Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Ear Training Program released by Rick Beato

If you bought his book - or one of his books - was it organized? In other words, the 2nd video I watched - admittedly skipping a bit for lack of time - jumps all over the place. Sometimes introductions don't reflect what is being introduced. Is his material that he sells more organized than that? Can it be followed? (whether useful to one's purposes is a different question, that have answered, I think).

That second video was a late night live-stream answering viewer ad-hoc questions. I don't think he has a video pitching the ear training program with examples and screen shots but he should; the website has some details.

Below are brief music theory videos that provide a flavour for his teaching style. These youtube videos frequently summarise content from his Beato Book.

Superficially it seems well organised - divided up into quite a large number of small topics. But I haven't studied music at an advanced level, so I don't have a yardstick to judge whether the structure and content and sequence are useful or appropriate.

One thing that Rick has said is that the ear training course is college level (he was a professor back in the day). It is a lot more advanced than the free phone apps you can get. The later parts will be very, very difficult (polychords and so on). Hard to say how useful that will be to the people hanging out in a piano beginners forum.

Plus, when you write a book, you have an editor that can help organize that for you. But doing a video, you may or may not have that kind of guidance. I'm thinking that this is more useful for people into jazz, improvising, composing, etc.

I got an app that does that "unique" stuff with like 5 bucks. If one can't improve their ears with that kind of app, the 200 bucks or the 3 million bucks method won't help either. Also, if you master that 5 bucks app, which pretty much means you're ears are freaking good, and you still think you want more, maybe then you can start spending 200 bucks, but still you shouldn't, unless there are demo videos for each chapter, so at least you have some idea what to expect. Throwing 200 bucks at a youtube celebrity à l'aveugle is pretty silly.

What app is that?

I'd like to add that I do think he knows his stuff, and that it appears to be a decent approach. But looking at the itinerary, it just may be overkill for many classical pianists since most would only need the first half or 1/3.

Somewhat along the same lines: When I was in teacher's college, we learned to organize lesson plans. You had a large module that might span 2 or 3 weeks where you are teaching a broad topic, and you divided that into smaller topics, building and reinforcing. You figured out what things the student needs to know or find out - things you might not think about since you know it so well yourself - and how do you bring this to them. You then had your daily lesson plans within the 3 week module. A good teacher isn't tied to these things, but there's an outline. This structure works well for classroom teaching. One-on-one you can be much more responsive and flexible.

Teaching on-line is different again. You are not bound by real time: your video lesson lives on, can be viewed years later, and can be studied in sections that are viewed over and over, or fast-forwarded and scrolled back. You have no idea whether a student watching your stuff got it, or is hopelessly lost. I've studied a lot of on-line things by now (or glanced) - many don't do it well. Some just ramble and wave their hands about (perturbing if you're trying to follow those hands). Beato is actually better than most in that regard. I think (or heard?) that he is used to teaching advanced students or students who already know things, who have a foot in the door of improvising - and that he does it live. If teaching live, you get your cues from the student - build on what they show they can do - back off with a puzzled look etc.

Going off on a tangent: I'm working through Seymour Fink's course right now. I bought it 10 years ago and didn't know enough to work with it. It is so tightly organized to the point of nerd-tom. Every detail is thought through: every word or gesture is preplanned: a "lesson" may last 30 seconds or less but may take weeks to get totally into your system. A student being overly diligent and too narrow in the details might actually dig themselves into a hole, esp. with no feedback. But it works for me, at this time.

Another one: This was a violin teacher who built her platform before platforms (Artistworks is a platform) existed. It is superbly formatted, and she has a programmer help her. There is an index with all topics and subtopics, with hyperlinks to the video lessons, and they relate to each other. If you are a "returner", or a "beginner", or need "remediation" specific lesson titles light up in the index as "these are the ones you probably should study". This one is a work of genius in terms of organization. When she was there, she was also getting feedback from the group of students registered there, and tweaked her work accordingly. This one is pure genius in the way it was organized, and the knowledge brought into it.

In short: teaching on-line is a new format, and not easy.

I got a bundle Ear Trainer + Note Trainer + Pulse(metronome) on Apple Store.

I use this one at present: tonedear.com
I'm always on my PC, so that works for me. It's not fancy, but works well. And it's free.

I have used tonedear and think it's a great resource. A Jazz/composition teacher recommended the David Burge Relative ear training Super course. I found that useful as well since it has a specific approach in ingraining sounds but it's hard to find used and quite expensive new and a more involved methodology than tonedear. Not sure how Beato's would compare to that.