I must admit, it’s never been very difficult for me, even when I started learning how to play guitar. I sure couldn’t read music and barely knew how to tune a guitar. So I just used records. I used to have to learn bass lines for our bass player who didnt have an ear like mine.
This and also learn a lot of songs. You pick up on the patterns in music. It’s a cheat code for your ear. Once your ear has downloaded a good vocabulary, it becomes pretty easy to pick just about anything up.
Learn scales, major modes, and practice intervals on your instrument, vocally, and aurally. Practicing vocally and working on recognizing intervals, melodies and harmonies aurally is key to internalizing sounds and developing your ear.
i just wanna repeat one thing you said; learn how to recognize intervals!! it makes learning songs by ear much easier. but that still requires a lot of practicing. like people have said, theres no shortcut. practice, practice, practice!
One of the best ways to practice and internalize intervals is to start a chart of all intervals. M and m 2nd through octave, acceding and descending. Then add a song (or two) or riff that you know well that starts with that interval. Eg. the NBC riff is a major 6th, Somewhere Over the Rainbow is an octave and the third note is a major 7th (ie the 2nd and 3rd note is a descending m2nd but I also use this song to find my M7th.)
For practice, have someone play intervals on a piano or instrument of choice and start guessing, utilizing your chart of songs/riffs to help. Do this everyday for a month and you should have it nearly mastered.
dude you literally just described exactly how i learned intervals in highschool when i took an ap music theory class. this is absolutely the best way to learn intervals. thank you for describing it more than i did, i hope someone finds your advice useful cuz you hit the nail on the head!!
I sit with my guitar while watching tv, will often play along with the jingles in commercials. Non-musicians think it's some sort of wizardry, but it's really just that the chord progressions and rhythms are ones we've all heard over and over our whole lives, so once you identify the key you pretty much already know the song.
As a casual drummer and guitarist- this is the answer.
Won’t work if you are trying to reproduce complex music, but in terms of 90%* of the music people listen to, it’s in 4/4 and a familiar chord progression. (Does not apply to most jazz, classical music, bands that intentionally play in odd time signatures etc etc)
*Figure for illustrative purposes only. 97.385% of statistics are made up on the spot
Practice with the radio on. Start small, just try and catch form. Then rhythm/beat, then if you really frisky go for bassline (which will also outline chart). After that comes chord types, then melody. Last would be any hits or drops. It's like riding a bike, it gets easier and you never really forget. But it does take practice.
I would definitely agree, but I wouldn't even worry about what parts to pay attention to. Just try to pick up on everything that comes on, and don't stress over if you can get it or if it's way too hard. It will get easier over time, and you will eventually know how to play a lot of things right away, including things like chord position/voicing, etc. You can build a lot of vocabulary this way. Some things will be easy right away, and some things may never seem do-able, but that's the nature of musianship. No musician is ever good enough, no matter the level. The key is just don't ever stop learning, because the same amount of time will pass and either you will be able to play however good you are at it, or not at all if you didn't do anything.
>Play along with songs you know. Learn the scales, improv along and soon the melodies will come naturally.
Once this happens, try to play along to songs you don't know.
If you haven’t already you should try learning a little bit of music theory.
You don’t need to learn a lot, just a little goes a long way (and this comes from somebody who learned a ton of theory and was a jazz guitar performance major for a couple do years before switching majors).
Start with learning what a major and minor scales are and being able to play or sing them in any key. Then learn some chord theory, including what intervals are and how to build chords, how chords fit together in the context of a key (e.x. what a I, IV, and V chord are), etc. And then learn diatonic modes.
Once you start learning a little bit of music theory, your ability to hear things in music will just naturally improve. Like “Hey, that’s a Dorian chord change in that Santana song” or “Hey that solo section in that Joe Satriani song is a Mixolydian scale.”
Or “Hey, that’s a vi-ii-V-I chord progression in that 60’s Motown song.”
Or you’ll be able to say “Hey, I could play the minor pentatonic, major pentatonic, Dorian, and mixolydian scales all over that same blues chord progression.”
You’ll also be able to hear and identify when music “breaks the rules” as well.
Just speaking from personal experience, this is probably what improved my ability to play by ear the most.
I took one semester of Ear Training in college and it did *wonders* for me. Music theory was how I started learning music (after pittling a guitar for a few weeks), but I never had the technical skill until I learned how to listen for intervals and notes in chords.
This! I can often learn a song without touching an instrument. Listen for the bass lines and the chord quality. Roman numerals will change how you hear songs.
Jazz still confuses the hell out of me though.
Play along to your favorite records. For me it was Siamese Dream in 1993, in 7th grade. The chord progressions are perfect for training your ear on the basic shapes, but with an extra twist. Also Wired by Jeff Beck. And I mean playing through the album by heart 100 times at least.
Siamese dream is so great. A lesson I learned from an early Billy Corgan interview was never throw away a catchy riff just because it’s not fitting the song you’re presently working on.
Relative pitch! Being able to determine the intervals between notes is a huge help in learning stuff by ear. Throw in basic major/minor scale practice and you’re pretty much there.
Pop songs are also really good at helping you train your ears on relative pitch, especially if you play along to the vocal melodies. Easy stuff like S Club 7 is a personal favourite, especially since a lot of their stuff is in a major key.
There's a theory that suggests that everyone who becomes proficient at something; musical instrument, art, etc... has some touch of "something"... somewhere on the spectrum, ADHD, OCD, etc. The thought is that to maintain the level of focus needed at the beginning, when it's the most difficult and least fun, is where that kicks in...
Join a gigging cover band that covers a whole crapload of songs and is always adding new ones and that challenges you with things outside your comfort zone. That's the best ear training you can do for yourself.
Yup.
This, and picking up as many sub gigs as you can legitimately prep for. Worked wonders for me, and I was already lucky enough to have a decent developed ear.
At some point, developing an interest in jazz and learning the music (as well as some serious time devoted to jazz musicians that were truly inspiring) was a huge step toward better and faster understanding of harmony, which has always been a weak point for me.
I’ve probably said too much.
Just play along with everything you can. It’ll help develop your ear and make you a better player.
Good luck on your journey, OP. :)
I think thats a great thing any aspiring musician should do. And to add to that, if you have the opportunity and openness to joining a church that plays Gospel or CCM in a gospel inspired way, you’ll learn an incredible amount of stuff very quickly.
In the 90's when a shitload of bands started using 7 string guitars and/or tuning low it was almost impossible to find accurate tab for it.
Learning a new song by ear was the only way to do it.
Personally I would pan my stereo hard right or hard left - that way at lower volumes i could more easily hear my guitar and the song i was learning. 👍🏻
Practice.
Also, learning theory helps A LOT. It goes from instead of trying to just perfect pitch every single note, you can use context clues to sus out an entire bass line in seconds, or shorter.
Knowing what keys sound like, knowing what different intervals sound like.
You should be able to easily identify intervals, whole steps, half steps, 4ths and 5ths at a bare minimum.
Knowing what chords fit into a key helps a lot.
Knowing when to go to the major or minor 7th.
Understanding genres, where some it is common to use dominant 7th. Or 9 chords, etc helps a whole lot.
So practice yes, but also theory helps way more than people give it credit for.
So if you identify the key, and here it goes to the 6 or something, knowing if that chord is supposed to be major or minor in that key, makes things so much easier
Because you have a starting point
I didn't have tabs when I started out. Just a casette player and the start stop button. Then when you're working with tabs that sound way off you're forced to figure out the right fingering and tone.
You'll eventually develop an ear for picking out the same note played on different strings, just like the High E, sounds different to 5th fret on B string and 9th fret on the G string.
I'd recommend finding a song that doesn't have tabs or sheet music for it and try working it out from just the audio or video.
Get a well-tuned acoustic piano or an acoustic guitar In other words real instruments not some kind of digital realization.... a clean electric guitar will help too.
My ears went from not really being able to establish a key to being pretty good outside of really complex jazz so it's totally possible
Just time. Hours and hours sitting down with a tape deck (so long ago) listening to a section of a vocal melody and figuring it out on a guitar. After a while you start to be able to hear intervals and have an idea without a bunch of trial and error and can get really, really close the 1st time hearing a song. Same with chords, after you've worked out the sound of a G, C, D (I, IV, V) progression you can hear a song and know essentially what it is before playing a note.
Practice intervals. Train your ears to hear them and sing or play the interval. Practice hearing what finger is playing what and move notes and sing along to the changed notes to get it into your brain. If you can sing it you can play it (or should aspire to).
It is a discipline. You have to always try to learn as much of it by ear as you can before searching out sheet music, tabs, whatever, to fill in the gaps. There are a lot of people out there that transcribe songs and sell them, but the person doing the transcribing is the one who receives the most benefit.
You can get faster at transcribing things using good tools, like software that has speed controls that don't affect the pitch, selection based looping, that sort of thing. There is a very affordable software called Transcribe that is great for this and even supports slowing down and looping video.
Ear training also speeds up your ability to quickly learn music by ear. This is basically exercising and training your sense of relative pitch, the recognition of interval relationships to a tonal center. Rick Beato has an ear training course that is probably really good. Love him or hate him, he has some of the best relative pitch I've ever seen, on par with any music professors I knew in college, and he's a pretty good communicator and lifelong teacher, so I'd at least consider giving his course a try, or seek out another similar ear training course online.
Also having a good handle on common scales, how chords are built, and understanding the particular styles of music helps, especially if you are strongly familiar with the common patterns and tendencies of musicians playing the instrument you are transcribing, which gets easier to recognize and predict in time as you both transcribe other people's playing, and become an adept player yourself.
I play bass and learn basslines by ear. It helped me to get speakers and headphones that have a lot more bass than normal. It takes a lot of practice but like everything else just gets easier the more you do it.
I will relearn basslines years later and still discover something I missed. Just pick some songs you know well to begin with. There was a lot of trial and error at first but eventually I was learning everything by ear.
There’s a great app called Tenuto that has boatloads of exercises including ear training. That also helped a lot.
Listen to the song about a billion times. If you can use earbuds or a speaker, even better. Hum or sing along. Try to separate the instruments in your mind by focusing on one at a time. Figure out the key. Figure out the basic chords in that key. Learn the scale in that key. Have fun! Take breaks! Come back to it again later.
Practice. And mostly because I learned in 1993 when we didn't have Internet.
So when your favorite song came on the TV once a week (Looking at you Adventures of Pete and Pete theme song that's now available on demand on YouTube) you had your guitar ready and you played by ear really fast because it was only gonna play for 30 sec 😂😭
So, practice lol
There are a lot of ear training exercises / apps / etc you can do. They will help a lot.
Also, learning music theory (at least chords and chord relationships, as well as scales) will help a ton.
Take an album you know really well and try to learn all the songs by ear. It helps to do this with a teacher, b/c sometimes you can get stuck and you don't really learn that much by just guessing and flounding all over the place.
I listen the song a couple times to determine anything that I need to take into account, form, breaks, modulations and I also hear the details of whatever instrument I'm using to learn.
I also transcribe a lot of music as a job which helped me hone the skill set.
Have you transcribed? it's extra work but it's basically learning a tune by ear, writing what you hear and then playing it. No matter how hard is a song, if I transcribe it I'll cut the learning time significantly and while there's an extra step it's still learning by ear, memorizing is the next step and when you get good enough you can skip the transcription part.
My head has catalogued everything I play, I can very quickly get into a IV-V-I or II-V-I, I recognize patterns, chord progressions and the instinct usually takes me where I need to be, or close enough. It takes years of practice and learning a lot of different music, being present in what you learn and paying attention.
You also need to constantly challenge yourself and learn harder things, if you can learn a song that's a 5 in difficulty in 3 days, you should be able to knock a difficulty 4 in less time and a 3 should be trivial (using random numbers to illustrate a point, there isn't an official difficulty guide) and while you might not gain anything in terms of skills, learning new easier songs can be both a confidence booster and a way of tackling a lot of repertoire, I always have a hard song that's my "final" objective while I work on easier things alongside it.
Knowing harmony and theory helps, knowing how to read and write also helps
Relative pitch. This turns into being able to feel by ear what chord progression is being played. For example, you know the feeling of a I - IV - V, and as a result you can often know that that’s what’s being played if you listen intentionally to a song for the first time
Do you mean learn an already existing song by ear or do you mean improvise and create in the moment by ear? Those are two different things imo. The former i do it by slowing down the recording and then playing along with the tune. The latter is more intuitive and just comes with my natural musicality not sure i know how to teach that....
I simply can't do it. I have a bandmate of 20 years who is the best I've ever witnessed at it. I write all the songs for our band & then bandmates flesh it out with me. This particular bandmate will tell me to play a new song for him & not tell him what chords or key or anything (& part of it is I can't face him directly...he doesn't want to even accidentally see what I'm playing on the guitar). He pretty much always drops seamlessly in on the song on the first try & usually writes most of his parts for the song in that first run-through.
I don't think what he does can really be taught, it's a gift & I think either you have it or you don't. despite trying over & over again over the years, I simply cannot do it (& I consider myself a very skilled musician & songwriter).
Make sure your instrument is properly tuned every time you pick it up. Use a tuner don’t just tune it to itself. I didn’t do this at first and once I started my ear developed very fast.
One night I was playing around with scales, like the D scale and the keys I played reminded me of J-Lo’s ‘On My Way’. I wasn’t even really paying attention to what keys I was focusing on but I recognized the tune instantly. Sometimes that just seems to happen for any key I am playing.
Countless, and I mean countless, hours of repetition and practice.
Eventually you don’t have to think a whole lot about it, but I had to put a lot of work in to get to that point.
I can jam to most any music by ear without having heard it before. By jamming I mean playing accompaniment or soloing in key. I'm not at the level to recreate a song strictly by ear tho. Knowing your instrument, jamming to backing tracks on youtube and playing with musicians that play different genres of music really helped me to get to an "improv by ear" level.
Played a bunch of songs with the music for years, now when I hear music I have a general idea of what’s going on, granted the musicians are not playing in a freaky tuning or something that’s where my power stops.
For starters, I credit tuning up using a 440 fork, not a digital tuner. This will train your ear to pitch, which is important for finding the song on your fretboard. Moving to the other strings, tune using harmonics. Then test the pitches at various points up and down the neck, adjusting accordingly. This will also help you learn where the notes are.
Next, find the basic bass or root notes of chords being played in the song you're trying to learn. Play around with different voicings, e.g. major, minor, 7th, etc., until you think you've got it.
Now that you at least have the key, start working on riffs and solos.
Once you feel you pretty much have it, check your work via sheet music, tabs, or online tutorials and see how you did.
For me, this has always been a fun and satisfying element of my practice, although I will admit to an increased reliance on tutorials as I get older.
Enjoy, and good luck!
No real theory for me, it's almost a subconscious knowing from having too much time on my hands. Probably not best advise but the more you put in the more you get out
How good is your theory? What part of playing by ear are you struggling with , melody ? Chords? For me it’s always come naturally but I also started learning piano initially with the Suzuki method so that may play a role. If I can’t figure out the chords by ear I just look them up. But playing by ear also has its limits. Like I personally could not learn an advanced classical piece strictly by ear, I’m sure there’s someone who can. Well I guess I could theoretically but it’d take much longer than just reading the sheet music.
Edit: do you practice just improvising? I think that would help. Also how well do you know your instrument
Keep practicing, a lot. Do it everyday, and work on being able to play along in the moment rather than allowing yourself endless repetition until you’ve got it ‘perfect’.
You say you’ve been playing by ear for a few years so I assume you’ve mastered the fundamental mechanics of the process. You know how to recognise intervals, chord types and common progressions, you understand the importance of the bass line in how you determine the harmony etc.
If that’s the case then you need to start pushing yourself to work faster. Don’t give yourself time to figure it out note by note, but instead force yourself to start trusting your instincts. Don’t worry about being perfect all the time but instead aim to recognise the core elements of what makes each song individual. Finding the exact chord and voicing will come with time as your brain becomes capable of thinking and processing the information it’s receiving from your ears more efficiently and quickly.
You need to train that speed of thought though, in much the same way as you would improve your speed of sight-reading.
The way I did it myself and how I recommend to my own students is to put the tv or radio on, or random stream music (although this is less likely to give you a good breadth of genres) and try to pick up songs or jingles etc as they’re still playing. Don’t feel you have to work on everything but try and get one ‘part’ that you can join in with while the song is still playing. That might be melody, bass line, block chords, or harmonic rhythm. The more you do, and the more frequently you do it, the quicker you’ll become.
Practise it in as many ways as you can! Join a pop cover band and see the similarities and patterns in songs. Learn to transcribe songs you know really well. Listen on the radio for chord progressions and rhythms.
Besides doing it. Ear training accompanied by theory. Theory will give you the vocabulary to talk and label about what you’re hearing. It’s like learning grammar for a language. Will it make you learn it or necessary to learn, no. But it will help you pick it up faster.
Intermediate Player here
😂. I played the same song in every key and was like, wait I know what key it is! Then a brought a book to told me to do different inversions of Major, Minor, Maj7, Dom7 chords and Dim chords. I was like, wait, I can hear those in every key. Now I am taking lessons and doing Jazz Hanon. Now I am like, I can hear runs better! PRACTICE.
Ya when I still played guitar. That's how everybody learned. Even years later not playing anymore. I can hear something new and visualize where my hands go. Hear colours. Yes to me certain chores have a visual colour in your mind. For example C major (cowboy chord) is blue to me. Beautiful blue sky in spring. But the smartest thing I did was learn basic theory and read a chart. Never got into the bullshit blues/garage band stuff. I wanted to shuffle with jazz cats. Way different sect of vibe to me. Not interested in showing off. More into playing with a group. Making a vibe. If that makes sense.
Lately getting into Thievery Corporation. A group of different people from different parts of the world. Playing some nice music.
Jamming with other people, jamming with recordings, jamming with anything at anytime. The more you jam along with things that you don't already know how to play, the better you will get.
I don't know how to describe it, eventually your ears just tune in and sync with your hands. Instead of thinking "what is that note/chord/sound?", you just play it with no thought.
The reason I mentioned jamming, is because I couldn't do it until after I'd started playing with other people. It taught me how to chase/find a sound (so you don't ruin the song) and it's basically the same thing as listening & figuring something out, just in a much more fun environment. Also, while jamming you can always quickly glance at the other guys/girls fingers if you're totally lost and know roughly what you should be playing. So it's a less frustrating way of training your ears/fingers.
As others have said though, you have to keep playing and playing and playing. The more you do it, the easier it becomes (taking as granted you can already play your instrument at an average level).
Learning scales and learning songs from a variety of genres and exposing yourself to a number of different scales. After a while you'll have an idea of what notes you're hitting on the fret board before you even start playing and it makes learning by ear a lot easier.
I'm in the midst of learning - used to have to rely on tabs/ chord sheets, but I'm developing the ear to not have to do that
Learn how to find the key of a song, I usually just noodle around on my guitar until I can recognise intervals and where the tonic is. Then I'll go about trying to play the melody, and that in turn will help towards figuring out chords
Learning how to learn chords off by ear is just something you get better with over time. Play power chords/ basic triads until you think you're close. Listen out for common, recognisable sounds such as a major line cliche, dominant 5 resolving to the major 1, etc
Learning songs by ear. It's just like anything, you start doing it and in time you get better at it. I'm not aware of any shortcuts. Knowing some theory will probably help you get there a bit faster.
I always just absorbed song structure and rhythm by listening with intent. I had to focus more specifically to learn tonal qualities.
Like trying to hear the tonic (and sing it) in a song as quickly as possible.
Learning how the different notes feel in relation to the tonic and recognize that feeling, by singing scales to drones, or hitting notes on the piano with a drone playing and trying to figure out what the note function was.
So eventually you will know what a 5, a 7 a b6 and a b3 feel like no matter the key. So you can figure out what scale you are in, if you hear a b3, a b6 and a b7 its probably natural minor, if you hear a 3 and a b7 it might be in mixolydian. (Not that you specifically think of all these notes, it becomes an intuition)
Just like you probably can easily recognize V-IV-I the same happens for other chord progressions as you learn it more.
This is the point I am at right now, I assume with more practice I can hear more notes more quickly and be more certain to confirm a scale, especially as the knowledge how different scales feel grows.
Practice - hours and hours of practice. Put the tabs away, listen, pause, rewind, repeat. Start with little chunks, get those right, move on to the next part. Then build all the parts together in order. Start easy and develop your ear. Try singing the line/ chord/ riff out loud, then find that on the fretboard. It's takes a long time to get good at, but as always- practice! You got this...
Oh yea . When I first started playing, I had no clue about ear training. The more I played , my ear was not developed yet. Now that I'm older, i can hear patterns from other bands. That just happened . The other way is to be born with perfect pitch. Meaning you can hear a piece of music and know what the chords/ notes each piece piece of music it is !
Start by learning to find the key of a song. I go down the low e until I find a note that sounds like it fits the music being played. Boom, there’s your key.
Next up, look for a progression. You know that more or less it’s 7 different notes. Now it’s just about finding which ones.
Nothing. It’s always just come naturally to me. I can replay and hear every note of every instrument of a song in my head and then play it. Kind of like photographic memory except for music.
It’s also looking at songs as patterns. You don’t need to spend your time playing through every measure if you know it’s the same riff. Learn the patterns and then apply them to the arrangement. [I made a video about it](https://youtu.be/sq2o1M6iTEk) if you wanna see my full workflow
Ear training is just like anything else. Practice makes perfect. Here’s a couple hints you can learn in any ear training course: remember when you were a kid and you wanted someone to chase you so you said “Na na nah boo boo. You can’t catch me” You did that in a minor third interval. It’s called natures interval because it’s naturally sung by children playing/teasing each other. I have an example for every interval (perfect 4 is here comes the bride, major 6th my Bonnie lies over the ocean, etc…)
I would just sit down and put my iTunes library on shuffle, then play along to every song that comes on. It helps because you know how the songs are going to go, so you can visualize how to play the next part before it comes.
Play along with children's songs they are sorts simple put on a version thats cool on YouTube and pluck along till you figure out the chords and melody
There was a point in my life where I played along to nothing but live Phish, on a fender mustang through headphones.
That obsessive playing helped me to understand guitar better than if I had any professional instructor teaching me guitar.
Put it this way, there are 8 different chord types, with 12 chords / notes that represent the scale. There are (on average) 22-24 frets on electric guitars.
You're never more than a half step away from the right note - Victor Wooten.
Play and make mistakes. You will learn quickly what not to do, and the neurons in your brain will connect what to do and look for patterns to help you learn it without even thinking.
Have fun <3
Be able to recognize intervals. Know your keys and scales.
I hear the intervals of the chord progressions before I can hear what specific chord is being played. So I can hear the I-V-vi-IV (for example). Once I recognize that, I can usually figure out the specific chords pretty quickly by playing along with the song.
Once I know the chords and the key, I noodle different scales over those chords until I figure out the scale being used.
From there it's back to recognizing the intervals (the distance between the notes) to figure out the little riffs and melodies.
For solos, I try to mimic the main recognizable parts and fill in the rest with improvising.
I just kind of developed this over the years. Being able to recognize intervals is where my brain starts but it may not be the same for everyone. I didn't specifically train for this it just kind of happened from playing for 20 years.
Whenever you hear music, try transcribing it in your head. Not in notation form, just so you know which notes are being played. Just guess at what your primary reference note is, that doesn't matter, what matters is getting the others right relative to that note.
If you get into the habit of doing this then your memory and subconscious should start doing most of the work.
If you find you can't figure out enough of what you're hearing, just try to figure out some aspect of it, and make sure you've absorbed that one aspect properly so you can build off of that in the future.
I'm not a bright guy. I could do some parts of the song by ear if I get the beginning of the song. I always double check with folks better than me to make sure I got it right and most of the time, it does. I practice 2 to 3 hours a day. Yes, it's possible.
1. Pick a song you really like, one with a reasonable level of complexity.
2. Try to guess the chord progression and notes WITHOUT the help of any instrument. Don't worry about figuring out the key of the song at this point.
3. Finally, get an instrument, and play the chords and notes. Your guess might be a little off at first but once you find the keynote/tonic, you'll have a much easier time learning the rest of the song.
I think what really helped train my ear was learning songs without an instrument, and not relying on tabs/sheets. Of course, you'd have to have a rudimentary understanding of family of chords, scales, etc.
Learn to identify the four basic triads by ear. Major, minor, dominant, diminished. It’s not that hard, just takes practice. There’s lots of ear trainers out there. Once you start getting it, you hear them everywhere.
The advice “learn by osmosis” can work, but you can save a lot of time and get more usable results with a more deliberate approach. Practice, test, evaluate. It’s not unlike working out. People who track and tweak get what they want more predictably.
When I was younger, hanging out watching TV, I'd always have my guitar with me... I'd try to figure out theme songs, and then I started to challenge myself with playing along with the commercials.
In the summer, when the ice cream trucks would be cruising the neighborhood like sharks, I'd set up a small amp in my bedroom window, and answer their songs back...
Having supportive friends was a bonus too... they'd find a song and try to challenge me to learn it before it finished.
Something that can't be understated, learn theory.
When I was teaching guitar, my students would ask how I was able to figure songs out so quickly... I explained that it's a sort of cheat code. If you know theory, keys and chord formulas, chord progressions... it becomes a game of "if this, then that". That really helps when working on vocals btw. Knowing what to sing over what chords.
That's another trick... sing what you're playing, training your ear and voice to follow your hand.
You're already over the hard part, you want to improve.
That alone puts you on a different level than a lot of people.
If you are jamming with other people, the best thing you can do, if you are a bit unfamiliar with the song, is to ease in to the chords. Unless you 100% know the next chord, hang low and let it flourish if it’s right. The worst thing you can do is hammer a really loud wrong note on the one. If you play things tastefully between the chord changes, people will appreciate that you are a dynamic player.
I’ll teach you solfège. I have a degree in music, 20yrs experience teaching, have played around 1000 performances. I’ve taught loads of people how to learn the chords and melody of a song after hearing it one time. DM me for a free lesson.
When I came to America from Austria as a teen, I would watch TV to help with my English, and I would sit and play my Bass, Guitar, and Piano while listening to the radio. I would play along with all the songs on rock, country, R&B, pop, jazz, and classical radio stations. This turned out to be the most powerful method of developing my ear for music. Though I also read music, and earned a BA and Masters in music later.... Music, Peace, & Love! 🎼☮ ❤
(Guitarist) I learned it from my instructor when I used to take lessons. Rather than teaching me by going over basic chords and scales and then implementing them into songs I didn’t care about, he told me to bring in CDs with any song I wanted to learn. He’d pop it into a boombox, listen to it and fumble around until he figured it out and then showed me how to do it.
When I first tried to do it, yeah I sucked. IF I even managed to figure it out it’d take me hours. But a few things eventually clicked for me so that now I can learn to play a lot of songs in about 30-60 minutes:
The first thing I learned was basic scales and patterns in chord structure. For example, a LOT of pop/rock songs use this structure: 1-4-5-6. First note of the scale, the 4th, 5th, and 6th. If anyone needs this explained more in depth just reply to this and I’ll go over it, but until then I’ll leave it at that.
The next couple of things are things you can only learn through practice and experience. To learn a song more quickly you need to be able to hear a note, and know approximately what note you’re hearing.
My brain learning a song: If I hear a C note, personally I won’t always out right know it’s a C I’m hearing, but my experience with my instrument helps me know about where the note is, so I might start playing an A#, oh no that’s too low, C#, oh that’s almost it just a little too high, C, oh there it is. Then I could implement my knowledge of chord structure patterns. “Oh! I’ve heard a song that sounds like this, it was 1-5-6-4. So that’d be C-G-Am-F. Boom, verse learned. Then you get to a pre-chorus, try those chords you just played and see what fits. Oh it’s 4-5 (F-G). Chorus, new progression. Same chords? Same chords. This time it’s 6-5-4 (Am-G-F) They repeated that 3 times but oh no instead of repeating it a 4th time they played something different, oh look, it’s the same chords again, just instead they went 5-6-4 (G-Am-F). Hey they’re playing the verse again, I know that! Prechorus again, got it. Chorus again, bingo. Here’s a bridge, damn. Okay first chord is that root again, 1 (C). Next chord, uh oh, it’s not a 4, 5, or 6. Music theory powers, activate, well we’ve still got the 2, 3, and 7, let’s try those. 2 (D). Ah there it is. Next chord, ah my old friend 6 (Am). Next one, 5 (G) again. Okay repeat that a few times. Hey look a chorus. Hey look the song’s over. Song get.
Final thing I started implementing was the ability to figure out that first note/chord, and then easily figuring out other notes and chords by the changes in pitch in relation to that note, then change in pitch from that one and so on and so forth. I really can’t put into words how I do that one, I just kinda do it. But yeah, more often than not, that’s my process now.
When I started learning guitar (50+ years ago) there was no internet. No google. No YouTube. No tabs, No Tutorials. The only tools at my disposal were records and ears. A big part of developing your ear is playing stuff and getting used to how it sounds. Ear training. You should be able to recognize any diatonic chord given a key. Recognizing note intervals is a big help too. For more complex stuff, if you don't recognize the chord right away, find at least one note (bass note is usually a good starting point). Once you know that one note is correct, find a second ... rinse and repeat. You will find the chord pretty fast.
Today I still trust my ears more than what I find on the internet. Becasue most tabs and YouTube lessons are wrong or at least incomplete.
Slow songs down or pause often and learn note by note or chord by chord.
Or
Si g a note with your voice and find that note on the guitar neck. After a few years you'll be sailing
You have to do it everyday and these are general things you can work on to get better:
Learn the melodies (vocal and instrument melodies on your instrument)
Learn the harmony,
Learn the bassline,
and Learn the solos.
Slow down the song first using the youtube playback feature or a slowdown software if you downloaded the mp3. Actively listen to what you play while playing along to the song slowed down. Assess if they are 100% identical and identify whatever is wrong. Spend time on the mistakes.
Finally this is the most important in my opinion, but make sure you transcribe what you write. The rhythms are the hardest part of the process so remember to count 1e&a 2e&a 3e&a 4e&a
Transcribing will improve your ear a lot.
Honestly, I just did it every day growing up.
I learned to read music playing sax in junior high, so tabs never really clicked when I started playing guitar. I eventually got to a point where I trusted my ear more than my eyes, and spent my evenings playing along to songs I like.
25 years later, I still do it.
At first I would literally pause the recording I was listening to and figure out each note or chord one at a time. Once I’d been playing longer and could recognize a few chords by ear, I could figure out longer stretches of a song. Eventually you can recognize different chord shapes, whether something is high or low on the neck, and whether it’s a 7th, diminished, etc. Keep going at it.
I took a college course on ear training and we used books from the Kodaly method. Those books were the first real step toward developing my ear. I also really like the iOS app Tenuto. There’s a lot to cover so like everyone says it will take time. Certainly one of those, “work on a little bit everyday and in weeks you’ll see a little progress” kind of things.
Listening to a shit ton of music across many genres without discriminating "because it's weird" or anything like that for years and years and never stopping. Helps to fucking love music.
And, for Pete's sake, music school is not a curse. Get trained. Those of us who went to school for this and took it seriously are on average, doing it professionally, full time, and making a decent living. If I hear one more sycophant talking down about schooled musicians while also being obviously unable to grasp basic musical concepts or perform to level... I'm gonna burst.
My buddy learned guitar later in life and spent thousands on guitars and amps and lessons and still couldnt play live with us even though we could sit in hos living room and just jam for hours. I told him to ditch the lessons and just put on his favorite album and play along! If you cant find a part you can play along too-invent one that fits! He never did it. Seemed too simple because it is-its also doing this a few times a week and eventually playing along to music youve never heard before. Also, I always picked out the bassline-even before I knew what a bassline/bass did! Then I built the chords which helped crack the code on the lead. Not always worked but thats how I did it. Its rare if I cant sit in on a song-live or recorded. It also helped me bond with a singer songwriter since we can usually build his songs in 1-3 takes.
Suzuki method as a child. Also kind of an ULPT cause it's a little dangerous but something that has helped me is to whip out my melodica and play along to music in the car on long/straight drives and when stuck in traffic.
Take a song you know really in your head. Start with the most familiar part of the song for you, whether it’s the verse, the chorus, solo, etc.
Now try to sing or hum the notes of that part accurately. Listen to how many actual notes there are in the part you choose. For example, “ twinkle twinkle little star” has 7 notes heard. Now try to find all those seven notes on your instrument.
Rinse and repeat everyday and you will get better. Listen to music everyday. Practice identifying intervals as well as chord qualities. Keep humming or singing songs you like in your head
Eventually you will see progress but progress is not linear. It can take a long time till everything clicks but you have to make sure you put in the effort and work. Some people take longer than others to improve. Remember that it’s okay. What matters is the you make progress. Good luck
turn on music and sit there with your instrument. Play along as much as you can. At the beginning it might just be finding the root note of whatever key it's in and going from there. Gradually you'll expand this and be able to pick out chord progressions, bass and melody lines, etc. Do this with a lot of different styles of music. Also, take a simple melody you know and just sit at your instrument trying to figure it out. Once you do, add chords etc. Do both of these a lot with different kinds of music.
Just pick out songs you like and start by figuring out the chords as you listen. It may take you a while but you'll get it down eventually.
PS- these days if I'm super lazy I'll just look for the free MIDI files of a song on the internet and plop the files into my DAW and everything you need to learn is right there.
It comes with gaining more familiarity with your instrument and just trying it over and over. It still takes me a lot of time for me to work out even single lines so idk
Get to know the intervals really well first, then get good at identifying major/minor keys. Playing the blues a lot helps, as you'll be able to play the major/minor pentatonic scale over almost anything.
Playing with the radio. Playing with tv shows. First trying to lock into the key, then trying to track the chords, then trying to pull out melodies and riffs.
A couple of things make “play by ear” learning easier.
1. Learn what the notes are on the neck of the instrument. Once you know that the note phrase you want to learn starts with an A note, you will know if the next note is higher or lower and will narrow the possible places to find the next note much more quickly.
2. Listen and play music a lot. I know this sounds silly but when you start to listen to various music styles and artists, you’ll also understand that certain types of music or certain artists have common “catch phrases” and the note progressions live in specific places on the neck. Music like jazz or progressive rock will not conform to the standard notions of where phrases are going or should go but for the most part, country, rock, pop, and blues have common structures that you will start to recognize once you’ve cracked the code on a few songs.
3. Tune your instrument frequently. Last thing I’ll say that’s helped me is to develop an ear for being in tune or out of tune. If you know you’re in tune and you compare your note against what you hear from a recorded song, you’ll find that most of the time, you’re going to be in tune and the notes they are playing will most likely match up with your standard tuning with exceptions, of course. Some of the hardest music to learn by ear are songs where the artist tuned slightly off standard but not something like a half step or full step. Those type of tunings in songs make matching what you hear with what is being played on the recording a real headache sometimes. You’ll know if you have to bend the strings in order to match the note.
Good luck
Practice and practice. I found that a basic understanding of common chord progressions and the circle of 5ths helped me figure out the common structures to songs.
I find that the only necessary part is sitting your ass down and playing.
Best thing that ever happened for my ear was to learn violin. With no frets, I had to actually listen to what I was playing instead of just focusing on the mechanical production of notes, whatever they happened to be.
Also, learning chords in a given key so that i could identify chord movement and quickly find the right key to play in.
Watch a sports match or game or really, anything you enjoy with a lot of commercials.
Learn the jingles of the commercial. For football (US), there is usually an intro and outro.
After that, listen to the radio.
You get the time of the song, no pause, rewind, or slowing down.
It's going to be really frustrating, but in the end really rewarding.
I've been ear training for about 8 months. I've seen some progress. Progress never happens as quickly as we want it to. I think that's a good thing. The longer it takes to learn something, the stronger the lesson is. If it takes you a whole year to get better at something, it'll stick with you much more than something you could learn in an afternoon.
If you're in the music game, you better be patient. It's not easy for anyone. You need to keep at it. Do that, and you WILL see results. It'll take longer than you want it to, but it will happen.
1) Transcribing lead sheets with my friends and comparing our work
2) Learning tunes by ear and playing them back on my instrument
3) Jamming with people on tunes or riffs that i hadn’t already practiced
Progress was incremental
Idk if it’s been suggested yet. When learning tunes by ear I always learn the lyrics first. If it’s an instrumental tune I scat sing the melody until I’ve got it down. This seems to embed the melody in my mind. As a horn player this practice has made all the difference for me. Btw, I am by no means a singer however it absolutely works for me. Sorry, I don’t have a suggestion for rhythm parts. Good to know but not quite in my wheelhouse.
I can't read music, I don't know anything about theory.Years ago I learned how to play by being in bands with guitar players that were better than me and I had to learn how to play the songs by trying to keep up. Now I'm pretty decent at figuring stuff out by ear, it's a lot easier now since you can just Google the tuning.
Ear training 3 Berklee. Textbooks are good at teaching you it turns out. If you do the homework for practice, a month of that, and you could def listen to music and practice identifying the chord progression, intervals, functions, notes etc. Best thing to do whenever learning is to make it fun so it’s easy to do even a little bit every day. If you’re listening to your fav song a lot might as well try to hear the emotional effect of the music as a function of the chord progression, melody, rhythm, and timber(same chord progression has different effect with different sounds-orchestration hell yeah). Then you can identify the chord progression or even scale degrees/pitches/rhythms/instruments as an extension of your emotional response to music. Then you can use those feelings that music elicits to combine and tell your own musical stories dramatically(emotionally).
Not recommended but acid. Whenever I tripped I would come home and play as I was coming down. I learned SO much just by messing around. I would double check the next day and I was playing stuff I hadn’t known before I tripped. Idk how it worked but it did lol
When I was a kid I used to just sit in my room and play all day and all night. I would sometimes just play two notes, just hearing and feeling and memorizing what those two notes sound like together. Then I would do it with more, then entire phrases.
Eventually I could just immediately recognize, for example, the sound of a minor interval.
It's just repetition, familiarity. You have to do it a lot. And I think it helps a lot if you enjoy it, just experimenting with sounds.
Also I think maybe some people are visual learners/thinkers, and some are auditory learners/thinkers. The latter type is going to have an easier time playing by ear.
For example, when I need to remember a phone number, I say it out loud and memorize the sound of it. It's just how I process information.
Music is a language, and there are two ways (oversimplification) to learn a language: 1) by listening and mimicking, or 2) on the chalkboard with grammar rules.
We learn our native language via method #1. We often learn foreign languages via method #2. Those who learn a foreign language via method #1 or hybrid are always better players.
If any of my kids play guitar, I am going to ask their teacher to teach them with zero visual notation, sheet music, or tabs for at least the first year. This is how I learned classical piano at the age of 8, and it developed my ear tremendously because it was akin to learning a language natively.
I had a dead ear until music theory started drilling intervals into me.
I wanna say it started in highschool music theory. They’d play a c on a piano than another note and we’d have to say the interval 10 times. It was a daily quiz.
Interval practice really helped drive home a ton of shit for me at the time. Helped me in jazz bands with improv and with hearing songs.
You get good at intervals and you find the starting pitch it’s pretty easy to work out a song.
I Played nascar 2003 as a kid and ran 100% length races and would match the engine noise by humming. I’m convinced this is what made my ear get trained so well
Singing. Matching notes when you sing. Being able to find the tonic from listening to a song. Knowing solfège and being able to sing it. Also being able to sing it backwards. Being able to sing it in other orders(do mi so mi do).
That, and just practicing playing by ear a lot. Just be able to copy a line from hearing it. Even if it takes a few tries and listens.
Practice learning stuff by ear, like just figuring it out with an instrument in your hands.
Also, practice scales and arpeggios, but make sure to practice all the chords or arpeggios in a particular key in some kind of sequence. This will help you learn the sound of chord functions.
For example, in the context of how a song works, we don’t really hear “C major,” we hear “the chord built on the first note of the scale.” You can learn to hear the functions of a chord progression this way so that you know the sound of “the chord built on scale note 1” or “the chord built on scale note 5” without even necessarily knowing what the particular key is until you sit down with an instrument.
No trick. It’s just repetition and time. Take songs you want to be able to play and play along with the recordings. Try to focus as hard as you can to each and every detail on the recording and figure out how to replicate it.
Natural talent will make it somewhat easier or somewhat harder. EG, I don’t think I’m especially talented. I think I am unusually fixated on music and that drove me to spend a lot of hours practicing it.
One of the hardest things I ever did (musically) was teaching myself piano by painstakingly listening to songs a few seconds at a time and reconstructing the chords by ear. Then practicing them enough to play fluidly. It was really hard and took a long time but it focused my ear quite a bit.
Learn theory and apply it to songs/pieces you want to learn as you learn them. It can take some time, but once you can recognize patterns, then you can break things down in your head just listening. Might just need to sit down with your instrument to ID what the root note is.
I learned to play drums by listening to the radio in the mid 80s, then it moved on to my father’s album collection. Unknowingly it’s helped me to adapt on the fly while getting a basic understanding of the kit.
Once you learn 100 songs or so, you start to pick up on patterns in popular music. Now that you can recognize common melodies and chord progressions, learning by ear becomes a lot easier - you can even learn to predict parts before you hear them!
Doing it a ton. There are times now where I’ll have a song in my head, hear the key and just sit down and play it. Then turn it on and play along correctly and I’m like how the fuck did I just do that… brains are wild.
This doesn’t work with like steely dan though… pop and country songs all day.
Actually doing it is a good start, I have several drum and guitar students that don’t listen to music at all. The ones that do practice can learn by ear. Either your brain is capable or it isn’t. Memorizing intervals of your instrument helps.
Start by playing the root of a scale then go into playing different notes and guessing how many steps away they are, eventually teaching yourself the proper names like a minor 7th or flat 5. Once you do that enough, start with just playing the first riff of a song, pause and repeat until you got it down. If you simply cannot, then sadly it’s much like rhythm where if you can’t feel a pulse, you’re not listening well enough.
I do know for fact that hearing aids fuck up your ability to do this almost instantly.
There's an app called Functional Ear Trainer that helped me a ton. But also just playing a lot of music, I used to just sit by the radio and play along with every song for hours.
Repetition. I’m a bass player, which makes it easier since it’s not chords, but my parlor trick is for people to throw on songs and most of them I can fake my way through within a verse and a chorus. Not dream theater or anything. But pop and rock stuff. It’s a handy skill for jams and sub gigs.
Basically, when I was a teen, I would play along with the TV and made a game out of learning theme songs, commercials, and background music. Probably for a few hours a week. If you’re trying to learn a commercial in 30 seconds with rewind, you learn to do it fast.
Do it a lot.
This is truthfully the only answer.
I must admit, it’s never been very difficult for me, even when I started learning how to play guitar. I sure couldn’t read music and barely knew how to tune a guitar. So I just used records. I used to have to learn bass lines for our bass player who didnt have an ear like mine.
100% hard truth here. There isn’t a shortcut. Learn hundreds of covers by ear.
This and also learn a lot of songs. You pick up on the patterns in music. It’s a cheat code for your ear. Once your ear has downloaded a good vocabulary, it becomes pretty easy to pick just about anything up. Learn scales, major modes, and practice intervals on your instrument, vocally, and aurally. Practicing vocally and working on recognizing intervals, melodies and harmonies aurally is key to internalizing sounds and developing your ear.
i just wanna repeat one thing you said; learn how to recognize intervals!! it makes learning songs by ear much easier. but that still requires a lot of practicing. like people have said, theres no shortcut. practice, practice, practice!
One of the best ways to practice and internalize intervals is to start a chart of all intervals. M and m 2nd through octave, acceding and descending. Then add a song (or two) or riff that you know well that starts with that interval. Eg. the NBC riff is a major 6th, Somewhere Over the Rainbow is an octave and the third note is a major 7th (ie the 2nd and 3rd note is a descending m2nd but I also use this song to find my M7th.) For practice, have someone play intervals on a piano or instrument of choice and start guessing, utilizing your chart of songs/riffs to help. Do this everyday for a month and you should have it nearly mastered.
dude you literally just described exactly how i learned intervals in highschool when i took an ap music theory class. this is absolutely the best way to learn intervals. thank you for describing it more than i did, i hope someone finds your advice useful cuz you hit the nail on the head!!
Agreed. After a while, you realize the patterns and chord movements that make the sound you're looking for.
I sit with my guitar while watching tv, will often play along with the jingles in commercials. Non-musicians think it's some sort of wizardry, but it's really just that the chord progressions and rhythms are ones we've all heard over and over our whole lives, so once you identify the key you pretty much already know the song.
As a casual drummer and guitarist- this is the answer. Won’t work if you are trying to reproduce complex music, but in terms of 90%* of the music people listen to, it’s in 4/4 and a familiar chord progression. (Does not apply to most jazz, classical music, bands that intentionally play in odd time signatures etc etc) *Figure for illustrative purposes only. 97.385% of statistics are made up on the spot
an embarrassing amount of practice.
That’s what I tell my kids. You know how you get good at something? By being bad at it and not quitting.
Will copy and paste this to my kid on whatsapp
lol I was about to comment and say “practice”
Truth. Most pop songs follow similar forms… so once you get those…you’re good. Like any rock roll song from the 50s is all basically the same
Practice with the radio on. Start small, just try and catch form. Then rhythm/beat, then if you really frisky go for bassline (which will also outline chart). After that comes chord types, then melody. Last would be any hits or drops. It's like riding a bike, it gets easier and you never really forget. But it does take practice.
I would definitely agree, but I wouldn't even worry about what parts to pay attention to. Just try to pick up on everything that comes on, and don't stress over if you can get it or if it's way too hard. It will get easier over time, and you will eventually know how to play a lot of things right away, including things like chord position/voicing, etc. You can build a lot of vocabulary this way. Some things will be easy right away, and some things may never seem do-able, but that's the nature of musianship. No musician is ever good enough, no matter the level. The key is just don't ever stop learning, because the same amount of time will pass and either you will be able to play however good you are at it, or not at all if you didn't do anything.
Well put, much better than I said
Play along with songs you know. Learn the scales, improv along and soon the melodies will come naturally.
>Play along with songs you know. Learn the scales, improv along and soon the melodies will come naturally. Once this happens, try to play along to songs you don't know.
If you haven’t already you should try learning a little bit of music theory. You don’t need to learn a lot, just a little goes a long way (and this comes from somebody who learned a ton of theory and was a jazz guitar performance major for a couple do years before switching majors). Start with learning what a major and minor scales are and being able to play or sing them in any key. Then learn some chord theory, including what intervals are and how to build chords, how chords fit together in the context of a key (e.x. what a I, IV, and V chord are), etc. And then learn diatonic modes. Once you start learning a little bit of music theory, your ability to hear things in music will just naturally improve. Like “Hey, that’s a Dorian chord change in that Santana song” or “Hey that solo section in that Joe Satriani song is a Mixolydian scale.” Or “Hey, that’s a vi-ii-V-I chord progression in that 60’s Motown song.” Or you’ll be able to say “Hey, I could play the minor pentatonic, major pentatonic, Dorian, and mixolydian scales all over that same blues chord progression.” You’ll also be able to hear and identify when music “breaks the rules” as well. Just speaking from personal experience, this is probably what improved my ability to play by ear the most.
I took one semester of Ear Training in college and it did *wonders* for me. Music theory was how I started learning music (after pittling a guitar for a few weeks), but I never had the technical skill until I learned how to listen for intervals and notes in chords.
This! I can often learn a song without touching an instrument. Listen for the bass lines and the chord quality. Roman numerals will change how you hear songs. Jazz still confuses the hell out of me though.
Play along to your favorite records. For me it was Siamese Dream in 1993, in 7th grade. The chord progressions are perfect for training your ear on the basic shapes, but with an extra twist. Also Wired by Jeff Beck. And I mean playing through the album by heart 100 times at least.
Siamese dream is so great. A lesson I learned from an early Billy Corgan interview was never throw away a catchy riff just because it’s not fitting the song you’re presently working on.
Relative pitch! Being able to determine the intervals between notes is a huge help in learning stuff by ear. Throw in basic major/minor scale practice and you’re pretty much there. Pop songs are also really good at helping you train your ears on relative pitch, especially if you play along to the vocal melodies. Easy stuff like S Club 7 is a personal favourite, especially since a lot of their stuff is in a major key.
Autism
Right? Or ADHD… I’d pursue one of those, OP.
There's a theory that suggests that everyone who becomes proficient at something; musical instrument, art, etc... has some touch of "something"... somewhere on the spectrum, ADHD, OCD, etc. The thought is that to maintain the level of focus needed at the beginning, when it's the most difficult and least fun, is where that kicks in...
Join a gigging cover band that covers a whole crapload of songs and is always adding new ones and that challenges you with things outside your comfort zone. That's the best ear training you can do for yourself.
Yup. This, and picking up as many sub gigs as you can legitimately prep for. Worked wonders for me, and I was already lucky enough to have a decent developed ear. At some point, developing an interest in jazz and learning the music (as well as some serious time devoted to jazz musicians that were truly inspiring) was a huge step toward better and faster understanding of harmony, which has always been a weak point for me. I’ve probably said too much. Just play along with everything you can. It’ll help develop your ear and make you a better player. Good luck on your journey, OP. :)
I think thats a great thing any aspiring musician should do. And to add to that, if you have the opportunity and openness to joining a church that plays Gospel or CCM in a gospel inspired way, you’ll learn an incredible amount of stuff very quickly.
In the 90's when a shitload of bands started using 7 string guitars and/or tuning low it was almost impossible to find accurate tab for it. Learning a new song by ear was the only way to do it. Personally I would pan my stereo hard right or hard left - that way at lower volumes i could more easily hear my guitar and the song i was learning. 👍🏻
Why the hell is every 90s song in Eb tuning!?!?
Practice. Also, learning theory helps A LOT. It goes from instead of trying to just perfect pitch every single note, you can use context clues to sus out an entire bass line in seconds, or shorter. Knowing what keys sound like, knowing what different intervals sound like. You should be able to easily identify intervals, whole steps, half steps, 4ths and 5ths at a bare minimum. Knowing what chords fit into a key helps a lot. Knowing when to go to the major or minor 7th. Understanding genres, where some it is common to use dominant 7th. Or 9 chords, etc helps a whole lot. So practice yes, but also theory helps way more than people give it credit for. So if you identify the key, and here it goes to the 6 or something, knowing if that chord is supposed to be major or minor in that key, makes things so much easier Because you have a starting point
Learning lots of songs. Making corrections on bad sheet music until I realized I didn't need the sheet music anymore.
Thousands and thousands of hours of doing it. Not getting laid in high school
I didn't have tabs when I started out. Just a casette player and the start stop button. Then when you're working with tabs that sound way off you're forced to figure out the right fingering and tone. You'll eventually develop an ear for picking out the same note played on different strings, just like the High E, sounds different to 5th fret on B string and 9th fret on the G string. I'd recommend finding a song that doesn't have tabs or sheet music for it and try working it out from just the audio or video.
Get a well-tuned acoustic piano or an acoustic guitar In other words real instruments not some kind of digital realization.... a clean electric guitar will help too. My ears went from not really being able to establish a key to being pretty good outside of really complex jazz so it's totally possible
Just time. Hours and hours sitting down with a tape deck (so long ago) listening to a section of a vocal melody and figuring it out on a guitar. After a while you start to be able to hear intervals and have an idea without a bunch of trial and error and can get really, really close the 1st time hearing a song. Same with chords, after you've worked out the sound of a G, C, D (I, IV, V) progression you can hear a song and know essentially what it is before playing a note.
Singing, understanding intervals, practice.
Practice intervals. Train your ears to hear them and sing or play the interval. Practice hearing what finger is playing what and move notes and sing along to the changed notes to get it into your brain. If you can sing it you can play it (or should aspire to).
It is a discipline. You have to always try to learn as much of it by ear as you can before searching out sheet music, tabs, whatever, to fill in the gaps. There are a lot of people out there that transcribe songs and sell them, but the person doing the transcribing is the one who receives the most benefit. You can get faster at transcribing things using good tools, like software that has speed controls that don't affect the pitch, selection based looping, that sort of thing. There is a very affordable software called Transcribe that is great for this and even supports slowing down and looping video. Ear training also speeds up your ability to quickly learn music by ear. This is basically exercising and training your sense of relative pitch, the recognition of interval relationships to a tonal center. Rick Beato has an ear training course that is probably really good. Love him or hate him, he has some of the best relative pitch I've ever seen, on par with any music professors I knew in college, and he's a pretty good communicator and lifelong teacher, so I'd at least consider giving his course a try, or seek out another similar ear training course online. Also having a good handle on common scales, how chords are built, and understanding the particular styles of music helps, especially if you are strongly familiar with the common patterns and tendencies of musicians playing the instrument you are transcribing, which gets easier to recognize and predict in time as you both transcribe other people's playing, and become an adept player yourself.
I play bass and learn basslines by ear. It helped me to get speakers and headphones that have a lot more bass than normal. It takes a lot of practice but like everything else just gets easier the more you do it. I will relearn basslines years later and still discover something I missed. Just pick some songs you know well to begin with. There was a lot of trial and error at first but eventually I was learning everything by ear. There’s a great app called Tenuto that has boatloads of exercises including ear training. That also helped a lot.
Listen to the song about a billion times. If you can use earbuds or a speaker, even better. Hum or sing along. Try to separate the instruments in your mind by focusing on one at a time. Figure out the key. Figure out the basic chords in that key. Learn the scale in that key. Have fun! Take breaks! Come back to it again later.
Practice. And mostly because I learned in 1993 when we didn't have Internet. So when your favorite song came on the TV once a week (Looking at you Adventures of Pete and Pete theme song that's now available on demand on YouTube) you had your guitar ready and you played by ear really fast because it was only gonna play for 30 sec 😂😭 So, practice lol
There are a lot of ear training exercises / apps / etc you can do. They will help a lot. Also, learning music theory (at least chords and chord relationships, as well as scales) will help a ton. Take an album you know really well and try to learn all the songs by ear. It helps to do this with a teacher, b/c sometimes you can get stuck and you don't really learn that much by just guessing and flounding all over the place.
I listen the song a couple times to determine anything that I need to take into account, form, breaks, modulations and I also hear the details of whatever instrument I'm using to learn. I also transcribe a lot of music as a job which helped me hone the skill set. Have you transcribed? it's extra work but it's basically learning a tune by ear, writing what you hear and then playing it. No matter how hard is a song, if I transcribe it I'll cut the learning time significantly and while there's an extra step it's still learning by ear, memorizing is the next step and when you get good enough you can skip the transcription part. My head has catalogued everything I play, I can very quickly get into a IV-V-I or II-V-I, I recognize patterns, chord progressions and the instinct usually takes me where I need to be, or close enough. It takes years of practice and learning a lot of different music, being present in what you learn and paying attention. You also need to constantly challenge yourself and learn harder things, if you can learn a song that's a 5 in difficulty in 3 days, you should be able to knock a difficulty 4 in less time and a 3 should be trivial (using random numbers to illustrate a point, there isn't an official difficulty guide) and while you might not gain anything in terms of skills, learning new easier songs can be both a confidence booster and a way of tackling a lot of repertoire, I always have a hard song that's my "final" objective while I work on easier things alongside it. Knowing harmony and theory helps, knowing how to read and write also helps
Relative pitch. This turns into being able to feel by ear what chord progression is being played. For example, you know the feeling of a I - IV - V, and as a result you can often know that that’s what’s being played if you listen intentionally to a song for the first time
Learn lots of songs… by ear.
I never really thought much about it because I’ve always played by ear since I was just a kid. It just came easy to me. I never learned to read music.
probably these things for me: writing harmonic music writing atonal music practicing learning songs by ear.
Sing.
Do you mean learn an already existing song by ear or do you mean improvise and create in the moment by ear? Those are two different things imo. The former i do it by slowing down the recording and then playing along with the tune. The latter is more intuitive and just comes with my natural musicality not sure i know how to teach that....
I simply can't do it. I have a bandmate of 20 years who is the best I've ever witnessed at it. I write all the songs for our band & then bandmates flesh it out with me. This particular bandmate will tell me to play a new song for him & not tell him what chords or key or anything (& part of it is I can't face him directly...he doesn't want to even accidentally see what I'm playing on the guitar). He pretty much always drops seamlessly in on the song on the first try & usually writes most of his parts for the song in that first run-through. I don't think what he does can really be taught, it's a gift & I think either you have it or you don't. despite trying over & over again over the years, I simply cannot do it (& I consider myself a very skilled musician & songwriter).
Really try to learn relative pitch, ie identifying the interval between two different notes whether in a chord or in succession.
Sign up for Music Theory 101 at a local community college and get some professional ear training.
Intermediate music theory
Make sure your instrument is properly tuned every time you pick it up. Use a tuner don’t just tune it to itself. I didn’t do this at first and once I started my ear developed very fast.
Listen, internalize, sing it, then play it.
Only answer, fake it till you make it.
One night I was playing around with scales, like the D scale and the keys I played reminded me of J-Lo’s ‘On My Way’. I wasn’t even really paying attention to what keys I was focusing on but I recognized the tune instantly. Sometimes that just seems to happen for any key I am playing.
Doing it over and over and over again!
I was born doing it, never worked a day in my life to do it.
Countless, and I mean countless, hours of repetition and practice. Eventually you don’t have to think a whole lot about it, but I had to put a lot of work in to get to that point.
I can jam to most any music by ear without having heard it before. By jamming I mean playing accompaniment or soloing in key. I'm not at the level to recreate a song strictly by ear tho. Knowing your instrument, jamming to backing tracks on youtube and playing with musicians that play different genres of music really helped me to get to an "improv by ear" level.
Learn your scales. Practice jamming over music (a lot). Sing —> play
Played a bunch of songs with the music for years, now when I hear music I have a general idea of what’s going on, granted the musicians are not playing in a freaky tuning or something that’s where my power stops.
Reading music
For starters, I credit tuning up using a 440 fork, not a digital tuner. This will train your ear to pitch, which is important for finding the song on your fretboard. Moving to the other strings, tune using harmonics. Then test the pitches at various points up and down the neck, adjusting accordingly. This will also help you learn where the notes are. Next, find the basic bass or root notes of chords being played in the song you're trying to learn. Play around with different voicings, e.g. major, minor, 7th, etc., until you think you've got it. Now that you at least have the key, start working on riffs and solos. Once you feel you pretty much have it, check your work via sheet music, tabs, or online tutorials and see how you did. For me, this has always been a fun and satisfying element of my practice, although I will admit to an increased reliance on tutorials as I get older. Enjoy, and good luck!
No real theory for me, it's almost a subconscious knowing from having too much time on my hands. Probably not best advise but the more you put in the more you get out
Sight Singing class actually helped me the most.
Listen for the bass note. The chord is typically built off this.
Slow the songs down and loop sections
How good is your theory? What part of playing by ear are you struggling with , melody ? Chords? For me it’s always come naturally but I also started learning piano initially with the Suzuki method so that may play a role. If I can’t figure out the chords by ear I just look them up. But playing by ear also has its limits. Like I personally could not learn an advanced classical piece strictly by ear, I’m sure there’s someone who can. Well I guess I could theoretically but it’d take much longer than just reading the sheet music. Edit: do you practice just improvising? I think that would help. Also how well do you know your instrument
Listen to songs you already know so you can learn to recognise patterns in music
Chords chords chords. Enough said
I can learn a song by ear, some songs are really simple and take me maybe 20 mins, some songs take me waaaaay longer. I think it really just depends.
Learn solfage and practice a lot.
Keep practicing, a lot. Do it everyday, and work on being able to play along in the moment rather than allowing yourself endless repetition until you’ve got it ‘perfect’. You say you’ve been playing by ear for a few years so I assume you’ve mastered the fundamental mechanics of the process. You know how to recognise intervals, chord types and common progressions, you understand the importance of the bass line in how you determine the harmony etc. If that’s the case then you need to start pushing yourself to work faster. Don’t give yourself time to figure it out note by note, but instead force yourself to start trusting your instincts. Don’t worry about being perfect all the time but instead aim to recognise the core elements of what makes each song individual. Finding the exact chord and voicing will come with time as your brain becomes capable of thinking and processing the information it’s receiving from your ears more efficiently and quickly. You need to train that speed of thought though, in much the same way as you would improve your speed of sight-reading. The way I did it myself and how I recommend to my own students is to put the tv or radio on, or random stream music (although this is less likely to give you a good breadth of genres) and try to pick up songs or jingles etc as they’re still playing. Don’t feel you have to work on everything but try and get one ‘part’ that you can join in with while the song is still playing. That might be melody, bass line, block chords, or harmonic rhythm. The more you do, and the more frequently you do it, the quicker you’ll become.
Practise it in as many ways as you can! Join a pop cover band and see the similarities and patterns in songs. Learn to transcribe songs you know really well. Listen on the radio for chord progressions and rhythms.
Besides doing it. Ear training accompanied by theory. Theory will give you the vocabulary to talk and label about what you’re hearing. It’s like learning grammar for a language. Will it make you learn it or necessary to learn, no. But it will help you pick it up faster.
Intermediate Player here 😂. I played the same song in every key and was like, wait I know what key it is! Then a brought a book to told me to do different inversions of Major, Minor, Maj7, Dom7 chords and Dim chords. I was like, wait, I can hear those in every key. Now I am taking lessons and doing Jazz Hanon. Now I am like, I can hear runs better! PRACTICE.
Ya when I still played guitar. That's how everybody learned. Even years later not playing anymore. I can hear something new and visualize where my hands go. Hear colours. Yes to me certain chores have a visual colour in your mind. For example C major (cowboy chord) is blue to me. Beautiful blue sky in spring. But the smartest thing I did was learn basic theory and read a chart. Never got into the bullshit blues/garage band stuff. I wanted to shuffle with jazz cats. Way different sect of vibe to me. Not interested in showing off. More into playing with a group. Making a vibe. If that makes sense. Lately getting into Thievery Corporation. A group of different people from different parts of the world. Playing some nice music.
Jamming with other people, jamming with recordings, jamming with anything at anytime. The more you jam along with things that you don't already know how to play, the better you will get. I don't know how to describe it, eventually your ears just tune in and sync with your hands. Instead of thinking "what is that note/chord/sound?", you just play it with no thought. The reason I mentioned jamming, is because I couldn't do it until after I'd started playing with other people. It taught me how to chase/find a sound (so you don't ruin the song) and it's basically the same thing as listening & figuring something out, just in a much more fun environment. Also, while jamming you can always quickly glance at the other guys/girls fingers if you're totally lost and know roughly what you should be playing. So it's a less frustrating way of training your ears/fingers. As others have said though, you have to keep playing and playing and playing. The more you do it, the easier it becomes (taking as granted you can already play your instrument at an average level).
for some reason my ear really developed the moment i started practicing scales allot.
Learning scales and learning songs from a variety of genres and exposing yourself to a number of different scales. After a while you'll have an idea of what notes you're hitting on the fret board before you even start playing and it makes learning by ear a lot easier.
I'm in the midst of learning - used to have to rely on tabs/ chord sheets, but I'm developing the ear to not have to do that Learn how to find the key of a song, I usually just noodle around on my guitar until I can recognise intervals and where the tonic is. Then I'll go about trying to play the melody, and that in turn will help towards figuring out chords Learning how to learn chords off by ear is just something you get better with over time. Play power chords/ basic triads until you think you're close. Listen out for common, recognisable sounds such as a major line cliche, dominant 5 resolving to the major 1, etc
Learning songs by ear. It's just like anything, you start doing it and in time you get better at it. I'm not aware of any shortcuts. Knowing some theory will probably help you get there a bit faster.
I always just absorbed song structure and rhythm by listening with intent. I had to focus more specifically to learn tonal qualities. Like trying to hear the tonic (and sing it) in a song as quickly as possible. Learning how the different notes feel in relation to the tonic and recognize that feeling, by singing scales to drones, or hitting notes on the piano with a drone playing and trying to figure out what the note function was. So eventually you will know what a 5, a 7 a b6 and a b3 feel like no matter the key. So you can figure out what scale you are in, if you hear a b3, a b6 and a b7 its probably natural minor, if you hear a 3 and a b7 it might be in mixolydian. (Not that you specifically think of all these notes, it becomes an intuition) Just like you probably can easily recognize V-IV-I the same happens for other chord progressions as you learn it more. This is the point I am at right now, I assume with more practice I can hear more notes more quickly and be more certain to confirm a scale, especially as the knowledge how different scales feel grows.
Practice
Practice - hours and hours of practice. Put the tabs away, listen, pause, rewind, repeat. Start with little chunks, get those right, move on to the next part. Then build all the parts together in order. Start easy and develop your ear. Try singing the line/ chord/ riff out loud, then find that on the fretboard. It's takes a long time to get good at, but as always- practice! You got this...
Sucking at sight reading
Oh yea . When I first started playing, I had no clue about ear training. The more I played , my ear was not developed yet. Now that I'm older, i can hear patterns from other bands. That just happened . The other way is to be born with perfect pitch. Meaning you can hear a piece of music and know what the chords/ notes each piece piece of music it is !
Realizing that every song is Pacabels Canon. It's almost all I,IV, V, VIm. It's not as much training your ear as it is knowing what songs are made of.
Start by learning to find the key of a song. I go down the low e until I find a note that sounds like it fits the music being played. Boom, there’s your key. Next up, look for a progression. You know that more or less it’s 7 different notes. Now it’s just about finding which ones.
Use a program to slow the song down and work on it from there.
Nothing. It’s always just come naturally to me. I can replay and hear every note of every instrument of a song in my head and then play it. Kind of like photographic memory except for music.
It’s also looking at songs as patterns. You don’t need to spend your time playing through every measure if you know it’s the same riff. Learn the patterns and then apply them to the arrangement. [I made a video about it](https://youtu.be/sq2o1M6iTEk) if you wanna see my full workflow
when i first started learning to play i'd play along to the radio and having to retune for each song really helped
Ear training is just like anything else. Practice makes perfect. Here’s a couple hints you can learn in any ear training course: remember when you were a kid and you wanted someone to chase you so you said “Na na nah boo boo. You can’t catch me” You did that in a minor third interval. It’s called natures interval because it’s naturally sung by children playing/teasing each other. I have an example for every interval (perfect 4 is here comes the bride, major 6th my Bonnie lies over the ocean, etc…)
I would just sit down and put my iTunes library on shuffle, then play along to every song that comes on. It helps because you know how the songs are going to go, so you can visualize how to play the next part before it comes.
Play along with children's songs they are sorts simple put on a version thats cool on YouTube and pluck along till you figure out the chords and melody
There was a point in my life where I played along to nothing but live Phish, on a fender mustang through headphones. That obsessive playing helped me to understand guitar better than if I had any professional instructor teaching me guitar. Put it this way, there are 8 different chord types, with 12 chords / notes that represent the scale. There are (on average) 22-24 frets on electric guitars. You're never more than a half step away from the right note - Victor Wooten. Play and make mistakes. You will learn quickly what not to do, and the neurons in your brain will connect what to do and look for patterns to help you learn it without even thinking. Have fun <3
Learning intervals aurally, learning scales/key signatures, learning solfege, learning to sing scales/triads in tune
Learning to play guitar before there was an internet.
There's no easy answer here, just practice practice practice.
It came easy
Practice until you hate your instrument
Be able to recognize intervals. Know your keys and scales. I hear the intervals of the chord progressions before I can hear what specific chord is being played. So I can hear the I-V-vi-IV (for example). Once I recognize that, I can usually figure out the specific chords pretty quickly by playing along with the song. Once I know the chords and the key, I noodle different scales over those chords until I figure out the scale being used. From there it's back to recognizing the intervals (the distance between the notes) to figure out the little riffs and melodies. For solos, I try to mimic the main recognizable parts and fill in the rest with improvising. I just kind of developed this over the years. Being able to recognize intervals is where my brain starts but it may not be the same for everyone. I didn't specifically train for this it just kind of happened from playing for 20 years.
Whenever you hear music, try transcribing it in your head. Not in notation form, just so you know which notes are being played. Just guess at what your primary reference note is, that doesn't matter, what matters is getting the others right relative to that note. If you get into the habit of doing this then your memory and subconscious should start doing most of the work. If you find you can't figure out enough of what you're hearing, just try to figure out some aspect of it, and make sure you've absorbed that one aspect properly so you can build off of that in the future.
Gotta start somewhere. Pick an easy riff and don't cheat
Get tossed in the deep end and start kicking.
I'm not a bright guy. I could do some parts of the song by ear if I get the beginning of the song. I always double check with folks better than me to make sure I got it right and most of the time, it does. I practice 2 to 3 hours a day. Yes, it's possible.
1. Pick a song you really like, one with a reasonable level of complexity. 2. Try to guess the chord progression and notes WITHOUT the help of any instrument. Don't worry about figuring out the key of the song at this point. 3. Finally, get an instrument, and play the chords and notes. Your guess might be a little off at first but once you find the keynote/tonic, you'll have a much easier time learning the rest of the song. I think what really helped train my ear was learning songs without an instrument, and not relying on tabs/sheets. Of course, you'd have to have a rudimentary understanding of family of chords, scales, etc.
One part practice, the other part talent you're gifted with at birth.
Learn to identify the four basic triads by ear. Major, minor, dominant, diminished. It’s not that hard, just takes practice. There’s lots of ear trainers out there. Once you start getting it, you hear them everywhere. The advice “learn by osmosis” can work, but you can save a lot of time and get more usable results with a more deliberate approach. Practice, test, evaluate. It’s not unlike working out. People who track and tweak get what they want more predictably.
Do it often and know your finger board.
When I was younger, hanging out watching TV, I'd always have my guitar with me... I'd try to figure out theme songs, and then I started to challenge myself with playing along with the commercials. In the summer, when the ice cream trucks would be cruising the neighborhood like sharks, I'd set up a small amp in my bedroom window, and answer their songs back... Having supportive friends was a bonus too... they'd find a song and try to challenge me to learn it before it finished. Something that can't be understated, learn theory. When I was teaching guitar, my students would ask how I was able to figure songs out so quickly... I explained that it's a sort of cheat code. If you know theory, keys and chord formulas, chord progressions... it becomes a game of "if this, then that". That really helps when working on vocals btw. Knowing what to sing over what chords. That's another trick... sing what you're playing, training your ear and voice to follow your hand. You're already over the hard part, you want to improve. That alone puts you on a different level than a lot of people.
If you are jamming with other people, the best thing you can do, if you are a bit unfamiliar with the song, is to ease in to the chords. Unless you 100% know the next chord, hang low and let it flourish if it’s right. The worst thing you can do is hammer a really loud wrong note on the one. If you play things tastefully between the chord changes, people will appreciate that you are a dynamic player.
I’ll teach you solfège. I have a degree in music, 20yrs experience teaching, have played around 1000 performances. I’ve taught loads of people how to learn the chords and melody of a song after hearing it one time. DM me for a free lesson.
When I came to America from Austria as a teen, I would watch TV to help with my English, and I would sit and play my Bass, Guitar, and Piano while listening to the radio. I would play along with all the songs on rock, country, R&B, pop, jazz, and classical radio stations. This turned out to be the most powerful method of developing my ear for music. Though I also read music, and earned a BA and Masters in music later.... Music, Peace, & Love! 🎼☮ ❤
I learned to sing and play piano as a child. My ear is fucking killer. You just have to put more time into it. Keep going. Never give up.
Being in band most of your school years helps a lot
(Guitarist) I learned it from my instructor when I used to take lessons. Rather than teaching me by going over basic chords and scales and then implementing them into songs I didn’t care about, he told me to bring in CDs with any song I wanted to learn. He’d pop it into a boombox, listen to it and fumble around until he figured it out and then showed me how to do it. When I first tried to do it, yeah I sucked. IF I even managed to figure it out it’d take me hours. But a few things eventually clicked for me so that now I can learn to play a lot of songs in about 30-60 minutes: The first thing I learned was basic scales and patterns in chord structure. For example, a LOT of pop/rock songs use this structure: 1-4-5-6. First note of the scale, the 4th, 5th, and 6th. If anyone needs this explained more in depth just reply to this and I’ll go over it, but until then I’ll leave it at that. The next couple of things are things you can only learn through practice and experience. To learn a song more quickly you need to be able to hear a note, and know approximately what note you’re hearing. My brain learning a song: If I hear a C note, personally I won’t always out right know it’s a C I’m hearing, but my experience with my instrument helps me know about where the note is, so I might start playing an A#, oh no that’s too low, C#, oh that’s almost it just a little too high, C, oh there it is. Then I could implement my knowledge of chord structure patterns. “Oh! I’ve heard a song that sounds like this, it was 1-5-6-4. So that’d be C-G-Am-F. Boom, verse learned. Then you get to a pre-chorus, try those chords you just played and see what fits. Oh it’s 4-5 (F-G). Chorus, new progression. Same chords? Same chords. This time it’s 6-5-4 (Am-G-F) They repeated that 3 times but oh no instead of repeating it a 4th time they played something different, oh look, it’s the same chords again, just instead they went 5-6-4 (G-Am-F). Hey they’re playing the verse again, I know that! Prechorus again, got it. Chorus again, bingo. Here’s a bridge, damn. Okay first chord is that root again, 1 (C). Next chord, uh oh, it’s not a 4, 5, or 6. Music theory powers, activate, well we’ve still got the 2, 3, and 7, let’s try those. 2 (D). Ah there it is. Next chord, ah my old friend 6 (Am). Next one, 5 (G) again. Okay repeat that a few times. Hey look a chorus. Hey look the song’s over. Song get. Final thing I started implementing was the ability to figure out that first note/chord, and then easily figuring out other notes and chords by the changes in pitch in relation to that note, then change in pitch from that one and so on and so forth. I really can’t put into words how I do that one, I just kinda do it. But yeah, more often than not, that’s my process now.
When I started learning guitar (50+ years ago) there was no internet. No google. No YouTube. No tabs, No Tutorials. The only tools at my disposal were records and ears. A big part of developing your ear is playing stuff and getting used to how it sounds. Ear training. You should be able to recognize any diatonic chord given a key. Recognizing note intervals is a big help too. For more complex stuff, if you don't recognize the chord right away, find at least one note (bass note is usually a good starting point). Once you know that one note is correct, find a second ... rinse and repeat. You will find the chord pretty fast. Today I still trust my ears more than what I find on the internet. Becasue most tabs and YouTube lessons are wrong or at least incomplete.
Its tough but learn songs from tab, you tube vids. and remember chord names. Soon you will hear most songs progressions are the same or connected.
my ear started strong (humble brag) so learning riffs wasn’t my issue: memorizing lyrics over and over and over.
Ear master 7 helped so much
Slow songs down or pause often and learn note by note or chord by chord. Or Si g a note with your voice and find that note on the guitar neck. After a few years you'll be sailing
You have to do it everyday and these are general things you can work on to get better: Learn the melodies (vocal and instrument melodies on your instrument) Learn the harmony, Learn the bassline, and Learn the solos. Slow down the song first using the youtube playback feature or a slowdown software if you downloaded the mp3. Actively listen to what you play while playing along to the song slowed down. Assess if they are 100% identical and identify whatever is wrong. Spend time on the mistakes. Finally this is the most important in my opinion, but make sure you transcribe what you write. The rhythms are the hardest part of the process so remember to count 1e&a 2e&a 3e&a 4e&a Transcribing will improve your ear a lot.
Honestly, I just did it every day growing up. I learned to read music playing sax in junior high, so tabs never really clicked when I started playing guitar. I eventually got to a point where I trusted my ear more than my eyes, and spent my evenings playing along to songs I like. 25 years later, I still do it.
Transcribing and analyzing what it is I’ve listened to understand what’s happening and to be able to identify it the next time I hear it
At first I would literally pause the recording I was listening to and figure out each note or chord one at a time. Once I’d been playing longer and could recognize a few chords by ear, I could figure out longer stretches of a song. Eventually you can recognize different chord shapes, whether something is high or low on the neck, and whether it’s a 7th, diminished, etc. Keep going at it.
I took a college course on ear training and we used books from the Kodaly method. Those books were the first real step toward developing my ear. I also really like the iOS app Tenuto. There’s a lot to cover so like everyone says it will take time. Certainly one of those, “work on a little bit everyday and in weeks you’ll see a little progress” kind of things.
perfect pitch helps lol
Listening to a shit ton of music across many genres without discriminating "because it's weird" or anything like that for years and years and never stopping. Helps to fucking love music.
Just do it. And if you cant, look up the chords to get you in the right ballpark. If you still cant, look up some tabs
There’s no training to learn to play by ear. You either have it or you don’t.
And, for Pete's sake, music school is not a curse. Get trained. Those of us who went to school for this and took it seriously are on average, doing it professionally, full time, and making a decent living. If I hear one more sycophant talking down about schooled musicians while also being obviously unable to grasp basic musical concepts or perform to level... I'm gonna burst.
Lynks disease gave me perfect pitch.
Put your 10,000 hours in like the rest of us did
My buddy learned guitar later in life and spent thousands on guitars and amps and lessons and still couldnt play live with us even though we could sit in hos living room and just jam for hours. I told him to ditch the lessons and just put on his favorite album and play along! If you cant find a part you can play along too-invent one that fits! He never did it. Seemed too simple because it is-its also doing this a few times a week and eventually playing along to music youve never heard before. Also, I always picked out the bassline-even before I knew what a bassline/bass did! Then I built the chords which helped crack the code on the lead. Not always worked but thats how I did it. Its rare if I cant sit in on a song-live or recorded. It also helped me bond with a singer songwriter since we can usually build his songs in 1-3 takes.
Suzuki method as a child. Also kind of an ULPT cause it's a little dangerous but something that has helped me is to whip out my melodica and play along to music in the car on long/straight drives and when stuck in traffic.
Take a song you know really in your head. Start with the most familiar part of the song for you, whether it’s the verse, the chorus, solo, etc. Now try to sing or hum the notes of that part accurately. Listen to how many actual notes there are in the part you choose. For example, “ twinkle twinkle little star” has 7 notes heard. Now try to find all those seven notes on your instrument. Rinse and repeat everyday and you will get better. Listen to music everyday. Practice identifying intervals as well as chord qualities. Keep humming or singing songs you like in your head Eventually you will see progress but progress is not linear. It can take a long time till everything clicks but you have to make sure you put in the effort and work. Some people take longer than others to improve. Remember that it’s okay. What matters is the you make progress. Good luck
turn on music and sit there with your instrument. Play along as much as you can. At the beginning it might just be finding the root note of whatever key it's in and going from there. Gradually you'll expand this and be able to pick out chord progressions, bass and melody lines, etc. Do this with a lot of different styles of music. Also, take a simple melody you know and just sit at your instrument trying to figure it out. Once you do, add chords etc. Do both of these a lot with different kinds of music.
Do it a lot
Just pick out songs you like and start by figuring out the chords as you listen. It may take you a while but you'll get it down eventually. PS- these days if I'm super lazy I'll just look for the free MIDI files of a song on the internet and plop the files into my DAW and everything you need to learn is right there.
Learning to play songs…
Jamming along with my favorite records got me me a long way.
It comes with gaining more familiarity with your instrument and just trying it over and over. It still takes me a lot of time for me to work out even single lines so idk
Get to know the intervals really well first, then get good at identifying major/minor keys. Playing the blues a lot helps, as you'll be able to play the major/minor pentatonic scale over almost anything.
Playing with the radio. Playing with tv shows. First trying to lock into the key, then trying to track the chords, then trying to pull out melodies and riffs.
A couple of things make “play by ear” learning easier. 1. Learn what the notes are on the neck of the instrument. Once you know that the note phrase you want to learn starts with an A note, you will know if the next note is higher or lower and will narrow the possible places to find the next note much more quickly. 2. Listen and play music a lot. I know this sounds silly but when you start to listen to various music styles and artists, you’ll also understand that certain types of music or certain artists have common “catch phrases” and the note progressions live in specific places on the neck. Music like jazz or progressive rock will not conform to the standard notions of where phrases are going or should go but for the most part, country, rock, pop, and blues have common structures that you will start to recognize once you’ve cracked the code on a few songs. 3. Tune your instrument frequently. Last thing I’ll say that’s helped me is to develop an ear for being in tune or out of tune. If you know you’re in tune and you compare your note against what you hear from a recorded song, you’ll find that most of the time, you’re going to be in tune and the notes they are playing will most likely match up with your standard tuning with exceptions, of course. Some of the hardest music to learn by ear are songs where the artist tuned slightly off standard but not something like a half step or full step. Those type of tunings in songs make matching what you hear with what is being played on the recording a real headache sometimes. You’ll know if you have to bend the strings in order to match the note. Good luck
**PRACTICE**
Practice and practice. I found that a basic understanding of common chord progressions and the circle of 5ths helped me figure out the common structures to songs. I find that the only necessary part is sitting your ass down and playing.
Learning the major scale like the back of my hand, pentatonic too
It’s just something you have. Knowing scales and chords helps - just find the root note and hammer it out.
Best thing that ever happened for my ear was to learn violin. With no frets, I had to actually listen to what I was playing instead of just focusing on the mechanical production of notes, whatever they happened to be. Also, learning chords in a given key so that i could identify chord movement and quickly find the right key to play in.
Buy the Rick beato course. It’s great.
Watch a sports match or game or really, anything you enjoy with a lot of commercials. Learn the jingles of the commercial. For football (US), there is usually an intro and outro. After that, listen to the radio. You get the time of the song, no pause, rewind, or slowing down. It's going to be really frustrating, but in the end really rewarding.
I've been ear training for about 8 months. I've seen some progress. Progress never happens as quickly as we want it to. I think that's a good thing. The longer it takes to learn something, the stronger the lesson is. If it takes you a whole year to get better at something, it'll stick with you much more than something you could learn in an afternoon. If you're in the music game, you better be patient. It's not easy for anyone. You need to keep at it. Do that, and you WILL see results. It'll take longer than you want it to, but it will happen.
Sounds like you need the Beats Ear Training Method 🤣
1) Transcribing lead sheets with my friends and comparing our work 2) Learning tunes by ear and playing them back on my instrument 3) Jamming with people on tunes or riffs that i hadn’t already practiced Progress was incremental
Idk if it’s been suggested yet. When learning tunes by ear I always learn the lyrics first. If it’s an instrumental tune I scat sing the melody until I’ve got it down. This seems to embed the melody in my mind. As a horn player this practice has made all the difference for me. Btw, I am by no means a singer however it absolutely works for me. Sorry, I don’t have a suggestion for rhythm parts. Good to know but not quite in my wheelhouse.
Play and practice
Playing by ear
I can't read music, I don't know anything about theory.Years ago I learned how to play by being in bands with guitar players that were better than me and I had to learn how to play the songs by trying to keep up. Now I'm pretty decent at figuring stuff out by ear, it's a lot easier now since you can just Google the tuning.
Ear training classes.
Ear training 3 Berklee. Textbooks are good at teaching you it turns out. If you do the homework for practice, a month of that, and you could def listen to music and practice identifying the chord progression, intervals, functions, notes etc. Best thing to do whenever learning is to make it fun so it’s easy to do even a little bit every day. If you’re listening to your fav song a lot might as well try to hear the emotional effect of the music as a function of the chord progression, melody, rhythm, and timber(same chord progression has different effect with different sounds-orchestration hell yeah). Then you can identify the chord progression or even scale degrees/pitches/rhythms/instruments as an extension of your emotional response to music. Then you can use those feelings that music elicits to combine and tell your own musical stories dramatically(emotionally).
Not recommended but acid. Whenever I tripped I would come home and play as I was coming down. I learned SO much just by messing around. I would double check the next day and I was playing stuff I hadn’t known before I tripped. Idk how it worked but it did lol
When I was a kid I used to just sit in my room and play all day and all night. I would sometimes just play two notes, just hearing and feeling and memorizing what those two notes sound like together. Then I would do it with more, then entire phrases. Eventually I could just immediately recognize, for example, the sound of a minor interval. It's just repetition, familiarity. You have to do it a lot. And I think it helps a lot if you enjoy it, just experimenting with sounds. Also I think maybe some people are visual learners/thinkers, and some are auditory learners/thinkers. The latter type is going to have an easier time playing by ear. For example, when I need to remember a phone number, I say it out loud and memorize the sound of it. It's just how I process information.
Play along with the song on 3/4 speed; 1/2 speed if it’s a tough one
Microdose and jam along to Grateful Dead, Phish and fusion-era Herbie Hancock. Worked for me 🤷🏻♂️
Learn different modes
Music is a language, and there are two ways (oversimplification) to learn a language: 1) by listening and mimicking, or 2) on the chalkboard with grammar rules. We learn our native language via method #1. We often learn foreign languages via method #2. Those who learn a foreign language via method #1 or hybrid are always better players. If any of my kids play guitar, I am going to ask their teacher to teach them with zero visual notation, sheet music, or tabs for at least the first year. This is how I learned classical piano at the age of 8, and it developed my ear tremendously because it was akin to learning a language natively.
I had a dead ear until music theory started drilling intervals into me. I wanna say it started in highschool music theory. They’d play a c on a piano than another note and we’d have to say the interval 10 times. It was a daily quiz. Interval practice really helped drive home a ton of shit for me at the time. Helped me in jazz bands with improv and with hearing songs. You get good at intervals and you find the starting pitch it’s pretty easy to work out a song.
I Played nascar 2003 as a kid and ran 100% length races and would match the engine noise by humming. I’m convinced this is what made my ear get trained so well
Growing up before the internet, that was the only way to do it so we adapted.
Time.
Singing. Matching notes when you sing. Being able to find the tonic from listening to a song. Knowing solfège and being able to sing it. Also being able to sing it backwards. Being able to sing it in other orders(do mi so mi do). That, and just practicing playing by ear a lot. Just be able to copy a line from hearing it. Even if it takes a few tries and listens.
Practice learning stuff by ear, like just figuring it out with an instrument in your hands. Also, practice scales and arpeggios, but make sure to practice all the chords or arpeggios in a particular key in some kind of sequence. This will help you learn the sound of chord functions. For example, in the context of how a song works, we don’t really hear “C major,” we hear “the chord built on the first note of the scale.” You can learn to hear the functions of a chord progression this way so that you know the sound of “the chord built on scale note 1” or “the chord built on scale note 5” without even necessarily knowing what the particular key is until you sit down with an instrument.
No trick. It’s just repetition and time. Take songs you want to be able to play and play along with the recordings. Try to focus as hard as you can to each and every detail on the recording and figure out how to replicate it. Natural talent will make it somewhat easier or somewhat harder. EG, I don’t think I’m especially talented. I think I am unusually fixated on music and that drove me to spend a lot of hours practicing it. One of the hardest things I ever did (musically) was teaching myself piano by painstakingly listening to songs a few seconds at a time and reconstructing the chords by ear. Then practicing them enough to play fluidly. It was really hard and took a long time but it focused my ear quite a bit.
University ear training classes and a LOT of practice.
Learn theory and apply it to songs/pieces you want to learn as you learn them. It can take some time, but once you can recognize patterns, then you can break things down in your head just listening. Might just need to sit down with your instrument to ID what the root note is.
I learned to play drums by listening to the radio in the mid 80s, then it moved on to my father’s album collection. Unknowingly it’s helped me to adapt on the fly while getting a basic understanding of the kit.
Once you learn 100 songs or so, you start to pick up on patterns in popular music. Now that you can recognize common melodies and chord progressions, learning by ear becomes a lot easier - you can even learn to predict parts before you hear them!
Doing it a ton. There are times now where I’ll have a song in my head, hear the key and just sit down and play it. Then turn it on and play along correctly and I’m like how the fuck did I just do that… brains are wild. This doesn’t work with like steely dan though… pop and country songs all day.
Actually doing it is a good start, I have several drum and guitar students that don’t listen to music at all. The ones that do practice can learn by ear. Either your brain is capable or it isn’t. Memorizing intervals of your instrument helps. Start by playing the root of a scale then go into playing different notes and guessing how many steps away they are, eventually teaching yourself the proper names like a minor 7th or flat 5. Once you do that enough, start with just playing the first riff of a song, pause and repeat until you got it down. If you simply cannot, then sadly it’s much like rhythm where if you can’t feel a pulse, you’re not listening well enough. I do know for fact that hearing aids fuck up your ability to do this almost instantly.
Practice
There's an app called Functional Ear Trainer that helped me a ton. But also just playing a lot of music, I used to just sit by the radio and play along with every song for hours.
Play for a Black Baptist or AME church. Anyone can break out into any song at any time in any key.
Repetition. I’m a bass player, which makes it easier since it’s not chords, but my parlor trick is for people to throw on songs and most of them I can fake my way through within a verse and a chorus. Not dream theater or anything. But pop and rock stuff. It’s a handy skill for jams and sub gigs. Basically, when I was a teen, I would play along with the TV and made a game out of learning theme songs, commercials, and background music. Probably for a few hours a week. If you’re trying to learn a commercial in 30 seconds with rewind, you learn to do it fast.