Functional Ear Training doesn’t always have to be about listening to a note and identifying its scale degree. Sometimes, the best exercise is simply to make music while keeping your ears focused on the tonal context.
That’s where the FET Backing Tracks and Drones come in.
Both provide a musical reference for exploring scale degrees, singing melodies, improvising, and developing a stronger sense of tonality. But they serve somewhat different purposes.
Drones: A Tonal Reference Point
A drone is a sustained note or tonal background that provides a constant reference while you sing or play.
Unlike a chord progression, a drone doesn’t take you anywhere harmonically. It stays in one place, giving you plenty of time to explore the relationship between individual notes and a tonal center.
This makes drones particularly useful for Functional Ear Training.
How to Practice with a Drone
Start a drone and listen to it for a moment. Then begin singing or playing notes against it.
You might start with the tonic and gradually explore other scale degrees.
Try this simple exercise:
- Play a drone that establishes your chosen tonal center.
- Sing or play the tonic until you feel comfortable with its sound.
- Move to another scale degree, perhaps the third or fifth.
- Hold that note and listen to how it sounds against the drone.
- Return to the tonic.
- Repeat with other scale degrees.
The important thing is not merely to hit the correct pitches. Pay attention to their different tonal qualities.
How does the second sound against the tonic? What about the fourth? How does the seventh behave?
Some notes may sound relatively settled, while others create a stronger sense of tension or movement. These impressions depend on the tonal and modal context, and they are exactly what you want to explore.
Passive Listening vs. Active Listening
You don’t necessarily have to sing or play all the time.
A drone can also serve as a background reference while you listen to music, experiment with melodies, or simply become familiar with a tonal environment.
But there’s an important distinction.
Simply hearing a drone is not the same as actively learning to recognize scale degrees.
Passive exposure may help you become familiar with a tonal sound, but active engagement gives you more opportunities to test and refine your perception.
For example, try silently imagining the sound of the fifth before singing it. Then check your imagined pitch against the drone.
Or sing a note, stop, and try to hear it internally before singing it again.
These exercises combine listening, auditory imagination, and vocal production.
And you don’t need to spend half an hour doing them. Even a few minutes of focused exploration can make a useful practice session.
Backing Tracks: Making Music in a Harmonic Context
Backing tracks take a different approach.
Instead of providing a sustained reference, they give you a musical accompaniment to sing or play along with.
Depending on the track, this may include chords, rhythm, bass lines, or other instrumental parts.
The essential difference is that a backing track provides a changing musical environment rather than a single, constant tonal reference.
That makes backing tracks especially useful for practicing scale-degree recognition and melodic invention in a more musical setting.
Exercise 1: Sing the Scale Degrees
Choose a backing track and establish its tonal center.
Then sing the scale degrees one at a time.
Start with the tonic, move to the second, third, fourth, and so on.
Don’t just run up and down the scale mechanically. Spend some time on individual notes.
For example:
- Sing the third repeatedly while the accompaniment continues.
- Alternate between the third and fifth.
- Sing the seventh and then resolve to the tonic.
- Create short patterns using only three or four scale degrees.
Listen to how the same note can sound different as the underlying harmony changes.
A scale degree that sounds stable over one chord may sound more tense over another.
This is one of the interesting aspects of practicing with backing tracks: you begin to hear the relationship between a note and the overall tonal center as well as its relationship to the current chord.
These are related, but not identical, aspects of musical hearing.
Exercise 2: Free Improvisation
One of my favorite ways to use backing tracks is simply to improvise.
Choose an instrument or use your voice, start the track, and begin making music.
There are no predetermined call-and-response patterns and no notes you are required to identify.
Instead, concentrate on hearing the notes you want to play before you play them.
You can start with very simple restrictions:
- Improvise using only scale degrees 1, 2, and 3.
- Add the fifth.
- Use all seven scale degrees.
- Try creating phrases that end on different scale degrees.
- Sing a short phrase and then reproduce it on your instrument.
Limiting yourself to a small collection of notes can be surprisingly interesting. It shifts your attention away from technical possibilities and toward the sound and function of each note.
Of course, you can also forget about restrictions and just play.
Functional Ear Training should ultimately help you make music, not just become better at ear training exercises.
Exercise 3: Hear It Before You Play It
This exercise connects your inner hearing with your instrument.
Start a backing track and choose a short melodic phrase.
Before touching your instrument, try to hear the entire phrase in your imagination.
Then play it.
Did the actual notes match what you expected?
If not, try again.
You can also reverse the process: improvise a short phrase on your instrument, pause, and then try to sing it from memory.
This is not primarily a speed exercise. Take your time.
The goal is to strengthen the connection between your musical imagination, your understanding of scale degrees, and the physical act of making music.
Go directly to all Call- and response tracks
Exercise 4: Explore Different Tonal Centers and Modes
Drones and backing tracks are also useful for exploring modes.
In the FET approach, the seven diatonic notes retain their scale-degree numbers regardless of the mode.
For example, in the familiar major-scale collection:
- Ionian has scale degree 1 as its tonal center.
- Dorian has scale degree 2 as its tonal center.
- Phrygian has scale degree 3 as its tonal center.
- Lydian has scale degree 4 as its tonal center.
- Mixolydian has scale degree 5 as its tonal center.
- Aeolian has scale degree 6 as its tonal center.
- Locrian has scale degree 7 as its tonal center.
The numbering remains 1–7. What changes is the tonal center and therefore the way the notes are perceived.
Try using a drone to explore the sound of a particular mode.
For instance, establish scale degree 2 as the tonal center and improvise with the seven diatonic notes.
Then compare that experience with a musical context centered on scale degree 1.
The pitch collection can remain exactly the same, yet the musical relationships change.
With backing tracks, the harmonic accompaniment can reinforce a particular modal center, allowing you to explore these relationships in a more developed musical setting.
One important detail: not every chord progression is equally suitable for every mode. A progression that strongly establishes a major-key tonic may work against your attempt to hear a different modal center.
Exercise 5: Create Your Own Call-and-Response Exercises
You don’t necessarily need a prepared call-and-response track to practice call and response.
You can create your own exercises with a drone or backing track.
For example:
- Start the accompaniment.
- Sing or play a short phrase.
- Pause for a moment.
- Repeat the phrase from memory.
- Try singing the scale-degree numbers or movable-Do syllables.
- Change the phrase and repeat.
If you have an instrument available, you can also alternate between voice and instrument.
Play a phrase, then sing it. Or sing a phrase and reproduce it on your instrument.
You can make these exercises as easy or as challenging as you like.
When Should You Use Drones, and When Backing Tracks?
There is no strict rule, but the two formats have different strengths.
Use drones when you want to:
- Concentrate on the sound of individual scale degrees against a stable reference.
- Explore intervals relative to a tonal center.
- Practice singing and pitch matching without changing chords.
- Investigate modal sounds in a relatively uncluttered environment.
- Experiment freely without following a rhythm or chord progression.
Use backing tracks when you want to:
- Practice in a more complete musical setting.
- Improvise melodies over an accompaniment.
- Experience how scale degrees interact with changing chords.
- Develop your ability to anticipate melodic sounds.
- Connect ear training with actual music-making.
Neither format is inherently better.
A drone isolates certain aspects of tonal hearing, while a backing track introduces more of the harmonic and rhythmic complexity encountered in music.
You can use both, depending on what you want to explore.
You Don’t Have to Turn Everything into an Exercise
There is one more way to use the FET Backing Tracks and Drones that shouldn’t be overlooked.
Just make music.
Sing along with a drone. Improvise over a backing track. Try out melodic ideas. Experiment with notes that sound unusual or unexpected.
You don’t always have to name every scale degree or analyze every phrase.
Sometimes you may want a highly structured exercise. At other times, you may simply want to play for ten minutes.
Both approaches have their place.
The FET Call-and-Response Tracks provide structured listening and singing exercises. The Backing Tracks and Drones offer a more open environment in which you can apply, explore, and experiment with what you’ve learned.
The point isn’t to become an expert at completing ear training exercises. The point is to develop a more direct connection between what you hear, what you imagine, and what you sing or play.
And sometimes, all you need for that is a single sustained note.