Ear Training for Musical Creativity 2
In this second level course, you will learn to recognize melodies by ear in the minor tonality. Combined with your ability from the first level course, you’ll be able to understand ALL of the sounds in the music all around you and play these beautiful sounds on your instrument.
Ear Training for Musical Creativity 2
Have you ever felt that minor melodies possess a unique emotional depth? Imagine being able to listen to minor songs and instantly recognize every note of these melodies by ear.
And imagine being able to PLAY all of these beautiful melodies in your improvising!
This multimedia video course is a deep dive into the beautiful sounds of the minor tonality. The minor tonality is produced when we’re feeling note 6 as our tonal center. So this course builds on everything you’ve learned in your IFR practice, bringing everything together into a complete ability to understand melodies by ear.
This course includes video lessons, audio exercises, special song analysis videos, creative jamming exercises and practice tracks.
Personal note: If you have ever felt intimidated by “minor keys” or struggled to understand what to do with “minor scales”, this course will remove those doubts. You will learn to see the minor tonality as a beautiful musical landscape that you can move around with complete freedom.
Open to everyone — Beginners welcome!
Everyone can learn to understand music by ear. You just need an organized path and the right guidance. The key to success with ear training is to study the sounds in a musical context, taking advantage of your own natural ability to feel and enjoy music. You don’t need dry academic technical exercises. You just need the opportunity to get to know each sound of our musical system for yourself and discover its unique beauty. This is exactly what we do in this video course.
Immediate benefits to your playing
- Recognize minor melodies by ear and instantly play them in any key on your instrument.
- Learn how to feel the difference between the natural minor and harmonic minor sounds.
- Seamlessly integrate both major and minor without having to mentally change keys.
- Finally have the tools to understand ALL of the songs that you hear in your daily life.
- Develop your taste and creativity for the minor sounds, expanding your ideas and musicality.
What makes this course different from other ear training programs?
- Experiencing the sounds as music. Every step of the way, you'll be hearing the sounds in the context of beautiful songs and melodies. So the connection to real music is very present right from the start. This is one of the biggest complaints that musicians have about other ear training programs. They get better at identifying random intervals in the context of a quiz, but they still can't recognize anything in the songs they hear on the radio. So it's important to hear all of these beautiful sounds in the context of actual music, and that's what we do in this course.
- Using your natural ability. It's not about developing "perfect pitch" or any other unusual ability. This is something everyone can do. If I were to sing the melody to your favorite song, you would recognize that melody right away. And if I were to sing a wrong note somewhere in that melody, you would recognize that too. What this means is that you already feel the difference between all of the different notes of our musical system. You just don't know which sound is which. All you need is an organized path that lets you clarify these sensations one by one so that you finally understand which note of our musical system produces each of those beautiful sensations that you already know and love.
- Jamming with the sounds. In addition to the singing and listening exercises, you'll also be improvising with the same sounds on your instrument over backing tracks that I will give you. This creative jamming with the sounds is essential because it allows you to explore the sounds on your own, combining them into melodies and expressing your own musical ideas with them. This will give you the same mastery of music that you have with your own spoken language, which you can both speak and understand effortlessly.
"I always shied away from the minor key sounds... too strange and unfamiliar. But it was a musical gap I wanted to fill. I faithfully did the bite-sized, step-by-step singing exercises, listening exercises, and improvisation exercises, and just as I had hoped, the minor key is now like a new friend."
– review by Allan Henderson — piano, GA, USA
Complete multimedia video course - 10 progressive units
This course is divided into 10 units of progressive difficulty. Each unit will teach you the next level of our ear training practice. This progressive system is the key to your success because each unit introduces just one new sound for you to enjoy and master. But these abilities stack up very quickly, and by the end of the course you’ll be able to recognize all seven notes of the major scale by ear in the music all around you.
What's included in this course:
- Video lessons. We'll explore the sounds together and I'll show you the important things to notice about each sound.
- Audio lessons. These singalong tracks use beautiful songs and melodies to teach you the notes of our musical system.
- Creative exploration. You'll be jamming with your instrument over backing tracks to explore the sounds creatively.
- Singing exercises. You'll have a chance to practice singing the sounds on your own over special practice tracks.
- Song analysis. Special bonus video lessons where we analyze famous songs together and identify the notes of the melodies.
- Self-tests. Special audio tracks to practice recognizing notes by ear in an easy, progressive way.
10 main video lessons
Supplemental lessons
Song analysis videos
What students say about this course
What students say about this course
Learn from a professional musician and experienced teacher
Learn from a professional musician and experienced teacher
Mireia Clua is a professional violinist based in New York City and the co-founder of Improvise for Real. Mireia is the creator of the entire IFR ear training program including our “Sing the Numbers” audio courses. She created all of the learning materials for this course. She has personally taught hundreds of IFR students in live workshops, and she has more than 20 years of experience teaching music to both children and adults. Mireia is especially focused on creating a safe learning environment where each student feels respected, nurtured and encouraged.
Get this course free with your membership!
When you join, you’ll have complete access to our entire library of video courses, audio courses, jam tracks, and ear training lessons. Everything works together as one unified method to help you master the art of musical improvisation.
Your membership is completely risk-free. Explore everything IFR has to offer, and if you don’t feel it’s the right fit within your first 30 days, just send us an email and we’ll refund your payment in full — no questions asked.