Ear Fusion Guitar Lessons - How To Play By Ear

Matching a tone by ear

          Have you ever hummed the melody or bass line in a one of your favorite songs? Chances are you have…..and when you did, you were matching tones. By humming the same basic notes that are in a song, you are training your ear to recognize them. How would you like to simply hear your favorite song come on the radio and then be able to just start playing it by ear?

            Try this little exercise and see if you can get a better idea of how to really match tones. Just play notes on one string. You may want to start with one of the middle strings just to stay within your singing or humming range. Play any fret on that one string, and listen to the note it produces when plucked in a relaxed way, just like you listen to a song, hum that note to yourself OUTLOUD! It is important that you hum another note just a fret or two in either direction, notice how the tone gets higher or lower sounding as you move your finger up and down each fret…at the same time matching each tone with your voice by humming it.

            This is probably close to the single most important exercise for training your ear. It’s this process of vocal internalization that you will be able to match and play the most ambiguous guitar and music parts. When you are listening to your favorite music, try, in your head, to pick apart and dissect all the different instruments and parts. Try to hum out or vocally or verbally simulate each different part or sound. Weather it’s being played by a regular guitar, a bass guitar, a drum, synthesizer, voice or any other instrument, try your best to hear it with the “ears of a musician”. Create mental pictures in your head of what your hands would look like playing certain parts.             

Once you get good at humming the notes you are playing…try doing it the other way around. Think of the guitar strings like you think of your own voice, where by simply moving your finger up and down the fret board you can raise and lower the pitch…to where you want it. Go ahead and hum a random note, perhaps a note from a song. Hum the tone steadily out loud almost memorizing it. Do your best to keep it steady. Then play frets on the string until you play the same note that you are humming. Try to notice if the note you are playing is higher or lower than the note you are humming. Once you get real fluent at this then you are ready to start tuning your guitar up by ear. Don’t expect to completely get this the first time. It might take a bit of practice and you should expect it to. Remember, this level of comfort and pitch recognition probably won’t come to you immediately. Maybe you already have a descent ear and you get it immediately, but it’s very likely that it will take you many tries and many hours of practice to master or even get a hold on. If it takes you a total of 15 hrs of actual practice time, you can either do that 15 hrs in a week or two…or you could barely practice a few minutes every 2-5 days and easily get discouraged, forget what you learned in your previous session and maybe even never learn it at all. The fact is…most people are going to give up before they’ve really even started. Musicianship is a life skill and takes practice, motivation, patience and determination like any worthwhile art.   

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