The Musical Mind: Join the Hike

Kevin Ure

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 20

    One Perfect Fifth, Six Ways: The Ear Training Your Drills Skipped

    A perfect fifth, heard six ways in about six minutes. By the end you'll have made more comparisons than a week of drilling gives you. Last time I said your ear learns by comparison and not repetition. Watch that one first if you haven't. This is what that actually looks like. Play along or just listen. Six angles on one interval: melodic ascending melodic descending harmonic, as a single color harmonic split, attention on the bottom note and then the top hidden inside a triad inverted, where the fifth becomes a fourth Most people who can nail an ascending fifth stall completely on one going down. That's normal. It's also the proof that they memorized a shape instead of learning a distance. Halfway through you'll be moving a flashlight around inside a sound that isn't changing. That's a skill, it's trainable, and almost nothing teaches it. A drill gives you one of these and calls it ear training. Your ear needs all six and more, because music is going to hand you all six at once. Do this with a fourth tomorrow. A third the day after. Thirty minutes, then go live your life. 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 Last Time: Comparison, Not Repetition 0:22 One. Melodic Ascending 0:38 Two. Melodic Descending 1:05 Three. Harmonic As A Single Color 2:19 Four. Harmonic Split, Bottom Note Then Top 3:58 Five. Hidden Inside A Triad 5:10 Six. Inversion, Finding The Fourth 6:35 Why Position Changes The Feeling 8:01 Six Angles On One Interval 8:43 Do This With A Fourth Tomorrow

  3. Sep 20

    Audiation Versus Recall: Correcting Something I Say In My Courses

    I'm going to correct something I say in my own two courses. What I call audiation in Flawless is recall, and I use the word anyway. Edwin Gordon coined audiation in 1975. It has a specific meaning: hearing sound in your mind that isn't coming from outside of you. Nothing in the room is producing it. Nothing you remember is producing it. It's generated internally. Here's what I actually do in Flawless. I play a C. I leave silence. I tell you to audiate it. That's recall. You heard the note two seconds ago and you're holding on to it, and I know that. Recall isn't audiation. Recall is a road to audiation, and there's no other road I know of that works. Before you can generate a pitch out of nothing, you have to be able to hold one. Most people can't do that on day one. It isn't pure recall even at the start, either. When you hold that C you're not holding an abstract pitch. You're holding a piano, the timbre, the room. Your ear is doing something constructive rather than replaying a recording. This is also where my two courses divide. Composing Hour is audiation, generating sound from the inside, which is what composers do. Flawless uses audiation principles to build recognition and internal hearing first, because you can't compose with an ear that can't hold a note for four seconds. Some people don't get internal sound at all. The mind's ear is silent. Anauralia is a name for it, and I'm not the expert to speak on it in depth. What I can say is that sound and relationship are two different things, and from what I understand, people who don't get internal sound still get relationship. The map is real even without the sound. Precision about what you're training is the difference between progress and four wasted months. If a program can't tell you whether it's building recognition, recall or audiation, it probably doesn't know either. 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 Correcting Something I Say In My Own Courses 0:07 What Gordon Meant By Audiation 0:25 What I Actually Do In Flawless Is Recall 0:45 Why I Use The Word Anyway 1:32 Comparison With Nothing Playing 2:12 Where My Two Courses Divide 2:41 When The Mind's Ear Is Silent 3:52 Why Precision Matters Here

  4. 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

  5. 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

  6. 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

  7. 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

  8. 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

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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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