Well, are you just starting do to music theory, or is this a problem that's been ongoing for a while?
If you're just starting, I had the same problem at first, but after enough practice, it came to me quicker (identifying notes that is). If you want to speed along the process, you could try going through a piece of music and saying each of the notes out-loud.
If you have trouble figuring what, say, a D# major triad would be, I'd recommend practicing counting by thirds. You know, the whole every good boy does fine + FACE thing.
As far as counting a major third or minor third above a given note, I find it works better to count by half steps instead of whole steps. And, eventually, I transitioned from that to just thinking in my head "major third. A to B is 2, B to C is 1, so C# (a major third being four halfsteps)".
As far as ear training goes, I'm not too good at it myself, but do you have access to any kind of computer program that tests interval recognition? My school has Auralia, which is good. It will play a random interval, and you have to say what it is. It's nice, because you can do it over and over again, and it goes fairly fast if you want it to. You can also repeat an interval a bunch of times until it gets into your head. The difficulty comes with being able to recognize the interval in any key, but programs like Auralia will create the intervals in various keys as well. So, I'd say repetition is your best bet with that, and really with a lot of these kinds of memorization-based theory skills.
At first, this is going to mean more time, not less, of course, but as you improve, you'll be able to go faster.
I've been doing music theory forever, so it's been going on ever since I started theory.
Um, I don't have problems with the triads or the thirds, It's mainly just secondary dominants that are tripping me up in chord progressions. Analyzing Bach, persay. Gah!
Also, doing ear training with the interval decending, but I have "practice musica" and have been working on that.
I see. For secondary dominants, usually the chromatically altered tone will be the leading tone of the tonicized chord, so that's a shortcut you can use. Occasionally, you'll have two chromatically altered notes in harmonic minor, and you have to do those ones the long way.
p.s. for secondary dominants, it's helpful to have the diatonic chords of each of the four scale forms (major, harmonic minor, melodic ascending minor, and natural minor) memorized.
If you're just starting, I had the same problem at first, but after enough practice, it came to me quicker (identifying notes that is). If you want to speed along the process, you could try going through a piece of music and saying each of the notes out-loud.
If you have trouble figuring what, say, a D# major triad would be, I'd recommend practicing counting by thirds. You know, the whole every good boy does fine + FACE thing.
As far as counting a major third or minor third above a given note, I find it works better to count by half steps instead of whole steps. And, eventually, I transitioned from that to just thinking in my head "major third. A to B is 2, B to C is 1, so C# (a major third being four halfsteps)".
As far as ear training goes, I'm not too good at it myself, but do you have access to any kind of computer program that tests interval recognition? My school has Auralia, which is good. It will play a random interval, and you have to say what it is. It's nice, because you can do it over and over again, and it goes fairly fast if you want it to. You can also repeat an interval a bunch of times until it gets into your head. The difficulty comes with being able to recognize the interval in any key, but programs like Auralia will create the intervals in various keys as well. So, I'd say repetition is your best bet with that, and really with a lot of these kinds of memorization-based theory skills.
At first, this is going to mean more time, not less, of course, but as you improve, you'll be able to go faster.
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Um, I don't have problems with the triads or the thirds, It's mainly just secondary dominants that are tripping me up in chord progressions. Analyzing Bach, persay. Gah!
Also, doing ear training with the interval decending, but I have "practice musica" and have been working on that.
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