Playing guitar by ear

[shredder123569]

I've been attemping to by by ear for a least a year. I work on it at least 2 hours a day, but i'm not getting better at all. I have a music slow down program slow gold wich helps, but still struggle to pick up the easiest stuff. What should i do? I thinking that i not meant to be a guitar player.

I was even going to go to MI this last Fall and got acepted, but i'm not going to go if my ear is not going to get better. I wouldn't be able to figure out that live playing workshop material. Any help would be a great.

[silent-storm]

I don't know what you are playing by ear, but instrumental stuff isn't always the best place to start.

Vocalists...it's all about vocalists. Play along with easy pop melodies. Most of those only have 3-4 notes. I'd suggest being able to play along in real time with most any pop melody before you move on to other stuff. If you can't sing along with the melody as it happens you may want to work on that as well, these are pretty much the same skills.

I remember one of my most productive days ever was when I sat down at my computer and played through every cheesy pop song I could find...hundreds of melodies for hours on end and by the end of it I could grab anything.

After that I'd suggest slow classical pieces, hip hop/r&b bass lines and Miles Davis. Try and keep everything in real time, no matter how hard it may be. You don't have to grab much, just try and hear a line, keep it in your head and try and get it while the rest of the song continues.

[Jacko]

I sometimes play along with the radio, trying to play the vocals, and then if it has a guitar chord pattern, try that too.

[shredder123569]

I've been working on some Marty's megadeth solo's at 35-50 percent speed. The weird thing i can hear all the notes good, but when i try and play it it's like the notes don't excist on my fretboard.

[Zatz]

I've been attemping to by by ear for a least a year. I work on it at least 2 hours a day, but i'm not getting better at all. I have a music slow down program slow gold wich helps, but still struggle to pick up the easiest stuff. What should i do? I thinking that i not meant to be a guitar player.



I know what you mean man. The guys are wondering what kind of ear training you use and it seems you really want to play it all on the fly real time - that exactly key, that exactly tempo.

Now the music is very polyphonic and sophisticated with lots of fx's layered on top of what already is a complex harmonic pie - no surprise that it can puzzle anyone. I'm not a very big fan of playing note by note for this reason. Let the song/instrumental boil inside you for some time. Then try to play it on your instrument. Don't listen to the original version after every single transcribed bit. Let it flow as you hear in your head - damn those neat bends and vibratos. Maybe when you're done with it you'll like your version even better and everyone will tell you - 'man, some nice arrangement you've made out of it'. It'll sound like you, it'll be easier to play and you'll get extra bonuses from listeners for being yourself.

[scott(ish)]

I know exactly what you mean, you hear a note but it just seems impossible to find it on the guitar. It happens to me too sometimes. I think it has something to do with hearing and remembering the note you just heard. If you can't hear it clearly in your head it'll be harder to find it on the guitar.

[shredder123569]

I think it might just be because i have terrible relitive pitch. Do you guys think if i learned all the intervals by ear good i would be able to play by ear better?

[Zatz]

I think it might just be because i have terrible relitive pitch. Do you guys think if i learned all the intervals by ear good i would be able to play by ear better?

At least you would be able to play consciously and thoughtfully, and actually it's what eartraining is all about.

[Madaxeman]

For me, this happened over a period of a few years. I hadn't played for awhile while in college, but found when I did pick up the guitar I could play songs that I used to have a hard time figuring out. I would listen to my CD's over and over to the point where I can "play" most any song from certain bands in my head. Not just hear a chunk of it, but actually hear the whole song front to back in my head like a radio.
Now when I sit down and play along to these songs, parts I used to get very frusterated at I find very easily.
For God's sake! Go to MI if you have the chance! Your ear will develop, and it would be hard to look back thinking you missed an opportunity if you somehow don't ever go.

[Bizarro]

It may be that you are working on the wrong things during your eartraining. Sometimes you need to crawl before walking, and walk before running! :)

Sing scales as you play them. Practice singing the intervals. Search for some free ear training SW for memorizing the intervals. You must internalize relative pitches. If you aren't good at relative pitch, how do you figure anything out by ear? It's like trying to read but you don't know the alphabet!

RANT: Relative pitch may be the single most important thing for every musician to learn. Why even be a musician if you don't know what you are hearing?

If you develop a better practice routine and work on it for 2 hours a day, you'll be a monster ear-master very soon! :)

[shredder123569]

Thanks for all the help guys! I just don't see how knowing the intervals in your head will help you pick up a fast solo.

[curiousgeorge]

Thanks for all the help guys! I just don't see how knowing the intervals in your head will help you pick up a fast solo.

Learning intervals will help your ear training tremendously, and you will be able to transcribe fast solos much easier...You may not see how it all works now, but work on it for awhile and you will realize just how important learning intervals is to your growth as a musician. (and for learning fast solos.)

[<KF>]

agreed. after becoming familiar with scale intervals, you can listen to a fast solo, and instead of just hearing "a bunch of fast notes", you hear "a series of intervals", and you will have a very good idea of exactly what it is that is being done in the solo, without even needing a guitar in hand.

[shredder123569]

Sounds good. I will start working hard on by relitive pitch corse i have from Davis Lucas Burge. How long do you think i will take to be come decent at it?

[Bizarro]

Time is hard to judge. If you are good at identifying your problem areas then it shouldn't take long. If you just work on the stuff you are good at and ignore things you have trouble with... it'll take forever!!

Do you sing? It is important to be able to sing along with scales. Vai, Satriani, and Morse all state the same thing in many of their lessons. It is a must-have skill for any serious musician.

[shredder123569]

No i don't sing, but i have the ability to sing along to scales and different intervals. The weird thing is i can hum the solo that i'm trying to learn, but struggle to learn it

[Bizarro]

If you can hum the solo, you have good ears but they are untrained. With some discipline and hard work you'll see great progress.

[shredder123569]

thanks, thats great news. So i'll i have to do is memorise all the intervals then i should have a decent ear?

[forgottenking2]

Not quite. You'll need to become familiar with the intervals first, both harmonic and melodic (that means played at the same time and one note at a time) then do the same with triads and scales, then arpeggios up to the 9th, then melodic patterns. This doesn't mean that your ear will suck throughout all this time. But it does mean that training your ears, like playing the guitar, is a lifelong journey. It can be fun though. So get started and enjoy the ride.

[silent-storm]

I've always thought it is strange how the first thing most people think of when they think relative pitch is intervals, when I don't really think that is the case at all.

So you memorize all your intervals and you hear a solo where the guitar jumps up a major 3rd...hmmm, so? Where'd the major 3rd start? where did it end? Hearing things in relation to the key is far more important then being able to recognize specific intervals. In fact I would argue that one would be perfectly competant if one were able to relate everything back to the given key and use theory to determine just what interval is being played. If you don't hear it as a major 3rd, but hear it as the 4th of the key moving up to the 6th of the key I think that would be far more information then the other way around. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think the two are all that related. Ya I know everything is related and I can recognize my intervals, but I never think that way when I'm figuring something out...you just hear it as a 4th, 6th, 9th, whatever, as though someone is whispering it to you. Hearing something move in relation to just the previous note isn't very much information at all, but if you hear something and say to yourself "damn, does that 9th ever sound sweet" then that's all the info you really need.

again, simple simple vocal melodies, slow classical etc...crawl before you trya and stand up. Anything else would be like trying to play some satriani before you can figure out some neil young.

[jade_bodhi]

I don't know what you're referring to when you say you're working on Marty's megadeath. It may be that that stuff is too difficult to begin with. The music I love to listen to is bebop, but I can't play it, even though I've been playing many years. So I've had to find good music that I am capable of mastering. I found success by starting with with easy stuff, slow paced stuff with slow changes and few notes. Just because it was easier than some other stuff didn't mean it was inferior music. Gradually, I got better and could play more advanced stuff. The best way one can learn to play an instrument, in my humble opinion, is to broaden one's taste in music and practice different styles.

Hope this is good advice. It has worked for me.

JB

[forgottenking2]

Intervals will help you precisely to recognize the 9th, 3rd, 7th degree of a scale. How do you know it's the 5th degree (as in Do Sol) by identifying the interval, it's true that when you hear a piece of music with some harmonic background things get a lot easier but knowing those intervals will help you in some less orthodox melodic situation (like atonal compositions... or Buckethead solos lol) . I don't think that intervals alone will give you a great ear, but I do think they are the right place to start... well maybe learn the major scale first (but I was assuming everyone knows that DO - RE - MI - FA - SOL - LA - TI - DO). The best way to (the only way I can) internalize intervals or anything for that matter, is to sing it. If you can't sing it it's going to be very difficult for you to recognize that sound accurately in all possible situations. You don't have to be a great singer. Simply be accurate. Transpose things up or down to fit your range or use falsetto. Most of us have about two octaves worth of usable range; if you are scared to sing and try to keep it REALLY quiet, chances are you think you only have about an octave, but trust me you do have that extra octave there. Good trained singers can have up to 3 octaves of range (!!!! insane ) .

So in short. Don't just learn it on paper and think you know it. Sing it. Sing anything from pop melodies to bebop heads (that's helping me a lot with the chromatic stuff).

Good luck!

[silent-storm]

yes, but wouldn't you want to start with the absolutely easiest possible scenario? Again, crawl before you even try and stand up.

You said it is easier with a harmonic background and if 99% of music has a relatively simple harmonic background it would seem silly to intentionally not play towards the averages. Sure we would all love to be able to just pick any melody out of the air, but in my oppinion that's not the place to start.

Take twinkel twinkel little star, or happy birthday, can't get any simpler then that, and figure out how the notes sound in relation to the chords. Make sure you hear them to the point that you don't even have to think about it, that root is just a root and the 5th is a 5th it can't be mistaken for anything else and you will know it for the rest of your life. Make sure you can recognize the bass movement and the chord qualities as a whole. Recognizing bass movement is probably the most useful and relevant aspect to all of ear training...something that can be directly applied to pretty much all situations. If you got that down move on to a slightly more difficult song, but if you don't you aren't in any position to try anything harder, least of all Buckethead. That's one of the main problems with ear training. When we get around to starting ear training we are usually relatively competant players and our minds and hands are way ahead of our ears. So we end up taking this huge step backwards which is honestly pretty boring, but it's worth it in the long run.

of course that's just my oppion...and yes singing is very important. That way you don't need an instrument to tell you if you are right.

[jade_bodhi]

I will definitely agree with others here who've said that training your voice will train your ear and help your chops in general. I have always liked singing and gravitated to it naturally while playing guitar, not realizing that it would help me learn music intuitively, but it has. Even a player without any aspirations as a singer would benefit immensely from voice training, even just the do-it-yourself kind of training.

"Believe it or not, you won't find it so hot, if you ain't got the do-re-mi."--Woody Guthrie

[(((0)))]

To play by ear, you have to know what notes sound like, play your pentonic scales and get them down, then try