The Musical Mind: Join the Hike

Kevin Ure
  • 5.0 (6)
  • Education
  • Updated Semiweekly

Join the Hike as we talk about musical concepts, including audiation, ear training, composition, theory, and much more!

  1. Sep 20

    Why Ear Training Plateaus: Your Ear Learns By Comparing

    Nobody signs up for ear training to get good at ear training. You signed up to hear music. To sit in a rehearsal and know what just happened. To hear the line moving against yours. So you drilled a perfect fifth a hundred times and waited for the moment it settles and becomes usable. That moment doesn't come from repetition alone. It isn't that you're not working hard enough. Hard work is needed. It has to be pointed in the right direction. Your fingers learn by memorizing. Your ear learns by comparing. Two different mechanisms. Memorizing works by doing the same action again and again. Comparing works by judging one thing against many others. Play a fifth a hundred times and you learn what that particular fifth, on that particular instrument, at that particular speed, sounds like. You've memorized an artifact. You haven't learned an interval. Play a fifth and then a fourth, and something else is happening. You're not storing a sound. You're measuring a difference, and distance is the thing that transfers. Your ear was never the problem. Nobody trained you to hear. You did that as a baby, before you could hold a spoon. The fingers are the slow ones. Nobody comes out of the womb ready to cut a steak. This video's the argument. The next one's the demonstration: one interval, a perfect fifth, heard six ways in about six minutes. The first week of Flawless Ear Training is free. Seven days, one audio lesson a day, thirty minutes or less. https://www.uremusic.com/flawless-free-trial Chapters 0:00 Nobody Signs Up To Get Good At Ear Training 0:35 Drilling The Fifth A Hundred Times 1:16 Muscle Memory Is Real, And It's For Fingers 2:04 Fingers Memorize, Ears Compare 2:37 A Fifth, Then A Fourth 3:32 Why People Plateau 3:51 Your Ear Was Never The Problem 4:48 Why The App Doesn't Transfer 6:06 What Works Is Deliberate Variation 6:40 Distance And Color 7:37 Reading Music With Your Ears 8:07 The Treadmill And The Refrigerator

  2. Sep 14

    Open Position, Close Position, and Why It Only Matters When You Switch

    Start Training Free: https://www.uremusic.com/flawless-free-trial Close position means every voice sits inside an octave. Open position means one of them doesn't. That part takes thirty seconds to learn. What matters is what happens when you switch. You're switching texture, and if you do it by accident the piece sounds unstable. Do it on purpose and it's a technique. Two rules come out of this one. Keep your spacing consistent, and double the bass. 0:00 Close position and open position 1:39 Register, and why the same chord muddies low 2:00 Doubling the bass note 2:58 Consistent spacing, and what inconsistent sounds like 4:23 How much room the bass needs 5:43 Switching textures on purpose 6:25 More in the members library These are excerpts from The Composers Studio Seminars, the live sessions I run with composers who are working on their own pieces. The audio is what it is, because these are real sessions and not studio recordings. Student work and student voices are never included in these videos. More at uremusic.com Courses: uremusic.com Membership: uremusic.com

  3. Sep 14

    Every Piece Is Its Own Theory

    Start Training Free: https://www.uremusic.com/flawless-free-trial You can write from harmony, or you can write from sound. Both work. If you write from sound, the analysis still has to happen. It just happens last, once the piece is done and the intuition has nothing left to give. Then you read your own first four measures and work out the rules you were already following. That becomes the theory for that piece. The next piece gets a new one. My composition instructor threw my theory book in the trash can over this. That story is in here. 0:00 Harmony first, or sound first 0:21 Reading your own first four measures 1:53 Why this comes last 2:00 My composition instructor and the trash can 3:07 Finishing the piece is the first one percent 3:44 More in the members library These are excerpts from The Composers Studio Seminars, the live sessions I run with composers who are working on their own pieces. The audio is what it is, because these are real sessions and not studio recordings. Student work and student voices are never included in these videos. More at uremusic.com Courses: uremusic.com Membership: uremusic.com

  4. Aug 26

    Stop Trying to Master Ear Training

    Most ear training tells you to get 100% before you move on. I think that rule is the reason your ear stopped improving. When you repeat one drill until you score perfectly, you usually are not training your ear. You are teaching your brain to predict a sequence it has already heard. The score goes up. The skill does not. What works better is uncomfortable: move through the material, do not stop for perfection, and come back around. The second pass catches what you missed. The third pass is where it becomes yours. This is not a sales pitch. It is the thing I wish somebody had told me before I spent years grinding single drills. 0:00 The mistake I see in the comments 0:45 You are memorizing, not learning 1:17 Why ear training apps stop working 2:03 Take the whole thing, do not stop for scores 3:07 Why one lesson for a week burns you out 4:16 Do the math: 750 days 4:49 The time lapse, and why to keep going Free audiation course, no cost and no trial nonsense: https://www.uremusic.com/audiation-inner-ear-training-for-musicians Flawless Ear Training, the full 250 lesson course: https://www.uremusic.com/flawless-ear-training-audio-video Composing Hour, Year 1, if you want the second and third pass built for you: https://www.uremusic.com/composing-hour-music-lessons If this argument bothers you, tell me why in the comments. I read them, and they are where most of these videos come from. #eartraining #audiation #musicpractice

  5. Aug 21

    The Music Stuck in Your Head Is a Skill You Never Trained

    About nine in ten people get songs stuck in their head every week. It's rare to have a truly silent mind, and only 1.5% are actually tone deaf. So what's the difference between an earworm and hearing music you haven't written yet? A trainable skill called audiation. The 60-second test is at 1:30. The five levels are at 5:30. Learn audiation. The real, scientifically-proven skill of hearing music in your head with perfect clarity. This video breaks down 5 levels of audiation and gives you actionable exercises to develop this ability, whether you're a beginner or an experienced musician. 📍 WHAT YOU'LL LEARN: ✓ The 5 levels of audiation (playback → recall → editing → new music → fluency) ✓ Why you're not tone deaf—90% of people hear music in their head weekly ✓ The difference between memory and audiation ✓ Why ear training suddenly gets harder (and why that's a good sign) ✓ Step-by-step exercises to advance your audiation skills ✓ How to use audiation for better sight-reading, improvisation, and composition Timestamps: 00:00 The Skill You Never Trained 00:40 The Song Stuck in Your Head 01:24 Audiation Is Real 03:44 Quieter than Real Music 07:23 The 60-Second Test 11:56 Your Ear Isn't Broken 13:48 Recall vs. Audiation 15:05 The Ear Training Floors 16:00 5 Stages of Audiation 17:19 Hearing and Writing Music Gap 17:55 Audiation Weekly Challenge 19:33 The Big Ear Training Mistake 20:17 You're Not Hallucinating Your Ear Training Progress 🎯 INCLUDED TESTS: The video includes two practical tests to discover your current level. See where you start and get personalized exercise recommendations. 🎹 WHO THIS IS FOR: - Musicians wanting to improve sight-reading - Singers and composers working without an instrument - Anyone who wants to develop perfect pitch - Music students struggling with ear training - People who want to understand the music in their head ⏱️ KEY CONCEPTS COVERED: - Audiation vs. ear training (they're different skills) - Internal sound quality and what "hearing it" really means - The breakthrough moment when progress feels like regression - How daily practice works anywhere—no instrument needed - The three-floor model of inner hearing Free course: https://www.uremusic.com/audiation-inner-ear-training-for-musicians 🎧 About This Channel Ear training, audiation, and creative theory for musicians of all levels. 📚 Essential Resources • Resource Guide • Octave Registers by Number • Newsletter • UreMusic Homepage • Books & Courses 👉 All links here: https://linktr.ee/uremusic 🎼 My Books Full list → https://www.uremusic.com/books 💬 Work With Me Consultation → https://www.uremusic.com/book-a-consultation 📌 Tags #Audiation #EarTraining #MusicTheory #Composition 📢 Affiliate Disclosure Some links may be affiliate links. Thank you for supporting the channel. #audiation #eartraining #musictheory #musicskills #HearingMusic #sightreading #musicalmindreader #ComposerTips #musiciantips #musiclearning

  6. Aug 17

    The Ear Training Sleep Track I Broke (And What I Learned Fixing It)

    ▶ Listen to the full 10-hour track for free here: https://youtu.be/Axr-_z6FTqE ▶ Free download (Perfect Fifth, 1:58 hours): https://www.uremusic.com/sleep-free ▶ Flawless Ear Training, the complete course: https://www.uremusic.com/flawless-ear-training-audio-video ▶ Start the free audiation course: https://www.uremusic.com/audiation-inner-ear-training-for-musicians ▶ Read My Recommendations for Beginners: https://www.uremusic.com/blog/audiation-for-beginners-how-to-start-ear-training-from-scratch I sell a sleep track for ear training. I put my own product under a microscope, and I found three things wrong with it — one bad enough that I rebuilt the whole thing and I'm giving the new one away free, no email, no gate. This is dense and it runs about twenty minutes, so I'd rather you watched it properly than had it on in another tab. Everything I found is in here, including the two things that make me look bad: a file that quietly ran out forty-seven minutes early, and a synthetic drone I almost shipped underneath an ear-training track. Along the way you'll get the actual research behind why sleep tracks work at all — Walker 2002, Antony 2012, the Göldi reversal that shows a cue that wakes you doesn't just fail, it damages the memory it was reactivating — and the four rules I now follow after years of breaking two of them. One risk I didn't cover in the video, and should have: if you sleep with any continuous sound — mine or anyone else's — it raises the level at which you wake up to everything, not just the track. That's the mechanism, not a side effect. Don't use it if you're the person who needs to hear a smoke alarm or a child at night, and if you want the single best fix for that risk, look up a 520 Hz low-frequency smoke alarm. In the research, it wakes sleeping adults four to twelve times more reliably than the standard high-pitched kind, regardless of what's playing in the room. That's true whether or not you ever touch my track, and it costs you nothing to check tonight. The 1:58 version is a free download — Perfect Fifth first, in a louder and a quieter mix. The full ten-hour version is free to listen to on the channel, or available to buy if you want the file. Major Third goes up next week, Major Sixth the week after. Chapters 0:00 Intro 0:10 Three things wrong with my own sleep track 0:42 Quick favor before I start 1:10 Finding one — 47 minutes of silence 1:56 What a sleep track is actually supposed to do 2:12 Walker 2002 — sleep finishes the learning 3:34 Antony 2012 — the whispered cue 4:46 The big one — my track vs. deep sleep 6:07 The confession — I guessed right 7:06 Why not ride the sleep cycles 8:20 Finding two — what was hiding inside the rain 10:27 Finding three, and the claim I won't make 12:18 The reversal — when a cue wakes you 13:18 The one almost nobody in music knows 14:32 Four rules for any sleep track 15:48 How the rebuild satisfies them 16:52 The offer — free download 18:21 How to use it safely 19:15 Close — the five minutes that matter most ▶ From the album Sleep Sounds for Musicians: https://www.uremusic.com/intervals-for-sleep-meditation-and-study ▶ Flawless Ear Training, the complete course: https://www.uremusic.com/flawless-ear-training-audio-video

  7. Jul 29

    The Path to Audiating Melodies Clearly... Imagine Music

    Most musicians can hear a melody just fine. Holding one. Keeping it alive in your mind long enough to sing it, play it, or write it down — is a different skill, and almost nobody teaches it. That gap is why a melody can be right there in your head and still evaporate before your pencil moves. This is a working session, not a lecture. I'll play short fragments at the piano and leave you silence to work in, so don't skip ahead. The silences are where the training happens. We'll go after eight breakthroughs: holding a note after the sound stops, replaying a line at any tempo, catching contour before note names, filling in a vanished note, predicting what comes next, transposing in your head, chunking long melodies, and holding a melody against a drone. If you've ever searched for melodic dictation practice or wondered how people transcribe music by ear, this is the skill underneath both. If a drill stays murky, you're not behind. That murkiness is the edge of your current ability, and the edge is exactly where the pathway gets built. Comment as you go. Type YES if melodies dissolve on you, tell me whether the missing middle note came back, flickered, or stayed silent, and type PATH if you want me to send you the guided version. I read and answer everything myself, and your answers genuinely decide what I make next. Chapters 0:00 The Gap: You Can Hear It, but Can You Hold It? 0:59 Breakthrough 1: Hold the Last Note 1:59 Breakthrough 2: The Replay 3:58 Breakthrough 3: Shape Before Notes 5:54 Breakthrough 4: The Vanishing Middle 8:15 Breakthrough 5: Finish the Line 10:22 Breakthrough 6: Move the Melody 11:58 Breakthrough 7: Chunking 14:22 Breakthrough 8: Melody Over a Drone 16:16 Why You Couldn't Write It Down 18:38 Recognition Ends, Audiation Begins 19:16 Where to Go From Here 21:18 Your Homework ▶ Start the free course: https://www.uremusic.com/audiation-inner-ear-training-for-musicians ▶ Flawless Ear Training, the complete course: https://www.uremusic.com/flawless-ear-training-audio-video ▶ Composing Hour, for creators: https://www.uremusic.com/composing-hour-music-lessons ▶ Originally Aired on YouTube: https://youtu.be/IK_3xu2w6zA

  8. May 21

    Stop Drilling for 100% — It’s Putting Your Ear to Sleep

    For years I was telling my ear training students to drill until they scored a perfect 100%. I watched it slowly put their ears to sleep. This video is about the practice model that actually works. Why momentum beats perfection, why a frustrated ear is functionally the same as a deaf ear, and why a few honest errors in your training material may help your development rather than hurt it. If you've been grinding the same interval drill or chord exercise for weeks chasing a perfect score, this is for you. Chapters 0:00 — The confession 0:51 — Thesis: momentum over perfection 1:58 — The 7-day rule 2:48 — Why this works (desirable difficulty) 4:02 — The physical layer no one talks about 5:19 — When the definition of mastery has to flip 6:52 — Music works like spoken language 8:23 — What happens when the training material has errors 9:15 — Pillar 1: Categorical perception 10:29 — Pillar 2: Overfitting and noise injection 11:23 — Permission to move on Tell me in the comments The single interval, chord, or exercise that's tripping you up the most right now. Be specific. I read every one and pull the most common ones into future micro-exercises. About I'm Kevin, a composer and ear training educator. I've worked with over 1,400 students refining how musicians actually build their ears — not by drilling harder, but by training smarter. More at [UreMusic link]. 🎧 About This Channel Ear training, audiation, and creative theory for musicians of all levels. 📚 Essential Resources • Resource Guide • Octave Registers by Number • Newsletter • UreMusic Homepage • Books & Courses 👉 All links here: https://linktr.ee/uremusic 🎼 My Books Full list → https://www.uremusic.com/books 💬 Work With Me Consultation → https://www.uremusic.com/book-a-consultation 📌 Tags #Audiation #EarTraining #MusicTheory #Composition 📢 Affiliate Disclosure Some links may be affiliate links. Thank you for supporting the channel.

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Join the Hike as we talk about musical concepts, including audiation, ear training, composition, theory, and much more!

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