Ear Fusion Guitar Lessons - How To Play By Ear

Learning music by ear

            It’s vital that when you learn songs by ear, either from the radio or from a recording, that you make sure your guitar is tuned to concert or standard pitch so it will match that song properly. The most important thing about learning music by ear is to realize that you can do it. For many people that want to learn…it seems almost impossible…but really, it’s quite easy. One of the best things you can do is train your ear to recognize and match tones by humming out loud the notes you play on your guitar when you’re just practicing. It’s just like when you hear a melody or a really cool musical sound that sticks in you head. All day you may be singing or humming that melody perhaps. If you can sing or hum any of your favorite songs…you can match tones…that’s how easy it is. Also, practice humming single notes at first and finding them on the guitar. Once you get descent, try humming out a short melody with only a couple of notes, like a jingle to a commercial or something simple and catchy like that. Work the few notes of the melody on the guitar. Remember to relax and hum the melody several times…and relax as you find the note on the guitar...move up and down a string one fret at a time if you have to until you find the note you are humming.

            When we refer to the root tones of a song, we mean the lowest, bass notes, typically played by a bass guitar or keyboards or even just the low strings of the guitar, just not quite as low pitched sounding. These bass notes will usually give you an idea for what chords to play in the song. In fact the bass notes is usually the root note of the chord being played. All you have to figure out is whether the chord will be major or minor…which of course depends on which mode that particular note represents in the key that the song is in.

            Usually it’s not too difficult to derive the key of a song. You must be careful though, some musicians may like to change keys in the middle of a song, other than that, once you learn the key, most songs will stay in one key throughout. Typically, most songs in general are in the key of C major / A minor. A lot of songs are also in the key of G major / E minor. A good idea is to listen for the one, single main bass note that a song is based around. Some songs may be a lot more complex. The main bass root note is usually the first note played in a song and is usually the first note of the key the song is in. Once you think you’ve identified the main root note, match it up on your guitar, typically on the low E string…because that’s the lowest bass string. If you’ve practiced matching tones, this shouldn’t take to long to get the hang of. The easiest way to get used to this is to hum the note before you match it, so that you feel the vibrations of that note internally while singing it. Once you found the note that seems like it could be the main note…try playing the major scale pattern starting from that note…you could just try playing all the way up one string or you could play the Ionian mode scale pattern. Play one note at a time and try to determine how the note sounds in comparison to the song you are trying to learn. You may notice that all the notes you are playing from the main root notes key sound kind of good or “melodic” in the song. If some or all of the notes sound melodic or harmonious…you are on the right track. Of course some keys have some if not most of the same notes that some other keys do, like the only difference between C major and G major is that the F is changed to F#, because of the way the whole step and half step scale intervals overlap each other. So because of these similarities, it could be easy to mistake the key of C for the key of G or A for D for that matter. This is why it’s good to become proficient at identifying each note in the suspected key as a melodic note that fits within the songs actual key. Keep in mind that if a note does not sound melodic, then a good note is no more than one fret away in either direction since the major scale doesn’t ever skip more than one fret.

            Remember also that the 1^st, 4^th and 5^th notes of a key represent major chords. A lot of songs are based around what’s called a 1-4-5 or I-IV-V chord progression. Meaning they play only the major chords. Some other songs may use a 2-3-6 or II-III-VI progression. Now of course these are not the only chord progressions, they’re just commonly used for their simplicity. It is possible to progress chords any way you want. Typically, you will want to play only chords that contain notes from just one key. Occasionally, some musicians have “passing notes” in their music. A passing note is a note used when changing from one key note to the next. This is also a reference to “chromatic scales” which is when all twelve notes are used at the right time as passing notes, off key notes can have a good sound. A good way to come up with and create harmonious chord progressions is to take a chord like say A major7 and then move each note in the chord up one note in the key. Keep moving up and down the fret board one note at a time with any kind of chord and you will find that the chord progressions can be very melodic and harmonious because all the notes from all the chords are in the same key. If you are trying to learn a song and none of this seems to be working for you…you may want to work on some different songs for a while, since some songs are easier to learn than others. Start with simple melodies and chord progressions…ones that you can easily hear and match notes to. Once you get the hang of it you can work on those tougher songs you couldn’t get at first.

            Once you’ve determined the key of a song, focus on the progression of the bass line and the chords…mainly the bass line. Hum each note of the progression to yourself, if you can, stop the tape or CD you may be learning from and hum out the bass note changes of the song. Some base lines have more intricate passages, but most will play mainly the root notes of the chords in the song. When we match these root notes on the guitar and we know what key we are in, we can play the corresponding chords. Let’s say that we determined the song wad in the key of G major…and the bass line went from G to C to D. Chances are the chords would also be G to C to D…and since G, C and D are the 1^st, 4^th and 5^th note of the key of G major, then we know that G, C and D will all be major since the 1^st, 4^th and 5^th chords of a key are always major chords. If the bass progression in G major happens to be G-B-E-A-D…it would represent a 1-3-6-2-5 progression. So if you played the chords it would be 1-3 min-6 min-2 min-5 (min means minor of course). When learning the chords to songs, remember that it is important to listen to the root first, and then determine whether the chords will be major or minor depending on where they are in the key. After that you can then develop your ear to hear whether there’s an added 7^th note or a substituted 4^th. This simply means that the chord would have a 7^th note from either the minor or major scale as specified or perhaps a 4^th note which is going to be the same note whether it’s minor or major because a 4^th is 2 ½ steps in either minor or major keys.

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