How To Learn By Ear
I get messages…
Sometimes the emails I answer make for great teaching tools. Here’s one:
Michael,
Thanks for writing, and thanks for studying with me!
Yes, you can learn to play by ear. It takes time, but honestly, most guitarists you’ve ever heard (most famous guitarists), basically play by ear.
I spent most of my life as a music journalist, and I’ve written for most of the major guitar magazines. I’ve also been editor in chief of some major guitar and music industry websites, such as Guitar.com and Musician.com (they were actual magazine style sites when I was involved, they aren’t anymore).
To see a small sampling of my hundreds of celebrity guitarist interviews, check out my site: www.GuitarLifeMag.com
Anyway, most of the celebs I’ve interviewed play by ear. Most do not read music. I mean, like 98 percent do not read music.
There are some basics that lead to being able to play by ear, among them learning and practicing at least the basic Pentatonic scale patterns will be very helpful.
Also try these steps:
1) Listen for the bass guitar or bass notes, and try to follow them. Don’t try to run before you can walk — start by trying to learn really easy songs, perhaps some old 50s or 60s stuff, or basic blues-based music. Don’t attempt to start with someone like Joe Satriani, or Metallica — you’ll never get anywhere.
2) Learn to recognize when they’re playing riffs as opposed to chords. Most guitar riff based songs are played in the main Pentatonic pattern I teach in my LLG course. Search within that pattern for riffs. Some examples: Heartbreaker by Led Zep, One Way Out by the Allman Brothers, Funk 49 by Joe Walsh/James Gang.
3) It will be easier if you do some playing/listening homework in which you play notes going up a scale and down a scale, teaching your ear to hear the difference between notes that are, well, going up, as opposed to going down.
4) Learn to hear the most basic movements, whole steps (two frets) and half steps (one fret), by playing two notes over and over again until you can “hear” whether it’s a whole step or half step. Later, try training your ear to hear multiple steps (3 or more frets).
These are some basics…
Hope they help!
Adam
