Towards the development of objective difficulty measure in Technical Ear Training tasks

Abstract

Technical Ear Training is a method to improve the ability to focus on a specific sound attribute. It is also used to be able to communicate using the common language used in the industry such as Hz and dB. Although it is essential to gradually harden the task difficulty for successful technical ear training, the objective measure of the difficulty is still not known. Therefore, the tasks are decided by the teacher's own ears and experiences, leading to inefficiency when students want to train themselves in the teacher's absence. As the first step towards understanding this tacit ability of knowing the task difficulty, the authors investigated the correlation between the students' subjective ratings of the task difficulty and the physical measures calculated from the sound materials used in the training. A linear regression model (R-squared=0.629) which predicts the subjective task difficulty from residual of the linear fit through the spectra of the sound material was created. This model may provide a firm step towards the goal of developing objective difficulty measure in technical ear training.