[Matthew Heintz]

I spent a great deal of time in formal ear training courses, plowing through books, using computer programs, singing with the piano, transcribing etc... and I've found that, for me, the most enjoyable (and, not coincidentally, most effective) method has been a proper study of jazz theory.

I'm far from competent in jazz, but I enjoy it, so the study of it is intentional, enjoyable misdirection. For instance, I picked up a copy of the The Jazz Sound by Dan Haerle, and in addition, to reading through his ****ysis, I sang through his examples to understand the ****ysis. It quickly becomes apparent that jazz isn't math and that it isn't enough to know that X scale is played over Y chord. One has to hear the surprise, the tension or release, etc... Once I had some elementary tools, I could then ****yze a few favorite tunes and pay along with recordings etc... I needed the theory first so that I had a vocabulary to describe what I was hearing.

Beyond finding more enjoyment in this process than traditional ear training, I also found that the freedom of jazz to move around the chord/scales really improved my ear. One can certainly do the same when singing Bach chorales, but the jazz setting encourages exploration.

Traditional solfege is certainly helpful, but can be tiresome for me. The only ear training that I didn't find particularly helpful (YMMV) has been computer programs that use midi-files. I found that the midi files lack the color and voicing of live recordings such that becoming better at recognizing XYZ chord/scale on the computer didn't necessarily improve my recognition of XYZ chord/scale in context.

My two cents...