I main on fingerstyle guitar, but I find my aural understanding on guitar feels impeded. Now I know music theory and how the fretboard works, but translating it is so damn laborious.
I’ve played other instruments, and this is what I’ve noticed about their impact:
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Penny whistle. It’s mostly in one key. The root will always be the same fingering and the fifth will always be the same fingering. I think this helps with making associations with sound and scale degree, as opposed to more chromatic instruments played in different keys. [Also used a transposing electronic digital instrument to the same effect.]
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Clarinet: Having to figure out the fingerings made me painfully aware of key signatures and where the sharps and flats are. On guitar you can smoothly shift up or down a fret without much thought or just play in position, but on clarinet there is often a specific button or button combo you need to get one specific note.
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This is the big one: Piano. You do need to bring a little theory into it to know what chords you’re playing, but the actual NOTES you are playing are immediately obvious, and since I’m building all these chords myself, I know exactly where the third is and how to lower it to make a major a minor, or where to add a major seventh, so I can also very quickly ask myself, “What if went with a minor chord here instead” and almost instantly be able to play it. On guitar, there’s a tendency to just memorize chords as shapes without knowing where the chord tones are because each shape has them in a different configuration (which is why eyes-closed arpeggio exercises are absolutely vital for guitarists).
[On piano it’s also easier to play the same inversions over and over again, which might help you learn the sound. You can play a whole song with Root-3rd-Fifth if you want, but on guitar, the common chord shapes are a kaleidoscope of chord tones. For instance, common chord tones on root chords:
C: O-R-3-5-R-3
F: R-5-R-3-5-R
G: R-3-5-R-3-R
]
I’m curious about violin, too, because I’m betting needing to intonation just right really sharpens your ear.
What’s your experience?
Haha you’re not gonna like it! It’s intervals 🤣
The way different chords are made up is essentially stacking different intervals (usually 3rds but not always) on top of each other. But there are different types of thirds: major and minor. (Also diminished and augmented, but those sound like other intervals so im gonna ignore those for now.) A major triad is a major third on the bottom and a minor third stacked on top. A minor third is the opposite. Being able to recognize the tonal quality of a major third vs a minor third is key for my ability to recognize chords. Maybe others have some alternative suggestions. Also, the more you do it, the more natural it becomes. I was inundated with this stuff at an early age when my brain was a sponge.
So let’s say you have C E G–a major third plus a minor third.
If you have E G C, it would be a minor third plus a fourth.
If you had G C E, it would be a fourth plus a major third.
And that’s just for basic triads in closed positions. Add extensions and open phrasings, it would get really complicated. I kinda wonder if you interval wizards are learning something along the way of interval training without being explicitly aware of it?
When you were learning chord inversions, did you listen to the samples and identify all the intervals and determine the root through a process of deduction? Or was there a moment when things sort of snapped into place and you could hear the root of the chord automatically, without thinking about intervals?
Because for me, I can hear the major and minor qualities of a chord without identifying any intervals, and ditto for a major and dominant sevenths. I imagine there’s a rootness and a thirdness and fifthness I could I also teach myself to identify.
There’s also the possibility that different people just learn differently, and that intervals are just hard for me and easier for others, and scale degrees are my best way in.