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Rating: 
Summary: Outstanding for self-study
Review: As an amateur musician with limited time to practice and few opportunities to jam (which is probably how most music students improve their ear), Bruce Arnold's ear training CD's are especially welcome. I've used other ear training tapes that emphasize the sol-feg method (i.e. identifying the note in the context of a key center), but this series has major advantages. The biggest is the possibility of shuffle play, which prevents me from identifying pitches by (inadvertently) memorizing their order --- a problem that eventually made my ear training cassette tapes useless.I've been working with this book and vol 1 of the two-note series, and am delighted with the results. When I started, I wondered if the key note exercises were redundant, since I could already identify all of the notes in the one-note advanced level CD. However, I could only get about half of the key-note exercises correct at first. Perhaps it is more difficult than the one-note series, because the key center changes with every track. I also like the author's emphasis on speed of recall. In real music, some notes are sounded or can be distinguished from other chord tones only for an instant. As a result of practicing with these CD's, I find that I'm able to identify notes in my favorite music that I wasn't previously aware of. (The presumed existence of other tones motivates me to continue practicing.) My only complaint is that my CD player (a 1996 IBM laptop) typically takes about 5 minutes before it can finally `latch on' and read the CD (although this is not a problem with the two-note vol 1 disk). Finally, I'm grateful that the author emphasizes how difficult and time consuming ear training can be. I'm progressing with the two-note exercises more slowly, and his acknowledgment keeps me from getting discouraged. Again, I'm grateful for shuffle play on my CD player, which keeps rearranging the order of the exercises: I would have memorized the cassette tapes by now, effectively halting my progress. Because of my improved ear, I'm listening to music with greater awareness and appreciation. Thank you, Mr. Arnold!
Rating:
Summary: A useful book
Review: I found this book to be very useful for helping me learn the sound of all pitchs in relationship to a key center. Mr. Arnold has refined this process into easy exercises that overtime helped me to improve my ear. I highly recommend this approach
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