Mark's Log of Learning

Community Hub Learning Logs
42

I maybe now understand why some people just don’t get what it is like to have a poor ear.

As a young child, I could draw well. In art we might be asked to draw an object the teacher placed on the table. I would set about sketching and filling in the detail, but then I might glance down at what the kid next to me had drawn, and feel something like shock! How could you come up with THAT? The object is right in front of your eyes. How can you not see it?

I feel like the kid with the bad drawing now, and some of the advice I’ve got amounts to ‘listen!’, just as back then I would have insisted ‘look!’ Probably not very helpful.

Now I believe that structured practice is the key to developing a good ear, just as it is with most learnt things - small repeated embedded steps. I don’t want to speak too soon, but I feel I’m improving, the clouds are clearing, doubt is being dispelled. If I put my yellow hat on I can even imagine a bit of an upward trend in all the plots in my ear training chart.

On another matter…

While I am concerned that I could easily lose time on this forum, time that I might otherwise use to play my guitar, I think in reality the forum has displaced something else: watching guitar videos on YouTube. For some reason I frequently watched videos about new gear, when I’m just not at all interested in buying anything. I think I might actually be immune to GAS. If you’re interested in getting some genetic material, antibodies or biome samples from me, let me know. No? I didn’t think you would be.

I was getting so bored learning about newly released guitars anyway. The pace of innovation in guitars is truly sub-glacial, retarded by the veneration of ‘vintage’ and musicians’ inherent conservatism. And yet the market is over-saturated with new products bearing only trivially differentiating characteristics. So much attention given to wood grain and colours! The wood in my strat doesn’t come into contact with any of the strings or pick-ups, so I am sceptical about its importance. If you think differently, that’s fine, but please let’s not have a tonewood debate.

So anyway, thank you, forum, for distracting me from all that stuff.

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43

Looks like you have some time to waste… What about amplifiers? :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

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44

Transistors rule! :grinning_face:

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45

My new action scale and radius gauges arrived, so it was time to check out all my guitars. I’ve run the tests, double-checked the results, and formed a tentative treatment plan. A bit of triage might be required. Here are the numbers:

            neck      -------- action -------
           radius     high string  low string
Electric     12"        1.00 mm     1.50 mm
Acoustic    9.5"        1.25 mm     0.75 mm
Bass         20"        2.75 mm     2.75 mm

The plan
Electric
I’m going to leave the action as is. However, a sitar-like sound on the high E string has returned. It sounded like this straight from the shop, probably because of a nut slot being cut too wide for the standard 0.09 string. I have a 0.10 string that I could try, but it is possible to fix the problem by trapping a fragment of tissue paper under the string at the nut. It seems my last bit fell out, so I’ll just put in another bit.

Acoustic
As I thought, the action is far too low on the low-string side of the fretboard. I’ll raise one end of the bridge a fraction of a turn.

Bass
This action is uncomfortably high for me, yet the saddles are as low as they can go. I am not sure I can do much about this, but I’ll read a bit more about truss-rod adjustment and make a decision later.

Results
Electric
Field dressing (tissue) applied, and the patient sounds better. Having a bit of a play on this today, after several days of playing the acoustic, I believe I could easily raise the action on this guitar without much bother.

Acoustic
A couple of turns on one bridge screw has produced an action of 1.25 mm across the board. I am happy with this outcome, particularly bearing in mind I bought this guitar in 1981.

Bass
There’s no need to tell me that one shouldn’t go about reducing action by tightening a truss rod. I know that, but I have no other options. I discovered that the truss rod accepts a 5/32" Allen key. My key was too long to feed down into the slot, so instead of just removing the two screws on the truss rod cover, I also had to remove a further eight on the scratch-plate and four on the pickup, to make space. I managed to turn the rod only about 60 degrees, and even that seemed to require too much force. I dare not go any further. Unfortunately, the action has not changed at all. I think this 50-year-old guitar may have gone through too much to get any better without specialist treatment.

PS: That adjustment just made things worse. It induced buzz on the low frets. Having put all the tools away, I’m now busy taking all the screws out a second time so that I can return the truss rod to its previous setting. The action seems to have dropped to 2.50 mm, but I expect it will settle back to 2.75 mm. :face_with_diagonal_mouth:

            neck      -------- action -------
           radius     high string  low string
Electric     12"        1.00 mm     1.50 mm
Acoustic    9.5"        1.25 mm     1.25 mm
Bass         20"        2.50 mm     2.50 mm
47

I duly waited seven days before attempting the Grade 2 ear training test. In that week I completed maybe 1,500 interval tests on a third-party website, with slightly encouraging results. What I didn’t focus on was Justin’s material, basically because I could not face a solid week of comparing such a limited set of intervals. In the end I failed to reach his 75% pass mark, garnering only 55%.

1 - 3 x 2    6 - 5        11 - 4        16 - 3 x 2
2 - 4 x 3    7 - 2        12 - 3        17 - 5
3 - 4 x 2    8 - 2        13 - 2        18 - 5
4 - 5        9 - 4 x 3    14 - 5        19 - 8 x 4
5 - 4       10 - 5 x 3    15 - 4 x 2    20 - 4 x 3

I simply couldn’t choose an answer for question 2 on the first pass. I had to listen through the whole thing again, and changed maybe five of my answers. I kept mixing up diatonic intervals and semitone counts, so the whole thing ended up rather a fraught mess.

It’s discouraging, given how much focus I’ve given this. I thought I was making better progress. Perhaps training on descending piano intervals and then testing on ascending guitar intervals was unwise, but I would have thought not.

Justin’s advice is to stick to 2nds, 3rds, 4ths and 5ths before going on to Grade 3. That seems deathly dull. I think I am just going to stick to my personal plan until I’ve done all nine training drills. I’ll soon be moving to mixed ascending and descending intervals.

48

I admire your tenacity.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this kind of thing pays off in completely unexpected ways… :thinking:

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49

Well, it’s certainly keeping me off the streets. :grinning_face:

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50

I think I’ve solved a little mystery: why do I sometimes identify an interval confidently and correctly, then fail to do so immediately afterwards with the same interval but at a different pitch?

I think it’s something to do with the holistic nature of perception. I’m never just hearing an interval; I’m hearing two absolute pitches, a specific time apart. If the conditions are correct, this reminds me immediately of a song I know, but change the pitch or the time interval and that memory never surfaces.

I’ve had this recall with specificity recently with:

  • alternating A and D chords fast in the beginner grades - I heard White Riot, by The Clash
  • alternating A7 and D chords, slower this time - I heard Give a Little Bit, by Supertramp
  • open G to open Am with a slow rhythm - I heard What’s Up, by Four Non-Blondes

In each case, I was right, not only about the relative chord change, but the actual chords themselves. So I’m just recognising that some interval tests sound like a song fragment, and I already know what the interval is from the song.

What follows is a pretty uninspiring read, so I popped back up here to say so. You have been warned.

Along the way, I’ve had small ups and downs in my feelings about ear training, but overall a picture of monotonous mediocrity seems to be emerging. I’m toying with the idea of going right back to basics, perhaps even restarting with just 5ths and octaves. If I cannot reliably tell the difference between those two intervals, then surely I am kidding myself to think a full range of semitones, or even just a diatonic scale, is within my abilities.

At this moment (lunchtime, 11 September 2025), I am having doubts about whether ear training even exists; is what we call ‘training’ just an awakening of some prior innate ability? We know some children are born with perfect pitch, and some people are (self-)described as tone deaf, so there’s a continuum, but how much of a shift along the continuum can any single motivated individual expect to achieve? Has anyone ever tried to find out under controlled conditions?

I did some brief online research. It appears (Acquiring ‘perfect’ pitch may be possible for some adults | University of Chicago Nws) that training may induce some improvement in adults (well, I can attest to ‘some’ myself) over a few months, but not much. Another (self-reported) case How I developed perfect pitch in 30 days at 24 years old | by Max Deutsch | Medium was interesting for the following reasons:

  • use of the same website
  • an obsessively tenacious approach
  • very ambitious goals
  • applying many different ideas
  • the feeling of simultaneously going backwards and forwards
  • falling asleep mid-test
  • occasional complete cluelessness about the presented intervals
  • eventual success

I just don’t think I’m as motivated as that, to be honest. It already feels like it isn’t worth it, so what’s going to spur me to invest even more time and effort? Granted, the two citations above refer to perfect (or absolute) pitch, and I’d be happy with relative pitch. But here’s where I lose trust - most of the sites that say acquiring relative pitch is possible for everyone are promoting themselves as the way to do it.

Despite that, there are some sober claims about how long the process can take. To summarise: two years and upwards, or for as long as you are a musician. So maybe I just need to lower my expectations to something more realistic. I must admit that J’s approach seems to have done the exact opposite: unrealistically raised them.

New plan:

  • Finish the program I started (about three more weeks)
  • Do the simplest of interval tests until I can get 100% right
  • Add other intervals one at a time
  • Do J’s ear training course again until I pass
  • Meanwhile, keep playing and don’t let ear training become all-consuming
51

I jumped from your warning to this

Good plan! :grinning_face_with_big_eyes:

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52

The end of my self-imposed task of Hercules is within sight. I’m commendably committed to carrying it off :waving_hand:. The rewards are not great, but there is something there. I’ve adjusted to the idea that, in my case, this could take years.

Meanwhile, the songs I’m playing are pretty much the same, designed to keep my fingers active with melody while chords flesh out the song:

  • One
  • Heaven
  • The One I Love
  • Happy Birthday - its mere presence rebukes me. So simple, yet so hard. I’m determined to beat it.
  • Greensleeves

My newly set up acoustic is getting a good workout, probably because it seems to sound better than the strat when the latter is unplugged, and these days I’m usually away from the desk where I run cakewalk, sitting back in my armchair doing thousands of ear training tests, during which the acoustic stands at my elbow, ready and willing.

Often I check in to the forum and see what others are doing. There is a fairly regular parade of people feeling lost, frustrated, stuck and confused. Each time one of these laments appears, a flood of generally well-meaning advice ensues. I stay out of these discussions because I don’t think I can materially help, even though I know the feelings all too well. My response might be something along the lines of:

  • guitar-playing is not an exam you have to pass
  • you can do some things, and there are always other things you can’t do yet
  • have fun and create with what you can do
  • as you do that, you’ll find you develop room to embellish a little bit at a time
  • it takes time

Because of point 5, it is important to follow point 3. But that’s just my way of looking at it. I was lucky enough to learn during the punk era, when two chords and a readiness to have a go were all you needed. That ethos seems to have been lost; there is now an overwhelming smorgasbord of learning options to consume, indigestibly vast, and intimidatingly riven with jargon. Musical life used to be much simpler, and goals easier to attain.

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53

Ah, you’re about to pull the chain in the Augean Stables? :wink:
Bravo!

So was I, but not a musical instrument.
Punk for me is an ethos. It’s a Just Do it! attitude (Nike? :grimacing:)
Ok, I’ve learned a couple more chords since my first song, but the philosophy remains the same.
And yes, it’s all about 3 :rofl:

Try this instead! :rofl:

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54

Yes, someone has to do it. I cannot remember whether Hercules did. Seriously, I’m sort of enjoying the torture. Make of that what you will.

Hilarious!

I saw the Ramones once, at Eric’s. We chatted to them afterwards, told them how brave they were to have Talking Heads as a support band. They were so nice, especially Joey. When he found out that my friend was Scottish he said their next gig was in Scotland and that we should go up with them.

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55

Nice update to your learning log. :slight_smile: I wish I was as structured as you regarding my ear training practice, it will eventually pays off. Me, it’s like I practice it 1 hour for a day having fun and then skip a week :rofl: It might be better to do like you.

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56

Thanks. I don’t think I could make it all the way through an hour of ear training. It literally puts me to sleep. I am amazed you can do that. I think the jury is still out on which regime would be better - I cannot tell whether I’m getting better or not. Reading through this log I can see my verdict swinging all over the place.

I’m looking forward to having a bit of a change of format in a week or two. And I’m trying to be patient.

I’ll drop by your log soon to see how you are doing.

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57

Just a quick note to say that exactly a year ago today I signed up with Justin Guitar. I was expecting to have made faster progress than this:

  • Beginner grades 1-3 (and 1/4 of Intermediate grade 4)
  • Practical Music Theory grades 1-2
  • Ear training grades 1-2 (and 2/3 of grade 3)
  • Guitars, Amps and Effects

I daren’t say I’m disappointed in myself, for fear of a pile-on of encouraging noises. Please don’t; I’m certified impervious to pep talks of all kinds.

Soon I hope to review my progress with ear training.

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58

I think you do have one more option, if it’s a bolt on neck, and that is to insert a shim between the neck and the neck pocket. That would slightly raise the neck in relation to the body. I put a brass one in my tele and that improved it greatly and I could get a better action.

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59

I think that’s quite a lot and good progress in a year.

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60

You’re right - but I am pretty sure it’s a set-in neck. You’d think I would know by now, after having owned it since 1977. There’s a plate at the back, but that seems to be held on only by the strap button. I don’t remember whether I have ever taken it off, so I can’t say whether it hides a set of bolt heads. The joint itself appears to be glued.

You’ve got me thinking - I might take that plate off this afternoon.

61

This morning I finished the little ear training program I set myself a month ago. Here’s a copy of the chart of the results:

Picture1
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After having listened to 7,300 interval pairs over four weeks, I just might be getting a bit better. :slightly_smiling_face:

Let’s just review what I was trying to do. I wanted to find a way to quantify my ability to identify musical intervals, and to see how it changed over time, with practice. This is because I want to find and validate a training method that provably works.

I began with a rough idea of what random chance would give me, but mid-process I recognised that the interval tests were not completely independent and maybe I’d have to use a Markov chain to truly model the prior probabilities. So that’s when I stopped worrying about probability. There are limits. And shouldn’t I have measured errors rather than successes? So, scientific? Perhaps not, but what can I pick out of it?

Well, I can compare the latest results with the earliest, and see whether anything can be concluded from the comparison.

  • After two and a half weeks, my mixed chromatic scores were slightly worse than my ascending ones, but perhaps mixed is a harder test. The descending ones (in between) were understandably much worse than either, because descending interval tests were completely new to me at the time. So all rather inconclusive.

  • On the other hand, my mixed 4ths, 5ths and 8ves scores (median 69) were better than the descending scores (66), which were in turn better than the ascending scores (56). I scored better even as the tests got harder. Encouraging.

  • My mixed major scale scores (median 60) were better than both ascending (49.5) and descending (46). Another sign of decent progress.

Anecdotally, transcribing seems a bit easier lately, but not by a mile.

Another outcome, slightly useful, is that I am less prone to conflate dominant and perfect 5th, for example. If the interval is ascending from a tonic to a dominant, yes, that is described as a perfect 5th. However, if the interval is descending from a tonic to a dominant, that is a perfect 4th. I knew this intellectually, but I got a little mixed up when I first tried to name descending intervals. Not any more, I hope.

I also did the last of the tests in J’s ear training course, first scoring 50%, where he seems to think 80-90% is required:

1 7 x 6   6 2      11 7      16 6 x 4
2 4 x 3   7 6      12 3      17 7
3 5 x 4   8 8      13 5      18 6
4 8 x 7   9 3 x 4  14 7      19 5 x 4
5 5      10 5 x 6  15 3 x 2  20 2 x 3

Then I did the quick-fire test, getting only 40%:

1 5       6 5 x 8  11 4 x 7  16 6
2 2       7 3 x 4  12 2 x 3  17 4
3 8 x 6   8 6 x 5  13 6 x 7  18 3
4 4 x 7   9 7 x 3  14 2      19 7 x 5
5 4 x 3  10 8 x 6  15 3      20 2

These results are a failure, I accept that.

So it’s all a bit swings and roundabouts. Yes, no, maybe.

I may redo J’s tests at some point, though I’ve not been impressed with the ear training course. J says you need to do your homework, but I think the thousands of intervals I’ve been testing myself on would be more than enough. What else could I have done?

I am a bit confused about what J’s referring to when he says ‘the next step up’ (at 51 seconds into video 3.4). It sounds like he means chromatic scale intervals. Is this courseware that doesn’t exist yet, or is it a way to refer to the first of the transcribing grades?

Testing on guitar seems harder than piano. Why?
How much does the ability to replay the interval determine your success?
Does dependency on reference songs become a liability?
Why do my correct and incorrect responses cluster like they do?
How quickly does ear training fade?

Anyway, enough with the questions.

Plan B is to start as simple as possible and proceed in minimal increments. I won’t bother with just ascending or just descending intervals, I’ll keep it mixed from the start.

62

Hah! Surprised you! :grinning_face_with_big_eyes: Sneakily, I had already started my second program of tests. The settings I use are medium speed, random starting note, 100 comparisons for each data point below.

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Mix 7 12 (up and down 7 or 12 semitones). Median 83.
NB: score of 98 on 9 October was for ascending intervals only.

Mix 5 7 12 (up and down 5, 7 or 12 semitones). Median 97.