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Ear training should be a regular part of your practice routine. In fact, ear training should be a regular part of your day as a musician, regardless of whether you practice that day or not. Like any other skill, your ability to hear and recognize notes and chords is something that can be developed with regular practice and application.



There are many good ear training products on the market today. These products will drill you on pitch and interval recognition, chord quality (major, minor, etc) and progression. They may even have a cool little certificate that you can print out stating that you have completed the "course" ... if that's what you're into

However, you really do not need to buy a book or software to train your ear when you can do a much better job using only a song that you want to learn.

Transcribing from a song, the art of listening and learning the song from the music you hear, is the best way to improve your ear. You not only get the pitch/chord drills as you would with an ear training program, you also learn about phrasing, bends, vibrato, trills, slides, whammy bar use and the way effects can be used.

Here are some ideas and thoughts around transcribing.

1. Get everything you need transcribe for your practice room. Guitar, tuner, music, pencil, tab or staff paper, eraser, coffee When you sit down, you want to be in the mind set that it is time to work. Nothing breaks that like having to get up to get a pencil. Then get up again to find your tuner ... and then again to get the CD you were going to work on.

2. Warm your ear up by picking out a melody like Happy Birthday or Jingle Bells. It doesn't matter what key it is in. Just start with one note and find the next note and so on until you have the melody and can play it all the way through. Some tunes you can try are: ABC song, twinkle twinkle little star, amazing grace or any nursery rhyme that you know well. Try some cartoon tunes like Scooby Doo, Flinstones or Battle of the Planets (one of my fav's as a kid - who remembers that cartoon?)

3. Start simple. For a new activity such as this, it can be slow going and frustrating at times as you try to pick out the notes and chords from your tune. No need to compound your frustration by picking a tune that has a lot of altered chords or that is uptempo with a solo of about 2000 notes. Pick a slow to mid tempo song to start with.

4. Figure our the key. Use your major and minor scale to play over the song to see which scale fits over the chords being played. Some scales will sound horrible over the song, eliminate them from consideration. Some scales will sound "somewhat" ok, eliminate them from consideration. Typically, if the song stays in the same key for its' entirety, there will be one scale where every note fits the progression. Once you have this, determine if the song sounds "sad" or "dark". If so, it is likely in a minor key. This is where a little music theory will help. Knowing your relative major/minor relationship and chord structures for major and minor keys will help you with the next step.

5. Listen to the Bass line to work out the chord progression. The bassist will typically place emphasis on the chord root while they play. If you can pick out the bass line, with your key theory, you can then work out the chord progression.  Key theory and chord structures are too complicated to get into here. Look for a future blog on these.

6. Once you have the chord progression, work on the solo. Remembering #3 above, starting simple, it is a good bet that simple solos will follow the melody and the chord progression very closely. If you know the key, there is also a good chance that the solo will use just a few notes from its respective major or minor scale. Start with your pattern and find the first note. Once you have that, it becomes as simple as listening to the next note to see if it is the same, lower or higher than the first. As you find the notes, write them out so that you will remember them later on.

Closing thoughts

• Practice away from your instrument. Listen to music everyday. And when you do, listen critically. Try to hear what the bass is doing, count how many times the verse is played before the first chorus. How many bars is the solo? Is it a major or minor key?
  
• The more you do this, the easier it becomes. Don't give up after one try because it is too hard. It is hard, no doubt. But stick with it and it will become easier!
• The more you know, the easier it becomes. I have heard way too often "Why do I need to know theory, I just want to play". If your goal is to just bang a few chords out, you probably don't need to know much more than how to grab the chords and strum. But, if you have ever wished you could play as good as your favorite musician, or have wondered how people can write/create such beautiful music, then you need to know why things work like they do. Bottom line, this ain't calculus folks. There are just a few simple rules on how notes are grouped to make scales, which notes are grouped to make chords and why the chords go together in a certain order. Once you have these in your head, everything becomes easier!
  
• As you get into more difficult songs, look into transcription hardware or software. There are some songs where the notes fly by so quickly, it is hard to hear what is going on. There are devices and software available that will take your song and slow it down so that you can then pick out the chords/notes. If anyone is interested in knowing more about these, let me know. I've tried almost all of them.
• Transcribe songs you want to learn. If you work on something you really want to play, you are more likely going to finish the job. If you start on a song that you have little interest in, you'll likely stop before finishing and move onto something else.
• Steal, er, collect research material from the songs you learn. Learning a song is great, but the real benefit is learning and having at your fingertips solo ideas, licks, riffs, chord progressions, etc., that you can play when you are playing with others or writing your own music. Make it a goal that from each song you work on, you'll take at least one thing away and incorporate it into your arsenal of ideas. Each solo I work on, I pick several phrases that I practice and throw into my own playing.
  
• Pat yourself on the back! When you finish a song, be happy in knowing that you can now play something as good as (or as nearly as good as) one of your favorite players.
  

guitar practice ear training learning songs by ear transcribing