Hey, I know there are some other musicians on this forum, and I thought I should bring this up. I've decided to start using an SRS in order to better my knowledge of music theory (and hopefully my ear). I'm going to build a deck in Anki and at perhaps at some point I might like to release it to see what others think of it. Or I'll actually have some sort of Q&A input from some of the musicians on this forum about what kind of general questions would work in an SRS for musicians of all kinds..

So, as a shoutout to all other musicians out there: If you could use an SRS to better your knowledge of music, what kind of theory-related questions would you like to see in a deck? You know, just stuff that would work better through spaced repetition rather than rote learning.

Hmm... SRS with music...
I´d guess it would be really good for remembering the different keys, scales, chord-knowledge etc.
But to use the SRS as an ear-trainer? I´m interested in how you´re planning to do this!
I would recommend a piano and/or Earmaster instead! =)
But maybe you can find a way? The only way I can see it work is to record (or use pre-recorded) intervals, chords and melodies, and then use the SRS for dictation.
But I don´t see how this is better than using Earmaster.

Zorlee Wrote:Hmm... SRS with music...
I´d guess it would be really good for remembering the different keys, scales, chord-knowledge etc.
But to use the SRS as an ear-trainer? I´m interested in how you´re planning to do this!
I would recommend a piano and/or Earmaster instead! =)
But maybe you can find a way? The only way I can see it work is to record (or use pre-recorded) intervals, chords and melodies, and then use the SRS for dictation.
But I don´t see how this is better than using Earmaster.

I never said it'd be better, but it's worth experimenting. Ear training in itself is extremely inefficient. There are methods out there that involve associating sounds with colors which in itself is even more efficient than the traditional methods of sitting at a radio and playing along until it sounds "so-so". If I were to experiment with combining color/sound association and SRSes, ear training could perhaps be made more efficient.

It's just a thought.

By all means - if you find a way to make ear-training efficient, I´m all for it! I´m starting my studies at a conservatory in a couple of weeks, and as a drummer... Well, let´s just say that me and chord-progressions are NOT friends!

Zorlee Wrote:By all means - if you find a way to make ear-training efficient, I´m all for it! I´m starting my studies at a conservatory in a couple of weeks, and as a drummer... Well, let´s just say that me and chord-progressions are NOT friends!

I'll see what I can do! I'll have to do a bit of research on color associations first, but I'll make sure to post here after I've done some work.

I've come across some method called the "brainin" method. It's by some russian mathematician who teaches a bunch of kids absolute pitch by using the method. I doubt it's "absolute pitch" since you have to be born with it, but it looks promising. I can't find any documentation on the actual theory behind it, though..

Why is it that the goldmines of teaching methods are hard to come across? :X

Well, I'm stumped on using it for ear training, it might take a while to figure something out. Actually, I'm a little more concerned with my scale learning - there seems to be a large following that says, "know yer scales", yet asides from playing really bad and unmeaningful passages, I can't really find any method to learn, say, the entire major scale on the fretboard without getting stuck in one way of playing it. I know how to play the entire C Major scale on the neck, for example, but I can't move the thing without spending an extreme amount of focus. I guess I'll have to bear through it like this.

I had an idea today about how I could use SRS to aid retention of pieces. I play piano and at any one time probably have a handful of complete pieces that I can play on cue from memory, without music or omissions/mistakes.

There are probably holes in this idea but, I was thinking that if I made a card for each piece I learned, then by playing the piece as the 'answer' to the card, it may aid long term memory so that I have a larger stockpile of remembered pieces rather than having to go back and re-learn large chunks. Keeping them all ticking over in an organised manner because it soon gets tedious and impractical to play every piece you have, everyday as a warm-up as it inevitably takes more and more time.

Shingo Wrote:I had an idea today about how I could use SRS to aid retention of pieces. I play piano and at any one time probably have a handful of complete pieces that I can play on cue from memory, without music or omissions/mistakes.

There are probably holes in this idea but, I was thinking that if I made a card for each piece I learned, then by playing the piece as the 'answer' to the card, it may aid long term memory so that I have a larger stockpile of remembered pieces rather than having to go back and re-learn large chunks. Keeping them all ticking over in an organised manner because it soon gets tedious and impractical to play every piece you have, everyday as a warm-up as it inevitably takes more and more time.

Sounds interesting enough. But writing something down like "play paganini's 5th caprice" and then playing it is much different than, say, writing a card down for a kanji and writing down the kanji.. there's a whole set of component parts that come along with songs. Just my take on the idea.

I finally came across something. http://www.unconservatory.org/perfect_pitch/1.html

He discusses the idea of using physical, every day objects as an anchor to remember pitches.. provided that they make the sounds in the first place, of course. It's genius! The human mind has a tendency to remember stupid or weird things, so my idea is this..

I'll find 12 objects that correspond to each of the tones (each one makes its own tone). I'll make sure to individualize them as much as possible so each tone is memorable. I have an image/name for the question of the flash card followed by a sound. Then I try to guess what note it is and see if I get it right. Eventually there'd be cards without image/name cues and I'd have to guess the note by the tone.

I'm getting somewhere with this idea but I still understand that there's a fault to it.. my mind might become more dependent on the imagery and I wouldn't exactly be listening for the tonal qualities of the pitch.

Maybe 3 sets of 12?

First set: 12 sets of cards with names/pictures of objects, followed by the sound the object makes
Second set: 12 sets of cards, followed by the sound the object makes (no pictures this time)
Third set: 12 sets of cards, followed by a pitch (all associations to the previous sound would be lost - the user would be forced to start developing a relationship with note name to pitch.. I don't even know how to make some sort of transition from second -> third)

Or maybe not. Perhaps I was wrong in thinking that an SRS could be used for ear training. Maybe it has to be inefficient? No, there's got to be some sort of answer.. but for now, I'll quiet my rambling.

KaitouJS Wrote:Sounds interesting enough. But writing something down like "play paganini's 5th caprice" and then playing it is much different than, say, writing a card down for a kanji and writing down the kanji.. there's a whole set of component parts that come along with songs. Just my take on the idea.

I agree it isn't a perfect approach but it may help me to retain pieces better over longer periods of time. Looking back at all of the repertoire I have gone through and lost due to not playing it often enough it may aid as a memory jogger in playing the piece, but not overload me with playing everything I have learned all the time so as to get in the way of me learning new things.

Shingo Wrote:

KaitouJS Wrote:Sounds interesting enough. But writing something down like "play paganini's 5th caprice" and then playing it is much different than, say, writing a card down for a kanji and writing down the kanji.. there's a whole set of component parts that come along with songs. Just my take on the idea.

I agree it isn't a perfect approach but it may help me to retain pieces better over longer periods of time. Looking back at all of the repertoire I have gone through and lost due to not playing it often enough it may aid as a memory jogger in playing the piece, but not overload me with playing everything I have learned all the time so as to get in the way of me learning new things.

True, there's not much when it comes to methodologies of holding onto one's repertoire..

So far my search for ear training methods has seemed less than fruitful. I have stumbled upon a site called 'prolobe' which is a java site that records your own progress and statistics as you train your ear through intervals..

But I dunno, you can tell it ain't for you if you've got terrible accuracy. Everyone has a terrible ear to start out with (well, most of us), but the fact that I'm not engaged with piano (which serves as the site's main ear training GUI/interface) makes it a bit iffy for me.

There is this.. http://www.trainear.com/

Remembering pitches is one thing, and it might be asking too much of some people to jump into it so quickly when starting out ear training. Trainear follows the intervallic way of ear training (discerning the interval difference between two tones rather than the two exact notes played) which is a lot more useful than recognizing pitches. The owner of the site has an interesting way of going about it, though, a way that we might have all done it at one point: To remember the quality/sound difference between two intervals, the user picks a song that these two intervals are featured right next to each other in.

That's probably a better way of doing it than the earlier methods I posted.

What I'm thinking now is I'll find 12 songs for each of the interval changes, rip clips out and put them as questions in an SRS. It may not work well but we'll just have to see.

Kaitou, that seems like a really cool program. I have the same feeling as you, I think I will make those intervals on my piano and put them in an SRS or something!

Sorry I'm late. I've did this about 1 month ago. I just did intervals. I played C and then another note. Then on the card I asked "What is the interval". After 1 month I can see a big difference. One piece of advice is, don't be afraid to add too many cards. I have about 24 cards of C going up to a random interval and 14 cards of intervals starting on random notes. I think it's better to add more than 1 card for each interval. Today I'm going to try to add some chord cards. If you don't know what the intervals sound like yet, just look on the internet and it will tell you some songs that use the interval in question. After a while you don't need the song, you'll just hear the character of the interval.

Is it even a useful skill? Does it need to be a sine wave, or would a piano suffice?

This pitch interval training thing has me really interested. I've played piano for quite some time but I've never had interval training. With an SRS I can learn it faster hopefully too.

After I get home from work today I hope to play lots and lots and intervals on my piano for the question side, record them, SRS them and have the full song on the answer side. Or am I missing something?

One thing I'd been meaning to try since discovering SRS but have been too shy/lazy to experiment with is learning to sing by listening/emulating segments of songs on SRS cards till I learn the entire song. Spaced repetition karaoke practice. I think that's the best way to do ear training for pitch accents and the like, in sentences where you can hear the flow of words and particles in native speech. The same principles that allow tone-deaf ppl to learn Chinese tones. (http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/a...rise_x.htm)

Someone posted a while ago about software that analyzes your voice (singandsee? edit: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=2393), and I thought it would be neat to have that in Anki somehow, where the waveform data for the cards' audio files are compared with your recorded voice reponses (someone came up with a plugin recently that allows you to record your voice in Anki, no?), so at least you could do pitch comparisons or somesuch and adjust till you get them matched up.

Can barely remember some old rambling theories I had on the matter now that I've internalized them and moved on, but it's also good to practice extending your 'phonological store' by learning to process sound more efficiently in conjunction with subvocalisation/'articulatory rehearsal' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baddeley's_...gical_loop). I had a link to some person's research into the key to 'listening' being those mechanisms where you can store and skim aural information in your head quickly. (Edit: research by someone named Wilga Rivers?)

Random quote: Peter Kirn, from Real World Digital Audio: "The musical pitches we know, such as the notes of a major scale, are specific, learned frequencies. We've heard them so many times that we've learned the relative intervals formed by certain tunings. If you have perfect pitch, you've even memorized the tunings, but even if you can only sing "Happy Birthday," you've unknowingly memorized a series of intervals. "

Another random quote whose precise relevance escapes me but it provides much food for though on visual/aural relations, representation, and memory: "The choice of colors to memorize might modulate the cognitive load balance between the phonological loop and the visuospatial sketchpad." - http://www.citeulike.org/user/oori/article/1137625

Super bonus video just for fun: http://www.boingboing.net/2009/08/01/bob...hacks.html

Nii87 Wrote:Is it even a useful skill? Does it need to be a sine wave, or would a piano suffice?

This pitch interval training thing has me really interested. I've played piano for quite some time but I've never had interval training. With an SRS I can learn it faster hopefully too.

After I get home from work today I hope to play lots and lots and intervals on my piano for the question side, record them, SRS them and have the full song on the answer side. Or am I missing something?

I'd say it's really useful. I went to university for music(I don't want to say it though after telling everyone how bad my ear has gotten since those times) and everyone studied ear training. If you only play classical music it might not be so important, but for all other types of music it is. When you're ear s really good you can transcribe things really quickly. Most of my teacher could figure out all the chords for a pop song before the song had finished playing. You can also write music without having your instrument in your hands(i.e. on the bus, at work, etc). If you are playing a solo after someone else you can copy something they did without practice before hand or quote another song without practicing it. The applications are limitless.

But just knowing the intervals aren't enough. Surely you need to connect the muscle movement and physical distance of a piano (or any instrument) with an interval?

I'm thinking of going down this interval/SRS path, but I have a feeling just because I can identify interval differences does not mean I'll be able to play it.

I feel this is simply because lots more training needs to be done which involves physically playing an interval after you've heard it.

Nii87 Wrote:But just knowing the intervals aren't enough. Surely you need to connect the muscle movement and physical distance of a piano (or any instrument) with an interval?

I'm thinking of going down this interval/SRS path, but I have a feeling just because I can identify interval differences does not mean I'll be able to play it.

I feel this is simply because lots more training needs to be done which involves physically playing an interval after you've heard it.

A concern with instrumentation--ear training's uses are not limited to that. However, what about finding a way to tie keyboard input to Anki? If it can be done w/ typing...

Edit: Perhaps I'm overcomplicating, since you can just have a keyboard in front of you... k if I start posting here I'm going to start obsessing over learning music and my Japanese will suffer, enjoy.

Nii87 Wrote:But just knowing the intervals aren't enough. Surely you need to connect the muscle movement and physical distance of a piano (or any instrument) with an interval?

I'm thinking of going down this interval/SRS path, but I have a feeling just because I can identify interval differences does not mean I'll be able to play it.

I feel this is simply because lots more training needs to be done which involves physically playing an interval after you've heard it.

What is your goal? If you just want to transcribe songs you like there is no need to use a piano at all. You could listen to a song on your iPod, transcribe it on the bus and then have a friend play it. If you want to use it in improvised solos then sure you have to use your instrument too, but I would suggest doing that after your ear is at a fairly high level already. IMO connecting your instrument to your ear is easy if you can play well and hear well. For someone that plays piano it should be even easier since you can see and feel the intervals.

nii87 Wrote:But just knowing the intervals aren't enough. Surely you need to connect the muscle movement and physical distance of a piano (or any instrument) with an interval?

I'm thinking of going down this interval/SRS path, but I have a feeling just because I can identify interval differences does not mean I'll be able to play it.

I feel this is simply because lots more training needs to be done which involves physically playing an interval after you've heard it.

If you have enough confidence in your instrument of choice, knowing how many steps/half-steps to go above your current note isn't that tough.

Actually, this whole interval training business has actually indirectly caused me to understand the process of it better!

From what I understand, discerning between two intervals is much more important than learning how to discern between pitches first. It's ridiculous to memorize pitches because the timbre of the instrument often "warps" your perception of what the pitch of the notes are. My dad has a "good ear" but even he has trouble figuring out what a brass player is playing unless he spends some time trying to follow it on an instrument.

So instead of trying to memorize pitches from the get go, memorize intervals.. then worry about getting a good ear for pitches! When you hear a note, you've still got to find it, but based on your knowledge of intervals you can quickly find the next note. I believe that's what it means to have a good "ear".

For example, let's say you just heard a succession of three notes.. A, B, D. When you hear the A you might be guessing a little to figure it out. But then you can use that to figure out what the other two sounds are. You aren't really worrying about what the next two pitches are, at least by note name. You hear a 2nd and a perfect fourth when comparing them to the first note you heard. So on piano/guitar, you play those two notes by going up a whole step and a whole+whole+half step, respectively.

In actuality, you'll always have a little trouble playing it by ear. But with interval memory, it's a lot easier.

KaitouJS Wrote:In actuality, you'll always have a little trouble playing it by ear. But with interval memory, it's a lot easier.

Sort of like Heisig and Japanese I suppose =)

Nii87 Wrote:

KaitouJS Wrote:In actuality, you'll always have a little trouble playing it by ear. But with interval memory, it's a lot easier.

Sort of like Heisig and Japanese I suppose =)

Yeah, I guess. There's no substitute for experience. You can spend a lot of time training your ear but it'll never get past a certain state until you actually use it for something. Just like knowing 2,000 some kanji won't completely help you until you realize the context of the words containing them.

In fact, it's kind of like anything else. Unless you're willing to get out of your comfortable zone, you will not improve.

I've had a completely different transition in my theories here. I used to say that interval training is good. It really is good, believe me, but for the rest of us who want to play REAL music, not memorize note distances, we want to jump in feet first.

So you know what? I've been messing around recently and I think I've figured out how to really, really do ear training with an SRS. Or at least, I think this is the best way.

You add cards to the SRS with sound samples, however, these sound samples are pieces from songs that you DON'T know how to play. Which means that for every card you have in your deck, there's a riff or phrase that you have to pick out and don't actively know.

Let me explain why I think this is a good idea.

1. For ear training, variety is a must. Nobody likes listening to the same BS over and over. That's why you add a bunch of clips from a variety of songs.

2. It's too hard to go and listen to a radio and find something you like. You have a library of things you like with this method.

3. Each time you do a new card, you [obviously] get better at using your ear. As long as you don't hear the same riff over and over, your muscles don't have sufficient time to adapt to what you played. Muscle memory is DIFFERENT than normal memory, or at least I'd like to think so: repetition within a certain time frame builds muscle memory, not repetition over gaps of time. Anyway, you all know what I'm talking about: You have to practice a riff for an hour or two to have it engraved into your memory, and if you don't practice it many times within that time period, you probably won't remember it the next time you see it. What am I trying to get at here? Well, I'm trying to say that if you have variety, you won't be able to physically remember the riff and you'll ALWAYS have to play it by ear.. which FORCES you to get better at ear training!

I call this method: The 'ten thousand riffs' method. Find hundreds of songs you like. Find riffs you like. Cut out clips. Put 'em in the SRS. Don't actively train those riffs from the songs. Let your ear do the work for you.

This will do two things, provided you already have good playing habits: 1, which I already said, it'll train your ear. 2, maybe you'll actually know those riffs after playing them over a long period of time. I KNOW I just said that muscle memory doesn't work like that, but I just think that after hearing those riffs so much that you'll hear it in your head and PLAY what you hear.

Any thoughts, fellow musicians?!

I've experimented with exposing myself to certain sounds I was very sensitive to (an OCD version of the 'nails on chalkboard' effect, a lifelong susceptibility I've now eliminated), doing so according to vaguely SRS-like progressive intervals for set durations of time. It had the interesting result of making me intensely aware of what about the sounds I was sensitive to as I extensively studied the nature of them (the acoustics and psychoacoustics), and subsequently they no longer bother me when I hear them, because I immediately bring to mind that memorized awareness even amidst unexpected encounters. Okay, that sounds weird, vague, and convoluted. But maybe it's useful somehow (if not to Musicianship then to 'treatment of OCD w/ SRS', perhaps?).

nest0r Wrote:I've experimented with exposing myself to certain sounds I was very sensitive to (an OCD version of the 'nails on chalkboard' effect, a lifelong susceptibility I've now eliminated), doing so according to vaguely SRS-like progressive intervals for set durations of time. It had the interesting result of making me intensely aware of what about the sounds I was sensitive to as I extensively studied the nature of them (the acoustics and psychoacoustics), and subsequently they no longer bother me when I hear them, because I immediately bring to mind that memorized awareness even amidst unexpected encounters. Okay, that sounds weird, vague, and convoluted. But maybe it's useful somehow (if not to Musicianship then to 'treatment of OCD w/ SRS', perhaps?).

Maybe it might help some musicians get past the oddities of certain timbres of instruments? I for one have trouble deciphering certain synth riffs just because of the way they sound. Asides from that, I couldn't see any practical use for it.