Music Video Lesson: Musical Test: How Good is Your Ear?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I'm Robert Estrin with a musical test, How Good is Your Ear? We're going to do a little test here today, and I think this could be helpful for you, not just as a test, but also to make you hear things better in your own music.

I'm going to just focus today on four different types of chords, major, minor, diminished, and augmented triads in inversions as well. Let me show you all the chords that we're going to have in the test today. First, major triad.

It's got a major third in the bottom, one, two, three, four, and a minor third on top, one, two, three.

That is a major triad. Now, you could invert it by putting the bottom note on top. That's called first inversion, or a sixth inversion, or C over E, for those of you who do lead sheet notation. Second inversion is called the sixth four, because you've got a one, two, three, four, five, six, one, two, three, four.

It's a second inversion. It's all the same notes, C, E, G, but now we have G on the bottom.

All right, that's the major chord.

Next, we have the minor chord. Minor chord has three half steps on the bottom, one, two, three, and four half steps on top, one, two, three, four.

There's a minor triad in root position. The root of the chord is on the bottom. First inversion and second inversion.

Then we have the diminished triad, two minor thirds, one, two, three, one, two, three.

We can invert this as well. Put that C on top.

Now put the G flat on the bottom.

Finally, augmented, two major thirds, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four.

Inverting this one, interestingly, it still sounds like an augmented triad, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. Inverted again, still have one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four.

That's an interesting anomaly about the augmented triad. It always sounds exactly the same, whatever inversion you're in. Once again, playing these four chords, major, minor, diminished, augmented, and in different inversions, major, minor, diminished, augmented.

We're gonna start just with major or minor triads in root position. I will play each one and I won't make you wait to the end and you don't have to use a pencil unless you wanna keep score and you're welcome to do that. But I'll make it easy for you. I'll give you a moment to decide. And then if you wanna keep score, that's fine. And then you can kind of see how you rank. Here we go. Here's the first chord.

Major or minor.

Here it is again.

And if you can't tell, most of you probably recognize it as a major chord. In fact, major and minor are fairly easy to tell apart because it's kind of a happy sound to major and kind of a sad quality to minor. Which one is this? That indeed is minor. So we go ahead and play a few more root position.

That's minor.

Southern minor.

You can probably hear that's major. Now what about if I do inversions as well? What's this one? Can you tell it that is indeed? A major triad. And how about this one? That is minor.

And I bet you know what that one is too.

Yes, that is minor.

And you can hear the difference there, right? Indeed, this is major.

So this isn't too hard.

But when we get to diminished and augmented, and I'm only going to do diminished or augmented. Once again, here's diminished.

Here's augmented.

Which one is this? That indeed is diminished. And I'm gonna show you the notes that you wanna think of.

If you sing the notes between the... Compared to augmented.

The augmented triad, notice, has all whole tones. The major thirds, if you play the notes between the major thirds, are all whole steps.

It's every other note of a whole tone scale.

So that's augmented compared to diminished.

Try to listen for the notes between the notes. You can even sing them. Once again, diminished and augmented. Which one is this? Oh, I'm cheating.

You'll get a different one.

That is...

Diminished. How about this one? That is augmented. Now I'm not gonna help you. I'm just gonna play them.

That is diminished. You hear that diminished fifth? The diminished fifth compared to the augmented fifth.

Diminished fifth, augmented fifth.

That's the telltale sign of diminished and augmented triads. A couple more, then we'll go to inversions.

I don't wanna help you too much.

This is diminished.

That is indeed augmented. How about this one? Once again, it is diminished.

That indeed is another diminished. Now we're gonna do inversions of augmented. Augmented just sound exactly the same when they're inverted.

That indeed is an augmented triad. But how about this one? That is an inversion, first inversion of a diminished triad. How about this one? That's also a diminished triad inverted.

How about this one? That is also a diminished triad.

Now you probably notice a difference here, right? This indeed is augmented.

And we'll do one more.

Diminished. Now we're gonna do major, minor, diminished, augmented in inversions. Which is this? Major.

Minor.

Diminished.

Augmented.

Diminished.

Major.

Major. We'll do just a couple more. How many of these are you getting right? You know, you can test yourself and start playing these triads on the piano. Better than that, explore the music you're studying and figure out what kind of triads they are. Remember, there's just four possibilities of triads. A major third in the bottom and a minor third on top is a major triad.

A minor third in the bottom and a major third on top is a minor triad.

Two minor thirds is a diminished triad.

Two major thirds are augmented triads.

Minor thirds are three half steps. Major thirds are four half steps. Boom.

Remember to put them in root position, make them all on lines or all on spaces, and then they will be in root position.

That's the way it works. They have to be in intervals of thirds where the letters are all skipping a letter. That's how you know you're in root position. A, C, E is a triad. If it was C, E, A, you'd know it's not in root position because E to A is a fourth, E, F, G, A. But A, B, C, C, D, E. That's how you put it in root position. Then you can count the intervals.

So last challenge round, here we go.

Major.

Diminished.

Augmented.

And that is minor.

Let me know in the comments how you did in this. And if you like more advanced kind of theory listening tests, we can do seventh chords, intervals, all sorts of things if you enjoy this. And then I'm Robert Estrin. This is LivingPianos .com, your online piano resource. Thanks so much for joining me.

Thank you.

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