Training My Ears

I believe what you're describing is not training of your ears, but an analysis of your equipment quality. I let the separate instruments come to me, which high end components allow me to do, rather than putting effort into hearing for these details.

That is in my opinion, the best way to train your ears, in its natural receptive state.

Ear training would be something like, distinguishing the difference between uncompressed and compressed, which only a few people can actually do.

I was thinking the same thing as Assorted. If instruments are seperate then they just are, I don't have to actively listen for it. It just appears to me in that way.

Maybe your success at following cymbals but not other instruments has something to do with the way your iems present the sound to you?

I find that listening to certain electronic and ambient music where all of the song is in the details and instrumental nuances (to me anyway) as opposed to the overall "effect", or emotion, provides you with a good chance at listening to the various components of the music individually.

Try to find a nearby university with a library that has Dave Moulton's Golden Ears ear training program. It will open your ears, for sure.

Second on this as I have heard it's among the best. I have also heard the Perfect Pitch Ear Training Course is good too.

The way I have trained my ears is by lowering the volume in my car and my home system.

Another way I have trained them is to go to a place like Starbucks and trying to listen in on all the sounds in the room - people talking, cups being filled with coffee etc. This has really helped me a lot, especially being able to hear fine detail.

YMMV though.

maybe it is all of my years of training as a musician, but I find it relatively easy to separate instruments (one reason why sennheiser bothers me). It doesn't take much to distinguish 128 mp3 from Flac. It is pretty obvious on even low end equipment. The area where it gets hard is WAV vs. 320 AAC. It can still be done. Personally, training your mind like that will probably not make you enjoy the music any more.

I pity you if you need great equipment to distinguish different instruments

As -=Germania=- said, I believe this is more about training your mind to recognise the sound signature of different instruments. Unless your listening equipment equals to all of a mobile phone's built in speaker equipment shouldn't affect how easily you separate instruments. Good equipment should make you think 'hey the cymbals sound less shrill now', not 'hey this song has cymbals in it!'

I just listen to music for the enjoyment of it and try not to punish myself if I'm not listening as intently at times as I do at other times. Sometimes your mind wanders to other things and that's Ok too.

I really don't want my hobby to ever become a job. Even when I'm listening to music with a new pair of headphones or if I've switched in a new source or amp, I try not to make a big dal about it. If someone asks me how I like my new Headphone X, my answer is often that I really don't know yet.

Until I've had 10 to 20 hours of listening with different types of associated equipment and different types of music, at best I'll just have a basic gut reaction and won't be able to say much else about Headphone X. Otherwise, I'd end up driving myself nuts trying to form crystal clear opinions about the gear instead of just enjoying the music on whatever gear.

I think the same logic extends to my listening "skills" themselves. There is no real reason to attempt to "train" you ears as such. Maybe it would be fun to take a couple of the available tests to see how well you do, but why then punish yourself over the results? Or then try to push yourself to get better? For what?

I used to love playing golf until I get too competitive within myself and I ended up just giving up altogether. Same would be true if ever I tried to perfect my driving skills when on the race track with the heel/toe technique and the like. It's more fun just to practice basic lapping skills for me, or to go out a play a round of golf without even keeping score just for the fun of it.

So I'm sort of that way when it comes to pretty much anything that is a hobby. If I make it work, I end up enjoying it much less, and so it is with audio and listening skills. Better to let them develop on their own as your foot is tapping than to try to "train" your ears and then suddenly you can't just sit down and listen to a piece of music without analyzing it to death.

Not to say that you won't enjoy doing this, but on those rare occasions when I've tried, I've always found it to be rather tedious and tiring. Don't say you haven't been warned!

Here's an online solution for free that does much the same thing:

Ricci Adams' Musictheory.net

Learn about pitch (more than you'll ever think there was to know) and interval identification. Also nice theory overview. Good stuff if you have the patience for it.

I agree totally. My brother once remarked that he cannot tell what instruments make which sounds in any given song. Doesn't mean he doesn't enjoy the music; he just doesn't listen analytically to the components of said music. It's a foreign concept for me, but different strokes eh?

Best advice to any music lover: Just listen! Take some time now and again to focus on nothing but listening to music and you'll find you start noticing all sorts of little nuances and musical flourishes. The quality of your gear does matter to some degree, but you'd be amazed what your ears will pull out of a recording when you dedicate time to really listen to it.