#Chord finder and ear trainer how to#
#Chord finder and ear trainer free#

Let’s start with a Dominant 9 chord. Listen to the audio below and get it in your ear. You need to be able to hear an extension or alteration and identify it. I’m going to go over some simple steps for training your ears to hear these chords. If you can’t identify a major 7 from a dominant 7, and a dominant 7 from a minor 7, hearing 7th chord extensions may be a level up for you. You may also want to get a handle on recognizing basic 7th chords as well. For example, if you can’t identify intervals by ear, you may want to take care of that first. I think it’s important for me to point out that you may want some other fundamentals of ear training down first. It comes down to a little bit of ear training.

#Chord finder and ear trainer how to#

How to train your ear to hear 7th chord extensions. Is that dominant 7th chord altered? Is there a #9, b9, or b13 in that chord? Is the melody note the 11th on that minor 7 chord? Being able to hear these extensions and alterations and understand what they are, will make a huge difference. This also comes in handy when learning jazz standards. Or perhaps you play a comping instrument and will want to know when to play these kinds of chords. You may even want to react to an extended chord the pianist or guitarist plays. That’s the role extensions play in chords anyway they add more color and texture. As a soloist, you can outline these extensions and alterations in your improvisation to add more color. Why is identifying these chords by ear important?īeing able to hear extensions and altered extensions will give you a leg up in many ways. If you want a little bit more information on the theory, check out this post. If you are paying attention, you will notice that these are the same notes.įairly simple concept right? That’s about all the theory I want to talk about on this for now because my primary focus of this lesson is about learning to hear them.

In the third and fourth bars, the 9th, 11th, and 13th are circled in red. In the first two bars, the 2nd, 4th, and 6th are circled in blue.

Notice from the example I gave you above, the blue and red circles around notes. Depending on the quality of chord (Major 7, Dominant 7…etc) they can also be altered or not used at all. The possible extensions for any quality of 7th chord are the 9th, 11th, and 13th. What are the possible extensions in 7th chords? When we number into the second octave, we continue up in numbers. Each scale degree is numbered 1-7, and as you can see in the first two bars, the basic chord tones of a 7th chord (Root-3rd-5th-7th) are identified. Just in case you don’t know, let me show you: What are extensions and altered extensions?

#Chord finder and ear trainer free#

In the past, I’ve talked about training your ear to hear chords in general, but in this lesson, I’m going to hone in on hearing those color notes on top of the chord which we call extensions.īefore we start, make sure you’ve signed up to receive our free Ultimate Ear Training Blue Print and Video Lesson Series. In today’s lesson, I want to talk about being able to identify 7th chord extensions and altered extensions by ear. The more time we spend developing our ears, the more successful our improvisation will be.

While knowing music theory and having some tricks up your sleeve is great, nothing beats having a killer set of ears. I’ve talked a lot about ear training on our blog because I truly believe it is one of the most important things you can do for your jazz playing. You need to have ears trained to hear anything that comes your way and ready to react quickly to your musical environment. If you want to become an excellent improviser, you need to have a solid ear.