Musical ear is the aggregate of abilities needed for composition, performance and active perception of music.
Mastering all musical means of expression according to the “PianoWell” system develops all necessary types of pianist’s musical ear:
1. internal ear
2. absolute pitch
3. timbral ear
4. polyphonic ear
5. melodic intonational ear
6. harmonic key-tonality ear
7. dynamics ear
8. rhythmic ear
9. architectonic ear
It also teaches to use them correctly in learning and performing pieces.
Musical ear implies a high fineness of perception of separate musical elements or qualities of musical sounds (timbral ear, absolute pitch, dynamics ear) including functional connections between them in a piece (melodic intonational ear, harmonic key-tonality ear, rhythmic ear, architectonic ear).
1. Internal ear
Absolute pitch, timbral ear, harmonic key-tonality ear and dynamics ear develop due to development of internal ear.
Internal ear — is an ability of clear mental imagination (using a score or one’s memory) of separate sounds, melodic and harmonic constructions and the entire pieces.
Internal ear allows to pre-hear a score and work with it without a musical instrument. Pre-hearing is a mental planning by internal ear of a future sound, harmony and dynamics.
2. Absolute pitch
Absolute pitch — is an ability to recognize any note by ear or reproduce it with one’s voice without prior tuning.
Relative ear is different from absolute pitch because a tuning has to be done before determining or singing notes — a note or chord is played to build a scale in one’s head.
3. Timbral ear
It’s an ability to hear timbres of various instruments and voices with internal ear.
4. Polyphonic ear
It develops on the basis of internal timbral ear as ability to pre-hear not just one voice line (one melody), but several voices together.
5. Melodic intonational ear
Intonational ear is an ability to hear expression of music, open up the structures of communication that are built-in into it.
So called structures of communication are a fine sensation of intervalic steps and melody movement. This is what enables you to hear and feel expression of music.
6. Harmonic key-tonality ear
Harmonic ear — is an ability to emotionally feel each harmony, each chord, clearly distinguish all harmonies in chord sequences. It’s an ability to hear not only each sound in a chord, but also feel harmonic, emotional coloring of a chord. Harmonic ear — is an imagery perception of consonances.
7. Dynamics ear
Dynamics ear — is an ability to imagine all dynamic nuances from ppp to fff with internal ear.
For example, an ability to imagine a sequence of notes where each subsequent sound will sound a little louder than the preceding sound.
8. Rhythmic ear
Rhythmic ear — is an ability to feel emotional expressiveness of rhythm. To feel steady meter — pulse of the piece. The ability to create time space — the arrangement of musical movement in the piece.
10. Architectonic ear
Architectonic ear — is a sensation of form of the piece. The name speaks for itself: architecture — is an art of space structuring. This intellectual ear is responsible for imagining the whole picture of the piece: motifs, phrases, sentences, periods — like blocks in a building all of them are assembled in the consciousness of musician into form of the piece.
All types of musical ear have to be developed in each professional pianist.
| 1. Problem: |
Student can’t name the notes of sounds which he hears in a simple piano piece or a symphonic piece. He can’t clearly sing a particular note (G for instance) without helping himself with a sounding note. |
| Cause: |
Undeveloped internal ear and as a result undeveloped absolute ear. |
| Cause elimination: |
Developing timbral ear according to the “PianoWell” system. |
| Result: |
Student can precisely imagine with his internal ear and sing the wanted sound. Student hears all notes in piano and symphonic music. |
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| 2. Problem: |
While listening to a polyphony student doesn’t hear the entire picture. All sounding material seems like a blended mass of sounds. |
| Cause: |
Undeveloped timbral ear and as a result undeveloped polyphonic ear. |
| Cause elimination: |
Developing timbral ear according to the “PianoWell” system. |
Result:
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Student hears melodies in the extreme and middle voices as though on separate levels of one whole picture. |
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3. Problem:
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While listening to a piece, student can’t always determine whether the melody goes up or down. He can’t exactly determine on which interval the melody steps (intervalic steps), mixes up intervals by sounding (e.g. forth with fifth). |
Cause:
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Undeveloped melodic intonational ear. |
Cause elimination:
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Mastering intonation and musical speech according to the “PianoWell” system. |
| Result: |
Student hears all interval steps, all directions of melodies in the sounding piece. |
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4. Problem:
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Student can’t clearly distinguish harmonies in the piece, mixes up the dominant with other chords, often doesn’t even distinguish the tonic. He can’t always determine whether it’s major or minor that he hears. He can’t determine what key-tonality the piece is in. |
| Cause: |
Undeveloped harmonic key-tonality ear. |
| Cause elimination: |
Developing harmony according to the “PianoWell” system. |
Result:
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Student sees-hears key-tonality of the piece, feels all harmonic changes inside the piece. He sees a chord in notes and hears its harmonic coloring with his internal ear. |
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5. Problem:
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While listening to a piece, student can’t always feel gradations of dynamic nuances. He can’t clearly determine where he hears
p, mp, mf or f. It all sounds as one layer on mf. |
| Cause: |
Undeveloped dynamics ear. |
| Cause elimination: |
Mastering dynamics and balance according to the “PianoWell” system. |
Result:
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Student sensitively hears all dynamic nuances in the sounding piece, he internally sees exact names of dynamic nuances. |
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| 6. Problem: |
Student doesn’t feel rhythmic pulse of the piece — single meter, he can’t choose the right tempo in the played piece. |
| Cause: |
Undeveloped rhythmic ear. |
| Cause elimination: |
Developing meter according to the “PianoWell” system. |
Result:
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The feeling of meter gives a sense of control of organization of time space of the piece. |
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7. Problem:
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Student doesn’t feel the breath of motives and phrases in a sounding piece. All sounding material seems a continuous flow of sounds. |
| Cause: |
Undeveloped architectonic ear. |
| Cause elimination: |
Mastering motifs, phrases, sentences and the meaning of form according to the “PianoWell” system. |
Result:
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While listening to a piece, student feels how sounds naturally assemble into blocks and are structured into form with culminations. |
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