How To Study – General music studying tips

Music is one of the vastest and most difficult art.
Main subjects to study.

ear training

Ear training is training the ear with exercises aimed to the awareness of what we are listening to, developing relative pitch, absolute pitch, the arrangements and orchestration analysis, analysis of the frequency balancing and of instruments between themselves..

Relative pitch is the ability to recognize sounds with one or more reference notes.

Perfect (absolute) pitch is ability to recognize sound from their “color”.

reading

It is learning to read the score in a fast way, at first sight (sight reading)

theory

It is learning solfeggio and above all harmony knowledge, getting ability of syntactic, formal and stylistic analysis of every song.

Getting the awareness of what is played. for example it is knowing tonality, chord, understanding how melody or accompaniment, pedal, progressions, modulations have built on

interpretation

Listening executions and famous musicians’ recordings, studying a song mechanism well and setting every author in his stylistic framework

improvisation

That is getting to learn theory and practice of improvising. For example transcribing by ear solos or songs and transposing them in all 12 keys.

Music studying

composing
That is getting to learn harmony, theory and different ways of composing.

arranging

It is studying and analyzing in theory but above all in a direct way by ear, considering the structures and the orchestration of different musical forms

singing

That is studying vocal basis and using song as a help in learning all the other instruments

sound engineering

Studying acoustic and recording rudiments, hard disk recording knowledge and ability to arrange a live performance

listening

That is listening to all musical styles with critical and analytic sense

music history
That is getting to learn styles, forms and authors and above all listening to their music

something else

That is getting to know everything which can enrich one’s own musical culture, such as computing, dancing, learning science, technology, philosophy, analyzing life style and above all caring about one’s own life style.

How to study music

I suggest to study more topics as possible: harmony, improvisation, ear training, arranging, composing and so on. Try to follow your passion and what you like more to study in day. Do not force your study too much.