Innovative New Ear Training Album Teaches Musicians To Play Chords By Ear
14th October, London. Music education technology company Easy Ear Training releases innovative new album, "Popular Progressions", to teach musicians to play by ear.
Online, October 14, 2013 (Newswire.com) - Easy Ear Training has developed an innovative method for improving your musical ear - just by listening to music. The "Unravelling Music" method is a simple 3-step process which uses specially-designed music tracks and excerpt clips to demonstrate the musical concepts in real use. This method is used in the newly released "Popular Progressions" album to teach musicians to play chords by ear.
Founder Christopher Sutton explains: "All too often musicians get bored and frustrated when trying to learn skills like playing by ear, because the material is either presented as classical music or as dry, abstract music theory. The Unravelling Music method bridges the gap between understanding the theory and putting it to practical use in music. The key is that it uses real music to teach real musical skills."
With the release of Popular Progressions, the Unravelling Music series of ear training albums is extended to teach the musical skill most prized among musicians: playing chords by ear. Instead of relying on printed sheet music, online tablature, or heavy song books, musicians who train with the Popular Progressions album can instead recognise and identify the chords in songs by ear - and so can play songs on their instrument without the need for written music.
The album features 5 original tracks by contemporary American composer Sabrina Peña Young. Each track is accompanied by several excerpt clips which highlight what the student should be listening for. A companion booklet provided with the album explains in more detail how to train with the album.
Peña Young, whose ground-breaking virtual opera Libertaria premiered earlier this month, says about the album's creation: "Normally when composing music you want create something new and distinctive. This album was a little different! My goal was to write tracks which sound very familiar—like the music you hear every day—and write them in a way which clearly demonstrates the musical concepts taught by the album."
Popular Progressions follows the first album in the series, Introducing Intervals, which teaches the vital skill of "interval recognition". This first album has proved a firm favourite among Easy Ear Training students, who number over 250,000 worldwide. The Popular Progressions album will be followed by further albums in the Unravelling Music series later this year.
Popular Progressions is available now as an instant download from the EasyEarTraining.com website, priced at $27. Review copies and customer testimonials available on request.
About Easy Ear Training
Easy Ear Training is a company whose mission is to take the hard work out of learning the essential listening skills of music. Musical listening skills are what enable musicians to creatively express themselves in music and play confidently with other musicians. However, these skills are traditionally taught in a very theory-oriented way which puts off many beginner musicians - or they are simply not taught at all.
Having recognised the potential for modern technology to make it easier for musicians to learn these skills, Cambridge graduate Christopher Sutton founded the company in 2009, releasing a line of iOS apps and founding the EasyEarTraining.com website. The first app, RelativePitch, was selected by Apple for promotion on the front page of the App Store. The EasyEarTraining.com website has since published hundreds of articles and tutorials on ear training, and been described as "the best all-round source of ear training information on the web".
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Tags: ear training, music education, music technology