Basic Ear Training

Right now, I'm doing a course in Basic Ear Training at Berklee, which involves conducting, singing, analysis, etc. This course is obviously very far over to the Theory side of things, whereas I am taking a heavier course-load in Production courses.

A few minutes ago, I was reflecting on how ear training impacts me. In some ways, studying ear training would appear on the surface to be fairly useless. At the moment, my key focus in music is DJ'ing and production of dance music. But in reality, that narrow point of view couldn't be further from the truth.

As a dance/electronica DJ, rhythm is extremely important. Well, programming is the most important part, because you need to play what the crowd wants to hear. But once you get past that and into the technical aspects of the profession, understanding rhythm is the core part of mastering technical skills. Do you want your dancers to be grooving out to a steady beat, and then all of a sudden it's not a steady beat anymore? No. So beat-mixing is an essential skill used in keeping the dance floor going steadily without any interruptions that might distract the dancers from the music and the dancing. And in order to beat-mix, you must understand and moderate rhythms.

Much as a conductor will use the visual cues in conducting to assist a group of musicians in keeping in time, a DJ will often wave his/her arms to give cues to the dancers. True, the DJ won't "conduct" in the traditional method, but the purpose is the same. But that's just the surface. A good DJ will be constantly conducting "internally" to keep himself or herself on track throughout the performance. The arm motions of conducting might not be important to a DJ, but keeping a steady beat is.

Most dance music is arranged in groups of eight bars, 4x4 time. As an experienced DJ, I can't help but know exactly where I am within that 32-beat sequence at any given second in an evening. It doesn't matter if I'm the DJ who is performing, or if I'm just "relaxing" in a club and listening to someone else. I constantly count beats and "conduct" internally throughout the night. It doesn't matter who I'm talking to, what I'm doing, it just happens automatically and I can't "turn it off" in my mind. Do you want to understand more about the technical composition of dance music? Try counting along yourself. Wait until what sounds like a "new" section is starting, and then start counting along: "ONE two three four TWO two three four THREE two three four FOUR two three four FIVE two three four SIX two three four SEVEN two three four EIGHT two three four." And then you start again. You'll soon find that 95% of the time, when you "start again," the music takes a significant change in direction (I'm talking about house, progressive house, techno, some top40 dance, etc.). Occasionally, producers will throw in sections that are shorter or longer than eight bars (1, 2, 4, 9, and 10 are moderately common phrase-lengths for variety). But most of the time, you can just count those eight bars over and over again, almost all night long, and always feel that you know "where" you are in the phrasing of the music.

In terms of singing rhythms, again, the act of DJ'ing doesn't necessarily lend itself well to singing rhythms, since the audience cannot hear what I'm singing. They can sometimes see that I'm singing along, and it gets the crowd more involved. But this is fairly unimportant in the greater scheme of things.

Singing rhythms and practicing my ear training WILL be of immense benefit to me with respect to producing my own music. And that is my true goal as far as music goes. I know that a lot of DJ's are in the industry for the glamour, and want to be able to play at massive clubs to huge crowds, and have lots of adoring fans. But for me, there is a far greater appeal in writing, creating, and producing good music that people will enjoy. I haven't done a massive amount of touring, and yet I can already see how it gets annoying. And for that reason, I can never have too much practice and knowledge about music theory and ear training. I suspect that a lot of developing producers spend all their time concentrating on the technical aspects of dance music production, ie. the laptops, the software, the synths and samplers and effects, and all that fun stuff. But deep at heart, you should know the basics of how music works as a stepping stone to being able to create your own music effectively. And just knowing the theory in an abstract sense is not good enough. If you feel comfortable acting out the role of being the director (conductor), and actor (singer), these activities will make you feel more involved when you're creating music. You become a physical part of the creation process, rather than just an intellectual contributor.

My voice isn't the sort that would lend itself to professional recordings, although I have comfortably sang solo in front of fairly large crowds in the past (not much more than a thousand people). But despite the fact that I know that I'll never be a professional vocalist, I look forward to developing my ability to sing effectively. As I become more skilled at that, I'll be more effective at coaching vocalists about what I'd like them to do for tracks that I produce.