Product Details

• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Berklee Press
• DVD Release Date: June 22, 2004
• Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00029RRHS
• Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #32,711 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Step by step guide to improving listening skills in order to become a better musician.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Too many presumptions, too little explanations and material, July 1, 2005

By	Mr. C. Rhucroft - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Harmonic Ear Training (DVD)

please excuse lack of punctuation but i have a multiple fracture of left collar bone at the moment (left-handed as well)


there is a 5 minute introductory section on the DVD which seems to focus exclusively on how the students (presumably of berkelee school ) already have significant knowledge of theory ,secondary dominant harmony, many hours of melodic and rhythmic dictation experience etc. trouble is it's me that bought the dvd...i am not "the sudents"! i was not aware that this was supposed to be for in-house use only.

the core presentation is only about 25 minutes . i frankly found elements of this perplexing. the purpose of ear training is to analyse music by ear, either live or recordings, therefore usually in real time. however having suggested that identification of the tonic is the first element (fair enough) she proceeds to play a tonic chord before playing at the keyboard the example piece to be identified ! and totally misses any discussion of how to identify the tonic in the normal scenario where it is not first delivered on a plate..any methods, difficulties or key ambiguities that might come into play etc are not discussed. try bruce arnold's key note recognition book and you may find that finding the tonic is not such a piece of cake as is suggested here.

next step is to extract the bass line formed by the harmony...again this presents no difficulty since she sight reads it ! the example is not replayed and an attempt made to extract the bassline from this hearing, with discussion of how to do this,..she just plays it from the page!

next step is to hear the bassline as a tonal melody using solfege. again this is an acquired skill in itself but it is more or less assumed that you, the presumably Berkelee student of the introduction, can already do it. in fact there is no actual explanation of solfege other than the mention of do,re, mi ..certainly no ti,li,say etc.

the following chapters may be of use if you can already do the stuff above and the theory it was assumed you already knew, but with a total length of about 10-15 minutes or so this seems to be in contradiction with a question from the introduction re. how long it takes to learn this stuff to which the answer was 'i hope you are not doing anything else for the rest of the week'. the emphasis is more on inferring and guessing chords from theoretical presumptions rather than just plain hearing them ..perhap this better represents the reality of things but if you where hoping this dvd had the magic answer to that one then look elsewhere.

especially if you are,like me, not already a college level etc music student with aural skills falling just short of hearing chord progressions i would forget this in favour of working with bruce arnold's books, gottschalk/kloeckner 'functional hearing' etc. the dvd visual format is not exploited here and the short duration and lack of in-depth discussion/explanation makes most ear-training book/audio systems preferable to this to my mind

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars These techniques really work!, March 24, 2006

By	Brian Shaw "soundguy2" (Canada) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Harmonic Ear Training (DVD)

The aim of this Berklee Workshop DVD is to help students recognize chord progressions. There has been a scarcity of material in this area of ear training and this DVD helps fill that gap very nicely.

Berklee instructor Roberta Radley discusses how students can take a logical and analytical approach to breaking down the hearing process by listening for one element at a time such as the bassline, the chord's third, or whether the chord sounds "in key' or not. By applying these processes individually and combining them with theoretical knowledge the student can determine the chord progression. Radley does a great job of explaining and providing suitable examples.

The second half of the DVD consists of listening exercises of increasing complexity played on piano followed by the answers (I did notice one error in the answers).

Radley doesn't pretend these skills can be learned by watching the DVD a few times and in fact says right at the beginning that it takes a very long time. Also basic ear training and music theory is required before starting harmonic ear training.

This DVD is a very good investment for anybody wanting to learn how to recognize chord progressions, just expect to invest a lot more in time.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Waste of money, March 24, 2007

By	dante (Rio de Janeiro) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Harmonic Ear Training (DVD)

I threw this dvd out after one watch, Berkeley should be embarrassed. A five minute lesson basically with some very basic theory. Here is the entire dvd: Listen for the bass note in the chord and try to figure it out from there.