at the piano in the same terms as conversing with a native, much the same way you develop technique with your body in playing music, you develop technique in speaking Japanese (tongue and mouth movements). It is muscle memory.

Edit: To expand that even futher, change that instrument to a more portable one, and every time you attempt to practice it's like practicing to speak in Japanese.

mafried Wrote:Remember, diminishing returns does not say that you will have no benefit by studying more in one day, it just says that marginal benefit of each extra hour will be less and less (but still positive).

And I'm asking what people believe is the optimal time.

Squintox Wrote:concept sounds silly to me... I study 6 - 14 hours a day and 3 hours sounds way too little. >_>

What number sounds right to you?

ropsta Wrote:What number sounds right to you

If you enjoy what you do, there is no limit.

Squintox Wrote:

ropsta Wrote:What number sounds right to you

If you enjoy what you do, there is no limit.

Good answer. Also, if you had to choose one or you're done some research on it I'd still like to hear your response.

ropsta Wrote:You can passively study music as well...

Point conceded.

ropsta Wrote:

mafried Wrote:Remember, diminishing returns does not say that you will have no benefit by studying more in one day, it just says that marginal benefit of each extra hour will be less and less (but still positive).

And I'm asking what people believe is the optimal time.

I would say that depends entirely on what you're giving up by the extra studying (opportunity cost), and therefore varies from person to person.