Hearing old songs with new ears: why training your ear takes time

I recently spent 8 hours in the car on a road trip to a conference, and of course, as a singer, it is a requirement to have a playlist for every minute of the journey to belt along to.

I love singing along and seeing how my voice has progressed, especially older songs I haven’t sung in a while. Sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised, and other times habit takes over without me realising until after it’s happened.

However, about 40 minutes into this particular journey, my voice wasn’t up to much. My vocal cords were pretty swollen, and my voice felt heavy and inflexible, so it was apparent I wasn’t going to be able to sing on this trip.

I realised as soon as I stopped singing that I don’t actually listen to music much, as I’m always singing along. This journey turned out to be a very different experience, where I found myself analysing what I usually don’t hear in the songs, especially the older songs on my playlist from when I was a less experienced teacher.

For the rest of the journey, I listened to every song that came on and was surprised at how much my ears have developed over the years.

One was a big 00s ballad I must have sung along to hundreds of times without thinking. In my listening mode, I heard tension in the high notes and an uncomfortable squeeze that I could feel in my throat. Instead of enjoying it, I found myself worrying about the singer’s health.

It wasn’t just that one song. Squeezed vocals, blaringly obvious pitch correction and all manner of other things had me hitting the skip button quite a lot.

What’s amazing is that I don’t think I’ve really done any active learning this year. I’ve sat through over 40 hours of teacher training classes at our IVACON, educator development meetings and other training classes so far, but only half-listening while working on other things in the background.

Even though I wasn’t consciously paying attention, my brain took in the information and processed it to the point that I formed new pathways, connecting what my ear was hearing to what I had heard in trainings.

I remember being a less experienced teacher, always getting frustrated with myself when I couldn’t hear what my mentors were hearing. 

Sometimes I could hear something, but I didn’t know what it was, while they usually identified the issue immediately. When I questioned them, the answer I always got was, “Some things just take time and repetition to hear”, which frustrated me even more.

I suppose, in a way, I didn’t want to hear that it would take time. I wanted to know now. I was willing to put in the work, but I didn’t want to wait 10 years to understand it.

Now, being a little bit older (and hopefully wiser), I am starting to realise they might have been right. Things I couldn’t identify before are becoming second nature. I also feel like I’m starting to hear more nuances in voices, leading to better singing exercise choices and explanations.

If I could go back in time, I’d advise myself to listen to as many singers as I could (live, recordings, and videos) and watch as many singing lessons as possible, because it all helps develop my ear.

I’d also tell myself to be patient and understand that it really does just take time. You can have access to the best information in the world, but your brain needs time to process it, and you can’t rush that.