are there any good resources or any insider knowledge here on how you learn to play things by ear?
i’ve been wanting to learn a few songs for a while but the extent of information about them online is just chords, and that doesn’t help me with finger picking patterns at all so i was wondering if you had any good tips on getting started with it because i have no idea where i’d even begin. (i know i can just google “how to learn to play by ear” (and i am doing that as well) but i like to ask here as well because it’s nice to hear directly frmo real people)
plus i think playing by ear is a really good skill to have in general so i don’t have to rely on tabs and youtube videos to learn songs.
The best way I found when I was first learning was to start by listening to a song and just trying to play the root note along with the chord changes.
Wagon wheel is a great song for this because there’s no unusual chord shapes, and it’s good one to throw out any time says “hey, don’t you play guitar?” just follow the song to try and find the root notes of each chord as their played. This will help you get the rhythm down too.
Noodle around until you’ve got those, and then start playing the major or minor chord shapes instead of just the root. If you’ve got a little music theory, or even just know the chords in the key, this’ll be a little easier. But you should be able to figure out whether the chord should be major or minor by ear. For a lot of songs, this’ll get you reasonably close.
Repeat with a few easier campfire classics, and you’ll start to get a feel for it, which will make more complex songs a little easier. You’re gonna get frustrated every now and then when you come across a chord you’re not used to or a weird chord shape, so feel free to look stuff up if you’re really stuck and can’t figure out after a solid effort. After a while you get better at spotting 7 chords or inversions, but when you’re starting out, just get as close as you can and then if you have to, it’s fine to cheat a little with tabs to get that last 10 percent. After enough practice you’ll find you don’t need to “cheat” quite so often
I used to practice this intentionally a lot more, but nowadays to keep sharp, I sit and noodle while I’m watching tv, and I’ll try to figure out what sounds good over the soundtrack, which is a sorta halfassed way to practice but still give you a feel for figuring out the key of random songs, which helps for learning things by ear.
Lmk if you’ve got any specific questions!
thank you so much, i’ve got wagon wheel on the list now. do you know any other songs that’d be good to practice this with? the ones i’ve been trying with recently are way too fast for my smoothbrain lol and i’m having trouble keeping up. i feel like i’ve got alright technical skill but my ear might as well not exist. thank you again
No worries! My two favorites are probably country roads (another crowd favorite) and sink Florida sink by against me. Nice simple songs that aren’t too fast and sound very satisfying once you get the hang of them. Once you’ve got the chords dialed in, pay attention to the strumming pattern and rhythm too, that’s a big part of why these really simple songs sound so great
I’ve played my instruments by ear my entire life. Best tip I can give is that you have to learn the basic techniques and methods of your instrument before you can really start playing stuff.
If you got all that down than it’s just simply getting some good headphones, sitting down with your instrument, and listening then trying to play along with the song you’re learning. Of course also memorizing basic music theory like key notes and how they correspond to your instrument’s set up, and how they sound goes a long way in helping too.
if you learn the modes of the major scale theory (it’s just seven scales) it’s pretty easy to play by ear after that. every song is basically one of the modes, and there’s only 7 of them. there’ll be like a note in some rare songs that’ll be a half step up or down, but once you’ve learned a few songs by ear using the modes, you’ll even be able to play those by ear.
For finger picking, pick up a cheap toy keyboard, then try to pick them out of that first (it’s a lot easier on piano). Then you can play those same notes on the guitar.
Another Find common transitions (like I–V V–vi vi–IV ) in songs you know very well. For example, “I’ve been working on the RAIL–ROAD” is "I’ve been working on the IV-I).
Then, when you’re trying to figure out a song, think “which common progression seems to fit here?” If you’re doing 90’s rock, a lot of it is a riff on I-V-vi-IV, and after Good Riddance, a lot of it is riffing on that picking pattern.
Yeah, there’s definitely a part of playing by ear where you just have to have been doing it since you were a little kid. Like how only native speakers and people with perfect pitch can speak Vietnamese since there’s so much pitch involved.
ty ty ty. keyboard advice is really helpful and i’m pretty sure i’ve got an old one around here somewhere so i can start working on that. thank you.
and i googled the I–V V–vi vi–IV progression and you’re right it’s in a crazy amount of songs.
If you want to get into jazz, familiarise yourself with ii-V-I progressions and secondary dominants. If you want to play Yngwie Malmsteen songs, listen to pieces heavily featuring the harmonic minor scale (the ”evil“ scale, heavily featured in the Tocata and Fugue in d-minor by Bach). Also, if you want to learn western music, study western theory. It’s basically cheating although it can lead to dissatisfaction when writing simpler songs.
Practice, and be ok with just getting the root or parts of the song down at first. There really is not magic bullet, just practice more.
