Ear Training w Ari: Context is Everything

by Ari 31 Jul 2023 2 minute read

Ear Training Tip: Have you ever heard somebody say that major sounds happy and minor sounds sad? In general – and in narrow terms, that would be correct. But in broader terms and in context, that may not be the case.

Let me show you what I mean:

 

Free diagrams here

#A25


Ear Training w Ari: Context is Everything

Video Transcript

Have you ever heard somebody say that major sounds happy and minor sounds sad? Okay, I can get on board with that somewhat. If you hear it back to back, minor… major yeah, I hear that this is a minor chord – sounds a bit sad.

And this is a major chord – sounds happier. Okay fine. so far so good. Now gets a bit trickier if I mess with the context. For example, if you hear [🎵] right after this you probably say oh yeah yeah, that’s minor, right? Because I made your ear recognize that E as the root.

Okay, but listen now… [🎵] Oooh, now it’s turned into major. I can turn major into minor just the same. Major [🎵] … turns minor. All of a sudden that E to the G sharp turned into a C sharp minor triad.

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Bassist, author, educator.

Groove enthusiast and learning nerd.

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Hi. I'm Ari.

As a bassist, I have toured/played/recorded with a variety of rock, Jazz, and funk bands, I have worked with some incredible producers (Keith Olsen) and musicians (Paul Hanson, Muriel Anderson) and I toured Brazil with Stu Hamm as a duo.

 

As a bass teacher, I have taught at London Bass Day, Gerald Veasley’s Bass Boot Camp, SBL, Truefire, notreble… I even ran my own music school for a few years before gigs took me back on the road.

 

One thing to know about me is that I teach because I am absolutely fascinated with the learning process. And I am obsessed with helping others realize their musical potential.

 

When I started playing bass, I excelled very quickly because I had an amazing teacher who taught me using a powerful method. This method transformed my playing so quickly that I passed a bunch of high-level university auditions and even tested out of entire classes at university even though I had been playing for only a very short time.

 

That’s what, many years later turned into one of my books, co-written with Wolf Wein, called “The Pattern System for the Bass Player”. I created entire systems of learning based on some of these ideas and wrote books and created courses together with Wolf. Our bass books have sold over 30,000 copies and garnered rave reviews.

 

I started teaching online in 2009 and have embraced technology as a powerful learning tool since then, never losing sight of the importance of providing feedback and personalized guidance to learners.

 

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