Since a large body of music is tonal the listener will commonly be assured that a tonic will be established therefore the technique is widely applicable. In fact, musicians may utilize the moveable- do system to label pitches while mentally tracking intervals to determine the sequence of solfege symbols.įunctional pitch recognition has several strengths. However there is no requirement that musicians associate the solfege symbols with the scale degrees. In the moveable do system, there happens to be a correspondence between the solfege symbol and a pitch's role. In the fixed- do system the solfege symbols clearly do not describe the role of pitches relative to the tonic. In contrast, fixed- do solfege symbols are simply labels for absolute pitches ( do=C, re=D, etc., in any key).
Functional pitch recognition emphasizes the role of a pitch with respect to the tonic. Note that functional pitch recognition should not be confused with the fixed- do solfege symbols, do, re, mi, etc. Using such systems, pitches with identical functions (the key note or tonic, for example) are associated with identical labels ( 1 or do, for example). To this end, scale-degree numbers or movable- do solmization ( do, re, mi, etc.) can be quite helpful. Many musicians use functional pitch recognition in order to identify, understand, and appreciate the roles and meanings of pitches within a key. No reference to any other pitch is required to establish this fact. Once the tonic has been established, each subsequent pitch may then be recognized in isolation with no need for reference to accompanying pitches.įor example, once the tonic G has been established, listeners may recognize that the pitch D plays the role of the dominant in the key of G. Functional pitch recognition involves identifying the function or role of a single pitch in the context of an established tonic. In most cases, singers can improve their pitch accuracy by simply improving their aural skills.Functional pitch recognition is an important skill for all musicians listening to and performing tonal music. Singing is also commonly used to improve aural skills, as there is a direct connection between a good musical ear and accurate singing. In many music schools, ear training includes the use of solfege syllables (movable-Do system), with which you are putting your recognition skills into a tonal context. The main focus of ear training being the development of aural skills, the training sessions mainly involve identifying sounds by ear and naming them, transcribing them, playing them back, singing them or, at more advanced levels, improvising upon them according to harmonic rules.
This is why ear training is a mandatory course in most music schools and conservatoires aroudn the world. This is called improving one's relative pitch. In other words, our aural skills are a bridge between the terms we use to explain music (an octave, a perfect cadence, a harmonic minor scale, etc.), and the actual sounds that are described by those terms. The more we train our ear to recognize this connection, the better musicians we become, because we learn to understand what we play, to anticipate musical structures, and to communicate with other musicians using the language of music.īoth beginners and professionals need to keep their ear in shape in order to know what they (and others, for that matter) are playing, and to anticipate what they are about to play. What is ear training? Ear training makes you a better musicianĮar training is the process of connecting music theory (notes, intervals, chords, scales, melodies, etc.) with the sounds we hear.