Ear for music: myths and reality
Musical hearing is a set of abilities necessary for composing, performing, and actively perceiving music.
Musical hearing implies a high degree of subtlety of perception of individual musical elements or qualities of musical sounds (pitch, volume, timbre), as well as functional connections between them in a musical work (fret sense, sense of rhythm, melodic, harmonic, and other types of hearing).
Among the various types of musical hearing that are distinguished by different characteristics, the most important are:
There is a common belief that the musical ear is something almost unique-a gift from God, and a person who has a musical ear is very lucky. After all, he can sing, make music, and in General, he is, in a sense, the chosen one.
How many people feel inferior when it comes to music, saying, ” I have a bear on my ear.”
Is it really such a rarity – a musical ear? Why do some people have it and others don’t? And where did it come from, anyway? Why did you even show up? Could it be some kind of psychic ability?
It is worth remembering that human abilities arise for a reason. All our ability comes from a vital necessity. A man learned to walk on two legs because he needed to free his hands.
The situation is about the same with musical hearing. This feature appeared when living creatures needed to communicate using sounds. The human ear for music developed along with speech. In order to learn to speak, we need to be able to distinguish sounds by strength, duration, height, and timbre. Actually, this is what people call musical hearing.
Types of musical hearing
Perfect pitch
The ability to recognize any note by ear (do, re, mi, etc.) and play it by voice without pre-tuning. This also applies to sounds performed not only on musical instruments (a siren, a phone call, a knock on a metal pipe, etc.).
The relative hearing
It differs from the absolute in that to determine or sing notes by ear, you need a setting – a sound or chord, relative to which the sound scale will be mentally built.
Develops in the process of learning music.
Melodic hearing
The ability to hear and understand the structure of a melody (pitch, direction of movement, and rhythmic organization), as well as to reproduce it by voice. At a higher level of development – write notes.
Develops in the process of learning music.
Harmonic hearing
The ability to hear harmonic consonances – chord combinations of sounds and their sequences and reproduce them by voice in expanded form or on a musical instrument.
In practice, this can be expressed, for example, in selecting an accompaniment to a melody by ear, even without knowing the notes, or singing in a multi-voiced choir.
It is possible to develop it even in the initial absence of such an ability.
Inner ear
The internal representation of the correct pitch intonation, without reproducing the voice.
Internal hearing, uncoordinated with the voice. Entry-level.
In practice, it is expressed in the selection of a melody, perhaps with accompaniment, by hearing on the instrument or understanding errors by ear in the studied work.
Internal hearing, coordinated with the voice. Professional level. The result of serious solfeggio classes. It involves hearing and pre-hearing a musical text and the ability to work with it without a musical instrument.
Develops in the process of learning music.
Pre-hearing
Mental planning by the inner ear of the future of pure sound, rhythmic figure, musical phrase. It is used as a professional technique in vocals and for playing all musical instruments.
