More specifically, ear training to better hear intervals and to work on your relative pitch. There are several apps that can help with this, I recommend Tenuto if you're on ios.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.openear.www
Simple, free, open source, no ads, prett useful exercises and lots of settings to adapt them to your needs over time
You don't need an app to get started. People have learned how to do this for generations without an app.
Easiest way to get started is to sing out loud the note you're trying to find. Once you can sing the pitch go ahead and find that same note on your guitar.
Take it slow. One note at a time. Once you get going you can fill in the gaps with basic theory knowledge and process of elimination.
100% this. The effort people put into scales I've put into interval training, for decades now. Yes, I still learned scales, but scalar thinking is for when I don't have much to say but I'm supposed to say something in a performance, mostly. It's a longer approach, it took me quite awhile to ditch scale thinking, because it's easier and more expedient. After about 40 years of playing I finally think I've got it down, but every wrong note says otherwise.
Music styles have a formula and if you know that formula you'll have a better chance of guessing where the changes are. I know Music Theory can seem really boring, but if you're listening to say a 12-bar Blues song and you've figured out the key is A minor you will know where changes are and also what scales and modes will work within those keys and styles.
It can get pretty unpredictable with some styles like freestyle jazz or technical death metal, but you can at least learn the basic classical and pop musical styles.
Otherwise you will be stuck having to painstakingly learn even easy songs note by note through trial and error.
I´ve read about those keys. As far as I have seen, you first need to guess some base chords to even identify the key, or ist that wrong? What are the best ways to find those keys? For now I am mostly interested in standard pop music anyways.
Thanks for the reply!
For the most part standard pop music tends to be in major key. I would suggest learning the modes (plenty of videos on YouTube BTW that cover popular songs and explain what modes or scales they use) as you will know what "feel" or idea the song is following. Even in popular music you will sometimes encounter a song that has an unconventional sequence, but it tends to be rare.
You don't necessarily have to be on par with very good guitar players to be able figure out standard pop music. It can depend on how complicated the writing is. Learning basic music theory will go a long way.
I've been playing music and guitar specifically for over 15 years so there is probably some things I think are pretty obvious that a beginner might not notice but I think if you start off simple, and play 12 Bar blues songs, punk songs, simple pop songs and don't forget to just have your own time with the guitar and play around without actually trying to play a specific song. Just have fun, you will learn then difference and understand chord changes via shapes you can make without even knowing the technical side. You will understand how to make certain sounds and feels but you might not be able to describe them in theory.
While not universal, commonly you'll be able to discern the key by listening for the music to keep returning to the root, or departing from the root. Take for example, Pink Floyd's Have a Cigar; E minor, I believe. You'll hear that E ring as the Root over and over throughout the song, from there you can, while learning, play in the Major or Minor Key, as far as Pentatonics go and both should sound fine, although one will likely dominate and be easier to discern from the other by the presence of the notes of each scale. If you're playing in E minor and the notes you're playing aren't quite the same as the song, the difference may be the notes contained in the E Major scale as opposed to the E minor, etc, and so on.
For me it gets trickier when the tuning is other than Standard, as I've trained my ear to hear Standard a bit better than other tunings. One thing I've found is that commonly if a song is in D, it's often recorded in Dropped D for the added fattened 6th E string.
Persistence and practice... once you learn a song with a certain Key, let it burn into your inner ear, so that you begin to recognize the key by ear rather than having to guess and be close.
Edit: As far as the Chord progression(s) go, commonly in Rock and Pop it's the One, Four, Five chord (I, IV, V), or the One, Three, Five chord (I, III, V) as a progression.
That would translate out to the first note of the scale's chord, the fourth and fifth notes of the scale's chords. and so on. Again, not universal, but it's very common and good to begin with.
To learn the keys, learn the major scale and the diatonic chords of the major scale. People are talking about learning the modes, but leave that until you are strong in the major scale and understand keys.
Yes, modes are a part of it, but walk before you run; keep trying to figure songs out by ear, definitely do interval training, learn the C major Scale, and its diatonic chords.
I learnt this stuff from the justinguitar Transcribing course, Major Scale course, the Music Theory course, and then eventually the Modes lessons.
I started out by being able to distinguish if the note being played was a G or not. It was as simple as being able to hum a G and comparing it. One you can do this on cue it becomes very easy to remember other notes until it becomes instinctive.
I found I could do it by accident. It was kind of how my natural speaking voice would make "M" sounds when I talked into my guitar tuner. To start with you could pick any note that feels natural.
Helps to know what chords go in a key. Narrows things down a great deal. You'll get stuff from outside but those usually come from familiar places. Music theory is your friend.
Ear training, focusing on the bass, also help.
Learn to sing things and then figure them out on instrument. That'll train your ear fretboard connection.
Also good old fashion trial and error.
The bass plays the root notes of the chord on the downbeat 80% of the time. If you know the root notes and the key, you can infer the chords and drastically reduce your options. Each key has 7 diatonic chords, one for each note of the scale. 80% of the chords will be one of those chords as well. Know the roots or the quality and you can back into the chord. You will get better at figuring out common borrowed chords the more you do it.
Chords are made up of numerous notes - typically the root, the 3rd, the 5th, and then maybe the 7th, and then, if you're into fruity jazz chords, the upper extensions for that little bit of spice.
The bass note tends to be the root.
Highly recommend checking out this post https://www.reddit.com/r/guitarlessons/comments/zltwna/the_importance_of_being_able_to_play_childrens/
Start working out some really simple melodies on guitar - ones you know well (and, ideally, can sing). Just lots of repetition and if you can't get something then slow it down or try something different/simpler.
I completely agree. Those simple melodies are the roadmap for what works. That's why we all know them. Honestly, a lot of them are more complicated than the average modern pop song's melodies, but because they're so grooved into our brains they seem easier. We already know them inside and out, now we're just learning to extract them on an instrument.
The EI EI 0 bit gets me every time, too.
I used to go on YouTube and learn nursery rhymes played on piano when I first was starting with ear training. That and Ramones albums. Start with easy stuff.
It’s really easy to learn the songs with power chords, then convert them to open chords if you want. For a lot of songs, if you can hum the riff you can play it with power chords.
I've been playing for around 15 years and have always learned by ear, and it's still mostly must trial and error and finding bass notes. It does get easier the longer you do it, and the more theory you have under your belt the easier it is to find the rest once you have one or two chords figured out
There's a free app called *Functional Ear Trainer* that helps you better recognise tonal relationships.
Apart from that, just playing music, and trying to follow it on your deepest string(s), sussing out the (usually repeating) patterns worked well for me. I used a bass for this when starting out, but guitar works fine too. When you get the hang of it, and have started jotting down what happens in verse, chorus etc, you can move on to testing "is it major or minor", "is there a 7th" etc.
After a while you'll start recognising common patterns, and as you build up this internal vocabulary of chord changes, and how they relate to melody, you'll be able to use them in making your own music.
Another bonus of this method is that you'll get more familiar with the neck, and strengthen the relationship between your ear and your hand.
PS: A concept you might want to look into, is the Nashville notation system, which is a system for noting down music regardless of which key it is.
So a chord sequence that goes **E A B F#m7** and one that goes **C F G Dm7** will both be noted down **I IV V ii7**, and then indicated that they're in **C** or **E**. The two beauties of this system is firstly that the relationship between chords is emphasised more than where on the neck you're playing, making it easier to understand the underlying mechanics, and secondly that it becomes much quicker to transpose to a key that fits a singer's vocal range. You'll just say "in the key of D instead of C".
EDIT: I should probably add that I IV V etc are *Roman numbers*, indicating how many whole tone steps from the root note the chord is. So **IV** means 4. And if it is capitalised; **IV**, it is major, and **iv** is minor. These would be **A** and **Am** chords respectively, if E is your root.
EDIT II: "H" changed to "B" to make sense outside Norway.
H chord?
Your question is too short (or I'm too stupid for it) to make sense.
EDIT "too stupid" is obviously the right answer here. Apologies for using a notation that makes no sense in most of the world.
Hahahah. Sorry! I am from Norway. Here, and in Germany and other places, we use H instead of B. Due to monks at some point misreading handwritten Gothic Bs for Hs. I'll edit the original post. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Justin Guitar has an amazing transcribing module that covers the process (listening, pausing, figuring it out on the fretboard and writing it down). Stringkick also had a great piece on playing by ear. It will take practice to get decent - so start with something easy and have patience, patience and some more patience; if you figure out more than one note accurately on your first attempt, you're better than 95% of us.
Also, as someone else mentioned, identifying intervals - where you figure out one note and then use that as a jumping point to find other 'adjacent' notes - will be your most useful skill here. For chords, listen closely to the bass note (it's usually the root note) and then try the root note's major or minor chords to see which one 'fits' best - if neither fit, try the 7th or suspended chords of the shape.
Another tip I'll add is to invest in a good pair of headphones and, if your amp doesn't have an aux in, a cheap mixer (I got it for $40 off Amazon) and hook it up to your headphones so that you can play the record and your guitar in real-time to see how well the notes 'align'. It really, really helped me. If you're playing acoustically, make sure you have a quiet room where you can hear the recording AND your playing.
Lastly, I'd say it's great that you're playing by ear just a year into your journey - I started doing it earnestly a couple of years ago (after about 10 years of playing) and realized how big a difference it made not just in terms of playing and enjoying the guitar again, but also in how I listen to music. It might seem daunting at first but stick with it, the payoff is huge.
An ear training trick I used early on that also helps for learning rhythms is to get any old keyboard that will autoplay a pattern, pick a key, and play along to it until you start to know what works and what doesn't. Even something simple, like set it to playing an A chord and then learn all the major A intervals along your A string, then apply that to the rest of the strings. You end up learning several things at once.
main way i first started learning by ear was with simple stuff that isnt too fast or complicated give your ears time and training to get used to it at first id start with covers and live performances. i stopped trying to pay attention to what they were doing as much as where their hands were, after a while i was able to start picking stuff up just from hearing it and have slowly been progressing with it. just keep training your ears and youll keep being able to do more with it. i know basically no theory at all and have inly been playing by ear for about a year but it has gotten me to progress a lot faster than most and develop my own style as well just keep on keepin on
Best advice I have is to search the neck and find the note that feels like “home” for that song. Then once you are confident in your choice of note, play the major scale and see does every note sounds like it works, if not then try minor to determine the key and you can use a bit of music theory to guess what the other chords in the song could be via process of elimination.
I’d also say when learning melodies or solos, break them up in hummable portions and then try and play those notes. If you can get the melody in your head it makes it much easier to translate to the guitar!
The other day someone recommended this app to me called Functional ear trainer. Seems real good so far. It's free and there are no adds or in app purchases so that's cool. I got it on iphone. Not sure if they make it for other devices.
You hit the low string frets until you find the key of the song and root of the chord you’re looking for. You have to have an ear clue but it’s not that hard. Then the next chords are often predictable. After a while you’ll learn where the songs progression is heading. Ex; is it a I-IV-V tune or a descending progression? Could be I-IIm-V. There aren’t that many places to go. Listen for major and minor.
A hack and slash method I do is play ever barre chord on the low E.
Once you hit a chord that sounds like it belongs, play out the pentatonic key of that chord.
If it sounds like you’re warm but not on the money, do the same on the A string; it’ll show up there. Again, once you’ve identified a chord, play the pentatonic of that key.
Playing the pentatonic will allow you to ultimately find the song itself. Just play individual notes until each one matches up to the rhythm chords.
Once you’ve got the chords, you already know the key so you’re already to solo.
Here’s what you do: find out the last chord in the song. That is usually the key it is in. For example, play a D chord when the song ends. If it matches, that’s the key. If that doesn’t work, try it again with an E chord, etc. then, look online for the chords in that key. You’ll have six choices (you’ll usually only use 3 or 4) to choose from. Use the same method for every chord change. There you have it.
Two words: interval training.
More specifically, ear training to better hear intervals and to work on your relative pitch. There are several apps that can help with this, I recommend Tenuto if you're on ios.
I am an Android. Any recommendations here?
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.openear.www Simple, free, open source, no ads, prett useful exercises and lots of settings to adapt them to your needs over time
I've been using the tonedear.com site for a while now - it works on any platform (I just use my Mac). It's hard, tough, slow going though.
You don't need an app to get started. People have learned how to do this for generations without an app. Easiest way to get started is to sing out loud the note you're trying to find. Once you can sing the pitch go ahead and find that same note on your guitar. Take it slow. One note at a time. Once you get going you can fill in the gaps with basic theory knowledge and process of elimination.
100% this. The effort people put into scales I've put into interval training, for decades now. Yes, I still learned scales, but scalar thinking is for when I don't have much to say but I'm supposed to say something in a performance, mostly. It's a longer approach, it took me quite awhile to ditch scale thinking, because it's easier and more expedient. After about 40 years of playing I finally think I've got it down, but every wrong note says otherwise.
High intensity interval training?
And play tons of songs by notations. With time you will get to used to repeated patterns on any song.
Music styles have a formula and if you know that formula you'll have a better chance of guessing where the changes are. I know Music Theory can seem really boring, but if you're listening to say a 12-bar Blues song and you've figured out the key is A minor you will know where changes are and also what scales and modes will work within those keys and styles. It can get pretty unpredictable with some styles like freestyle jazz or technical death metal, but you can at least learn the basic classical and pop musical styles. Otherwise you will be stuck having to painstakingly learn even easy songs note by note through trial and error.
I´ve read about those keys. As far as I have seen, you first need to guess some base chords to even identify the key, or ist that wrong? What are the best ways to find those keys? For now I am mostly interested in standard pop music anyways. Thanks for the reply!
For the most part standard pop music tends to be in major key. I would suggest learning the modes (plenty of videos on YouTube BTW that cover popular songs and explain what modes or scales they use) as you will know what "feel" or idea the song is following. Even in popular music you will sometimes encounter a song that has an unconventional sequence, but it tends to be rare. You don't necessarily have to be on par with very good guitar players to be able figure out standard pop music. It can depend on how complicated the writing is. Learning basic music theory will go a long way. I've been playing music and guitar specifically for over 15 years so there is probably some things I think are pretty obvious that a beginner might not notice but I think if you start off simple, and play 12 Bar blues songs, punk songs, simple pop songs and don't forget to just have your own time with the guitar and play around without actually trying to play a specific song. Just have fun, you will learn then difference and understand chord changes via shapes you can make without even knowing the technical side. You will understand how to make certain sounds and feels but you might not be able to describe them in theory.
It's not a bad way to go about it, if you like those kinds of musics of course. John Lennon didn't learn chord changes in university.
While not universal, commonly you'll be able to discern the key by listening for the music to keep returning to the root, or departing from the root. Take for example, Pink Floyd's Have a Cigar; E minor, I believe. You'll hear that E ring as the Root over and over throughout the song, from there you can, while learning, play in the Major or Minor Key, as far as Pentatonics go and both should sound fine, although one will likely dominate and be easier to discern from the other by the presence of the notes of each scale. If you're playing in E minor and the notes you're playing aren't quite the same as the song, the difference may be the notes contained in the E Major scale as opposed to the E minor, etc, and so on. For me it gets trickier when the tuning is other than Standard, as I've trained my ear to hear Standard a bit better than other tunings. One thing I've found is that commonly if a song is in D, it's often recorded in Dropped D for the added fattened 6th E string. Persistence and practice... once you learn a song with a certain Key, let it burn into your inner ear, so that you begin to recognize the key by ear rather than having to guess and be close. Edit: As far as the Chord progression(s) go, commonly in Rock and Pop it's the One, Four, Five chord (I, IV, V), or the One, Three, Five chord (I, III, V) as a progression. That would translate out to the first note of the scale's chord, the fourth and fifth notes of the scale's chords. and so on. Again, not universal, but it's very common and good to begin with.
To learn the keys, learn the major scale and the diatonic chords of the major scale. People are talking about learning the modes, but leave that until you are strong in the major scale and understand keys. Yes, modes are a part of it, but walk before you run; keep trying to figure songs out by ear, definitely do interval training, learn the C major Scale, and its diatonic chords. I learnt this stuff from the justinguitar Transcribing course, Major Scale course, the Music Theory course, and then eventually the Modes lessons.
I started out by being able to distinguish if the note being played was a G or not. It was as simple as being able to hum a G and comparing it. One you can do this on cue it becomes very easy to remember other notes until it becomes instinctive.
Yes. Train your hearing more than your fingers. Your fingers will eventually do as they're told. Your ears are in charge of this bus.
Simple to hum a G? How many people can do that?
I found I could do it by accident. It was kind of how my natural speaking voice would make "M" sounds when I talked into my guitar tuner. To start with you could pick any note that feels natural.
Many more than might imagine they can.
Helps to know what chords go in a key. Narrows things down a great deal. You'll get stuff from outside but those usually come from familiar places. Music theory is your friend. Ear training, focusing on the bass, also help. Learn to sing things and then figure them out on instrument. That'll train your ear fretboard connection. Also good old fashion trial and error.
Query, why focusing on the bass specifically?
The bass plays the root notes of the chord on the downbeat 80% of the time. If you know the root notes and the key, you can infer the chords and drastically reduce your options. Each key has 7 diatonic chords, one for each note of the scale. 80% of the chords will be one of those chords as well. Know the roots or the quality and you can back into the chord. You will get better at figuring out common borrowed chords the more you do it.
Thank you.
Chords are made up of numerous notes - typically the root, the 3rd, the 5th, and then maybe the 7th, and then, if you're into fruity jazz chords, the upper extensions for that little bit of spice. The bass note tends to be the root.
Thankyou for explaining the rationale.
Highly recommend checking out this post https://www.reddit.com/r/guitarlessons/comments/zltwna/the_importance_of_being_able_to_play_childrens/ Start working out some really simple melodies on guitar - ones you know well (and, ideally, can sing). Just lots of repetition and if you can't get something then slow it down or try something different/simpler.
I completely agree. Those simple melodies are the roadmap for what works. That's why we all know them. Honestly, a lot of them are more complicated than the average modern pop song's melodies, but because they're so grooved into our brains they seem easier. We already know them inside and out, now we're just learning to extract them on an instrument. The EI EI 0 bit gets me every time, too.
hum the notes you play. Hum the intervals and play them.
I found this pretty helpful https://youtu.be/e1a74c-9m6M
I used to go on YouTube and learn nursery rhymes played on piano when I first was starting with ear training. That and Ramones albums. Start with easy stuff.
I still play nursery rhymes as my keyboard warmup (I main guitar). Audiences get into it, and sometimes it turns into a sort of jazz.
It’s really easy to learn the songs with power chords, then convert them to open chords if you want. For a lot of songs, if you can hum the riff you can play it with power chords.
I've been playing for around 15 years and have always learned by ear, and it's still mostly must trial and error and finding bass notes. It does get easier the longer you do it, and the more theory you have under your belt the easier it is to find the rest once you have one or two chords figured out
There's a free app called *Functional Ear Trainer* that helps you better recognise tonal relationships. Apart from that, just playing music, and trying to follow it on your deepest string(s), sussing out the (usually repeating) patterns worked well for me. I used a bass for this when starting out, but guitar works fine too. When you get the hang of it, and have started jotting down what happens in verse, chorus etc, you can move on to testing "is it major or minor", "is there a 7th" etc. After a while you'll start recognising common patterns, and as you build up this internal vocabulary of chord changes, and how they relate to melody, you'll be able to use them in making your own music. Another bonus of this method is that you'll get more familiar with the neck, and strengthen the relationship between your ear and your hand. PS: A concept you might want to look into, is the Nashville notation system, which is a system for noting down music regardless of which key it is. So a chord sequence that goes **E A B F#m7** and one that goes **C F G Dm7** will both be noted down **I IV V ii7**, and then indicated that they're in **C** or **E**. The two beauties of this system is firstly that the relationship between chords is emphasised more than where on the neck you're playing, making it easier to understand the underlying mechanics, and secondly that it becomes much quicker to transpose to a key that fits a singer's vocal range. You'll just say "in the key of D instead of C". EDIT: I should probably add that I IV V etc are *Roman numbers*, indicating how many whole tone steps from the root note the chord is. So **IV** means 4. And if it is capitalised; **IV**, it is major, and **iv** is minor. These would be **A** and **Am** chords respectively, if E is your root. EDIT II: "H" changed to "B" to make sense outside Norway.
H chord?
H chord? Your question is too short (or I'm too stupid for it) to make sense. EDIT "too stupid" is obviously the right answer here. Apologies for using a notation that makes no sense in most of the world.
Sorry, I’m new to guitar and didn’t know there was an H chord.
Hahahah. Sorry! I am from Norway. Here, and in Germany and other places, we use H instead of B. Due to monks at some point misreading handwritten Gothic Bs for Hs. I'll edit the original post. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
No worries, glad to help!
Justin Guitar has an amazing transcribing module that covers the process (listening, pausing, figuring it out on the fretboard and writing it down). Stringkick also had a great piece on playing by ear. It will take practice to get decent - so start with something easy and have patience, patience and some more patience; if you figure out more than one note accurately on your first attempt, you're better than 95% of us. Also, as someone else mentioned, identifying intervals - where you figure out one note and then use that as a jumping point to find other 'adjacent' notes - will be your most useful skill here. For chords, listen closely to the bass note (it's usually the root note) and then try the root note's major or minor chords to see which one 'fits' best - if neither fit, try the 7th or suspended chords of the shape. Another tip I'll add is to invest in a good pair of headphones and, if your amp doesn't have an aux in, a cheap mixer (I got it for $40 off Amazon) and hook it up to your headphones so that you can play the record and your guitar in real-time to see how well the notes 'align'. It really, really helped me. If you're playing acoustically, make sure you have a quiet room where you can hear the recording AND your playing. Lastly, I'd say it's great that you're playing by ear just a year into your journey - I started doing it earnestly a couple of years ago (after about 10 years of playing) and realized how big a difference it made not just in terms of playing and enjoying the guitar again, but also in how I listen to music. It might seem daunting at first but stick with it, the payoff is huge.
An ear training trick I used early on that also helps for learning rhythms is to get any old keyboard that will autoplay a pattern, pick a key, and play along to it until you start to know what works and what doesn't. Even something simple, like set it to playing an A chord and then learn all the major A intervals along your A string, then apply that to the rest of the strings. You end up learning several things at once.
Get an ear training app. There’s a bunch out there. Try some.
Check out the justinguitar Transcribing course.
Takes time, play what you listen to and listen to what you play🧐
main way i first started learning by ear was with simple stuff that isnt too fast or complicated give your ears time and training to get used to it at first id start with covers and live performances. i stopped trying to pay attention to what they were doing as much as where their hands were, after a while i was able to start picking stuff up just from hearing it and have slowly been progressing with it. just keep training your ears and youll keep being able to do more with it. i know basically no theory at all and have inly been playing by ear for about a year but it has gotten me to progress a lot faster than most and develop my own style as well just keep on keepin on
Hum along
If you can hum the note, you can find it on any instrument.
Serious answer: learn to do deep, detailed listening.
Best advice I have is to search the neck and find the note that feels like “home” for that song. Then once you are confident in your choice of note, play the major scale and see does every note sounds like it works, if not then try minor to determine the key and you can use a bit of music theory to guess what the other chords in the song could be via process of elimination. I’d also say when learning melodies or solos, break them up in hummable portions and then try and play those notes. If you can get the melody in your head it makes it much easier to translate to the guitar!
The other day someone recommended this app to me called Functional ear trainer. Seems real good so far. It's free and there are no adds or in app purchases so that's cool. I got it on iphone. Not sure if they make it for other devices.
You hit the low string frets until you find the key of the song and root of the chord you’re looking for. You have to have an ear clue but it’s not that hard. Then the next chords are often predictable. After a while you’ll learn where the songs progression is heading. Ex; is it a I-IV-V tune or a descending progression? Could be I-IIm-V. There aren’t that many places to go. Listen for major and minor.
Trial and error.
A hack and slash method I do is play ever barre chord on the low E. Once you hit a chord that sounds like it belongs, play out the pentatonic key of that chord. If it sounds like you’re warm but not on the money, do the same on the A string; it’ll show up there. Again, once you’ve identified a chord, play the pentatonic of that key. Playing the pentatonic will allow you to ultimately find the song itself. Just play individual notes until each one matches up to the rhythm chords. Once you’ve got the chords, you already know the key so you’re already to solo.
Here’s what you do: find out the last chord in the song. That is usually the key it is in. For example, play a D chord when the song ends. If it matches, that’s the key. If that doesn’t work, try it again with an E chord, etc. then, look online for the chords in that key. You’ll have six choices (you’ll usually only use 3 or 4) to choose from. Use the same method for every chord change. There you have it.
Hum happy Birthday. It's in c. Now you know c c d c f eeee c c d etc etc
Unless I hum it in G.
Yes G if you are doing the country version. Happy birthday to y'all.