Drill
Why am I practising this?expand
- What it teaches
- Attaching a name to a sound quickly enough to be useful while playing.
- Problem it solves
- Theory known only on paper cannot guide improvisation in real time.
- Physical skill
- None directly, but it shortens the gap between hearing an idea and fingering it.
- Theory reinforced
- Interval size, chord quality and scale colour as recognisable, nameable objects.
- Improvisation
- You can only play what you can hear in advance. This is the training that builds that hearing.
- Ear training
- This is the ear work itself — the drills are deliberately randomised across all twelve starting notes.
- Common mistakes
- Guessing quickly instead of listening; only drilling ascending intervals; scoring high on a small option set and assuming mastery.
- Recommended tempo
- Not applicable. Aim to answer within two seconds.
- Increasing difficulty
- Add more chord qualities, drill descending intervals, then sing the answer before choosing it.
- Mastered when
- Above 90 per cent across the full option set, answering immediately, on several separate days.
How to practise it
- 01Choose one category and stay with it for the whole session.
- 02Listen once, sing the sound back, then answer.
- 03When wrong, replay and sing the correct answer twice before continuing.
- 04Finish by playing the day's hardest interval or chord on your horn in three keys.