Hi Everyone,
One of the most fascinating things to me when i first decided to learn guitar was people who could pick up music by ear. I have seen folks who can literally learn a song after hearing it a few times. It seems like they listen to it one time, mentally mapping out the chords, then the second time they play along, fixing any mistakes, and the third time they have it. It is pretty amazing, and might perhaps seem like an unattainable skill to some. But i think it is something that is definitely doable to anyone who wants to put the work in.
The number one thing to remember when starting to learn by ear is patience. Unless you have previous experience training your ear to recognize pitch, like singing in the chorus, you are not going to have any sort of frame of reference. At first the simplest things are going to seem hard, but stick it out. I feel that learning by ear, at least for certain forms of music like folk, rock, and some forms of traditional music, is the way to go. You will be able to pick up songs faster, remember them easier, and eventually get to the point where you can hear something and just play it, or approximate it.
So lets look at the context of learning one of the so many easy guitar songs out there. Something like “Knocking on Heaven’s Door”, or “Louie Louie“. If you are just starting out the song should be relatively simple and only have a handful of chords. The first step is to just listen to it a lot. Around the house, in the car, when mowing the lawn. Get the overall structure and sound of the song in your head. Try to listen when the chords change, and see if you can start to hear when the same chords come around in the song.
The next step will be actually involve your instrument. Lets use the classic guitar song Louie Louie as an example. It contains the chords A, D, and Em. Make sure you are in tune with the recording, and then the first step will be to figure out what the starting chord is. This can be done by just using the 4th, 5th, or 6th string of the guitar, and playing a single note along with the first chord of the recording, trying to find the bottom note, or “root” of the chord. Try to find the bass note on your guitar that matches the pitch of the opening chord, and when you find the match it will just sound “right”. So for Louie Louie you will eventually find that the open 5th string matches the opening chord, A. From there think does the chord sound happy or sad? If its happy its A major, if it sounds sad its probably A minor. That is looking at it kind of simplistically, but its a good place to start.
After that listen to where it switches to the next chord, and repeat the process. You’ll find that the open 4th string matches the second chord, which is D major. The third chord is something a little different, an E minor. Listen to the difference, and how it sounds, and how the minor tonality is different from the A or D major.
This is a pretty simple example, but its a good first place to start. Find a few simple three chord songs that you like and give it a go at learning them. It can also help if can find chords written out, so you can check to see if the chords you chose were correct. One thing to keep in mind is that if the opening chord seems to be something weird like G# or C# than the player may be using a capo, which we will look at in another post.
After learning a few simple three chord songs, move onto to songs with more chords, and eventually songs that change keys. If a given song is to fast software like the Amazing Slow Downer and Transcribe can slow down mp3’s and keep them at pitch. Windows Media Player and Quicktime will also do the same thing, but don’t allow to loop sections like the other programs do.
So pick a song you like and get started. If you think with it I think you’ll find learning songs by ear a rewarding and fulfilling experience
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