Ear Training
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Paul Stiller, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Ear Training Department"When you're producing an album and run into performance problems, you have to troubleshoot on the spot. Ear training gives you tools to draw from. But you also need communication skills to work with different musicians in a way that makes sense to them. I've worked with groups of people who are unbelievably talented but can't read music and have never tried to lock to a click track before. So you have to come up with a new musical language to reach them. It's all about figuring out new ways to teach the same thing."
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"It's really hard for any of us to judge students' talent. Judging talent is very difficult. What you judge is growth, and whether it seems appropriate or above average. If students are so entrenched in music and it's a part of life they can't do without, then they're the right people for it, because whichever way the chips fall, they'll be OK."
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Brian Lewis, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Ear Training Department"Ear training is all about becoming a literate musician—mastering the fundamentals, covering everything musicians might encounter in their career. Acquiring a good ear doesn't happen by turning a magic key. It happens through performing experience or a systematic progressive approach that slowly builds and reinforces musical concepts through performance-related and recognition activities."
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Jane Potter, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Ear Training Department"In order to grow as a musician, you have to transcribe to see how it's done. It's probably the oldest tried-and-true method of advancing as a musician. It's not just singing a Marvin Gaye song; it's learning what Marvin Gaye did, copying it, and then making it your own. It's like having a private lesson with Marvin Gaye."
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Daryl Lowery, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Ear Training Department"My playing is rooted in African American styles: jazz, r&b, and funk. But for fun I listen to classical music and rock, including stuff I grew up on, like Led Zeppelin and the Who. I also have a graduate degree in software engineering, but in my computer applications class I teach that technology is not an end in itself—it's a tool to make our life easier when we make music."
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"It may be a little sacrilegious, but I don’t really care if students never use solfège again after they get out of here. But I do care that they have an increased depth of understanding about the music-making process and are sensitive enough to be able to hear details in music that they’re listening to. Although, at a party it’s nice every now and then to be able to scat Donna Lee in solfège. That’s always fun. To really impress the person you’re trying to go home with, play a few pop solos in solfège; you’ll knock ’em right off their feet."
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Kaye Kelly, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Ear Training Department"The concepts we study in ear training classes teach students to recognize, interpret, and notate musical sounds and ideas. These skills are invaluable to developing musicianship and completely necessary to succeed in a competitive field. I try as much as possible to make my classes relate to what students might be doing when they graduate from Berklee. We listen and analyze all styles of music and discuss real life musical situations they might find themselves in."
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"Ear training is such a fundamental thing. It's a feedback system involving several factors: reading, writing, and listening to and imagining music. As any one of these abilities improves, the others improve as well, so I always try to come at ear training from all those angles. You get these gradual, incremental realizations: 'Oh, now I understand that song I've been listening to all these years!'"
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Allan Chase, Chair
DEPARTMENT : Ear Training Department"Ear training is a tool that allows you to express what you hear, what you want to play, and what you want to sound like. It allows you to interact with other musicians. If you're in a group that has any element of improvisation or surprise in it—which most popular contemporary music, jazz, and all sorts of world music have—ear training is what allows you to hear what somebody else is doing and respond to it with something that fits and isn't an accident, but is intentional and meaningful, and has feeling and confidence behind it. When you have a good ear it makes your rhythm better, because you're not hesitant, you're confident."
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Darcel Wilson, Instructor
DEPARTMENT : Ear Training Department"I've done a lot of jingles in my career, and having been a student here at Berklee and understanding how ear training works, I use solfège to learn the jingles. Jingle houses don't really use written music anymore. You just have to go in and listen and learn the song by ear. So over the years I've used my ear training skills to write down whatever I can't memorize right away. I literally write, just over the lyrics to the jingle, the solfège, or the sol-fa. If it's really confusing to me, I'll write the rhythm that goes along with it. Just little personal notes—but ear training has allowed me to do that, so that I can work fast. And I really think that that has been a plus through my career. You get called back when you can work quickly."
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