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Reelin' in the Ears
Ear Training guru Mitch Haupers challenges his students to develop musicality any way they can. One student reports back from his days under Haupers's tutelage.
By Matt Moldover '02
(February 28, 2001)
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Mitch Haupers is one of Berklee's most popular ear training teachers. |
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I walked into my second semester of ear training with the same attitude I had walking into the first. I couldn't see any connection whatsoever between "Do-Re-Mi" and the music I was making at the time. Nothing at Berklee had been more nerve-racking for me than singing solfege in front of a class. My alienation mutated into a combination of fear and despair as my teacher, Mitch Haupers, began the semester by leaping into harmonic ear training, jazz tunes, and sight singing. Before long, we were performing vocal duets, reading three-part rhythms and of course, doing plenty of the dreaded dictation. It was a lot of work, but I was doing surprisingly well. Then, everything fell apart when I got an ear infection and lost my hearing in one ear.
Everything I heard sounded strange and everything I sang came out wrong. After my grade began plummeting, I went to see Mitch at his office to explain. He gave me a bunch of practice ideas, and he was even able to see a possible upside to my ear infection. "Here's your chance to really develop your inner hearing," I remember him saying. "Don't worry about singing, just work on hearing the pitches inside your head."
Inner hearing. It's one of those concepts people told me about, but I couldn't really understand until I had experienced it. Thanks to Mitch and the obstacle presented by my infection, I finally started to get it. After meeting with Mitch, I went back home and practiced in a completely new way. I didn't sing, I just thought of the pitches, and a door opened in my musical imagination. I had never experienced how powerful the "inner ear" could be. To think of the melody to "Happy Birthday" is one thing, but to look at sheet music and use solfege to realize a melody I had never really heard, blew my mind. I began to get a lot more out of class and started to truly appreciate how much Mitch had to offer as a teacher.
One of Mitch's specialities is providing several approaches for tackling ear training challenges, always providing the easiest option first. For example, I used to stumble when I tried to count an odd time, like 7/8. But after Mitch suggested thinking of a common phrase, like "Hon-o-lu-lu-Ha-wai-i," I found it a lot easier to feel the meter. Mitch introduced me to the Lydian-flat-7 mode when he gave a homework assignment to transcribe the Simpsons theme song, which is based on the mode. That was one project the whole class enjoyed. And jazz, something that always felt alien to this corrupted child of the MTV generation, suddenly became accessible when Mitch had me and the rest of the students sing duets of "I Got Rhythm" from chord symbols.
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| Mitch infuses free improvisation with an accessible beauty on his recent quartet recording. |
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Mitch's Music
Listen to excerpts from Mitch's CD "Somewhere Out There" by following the links below. |
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Blue Molasses
Listen: slow | fast |
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Lefty's Groove
Listen: slow | fast |
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Ballad for Fellini
Listen: slow | fast |
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Gray Matter
Listen: slow | fast |
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Against the Current
Listen: slow | fast |
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Mitch Haupers, guitar
Vardan Ovsepian, piano
Joshua Davis, bass
Bob Weiner, drums
These selections are protected by copyright law. You may download this material for your own personal listening pleasure. You may not otherwise reproduce, distribute, or create derivative works of this material, unless authorized by the appropriate copyright owner(s). You may contact Mitch Haupers and MHQ Music at mhaupers@berklee.edu |
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"As many people as there are trying to learn something, there are that many ways to relate to it," Mitch says. Difficult as you might think it would be to teach a class of 20 students under that premise, that's exactly what Mitch does.
The way Mitch teaches is a logical extension of the approach he has applied to his own music studies. Even at a young age, when he began piano lessons, Mitch found himself searching for his own path to learning.
"I didn't like the lessons mainly because of the constrictions they were putting on me," Mitch says. "It was stopping me from enjoying it. Even as a kid, I was happy just hearing the sound when I hit a note and said 'whoa!' Whatever I'm doing, I'll get in deep, learn how to do it, and go to the next thing. I see myself changing and growing constantly."
After completing a bachelor's degree in composition, theory, and jazz performance at DePaul University in Chicago, Mitch discovered the innovative guitar work of Mick Goodrick and traveled from the Midwest all the way to Boston in the mid-1980s. "I came to Boston as a result of hearing Mick's 'In Pas(s)ing' (ECM, 1978). I just had to find Mick and be around him," says Mitch, who had learned Goodrick was teaching at New England Conservatory. "There was something about the colors and feeling created by that ensemble. I love the sound of the bass clarinet. I was intrigued by the tunes, which seemed to revolve around the changes mostly. Mick's harmonic approach to the guitar was a revelation to me—fingerstyle jazz! But, it was more than that and I knew it at the time. I had never felt so drawn toward anything."
Mitch moved to Boston, enrolled at NEC, and earned a master's degree in Third Stream Studies, Guitar Performance. After graduating, he helped Third Stream chair and pianist Ran Blake restructure the department and managed his performing career. As a faculty member at NEC, Mitch taught Third Stream repertoire ensembles and private lessons before leaving in 1989 for a faculty position at Berklee.
Page two: "I'm not someone who sees categories."
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