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[P468]Play Guitar By Ear

by David Smithe, Dav

Have you ever met someone who could hear a song on the radio, then sit down at a piano or pick up a guitar and start playing the same song, without ever looking at the music for it? That is called playing by ear. If you have ever wanted to play guitar by ear, here are a few simple tips that will help you get started.

Start Simple:

Start out with this simple exercise to test your aptitude for learning how to play guitar by ear. Choose a simple, well known tune, like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Choose a starting note, and see if you can pick out the melody without help from someone else. After you feel you have mastered the simple tune, ask an objective listener to evaluate your playing. If they can identify the tune, there's a good chance that you have what it takes to learn by ear.

Progress Slowly:

Now that you've mastered Twinkle Twinkle Little Star with your chosen starting note, choose another starting note, and pick out the same tune. One of the key elements that all musicians who play by ear must master is the ability to work with any starting note. If you have some understanding of music theory, you will recognize that starting on a different note means that you have changed to another key. This is important if you want to accommodate vocalists with varying ranges.

Complex Issues:

If you don't already know some guitar chords, you will need to study a basic chord chart in order to start building the complexity of your songs. After you've practiced playing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star starting on any note, it's time to see if you can pick out the chord structure behind the song. This is a much more difficult task, and you may want to find a simple version of the song with the chord structure given online for your first try. If you have to look at the chord structure, try changing to a different starting chord and see if you can pick out the tune. You may want to enlist the help of a vocalist if you are not a singer yourself, just to see what the tune sounds like as an accompaniment to a melody.

Once you have reached the point where you can pick out basic melodies and chord structures, you can experiment with more difficult songs. For example, the chord structures for many rock songs are quite simple. You'll find that some have only 3 chords. Take a simple song, like Tom Petty's Free Falling. Pick out the melody as suggested above, and do it in several keys. Then move on to the chord structure, and make sure you can pick it out in more than one key as well.

By following this formula, you'll see that you can play guitar by ear, and use your skills to pick out riffs, licks, and melodic lines, as well as the underlying chord structure to a song. The more you listen to music and practice picking out the songs you hear on your guitar, the faster and easier you will develop your skills in playing by ear.

For most of us, learning an instrument requires an enormous amount of dedication %u2013 understanding fundamental principles and techniques before embarking upon long practices. Practicing long hours will finally reward the student with a working knowledge of the instrument. And, if they are lucky, after many years of hard work they may even become quite a masterful player. The guitar, especially, is held up as one of the more popular instruments to which people dedicate themselves. With images of musical grandeur in their heads they apply themselves night and day to the practice of guitar in the hopes of someday becoming proficient. But there are a rare few of us who can actually learn guitar by ear %u2013 an inherent skill that graces only the lucky among us.

Ultimately, you never know until you try if you can learn guitar by ear. If you are interested in taking up guitar and have a few chosen songs that you would really like to learn to play %u2013 try it out. If you play the song on a CD, those who can play guitar by ear can mimic the notes they hear on their own instruments. For those who have a working knowledge of the guitar %u2013 the ways in which to hold it and the tone that each vibrating chord makes %u2013 the possibility to learn guitar by ear is far more probable. Until you really understand the sounds that each chord is capable of making, it will be difficult to replicate the sounds you hear in your music on the strings of your guitar.

In some cases it is possible to train yourself to learn guitar by ear. Begin by learning the sounds the strings make on your guitar; really process this and hear it in your head as well as your ears. Listen to how the sounds change as you change chords and begin to listen to the music on your CDs with an ear towards those chord changes. You will soon begin to hear chord changes in the songs that you have listened to over and over without ever previously recognizing those chords. It%u2019s amazing how your ear changes once you begin to learn guitar; suddenly you are able to make those necessary correlations between the sound that your guitar makes and the sound that the guitar makes in some of your favorite songs. Pick one part of the song and begin to try it out on your own guitar; keep trying until you are able to replicate the sound. Soon enough you%u2019ll be able to piece the song together; often sounds are just repetition of the same chords.

While playing music adeptly by ear is in inherent skill, you can still learn guitar by ear if you are dedicated and single-minded in your task.

Article Source : Pg. 16

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Both David Smithe & Michelle Bery are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.

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