A Pair of Moderately Well-Trained Ears ......................................................
When you think about it, we don’t really “train” our ears at all. We develop
listening skills and, therefore, develop our communication skills. We do this
by training our brainsto exercise a more focused type of attention on the
stimuli arriving at our ears. It’s just like when you’re learning to speak a for-
eign language — you learn to pick out familiar words and phrases spoken in
that new language and build your vocabulary from there. Music is as much a
language as Mandarin or English or Swahili, and it just takes time, patience,
and good listening skills to understand its “words.” You probably won’t pick
it up instantly, but with perseverance, you will pick it up.There are a lot of good courses available for developing good musical listen-
ing skills. If you’re the self-teaching type, sitting in front of a piano and hitting
notes over and over until you can identify pitches by ear is a good way to
start.Very few of us are born with perfect pitch, but most people can become able
to identify intervals(the difference in pitch) between two or three notes and
can pick those notes out on the piano without much trouble. With practice,
the same person can learn to pick out simple phrases and chords on the
piano and therefore learn how other composers put their songs together.What we’re saying here is that being one of the gifted few with perfect pitch
isn’t critical to being a good composer. With a set of moderately well-trained
ears, you can learn to play and compose just about anything.Knowledge of Music Theory ........................................................................
It is important to be able to communicate your musical ideas to others.
That’s why you want to compose music in the first place, right? Part of this
communication is being able to define the music you hear in terms that
others can understand. Music theoryis the study of music and the way it
works and it encompasses the language through which musicians communi-
cate their musical ideas to one another.We assume that if you’re ready to compose, you can already at least read
music. With practice, you should be comfortable enough reading music
that you can hear the notes in your head as you read them on the page. Have
you ever seen someone reading a piece of music aloud to themselves, often
humming loudly as they work their way through a piece? That’s the level of
comfort you should aim for — being able to “hear” a song just by looking at a
lead sheet or a section of sheet music.20 Part I: Basics and Rhythm
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