Here's something you can do if you get bored- train yourself to better recognize intervals in music. All this requires is a brain, hands, and knowledge of a song. I am sure you know at least one song.
Also knowledge of solfege. "What is solfege?" some of you ask. I point you towards this video. "Oh," you say.
Here's something to think about: Each of your fingers represents a solfege syllable. Pick a song in your head, now dance your fingers to it, moving or tapping one finger per solfege syllable. Try as best as you can to recognize the scales, the intervals, and so forth. If you just end up dancing your fingers around, it's still a fun activity. To train yourself, think of some musical warm-ups in your head while tapping your fingers on the correct note. Try "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." Go over the scale a couple of times.
"But I have 10 fingers and there are seven basic solfege syllables," you say.
No you don't, you have seven fingers, and they are all on one hand.
What does this look like? Well, here's a picture I made just for you in ImageReady, using the highly professional technique called "putting my hand on the screen and tracing around it with the paintbrush tool:"
My roommate says I should get that checked out.
Lovely.
So, a scale would be thumb, pointer, middle, ring, pinky, invisible, invisible, thumb.
And what do you do if the song has chromatic notes, or strange scales like the whole-tone scale?
Ha! That's for you to decide. For the chromatic tones, you can tap the finger a half-step above, the finger a half-step below, bend your knuckle halfway, do nothing, etc. For different scales, you can leave your hand as the major scale and deal with a lot of accidentals, or let your hand represent the scale that the song is actually in. You'll find that you can probably do this automatically, or get pretty close. Try this, it's fun. It's like a little hands dance.
Comments, suggestions, more helpful ideas? Tell us.
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