Best Approach To Playing By Ear

[dragonfly66]

I'm too old to have aspirations of being a star, I just want to be able to jam with people. I wanted to know if there is a method for learning to play by ear or if you just figure it out over time with experience. I've been playing since the 80s but mostly my own music and just in the last 3 years have been learning songs of other artists. So I'm not a total novice, but I'm used to playing by myself.

[mmmaak]

I'm off to work, so here's a hurriedly-typed answer!

I usually get my students to do two things before they attempt to learn "real" songs by ear:
1) I play a note and they attempt to find it on their fretboard (with as little guesswork as possible)
2) I ask them to play single line melodies from familiar songs (even nursery rhymes) without any tab/notation/audio, i.e. straight from memory.

[zpcm04]

www.justinguitar.com has free online lessons, some of which are focused on training your ears to distinguish different notes. These lessons are part of his Beginners Course. He calls it JUSTIN Training (Just Use Sound to Improve Now). There is a lesson under each phase of the Beginners Course (see link below).

http://www.justinguitar.com/en/BC-000-BeginnersCourse.php


He also has a series of Aural Training lessons to help you learn and recognize intervals. The link to those lessons are at:

http://www.justinguitar.com/en/AU-000-AuralTraining.php

[Hendra]

www.justinguitar.com has free online lessons, some of which are focused on training your ears to distinguish different notes. These lessons are part of his Beginners Course. He calls it JUSTIN Training (Just Use Sound to Improve Now). There is a lesson under each phase of the Beginners Course (see link below).

http://www.justinguitar.com/en/BC-000-BeginnersCourse.php


He also has a series of Aural Training lessons to help you learn and recognize intervals. The link to those lessons are at:

http://www.justinguitar.com/en/AU-000-AuralTraining.php

I wish I knew this when I was just started playing by ear. At least i can save some tenths of cassette tape damaged just because I rewind them too many time just to learn the songs. The internet today is just amazing. Everything is made easier.

[dragonfly66]

Thanks for the responses. I saw in the Acoustic Guitar magazine they highlight the Perfect Pitch CDs. Has anyone tried this or heard of it working?

[Bern]

I've been playing since the 80s but mostly my own music

Hmm...I'm curious, didn't writing your own music teach you ear training in regards of voice leading, which in turn would help you in recognizing anticipated musical lines ? Personally, it did help me a lot.

[ljguitar]

I'm too old to have aspirations of being a star, I just want to be able to jam with people. I wanted to know if there is a method for learning to play by ear or if you just figure it out over time with experience. I've been playing since the 80s but mostly my own music and just in the last 3 years have been learning songs of other artists. So I'm not a total novice, but I'm used to playing by myself.
Hi df...
This isn't everything, but it will give you a good ToDo list...

Learn to read hands sitting across from others
Learn to Recognize key the song is being played in by ear as well as by sight
Learn to Recognize chords
Learn major, minor and pentatonic scales in the five ''guitar friendly keys'' C A G E & D
Learn to recognize familiar chord progressions
Experiment by playing along with recordings
Carry capos with you to jams

[dragonfly66]

Hmm...I'm curious, didn't writing your own music teach you ear training in regards of voice leading, which in turn would help you in recognizing anticipated musical lines ? Personally, it did help me a lot.

I don't even know what "voice leading" means. The answer to your question is obviously not because I'm trying to learn to play by ear now so anything I've done in the past hasn't helped. I also wasn't trying to play by ear then either.

I would play chords that sounded good to me, chords from a chord book, and then write lyrics to it. Sometimes I would sing something and then go dig in my chord book to figure out what I was singing. I had no concept of song structure (outside of verse and chorus) or chord progressions only what sounded right to me.

It was in my late thirties that I took my first theory course and that opened up a whole new world and depressed me all at the same time because I kept thinking how if I'd known theory I would have been more creative with my writing and been a better musician. Same thing happened when I learned about bar chords.

So while I'm learning chord progressions, scales and more theory, I'm asking here about an approach to learning to play by ear. What things are good to do to cultivate my ear. Big THANKS to those who've given me things to try.

[scbluegrass]

dragonfly66, you might check out Rob Bourrassa on youtube. He has done a primer that speaks to this very thing. Here is a link to one of his ear training videos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRU3GEwJTao . Here is the introduction to his primer and he will explain how to proceed thru the videos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-jxu-rEYwo . You might check him out. I am sure you may not need a lot of the info in the primer but maybe the ear training part will help and the price is right :)

[fulano]

I think different folks define "playing by ear" differently. I have people ask me all the time how I learned to "play by ear" because I can guess my way through a song I haven't tried before. I don't consider that playing by ear, I consider that being familiar enough with the chords within each key that I can select a key and then pick my way through a song if I am familiar with the melody of said song. That's not playing by ear but it is different than playing from tabs or chord sheets or even music notation.

Some people call that playing by ear and if that's what you're talking about as opposed to reading tabs for example, then it can certainly be learned and I think LJguitar's post sums up what could get you to that point quite well and then some.

[dragonfly66]

I think different folks define "playing by ear" differently. I have people ask me all the time how I learned to "play by ear" because I can guess my way through a song I haven't tried before. I don't consider that playing by ear, I consider that being familiar enough with the chords within each key that I can select a key and then pick my way through a song if I am familiar with the melody of said song. That's not playing by ear but it is different than playing from tabs or chord sheets or even music notation.

Some people call that playing by ear and if that's what you're talking about as opposed to reading tabs for example, then it can certainly be learned and I think LJguitar's post sums up what could get you to that point quite well and then some.

That is exactly what I mean. Hearing a song (not necessarily familiar with) and then "guessing" my way through hopefully getting skilled enough for the guessing to not take so long. The guessing is figuring out the key, remembering the chords in that key, and then figuring out the progression that is being used. Larry J hit it on the head with his list. I've been doing the exercises from the other recommendations and viewing the recommended videos. Thanks so much!!

I've been sitting here thinking of what else playing by ear could mean. What is your definition of playing by ear? I'm thinking even the geniuses who don't know musical theory, can't read music, haven't taken any lessons, but can play anything, still use memory to figure out a song. They hear something and think, I put my hands here to make that sound. They are guessing until they aren't guessing anymore--they know. Since I'm not a musical genius I have to learn chords, scales, watch peoples hands, figure out chord progression and remember everything I've learned so that I won't have to guess, I will just know.

[TBman]

I had some friends over last weekend for a bbq and I finally got the chance to play with someone. We just established what chord changes we were going to do and then took turns playing leads over them. Sometimes your on it sometimes not. There was one sequence we used that my friend suggested, something I don't usually do. I'm not a scale maniac so I just started with the root of the first chord and basically played every other fret on the bass strings and shifted accordingly on the trebles. I do know a movable scale pattern so that helped.

[murrare]

It will come over time. The way I learned was pushing play on the stereo, then pause, then rewind, then play, then pause, then rewind, then play, etc. I did this until things came naturally to me and now when I hear a song I can pick it up in seconds.

[rick-slo]

Some of the details of what others have mentioned for an organized way of doing it but mainly just do a lot of it. Train your ears. The very first tune I figured out by ear was Classical Gas when it first came out and that was off a LP record. Then a number of tunes by Rick Ruskin again off an LP.

[Fingerstylist]

Some of the details of what others have mentioned for an organized way of doing it but mainly just do a lot of it. Train your ears. The very first tune I figured out by ear was Classical Gas when it first came out and that was off a LP record. Then a number of tunes by Rick Ruskin again off an LP.

Good grief man, you figured classical gas out by ear? I want this ability so badly.

[rick-slo]

Good grief man, you figured classical gas out by ear? I want this ability so badly.
I was about 18 when I did that one. It just takes time and critical listening.

[mmmaak]

Good grief man, you figured classical gas out by ear? I want this ability so badly.
It's not the "figuring out" that's hard. It's the "LP" part!! :eek::eek::eek:

Not something I would like to try. Thank goodness for slow-downable MP3s! :lol:

My hat's off to you, Rick.

[Doug Young]

It's not the "figuring out" that's hard. It's the "LP" part!! :eek::eek::eek:

Not something I would like to try. Thank goodness for slow-downable MP3s! :lol:

My hat's off to you, Rick.

Yeah, the LP way was expensive, really wore out those needles, and the records :-) Fingerstylist, just get Transcribe (or Amazing Slow Downer) and dive it, it's just a matter of doing it a lot.

[mmmaak]

Yeah, the LP way was expensive, really wore out those needles, and the records :-) Fingerstylist, just get Transcribe (or Amazing Slow Downer) and dive it, it's just a matter of doing it a lot.
+1 on Transcribe! (yeah, it really is spelt with the exclamation mark). Thanks to Doug who recommended it to me over the ASD in a previous thread. An excellent piece of software at a very reasonable price :up:

[Fingerstylist]

I'll look into transcribe! thanks guys