I play the violin and I have been told by my music teacher at school that my "inner ear" is not developed and that I have to hear my notes in my head as I play and self correct. She has told me to sing my pieces before I play them on my violin. Could someone please explain to me what my "inner ear" is and what I have to do to develop it. When it is developed will it mean that my inntonation will improve?

Thanks

in science, The ear is seperated in 3 sections.

I am sure that your teacher is using the term "inner ear" in a non-scientific way. She means the ability to hear notes in your head, in your imagination if you like, before you play them. If you were to llook at a very well-known melody written down with the title missing would you be able to recognise it? If you saw a run of notes, C D E F for example, would you know the pattern that these would make before you played them? You will get better at this anyway the more that you play. If you are really having intonation problems see if any kind friends will play some duets with you. If you have any piano playing ones that would be really good. Make sure that the piano is in tune though! Any simple pieces will do, infact easy hymn tunes would be ideal. Try something such as "The Easiest Book of Hymns, ( or Carols)" where the top line is set out clearly for the violin.

Whilst this is true (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ear ) it is almost certainly not what your music teacher was talking about. She means "inner ear" as the aural equivalent of the "mind's eye". Can you sing a tune to yourself in your mind, without actually making any noise? It's a bit like that. Unfortunately this is really hard to explain!
When you are playing, you should know what pitch ought to come out - you should be able to tell if you are going out of tune or not. Singing is probably a good way of developing this. Singing scales and intervals will help too, but if you can, check them on a piano or similar (no point on a violin as that depends on your intonation to start with). For example, sing up and down a major scale a couple of times - take your time - then sing up to the 6th degree of the scale. Are you in tune? If not, try to work out why not - check each note on the way up and down the scale (sing first, then check).

Sorry this is all a bit rambling, hope it is of some use. Perhaps someone better qualified will come along and give some more suggestions! :-)

Edit: oh, someone got in there while I was writing.

--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Michael B @ Sep 3 2006, 09:35 AM) </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
[[/quote]
She means "inner ear" as the aural equivalent of the "mind's eye".

That is a nice description!
OOPS! The quote device mis behaved.

In Kodaly it's known as the 'thinking voice', in the same way a child first learns how to read aloud and then 'read silently'. Many musicians have not tuned into this idea which makes them what I would descirbe as 'abstract' musicians- in other words, they see the note and associate it with a certain position or key, without thinking about how it sounds. This makes things such as sightsinging a real problem (which you have to learn even as a violinist). If you live anywhere near a place that offer Kodaly training I would recommned it as it does improve both memory, co-ordination and tuning while still being simple and fun. However not everyone has this training available, so in the meantime I would perhaps suggest taking a piece of violin music and getting a recording of the same arrangement.

Start by listening to the piece on its own and then follow the score a few times so you see how the patterns match the movement of pitch and rhythm. Then pause the recording at certain points and see if you can hear in your head what happens next by looking at the score. Pressing play will immediately let you hear if you have got it right. Eventually you will be able to pause for longer chunks and after a while, you may only need the first couple of bars as a prompt before you can hear in your head how the rest of the tune should go, using your 'thinking' violin. Do this with a number of pieces and you'll be surprised how the dots become patterns and your ability to 'tune' becomes sharper.

I did this method when I joined a choir very late and couldn't sightsing. By listening very carefully to the experienced members, I honed the ability to follow what they were doing to the notes on the page. This skill does improve tuning so I now know if my tuning slips and eventually became 'the alto who the others fed off'.

There are other methods, this just happened to work for me. Good luck!

Heh, glad you think so! It's interesting because my "mind's eye" is very bad - especially for faces - but I can "playback" music in my "mind's ear" just fine. Probably I'm not well-qualified to answer Crazy Musician's question because I find sight-singing pretty easy, and I don't really know why. Maybe it's related to the fact that piano is my main instrument and is always near enough in tune... and my mother sang a *lot* to me when I was a baby because she had had a stroke when I was 6 months old, and she had to re-learn to speak, but could sing just fine (weird, I know!)

Anyway... not at all surprised that Kodaly has this idea. Apparently Bartok insisted that one should be able to sing a line before attempting to play it. Very wise, I think.

Many years ago my violin techer gave me a specific excercise to develop the ability to listen to the intonation and use my ear to tune my playing. It was to take the piece I was working on and play the notes alone as a series of crotchets with a crotchet rest in between each at a speed of about 60 crotchets per minute (ie very slow with the rests). Try to "sing" the next note in my head before playing it. Do it in short sections of about 10 notes. When this was in tune I had to remove the rests in between the notes and play it still as crotchets = 60. When this is in tune then play it with the correct note lengths but very slowly, then gradually speed it up but only when I could hear that it was exactly in tune.

I found that this process of removing rhythm and playing very slowly focussing on anticipating the pitch of each note really helped me develop the interaction between my ear and fingers which is perhaps what your teacher meant by inner ear.

Hope this helps

Your 'inner ear' is the means by which you can hear in your head a sound before you try to make it, on the instrument you are playing.

Musicians spend a lifetime developing this. Then we die and all is lost

You develop it by 'hearing' in your head the note you are about to play. Then, you adjust the sound you are making to that you hear in your head. 'Hear' the sound perfectly, then adujust your sound perfectly to match what you hear in your head, and you have a 'perfect' sound.

Describing it is easier than doing it, but life is like that. Musicians spend an entire lifetime trying to make their instrument match the perfect sound they have in their head. Most of us fail, but do the best we can.

Some people here may be horrified but I sometimes recommend an electronic tuner to the adult students who can't sing in tune. These tuners can be very over-sensitive, so I just tell them to learn to play a scale so the green light comes on with each note they play. If the dial goes to the right of the green light they're sharp and if it goes to the left they're flat so they very quickly see where they're going wrong and correct themselves. In no time at all they start to hear where and how they're going wrong and the self-correction becomes automatic.

I tried it out on a brand new pupil last night who was having trouble recognising when she was out of tune. Within minutes she was self-correcting without needing to look at the tuner - it was amazing. Perhaps what was happening was a reawakening of a dormant good inner ear - after all we were all born with one! She's going to buy one and use it as a guide and then abandon it as soon as possible.

I used it with one pupil who originally described herself as 'tone deaf'. Her singing was very poor; it was always flat as was her playing. She used the tuner for a while and now plays beautifully in tune without it, making (inaudible) micro-adjustments as she goes along, as we all do.

Obviously I'd prefer it if they could all go to Kodaly training but these are busy working adults with only so much time and money to spare, and there aren't any Kodaly classes around here anyway. My instinct would have been against these things because apart from anything else the violin isn't 'well-tempered' but I'm talking about people who really can't hear when they're considerably out of tune. I hate dots and the idea of looking at fingers - it's unmusical and doesn't work anyway. These electronic tuners do get you to listen and then adjust, and something seems to happen to the inner ear in the process.

Violinia

Inner hearing is, IMHO, probably the most important thing for a musician to develop.

As others have said, far too many people learn to play an instrument by associating the note they see on the page with 'where to put my fingers' and don't HEAR what they are doing. I know - I was one of these people...

Kodaly felt that a good musician should be able to 'see what you hear and hear what you see'. In other words, you should be able to hear in your mind what the music will sound like BEFORE you play it. As jazzywench said, this skill can be likened to the ability to read words in your head. Imagine if you could only ever read a book by having to feed the code of the letters into a machine which would then produce the sounds of the words for you! - But this is exactly how many people learn to 'read' music.

The majority of children in Hungary will have reached the stage of being able to sight-sing a simple pentatonic melody before they lay their hands on an instrument, and they naturally sing before they play.

Kodaly also said that he felt the four aspects of being a good musician were to have a well-trained ear, a well-trained mind, a well-trained heart and well-trained fingers - and that if any one of these raced ahead of the others then problems would ensue. In my experience, we tend to train the fingers before anything else...which is why so many people have problems with rhythm reading, aural work and so on.

Singing is the best way to activate the inner hearing. So - yes, sing before you play if you possibly can! If not, play then sing then play again - and you will find that the quality of your playing will have improved after you have sung the line or phrase. This will help also to produce the 'perfect sound' in your head that Steve talks of.

Good luck and let us know how you get on. If I can be of any more help please just PM me. A Kodaly course could really help so if you let me know what part of the country you're in I may be able to help here.

Best of luck!

Thanks for all your suggestions. I will try them and let you know if they have helped.

Amy