No, not a musical post, sorry.
I'm looking to learn more music theory. I play upright bass as essentially a beginner -- I can learn a piece and play it relatively well, reading the bass staff slowly. I have a good ear for intervals, and, when practicing, can pick out when I'm sharp or flat (to a degree).
I can't tell notes by ear, let alone chords. I took a music theory class in college as an elective and did well, and understand some of the basics of song construction.
What I'm looking for is an audio-based approach to learning more music theory, whether it be ear training for notes (which I consider pretty basic, but important) or something more advanced, such as learning notes by ear and then moving into keys, scales, intervals and so on.
There's tons of books out there, and plenty of courses I could do, but here's why I made the thread:
Are there any audio books, or training tools that exist primarily as a CD or MP3s? I work in a computer-based job where I can listen to music for a large portion of any given day, and would rather use this flexibility to improve my music skills.
Posts
Ricci Adam's http://www.musictheory.net/ <- very basic stuff, like ear training for notes and chords. But all Flash based, and you can download a "local" version to put on a flash drive.
Pandora.com's Musicology Podcast: http://blog.pandora.com/podcast/ <- 15-20m episodes each week highlighting a different area of music theory, like time signatures or chord progressions.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
But my ears are rarely used at work, which is why I'm primarily looking for audio resources.
Once I've got my masters, I'm fully planning on getting into lessons again for my bass (had lessons for a little under 2 years, teacher moved and I was broke) and will have more options for other ear training or musical "stuff," but listening to stuff at work is the most feasible at the moment. The Good-Ear stuff looks like it might have some useful stuff, though, although the fact that it appears I need to interact w/ the website is kind of a drag.
I realized this the other night that they make "learn a language" books and such that have, like "See you tomorrow.... Hasta Mañana... Hasta Mañana...." but I've never heard of one for musical tones and theory, like "[beeeeeeep] E7. [beeeeeep] C#5."
http://www.macgamut.com/
I'm in my third year of a music degree and a big part of that is a class called "Skills" where you have to do a huge host of things including melodic and harmonic dictation. In this class we all had assignments on MacGamut (ie. had to do up to level 4 of interval recognition by such-and-such a date) and it really, really helps. It's hard and can be a pain in the ass but it really helps your recognition of intervals and chords. Don't have any hope of being able to identify notes though without something to base if off of as for that you need perfect pitch and it is really, really difficult to "learn" perfect pitch when you're old (ie. older than like, 4).
Now, I'm not sure how it'll work to just by the standalone MacGamut because we had "presets" that were written by our teachers that we had to use. If you do choose to get it and need something like that I could always send mine.
Most Music Theory books (Alfreds, for Dummies, for Complete Idiots, etc.) come with CDs that include ear training exercises.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Feral: I had a feeling, or a hope at least, that that would be the case. Do you suggest any? We've got a spanish language thing that references the book for everything, so it's actually useless w/o the text, which obviously wouldn't be so great if I was just listening to it at work.
I don't have any specific suggestions unfortunately. I've got the Alfred's book and it's got exactly the problem you mention: the CD is useless without the text.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I always see the ads in guitar world magazines and I always think they're a huge scam, but I may be wrong.