[distressed_romeo]

Currently working at this every day (y'know...singing DO RE MI etc. along with yourself as you play as a way of ear-training.). Now I've made it a part of my daily practice (actually, it's the only thing I work on every day without fail at the moment) I'm getting pretty good results with it. Anyone else devoted time to it?

[The Dark Wolf]

Yep. Start working on the minor scale now. Just go down 3 tones, start on La. La-ti-do-re-mi-fa-so-la, back down, up down. The work on the melodic and harmonic minor scales.

I used to have to do that shit all the time for my music theory class. It does help with ear training, though.

[distressed_romeo]

That's what I'm doing. Working on different arpeggio inversions and sequences as well. It does seem to be really making a difference, so I'm going to stick at it.

[strychnine]

the most important thing with solfege, as it becomes a habit, is to sing the name of the degree and then tell yourself the interval. Alot of singers can solfege really well but wont know how much they move in steps or w/e. It was a big problem in my class because they had amazing voices but actually hitting the wrong notes because it would change on them and they would just loose it since the teacher would not supply any backing chords for them to sing around

good luck with solfage, its a bit weird to me. I just sing interval degrees =)

[distressed_romeo]

Thanks for the advice man.
The big problem I've had with most academic eartraining exercises is that I don't really have a natural singing voice, and coupled with that I'm a pretty heavy smoker, so that's limited me a lot before.
I used to just practice singing intervals as well, but I've sound solfege helps internalise them better, so they become instinctive. May have helped that I spent about three years using the approach you describe.

I kinda wish I could start proper study again, but unfortunately the music department at my university closed last year.

[distressed_romeo]

Fuck! This thing really works! Since I started practicing it my singing, and my ability to hear intervals has come on tenfold! Going to stick with it. Recommend it to everyone!

[strychnine]

dont forget to do them going down also...going up is actually the easiest natural progression humans have. singing down we lose it. you should draw up a little chart of the solfege symbols going up, and under them the interval and then vice versa going down, above it. so in the end its something like this
all in relationship to do that is.

P8..m7..m6..P5..P4.m3...m2
do- re -me -fa -so -la - ti- do
.....M2..M3..P4..P5.M6...M7 P8

with this little chart it actually just shows you the inversions of each interval which is cool.

Simply when you have an interval and want the inversion you have to make the numeric number 9 and then if the first interval is major, you make the inversion minor, and vice versa. with parallels the inversion is always parallel =)

so just incase you dont understand that:

m3+M6 = inversions.

hope this helps as well.

[distressed_romeo]

Already doing that, but cheers anyways!

[The Dark Wolf]

Originally Posted by strychnine

dont forget to do them going down also...going up is actually the easiest natural progression humans have. singing down we lose it.

I disagree with this. Once you ascend, it's far easier to descend, since you already have the pitch intervals "practiced", so to speak. I find this in A) personal experience and B) also learned the same thing at University, in sight-singing/theory classes.

Although it's definitely a good idea to do scales/arpeggios both ascedning and descending.

[strychnine]

oh ya its true after you do it one way and then the other that you can get them easily but it seems majority of the population have troubles with the intervals going down such as....

like I dont know how your tests have gone but my teacher did this once

Sing me a m6 up...

sing me a m3 down...

sing me a p5 down then a m3 up from the p5.

like, thats my personal experience on the tests and even though I got them right or close, it was really tough.