Phonemic (speech) hearing is the ability to catch and identify the sound (phonemes) of native speech, determine the semantic load of words, sentences, and texts. This type of hearing allows you to distinguish the volume of a conversation, intonation, and voice timbre.

They say that a child receives absolute pitch from birth. However, without supporting and developing it, “absoluteness” gradually fades away with age. To prevent this from happening, hearing must be fully developed.

An unborn child is capable of hearing a huge number of sounds. Among them are contractions of the mother’s heart, the sound of amniotic fluid, and external sounds. At birth, the baby is able to hear even things that an adult is unlikely to pay attention to. The peculiarity of an adult is to focus attention only on those sound options that are given time he needs, while completely ignoring the rest. A newly born child does not yet know how to focus his attention and separate sounds into necessary and unnecessary. This is what he must learn.

Phonemic hearing helps to isolate individual sounds from ordinary noise. To begin with, the baby begins to identify the individual sounds that he hears most often: these are the voices of his parents, given name. That is why often the first word spoken by a baby is the word he hears most often.

If in early childhood the child is surrounded by musical sounds, including lullabies that his mother sings to him, we can say that in the future the baby may develop an ear for music. Of course, such hearing also needs to be developed: listen to and analyze musical works together with the child, master the rhythms, which can be achieved by simple playful dancing with the child. The child must learn to distinguish good music from aggressive, playful from sad, etc.

What awaits a child if you do not pay attention to the development of his hearing? Let's give an example: a deaf-mute family has a baby who can both hear and speak. He does not hear the conversation as often as necessary, does not understand its significance in social world, he loses the ability to distinguish sounds, much less repeat them and use them for his own communication. As a rule, such children either do not know how to speak at all, or do not do it well enough.

For the same reasons, study foreign language It’s much easier to be in an environment where everyone around you communicates in given language. Every person has a natural gift for imitation and capturing sound differences.

Exercises for the development of speech hearing must be carried out starting from the moment when the child begins to respond to sounds, first showing him the source of the sound, then explaining what and how made it possible to reproduce this sound. How can you determine whether your baby’s phonemic awareness is developing sufficiently? We will give you several activities that can be used both as a diagnostic of development and in developmental terms. When performing exercises, take into account the age of the child: a three-year-old child may not be able to cope with the last exercise, but if this happens at 6-7 years old, the development of his hearing must be urgently helped.

First, the child should be taught to separate speech among other sounds.

• What's the sound?

This lesson has three difficulty options:

1. The sound of a rattle, bell or whistle?
2. The sound of apartment keys, the sound of a spoon hitting a plate, or the leafing of a book?
3. A box of matches, sand or pebbles?

• What's the weather like?

An activity in the form of a game, taking place during a walk on a fine day. The adult gently shakes the rattle (fine weather), then shakes it sharply, making strong sound(it started to rain) and asks the baby to run up and allegedly take shelter from the imaginary rain. It is necessary to explain to the child that he must listen to the sounds of the rattle and, depending on the intensity of the sounds, “walk” or “hide.”

• Guess the action.

Several children are sitting on chairs. The hands are on the knees. The adult hits the drum hard, the children raise their hands up. If the blow is weak, there is no need to raise the handles.

• Guess the instrument.

An adult should introduce children to popular musical instruments. It could be a whistle, guitar, pipe, drum, piano. It is necessary to play the sound of each of them. Then the adult hides behind the partition and makes instrumental sounds, while the children must guess which instrument was sounded.

• Guess the direction of the sound.

The child closes his eyes, and at this time the adult blows the whistle. The baby must determine where the sound is coming from. Without opening his eyes, he should turn around and point in the direction with his pen.

Only when the baby learns to separate sounds can you move on to further exercises. Now it’s time to explain that the same sound can have different sounds:

• a-a-a - we show the doctor the neck;
• a-a-a - we lull the doll to sleep;
• a-a-a - something hurts;
• o-o-o – it’s hard for grandma to carry the bag;
• o-o-o – surprise;
• o-o-o - let's sing a song.

To begin with, the baby learns to repeat the sounds on his own, then tries to guess what the adult wants to say with this sound.

In order for the baby to easily navigate the variety of different sounds, an adult must tell how a particular sound is reproduced. To do this, it is necessary to demonstrate the importance of lips, tongue, teeth: it is better to use a mirror for this purpose. The baby learns to recognize and pronounce sounds, starting with vowels, gradually increasing complexity with the use of consonants.

After mastering such knowledge, it is necessary to begin developing auditory memory - the ability to compose words from sounds. Here it is important not only to hear the set of sounds in words, but also to remember their order. You should start with simple short words pronounced in the following order:

• boom-bom-boom;
• rock-rak-roar;
• so-tok-tok;
• hand-flour-pike;
• vine-goat-thunderstorm;
• jar-semolina-ranka.

You can invite your child, after listening to a number of words, to isolate the unnecessary from it (this is how a sense of rhyme is developed):

• mountain-hole-feather;
• laughter-snow-sun.

You can practice solving riddles, the answer to which should rhyme. For example: there is a belly and four ears on both sides, but what is her name? Pillow!

Imagine that you are at a children's competition and rooting for some team. We clap our hands and say with emphasis: well-done, let's-be-dim, ve-se-lei, do-go-nyay. In this way, you can teach your baby to divide words into syllables.

So simple play activities Not only will your baby definitely like them, but they will also expand his phonemic awareness. Starting with simple exercises can prepare your child for more complex activities.

Exercises for developing musical ear

Support musical form Hearing is required for every person who loves and respects music or is involved in active creativity. Let's understand the concepts of relative and absolute hearing.

Notes, in fact, are certain sound signals that differ in sound frequency. The presence of absolute pitch in a person makes it possible to separate the main tonality from multi-frequency reproduction without error.

Relative form musical ear allows you to determine comparative characteristics notes and their relationship to each other. Speaking more in simple language In order to name the required note, such a person needs to hear another, preferably nearby note.

Huge role in studying musical development children belongs to the famous Soviet teacher V.V. Kiryushin, who, instead of boring and obscure solfeggio classes, read to the children a number of fairy tales he invented. The children not only listened with pleasure, but also remembered what was told, because there were so many interesting things in the fairy tales: the adventures of the kind animals-intervals, the teddy bear who raised the turnip, the struggle of dissonance and consonance, the septim dragons with seven heads and much more. Such fairy tales turned out to be extremely effective and allowed the child to master musical literacy with ease and pleasure.

It is possible to start classes according to the Kiryushin scheme almost from the first days of a child’s life. There is quite a lot of material on the Internet about the famous teacher’s system: collections of his fairy tales, musical works for children, classes on independent play on musical instruments.

Ilana Vin’s educational system is also well received by children. Thus, her book “How the Notes Met” received positive assessments from many music teachers.

In home practice you can use some simple exercises, subconsciously developing hearing:

1. When you walk the streets, listen to what passersby say. Short excerpts from phrases, fragments of words - all this will help you remember sounds in the future and be attentive to them.
2. Try to remember the timbre of the voice of those people with whom you have to communicate. What is the point of this exercise? Each voice is individual, it has its own unique features and manner, intonation and pronunciation. This will allow you to identify and remember sound variations. Some people, having barely heard someone else's speech, can accurately determine where a person comes from, and even guess many of his personal qualities.
3. A good effect is observed when guessing talking man by voice. This is a kind of game, and even quite interesting.
4. Try to identify your acquaintances and friends by the sound of their steps.
5. Listen to a fragment of music and try to sing it from memory, hitting the notes as best as possible.
6. And finally, memorizing songs: it develops musical memory. When memorizing a piece of music, repeat the failed section of the melody until you can repeat it without errors.

There are also many known computer programs aimed at developing the musical form of hearing: these are “Musical Arcades”, “Ear Master Pro”, “Music Examiner”, “Ear Gryz”, etc. Such programs should not be considered as the main tool for self-development, but only as an addition to general training.

Regarding the musical development of a child, it should be noted that often even the most capable children from the point of view of teachers are reluctant to agree to study music. In such cases, we can only advise one thing: never force your child to study by force (they say, when he grows up, he will say “thank you” himself). Try to interest the child, show him the most attractive and fun sides of such activities: the child should develop motivation and personal interest in music.

Exercises to develop phonetic hearing

It is extremely necessary to develop a child after 4 years, activating his speech, expanding lexicon, making speech more expressive, training the coherence of statements and the presentation of one’s emotions and sensations. It is not necessary to force the baby to do any exercises: it is enough to unobtrusively communicate and play with the child.

Use in your games everything that your child observes around him in Everyday life. The child must know not only what a bus is, but also that a bus has a steering wheel, wheels, an engine and an exhaust pipe; the house has a foundation, walls, roof and basement. In addition, children must be well versed not only in the color of objects, but also in their shades: dark blue, pastel, burgundy.

Often invite your child to describe the selected item, think of what it can be used for, what it is made of, etc. Ask your child questions: “What could be bigger?” - “Mountain, elephant, house...” - “Can an elephant be bigger than a house? In which cases?". Or: “What could be cold?” - “Winter, ice cream, ice...” In this way, the child will learn comparison and generalization.

After an adult reads a fairy tale to a child, you should ask leading questions that will not only train his memory, but also form a connection between words and phrases and determine the sequence of phrases and actions. For example, ask: “Where did Little Red Riding Hood go? What did she carry with her in the basket? Gray wolf who met her on the way, good or bad? Why?". In the same way, you can ask to retell a cartoon plot or the content of a children's play.

A good effect is observed from inventing your own plot, compiled, for example, from a picture or toy. Compare the pictures: “A boy is drawn here, he is smiling. And here is a picture of a puppy, he is playing. The boy is happy that he has a puppy to play with.”

It is useful to record your child's conversation on a voice recorder, and then listen to the recording together with him. Words that the baby fails must be repeated again.

Exercises for hearing development will help not only to intelligently reproduce sounds, but also to develop auditory perception and identify almost imperceptible differences in sounds. Remember that the vast majority of children have this gift: the task of adults is to preserve and maintain this ability.

Everyone loves music, but not every person is born musical. Sometimes there comes a time when emotional outburst I want to sing a couple of lines from Miley Cyrus’s latest hit. However, after the performance you have to catch sympathetic glances and listen to disapproving comments. To prevent this, you need to figure out what an ear for music is and what to do if you don’t have it.

Someone has been given absolute pitch by nature, someone raised him
with time

Musical ear is a fairly broad concept, containing a whole list of abilities that allow you to fully perceive music and adequately evaluate its advantages and disadvantages. A well-developed ear for music is a vital ability for musicians, producers, and sound engineers. To some it is given by nature, to others they have cultivated it over time. Anyone creative person, even if you are not related to music, it won’t hurt to add this skill to your bank of skills. Recently, experts have proven that an ear for music even helps to master foreign languages.

It has been scientifically established that there is a certain area in the brain that is responsible for hearing music. This bundle is located in the auditory zone: the larger it is and the more nerve fibers it contains, the better a person’s hearing is developed. How can you determine whether you have hearing and how things are going with your neurons in that very area of ​​the brain? To do this, you don’t have to go and have a magnetic tomography scan, just try to accurately repeat the melody you heard, for example, from the chorus of the song Reflektor by Arcade Fire, while trying to keep the rhythm. It didn't work out the first time - don't be upset. You probably have poor hearing or vocal coordination and need more training.

It seems to me that professionals will help you determine exactly whether you have hearing or not. But, in any case, there is no point in despair, because all this can be developed. The main thing is that there is a desire.

There are several varieties
musical ear:

Absolute pitch

This is the ability to accurately determine pitch ( musical note) any sound, without comparing it with any standard. It is believed that this talent is innate and is present in 1 in 10,000, and even most greatest musicians people in the world do not have absolute pitch.

Relative (or interval)

Hearing capable of detecting and reproducing musical intervals in melodies, chords, etc. In this case, the pitch of the sound is determined by comparing it with the standard.

Inner hearing

The ability to have a clear mental representation (most often from musical notation or from memory) of individual sounds and melodic structures.

Intonation hearing

A type of perception of music that allows you to understand its character and expression.

Fret hearing

The ability to hear, separate and identify differences in chords, harmonies and sections of melody, for example, their stability and instability.

Rhythmic hearing

The ability to motorly experience music, to feel the emotional expressiveness of musical rhythm.

Vocal masters and musicologists also distinguish harmonic, polyphonic, rhythmic, textured, timbral and architectural hearing.

Setting myself a serious task- by all means, train your ears, of course, you need to contact a specialist and find a teacher in solfeggio (there is a special discipline designed for the development of hearing and musical memory).

It is best to go to an experienced private teacher and it would be good to start mastering musical notation along with the desired instrument. You will be taught to distinguish notes and intervals, and then entire chords, keys, and how to handle all of this. I went to solfeggio when I had an interest myself. Every lesson the brain swells from new information and begins to process it painfully. The most useful thing about solfeggio for a musician is the practical exercises, when you are trained by ear to determine notes and their relationships - intervals, chords, etc.

The most basic exercise is probably just singing the scale (do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-si) in unison under the piano. I would also advise you to select melodies from your favorite tracks on the instrument by ear until you get one to one. It is doubly useful to practice with a metronome and devote special time to exercises on the sense of rhythm.

After practicing for a while, you begin to hear the structure of the compositions on a much more subtle level. You just listen to the music and really get into everything! You mark cool moves or, conversely, simple, elementary ones. In general, you perceive everything more insightfully.

7 programs and applications

If there is no time for a teacher, you can try to train your ear for music using special web services, programs and applications, which Lately a mass appeared. We have selected some of them.

To train your hearing and learning to recognize and identify intervals, chords, timbres, rhythms and other basic elements of music takes a lot of practice. For such practical classes you just need to have an accompanist partner who would play the same intervals and chords on the instrument to guess. The Ear Teach service allows you to train independently, clearly tracking your progress. The program exists both in a web version and as a separate program (though so far only for Windows).

Theta Music Trainer- a resource that includes several dozen flash games for hearing development, most of which are intuitive. Some games can be played for free without any registration; to access others you will have to enter your data. To fully complete the entire course and access all site materials, you need to create a paid account (for $7.95 per month or $49 per year).

EarMaster 6 is latest version training program for Danish developers. In it you will find 2000 lessons and exercises for both beginners and experienced musicians. By connecting a microphone to your computer, you can hum tunes based on the notes displayed on the screen. The program, in turn, will evaluate your hearing, producing a detailed report on the tone hits. Cost: €47.95

Auralia 4 is a serious program that contains 41 topics covering the basics of solfeggio: intervals and scales, chords and their sequences, rhythms, harmonies and melodies. Auralia allows you to arrange melodic dictations for yourself, connect a MIDI keyboard and microphone. $99.00

Pitch Improver

Simple collection basic exercises, offering to reproduce melodies by ear. Press the Play button and try to repeat what you heard on the virtual keys. The first note is marked with a letter, and the rest are highlighted in green. To pass to the next level, you need to play all the notes correctly. You can try Pitch Improver in the online version, and also download it to your smartphone

Online game "Perfect pitch"

To view this page ensure that Adobe Flash Player version 10.0.0 or greater is installed.

If you do not see the game above this inscription, then you need to download and install Adobe Flash Player

For technical reasons, we no longer create a table of records, so you DO NOT need to enter data at the end of the game...

For technical reasons we are more
We do not issue DIPLOMAS and we apologize :-(

The game asks the first 33 questions from this list. The entire list of 55 questions (from 34 to 55 chips with a stave) is presented in full version of this game included in the program.

Alexey Ustinov, 2011-12-30

Game updated 2013-11-30

Teacher's comment

Absolute ear for music - the ability to determine the pitch of a tone, regardless of other tones, i.e. without comparing sounds with each other and, as a result, assigning a note name to this sound. The nature of this phenomenon has not been sufficiently studied in musicological circles and, apparently, is therefore represented by different points of view. But it is even less familiar to practicing teachers. At the same time, the skill of “absolute musical ear” constantly remains the focus of both interest and controversy among almost all musicians. It is generally accepted that all string players (violinists, cellists) have such hearing, but this is not so! On the contrary, it seems that the pianist does not need it at all - however, those who master this skill say that it helps a lot, for example, when reading scores... Another often discussed question is whether it can be developed, or is it something... Is it innate?...

What to do with a child who easily picks out any melody and does not want to look at the sheet music at all? How to develop hearing for a student who knows musical notation symbols well, but can play false notes, memorizes them, and the teacher cannot help him in any way?

One day, my second grade student asked me to play him Gennady Sasko’s play “Blues,” which was quite complex in rhythm, with a passage at the end. I played it three times... and at the next lesson he played the Blues without notes and at the same tempo as the piece was played. The case of this boy was for me an example of my incompetence in working with a gifted student with absolute pitch... I have not encountered many children with absolute pitch in my teaching practice. And most often such children did not graduate from music school. From the very beginning, they could remember and play the pieces by hand, “by ear,” but reading a complex text caused resistance in them and, as a result, they lost interest in learning.

In other words, the skill of “absolute pitch” is not something separate in the learning process, clearly positive or negative. Both its presence and absence require additional attention from the teacher and a special approach to the student. Still, this skill is extremely desirable!

To help my students, and to avoid repeating the mistakes of my youth, I am now using S.M. Maltsev’s method. - the author of a comprehensive methodology for teaching piano playing, as well as solfegging, synchronized with piano playing. This method helps me identify children with good developed hearing and constantly work with them by sight reading notes.

For most students and those who want to master musical wisdom, it is easy to learn and play their favorite melodies on the piano or guitar, they still need to develop their hearing. And the game "Perfect Pitch" is an excellent tool for this. It is suitable for all ages.

Small children, who cannot even read, will guess the right answer from the pictures. (You just need to help them - first play the game NOTES - PICTURES so that the child gets acquainted with the notes hidden in in simple words: HOUSE, TURNIP. There, he will become acquainted with the sound of notes.).

Older children and adults, while playing, will discover that they HAVE absolute pitch and that this skill is developing - verified!

Of course, someone might say that there are no halftones in the game (more precisely, a full chromatic scale). Yes, the game only includes white piano keys, i.e. in fact, we are in a major (C) or minor (LA) mode... Someone may note that the degrees of the mode and intervals play a role here... Absolutely right! But, start with simple tasks, achieve confident recognition of these notes, and you will take a big step in improving your musical ear. Believe me, you will get great pleasure from discovering that you can identify the name of a note by ear!

Krivopalova L.N.
Piano teacher, Palace of Children and Youth Creativity, Tomsk
01.05.2011

The Virartek team expresses gratitude to Lyubov Nikolaevna Krivopalova, who received Active participation in the creation of this game and in its testing. THANK YOU! Good luck to you and your students!

Every person, if he loves to sing, dreams of performing compositions so that the audience then applauds him enthusiastically. But all you need for this is to have perfect hearing. But how to achieve this? There are special exercises for developing hearing.

What are the types of hearing?

Oddly enough, musical ear is a rather complex concept and cannot be categorically denied or affirmed (“I have hearing/I don’t have hearing”). The fact is that every person can have one or another subtype of musical ear. Whether it is possible to develop a certain type of hearing cannot be answered unequivocally, since there are a lot of these types.

1) Rhythmic hearing, that is, the ability to feel the rhythm, the emotional component of the melody.

2) Modal hearing, responsible for the ability to understand chords.

3) Ear of intonation, which allows you to understand the nature of the music (cheerful or sad).

4) Inner hearing - the ability to reproduce the musical notation of a melody.

5) Interval hearing - the ability to sing musical intervals and determine the pitch of sound.

6) Absolute pitch - a unique ability to determine the pitch of any sound without comparing it with a reference sound.

How to develop an ear for music

If you don’t know how to develop any type of musical ear on your own, try doing the following exercises daily.

1) To develop rhythmic hearing, try to read poetry to music, dance to your favorite music, counting the bars. By the way, we are developing musical and rhythmic ear namely by moving, so the plasticity of the body is not the least important for a musician. The opposite is also true: any dancer must have perfect pitch. These are interconnected things.

2) Listen to your favorite songs, short ones are better to start with, and then try to play this thing in your own voice, but without music. Then test yourself by turning on the original.

3) Sing monochromatic scales (note series "C - B" and "B - C"), even though it is boring and uninteresting. This is an invaluable experience for hearing development.

4) Sing “chromatic scales” (played only on the black piano keys in one tone). Such scales help to better develop an understanding of the differences between modes.

5) Choose your favorite tunes on musical instrument, without even knowing the exact notes. Eventually, someday it will be almost impossible to distinguish you from the original.

6) Enroll in a music school. It is music teachers who will help develop an ear for music with the help of a special discipline called solfeggio.

How to develop absolute pitch?

Oddly enough, but not at all. A person can only be born with an absolute ear for music. Therefore, the question of how to develop absolute musical ear is not entirely appropriate. In the absence of absolute innate musical ear, it is better to focus on the development of other types of hearing - intonation, rhythmic, internal, etc.

Video on the topic of the article

It's safe to say that good hearing is the only ability that allows you to become a musician.

Without this nothing can happen.

Of course, it is possible to teach a person without an ear for music to play a musical instrument, but his playing will most likely resemble the actions of a robot executing a preset program and unable to deviate from it.

When they talk about musicality, they always mean a well-developed ear for music, even if this idea is not voiced.

I think there are many questions related to musical ear, but the most important ones are the following:

• What do you mean by good ear for music?
• What criteria exist to determine it?
• How to develop an ear for music?

Let's start by defining how musical hearing differs from ordinary hearing.

Ear for music- a set of abilities necessary for composing, performing and actively perceiving music. An ear for music, first of all, relies on knowledge and an acquired system of symbols. For example, everyone can sing the melody of the song “A Christmas Tree Was Born in the Forest,” but not everyone can name the intervals and notes that make up it.

On the other hand, if your head has a stable connection between the first intonation of this song and the fact that this is an interval of a major sixth, then when you hear this in any piece of music. You know that this is a major sixth interval and you can play it on the instrument.

The work of hearing in this case is to memorize certain musical structures and endow them with meaning.

As you can see, hearing development is the application of certain knowledge in practice combined with the development of auditory memory.

Lack of understanding of how to relate hearing experience to hearing development can lead people to believe that they are not hearing.

However, there are practically no people without hearing. Most of the problems are associated with poor quality training in the basics, in music schools and other educational institutions.

There are many categories of musical hearing. The most important are:

Absolute pitch- ability to determine absolute altitude musical sounds without comparing them with the standard. This means that when you hear any note, you can name it.

It is divided into passive (small percentage of note detection, limited application) and active.

Relative hearing- the most important for any musician - defined as the ability to determine and reproduce pitch relationships in melody, chords, intervals, etc.;

Inner hearing- the ability to have a clear mental representation (for example, from musical notation or from memory) of individual sounds, melodic and harmonious structures, whole musical pieces; very important when learning.

Harmonic hearing- the ability to hear harmonic consonances - chord combinations of sounds and their sequence and reproduce them with the voice in unfolded form or on a musical instrument. In practice, this can be expressed, for example, in selecting an accompaniment to a melody by ear, even without knowing the notes, or singing in a polyphonic choir.

Polyphonic hearing– the ability to listen to all voices in a multi-voice work.

Polyrhythmic hearing– the ability to hear rhythmic figures sounding different sizes and the ability to reproduce these rhythms.

There are several main ways to develop hearing:

Solfage

Solfaging (that is, practice) involves singing intervals, chords, scales, modes, and melodies. This practice strengthens the connection between hearing and the written note, and solfège also forms a specific auditory system.

For example, by singing a major scale, you learn its structure and sound, and gradually it becomes natural and familiar to you, and you will perceive any deviation as an inconvenience. Thus, on the one hand, your hearing is developing, on the other hand, until you master anything else, it will be inaccessible to your perception. This problem can arise, for example, when listening to atonal music.

2. Musical dictation

The process is somewhat opposite to solfege. Here you, relying on the knowledge you have already acquired, write down the melody played by the teacher on notes. For this purpose, various techniques are used (finding stable tonality levels in the melody, recognizing intervals, determining cadences, etc.).

Also musical dictation promotes the development of musical memory.

3. Transcribing (from the English transcribing rewriting) or taking- selection by ear or instrument and recording on
notes of any work.

This can be either taking your instrument or other instruments, or even writing an entire score.

There are various techniques used by transcribers to speed up the transfer process. sounding music on paper (slow recording, tables, analysis, etc.).

4. Auditory analysis– identification by ear of intervals, chords, chord sequences, rhythmic figures, etc.

You can also use various specialized programs (for example, Ear Trainer) to develop your hearing.

Thus, the criterion for good hearing is the ability to hear and reproduce various elementary structural elements, the ability to write down a heard melody in notes, the ability to anticipate a certain sound, the ability to hear music with the eyes, etc.