One of the greatest ear training exercises is to sing what you play, and play what you sing. This applies to playing single notes, melodies as well as chords. This exercise brings your ears and hands together, and works for any instrument.
Do not worry if you don’t have a great voice. Hitting the notes (signing in tune) is good enough even if use can only use a quiet falsetto voice. You can also hum. In worst case scenario, sing an octave or two lower.
Play and then sing
For starters it might be best to first play and then sing what you hear. You can play notes, arpeggios, melodies, as well as chords and chord progressions.
Play and sing notes
One way you can practice playing and singing is by picking a key (say C major) and playing random notes in C major scale and singing them one by one.
Another way is to play through the C major scale in intervals, for example 3rds:
C – E – D – F – E – G – … etc.
Do that up and down the scale. Try different intervals. Try doing the same thing in different keys.
You can either sing the pitch of each note, or sing the name of the note (“C” or “do”). You can also sing a scale degree of the note (“one-three”, “two-four”). This will work well not just for ear training, but also for solidifying your fretboard and music theory knowledge.
Practice playing and singing for some time. Try vary the speed of the exercise. Slowly progress to faster and more complex passages.
Do this when playing scales, arpeggios, or melodies.
Play and sing chords
Also try playing and singing chords. You can either play a chord progression and sing root notes for each chord, or play a chord and sing all the notes and intervals in it.
For example, if you are playing a I-IV-V chord progression (C-F-G) sing:
“C”-“F”-“G”
or you can sing the number:
“one”-“four”-“five”
Both are great ways to practice playing and singing chord progressions.
For individuals chords you can sing the names of the notes. For example, for C major chord you can sing:
“C”-“E”-“G”
You can try singing chord degrees instead of the names. That might come handy if you are practicing playing chord inversions where it is not 1-3-5 all the time.
Sing and play
Once you are comfortable with playing and singing try to sing first and then play.
Again, establish a key, think of a note, then play it.
This is harder to do, so be patient. Start with singing and playing individual notes. Try intervals and melodies, as well as chords and chord progressions.
The ultimate goal is to be able to play what you hear in your head.
This is a great ear training exercise, so give it a try. Let me know how it works for you!
