Memorizing Chord sound?

[hovishead]

I can recognize chord voicings fairly easy, and it's a skill that's been acquired from lots of listening and lots of playing. I don't have perfect pitch although I'm able to tune my guitar close to concert pitch without a reference note. Again a skill that's been acquired from lots of tuning.

I think recognising chord types is important if you want to get to know which chords sound good together. Chord voicing recognition is important for working stuff out by ear, especially if capos are involved.

[Brent Hutto]

I can't do it. Wish I could. Work on it in fits and starts. I don't think it will come naturally, it requires a lot of practice and it needs to be practice where you are actually paying attention. You won't just develop it via osmosis from having heard lots of music. I'll keep nibbling away at it, I can identify a lot more than I could a couple years ago but have a long way to go.

[mr. beaumont]

One of the biggest boons to my playing was training my ear to hear chord "quality"--major, minor, dominant.

After playing the guitar for 20 years, I can certainly just "hear" some chords when played on a guitar, but relative pitch has been more useful to cultivate for me, since I'm not always just listening to guitar. If I can tell how something's functioning (chord quality) and how it's moving to the next chord (relative pitch) then I'm on my way.

[Allman_Fan]

I don't think I have absolute pitch but I have played this chord many, many times.

M02SSX

That's Maybe on the E string
Open on the A
2 fret on the D
Something on the G
Something on the B
X Nothing (probably) on the E.

Pre-amp/distortion was usually on 12. Everyone called it A, but it really should have been called Anoisy. I think I talk in this key. I probably make other noises in this key, too . . . I'll let you use your imagination.

So, I don't know if absolute pitch can be learned, but I believe it can be force fed.

[trion12]

Originally Posted by JonPR

Start with basics . . .

. . . there is no need for "absolute pitch" (aka perfect pitch).
. . . Relative pitch means you can hear the same song and identify the chords as I, IV and V - from their relationships with each other, rather than their absolute frequencies.
- put the time into improving your relative pitch (which we all have to some degree).

+1 - and the most basic element of all is the ability to recognize intervals i.e. the structural distance between any 2 notes. That's the building block for everything else in training your ears and it's why every first year music student starts with it.

Originally Posted by mr. beaumont

. . . relative pitch has been more useful to cultivate for me . . . If I can tell how something's functioning (chord quality) and how it's moving to the next chord (relative pitch) then I'm on my way.

Yup, and it's all about recognizing structure. That's how good players can transpose on the fly when a singer wants a song in a different key for example.
Good players don't so much think about names of chords as they do about the structural relationships of the chords in a song (as in Jon's I-IV-V example).

. . . You want that in Ab instead of C? No problem . . .

Aaron

[Memphis Jim]

Here’s an elementary chord/ear exercise that a very special person put together just for us. When I say “us” I really mean my son. I’m just the helper and coach. My kid and I have been working at guitar for years now (every morning and every night). We’ve been studding and setting goals all along and hands down this little chord lesson has been the biggest light bulb moment far him in regards to ear and chord work. We spend about 20 percent of our music time working towards this ongoing goal.

I will share the lesson plan with you but being it was specifically put together for us I should tell you the problems we were having. My kid was playing some pretty complicated chord work back when he was a very little boy (6 yrs old) but there were problems. Other than the very basic triads he really didn’t understand what he was playing. I struggled for at least 2 years trying to find a way to build understanding of where and how to play and hear the chords. I was becoming frustrated and posted on another forum my problem. That’s when someone emailed me this special exercise tailored specially to help with our weakness.

To begin with we were told to memorize the notes in ALL the major triads. We had already launched into a huge study of the fret board a few years prior so please understand that came first for us! We used homemade flash cards and referenced the circle of 5ths until he could call the notes within the triads cold. Next, for some reason that I can’t seem to remember, we were instructed to work counterclockwise on the circle starting with C. He learned to play the C chord in 4 places on the neck. Then came the F in 4 places and so on. This process continued all the way around the circle until he had it rock solid. ALL major triads in at least 4 positions each on the neck! At any point I could stop him and ask, what chord? What notes? If he couldn’t answer we were busting the foundation by moving too quickly. We had a lot of little tricks like that but you get the idea.

The 2nd phase of this lesson was to run the circle as before except this time with the minors. Yes, learn the notes within and play each in 4 places on the neck just like the majors. It’s not quick. Trust me, it’s not quick but it does work. He knows exactly what he’s playing now days as long as it’s Major or minor. He knows it by sight and he knows it by ear from this study. Now we are at the point of shifting all of these into 7ths, Maj 7ths and –7ths and so on. I suppose there’s no end to it.

We’re actually thinking of putting a video together of how this works now that we finally have a decent video/audio set up.

I’m not an instructor and I don’t have a music background or education so please don’t think I’m trying to come across as someone who does. This is just a method that we’ve found that seems to be producing good results for us at this level. Maybe some of the more knowledgeable players could offer their opinions on this method we are using. I’d welcome to any suggestions in regards to this.

[Hotspur]

With experience you will start to notice the difference between "c-shape" chords where the third is the second-lowest note (which includes first-position G major, and the xx3211 F-major chord), and "e-shape" chords (which include first position A and D chords) where the note pattern is R5R3. Other subtleties will also become clearer with practice.

In practice, however, this is a much less important skill than being able to identify (at least relatively) the root of the chord you're listening to and whether it's major or minor. A song with a c-major chord is going to sound basically right if you play it x32010 or x35553. Heck, for casual listeners, it'll often sound the same if you play x32033, which is actually a Cadd9.

A lot of the common chord extensions aren't strictly necessary to get the song to sound basically right. Yes, G7 sounds different from G major, but since G7 contains all the notes of G Major (merely adding the minor 7th) the song will often sound more-or-less right if you omit the 7th. (This, however, is not always the case - particularly in songs that use the 7th as part of a melody the guitar is playing, eg the descending octave-major 7th-minor-7th chords in the Beatles' "Something").

If you want to work on your ear training (which almost everybody who does swears was one of the best things they did), this book comes really highly recommended:

http://www.amazon.com/Training-Conte.../dp/0793581931

Be aware that it's going to be a lot of work, and you'll spend time singing to internalize the process, even though the book is written for instrument players rather than singers. I know people who swear by that book/method.

[enalnitram]

Originally Posted by geek101

It seems to be a daunting task to memorize all the chords, do people try to do this?.

When I started in music school I didn't yet know that a C6 was typically a major chord with an 'a' in it, and that a C13 was also a C chord with an 'a' in it, but one was major and the other was dominant. As I was learning about all this stuff I worked at ear training and I was very bad at it. I'm not exactly sure how to explain it in full, but I was trying to listen for something literal about the pitches. and after a few years, things began to eventually click, and I could distinctly hear the "quality" about each kind of chord. I have never been able to say "you just played x, y, and z pitches from top to bottom," with any degree of consistent accuracy. but I can recognize kinds of chords, and when I'm playing in a key, sometimes my hands even mysteriously go straight to the right notes. it gets me by. and knowing about theory, I'm able to construct chords by looking at symbols. I have never and will never memorize them all, but I know how to make them and how they all kind of sound. does this make any sense?

[mr. beaumont]

Chord building knowledge--knowing what notes are in them, will always be more useful than memorizing a bunch of shapes.

[geek101]

Originally Posted by Memphis Jim

.....

I’m not an instructor and I don’t have a music background or education so please don’t think I’m trying to come across as someone who does. This is just a method that we’ve found that seems to be producing good results for us at this level. Maybe some of the more knowledgeable players could offer their opinions on this method we are using. I’d welcome to any suggestions in regards to this.

Thanks for sharing this with us. I checked your youtube channel. I should say you have one talented kid and he is lucky to have your support. When I was kid all my parents could afford was an education with no extra circular activities. I am still thankful for that, at-least now I am able pursue my dream of playing the guitar though I am quite a lot older .

cheers!

[Memphis Jim]

Thank you sir for watching that channel and the complement too. You are right, he is a luck boy but I’m just as lucky as he is. The guitar keeps us two straight. We spend a lot of time together with guitar and because of that we learn a lot about one another. This instrument has a way of bringing out every possible emotion that we have. From anger and frustration to pride and joy and everything in between. It’s all dealt with when it comes to learning guitar.

I just got back from driving my kid home from a real gig tonight! He was invited to play acoustic at a very nice retirement home. The old folks just loved it. Adam had 18 songs worked up. Seven of them were his very own creations. The others were tunes like “Afternoon In Paris, “Wayfaring Stranger” and “Sweet Georgia Brown”

I don’t want to hijack this fellow’s thread in anyway so I will stop.

Now back to the subject of chords. With our method I have indeed witnessed the ability to memorize chord properties including sound and shape. A good set of ears just doesn’t have a choice when up against repetition.

Thanks again.

[bousti999]

When I go to a guitar lesson, sometimes I just pick a song off my ipod to learn that my teacher has never heard before.

He'll listen once and be like "oh, the chords are G A Bm A E/G# E..."

[K-vegas]

There are many ways to learn 'hearing' chords on guitar. Some formal training is the best way IMO.

[enalnitram]

One thing that definitely is helpful to memorize, are the intervallic relationships of the notes in a position surround a 6th string root and a 5th string root. know them by being able to hear them, too.

something like this for a 6th root:



__________________________________________

..b7...|..b3...|..b6/#5.|..1/8..|..4/11.|..b7..

__________________________________________

...7...|...3...|....6...|...9...|.b5/#4.|...7..

__________________________________________

...1...|...4...|...b7...|.#9/b3 |...5...|.1/8

__________________________________________

.......|..#4...|....7...|...3...| #5/b6 |..b9

__________________________________________

...2...|...5...|....1...|...4...|..6/13.|...9

[Hotspur]

Originally Posted by K-vegas

If you only learn the 1, 4 & 5 (basic song structure)and the 3 and 6 for accent you can play a ton of songs. This chart shows the relationship of these basic chords in all keys.

I have to say, I sort of hate that chart. Not because it's wrong - it's clearly not - but it's so limiting.

Yes, sure, there are a gazillion songs with the I-V-mVI-IV structure. But one of the big aha moments for me on songwriting was when was reading some analysis of song structure online and it referred to a chord as the "IV of IV."

I was like, huh? And then I realized that was just a flat 7th - and that it worked. Really well, in fact. It shows up in a tremendous number of the songs I write, now. You could call it Mixolydian, I guess, except that I also use the IV and the V.

And then I was watching a video on songwriting and talked about using the notes in the chord as the root for other chords, eg, you're playing an E major, two logical places to go with that are B and G#. You look at that chord chart and you see, okay, G# should be minor ... but the guy was playing it major ... and it worked!

All of a sudden I just felt - holy cow, there's a lot more freedom here than I thought.

So yes, that chart is a starting point, sure, but don't be a slave to it. I mean, really, don't be a slave to it. Heck, I feel like leaving the b7Major out is almost criminal because it's so much more useful than the rather unpleasant-sounding diminished chords.

Now I won't be surprised if someone who knows a ton more theory than me will hop in and explain why I'm an idiot (and I might be one, so its okay), but if the song works, it works, no?