Play Guitar by Ear, part ten

The end of the beginning

By Darrin Koltow

We're winding up the Playing by Ear saga with this episode. If you've worked through each of the 578 previous episodes, congratulations. You're probably pretty tired, but also much more in tune with how much enjoyment playing by ear can provide.

In this final episode we'll look at strategies for playing by ear, and Web resources to help you.

First, the strategies.

One of the best things you can do to learn to play by ear is to write your own tunes and exercises. When you write your own songs and exercises, you're doing several beneficial things at once, including giving the neighborhood dogs something to howl at. Also, you listen more carefully to what you're creating because you *care* more about what you're playing, when you write your own stuff.

Another way that writing your own music helps build your ear is through the "mistakes" you make. Actually, there are no mistakes in music, only sounds we recognize as music and others we don't yet recognize as music.

When you're creating your own music and hit a note that doesn't work to achieve the specific musical goal you're going for *at that time,* your mind doesn't just ignore that sound. You remember it. After you've moved on to other pieces and exercises, your mind reminds you of that sound and says, "Hey, knucklehead. Remember that chord you played that made all the butter in the fridge go rancid? Yeah, that's the one! That would sound great in this situation. Let's use it."

Musical garbage and furniture

See, music is not like the art form of painting. If a beginning painter works on a painting and doesn't like how it's turning out, he can just toss the canvass. In music, you can't throw away the canvass: your mind is the canvass. What you play you remember. So, there is no such think as music you can throw away, or musical garbage. Instead, think of music as furniture, priceless furniture that will look great in your home when you can figure out how best to arrange it.

The determination to learn how to arrange this furniture, and to learn from musical "mistakes," has probably driven the creation of a lot of great music. Jazz comes to mind, and so does other music that doesn't play by the rules. The Debussy piece Prelude to Afternoon of a Fawn comes to mind. Stuff by Richard Wagner comes to mind. Nirvana is in there, too.

Back to the point: when you write your own music, and try out lots and lots of different sounds from notes and chords and rhythms, your mind remembers all that stuff, and will remind you of some of these things when you're listening intensively to figure out another sound, made by you or someone else. You might be learning a tune by one of your favorite artists, by ear; as you're listening intensely, a sound seems to jump out at you and say, "Hey, howzit goin'? Remember me?" It's a great feeling when this happens, and it happens more and more frequently the more variety you put into the stuff you practice.

Motivation

"If you want something badly enough, you will find a way to get it." Nothing can stop you from playing by ear if you're sufficiently inspired and motivated by that inspiration. That inspiration can come from a favorite song or artist. It can also come from non-musical sources. For example, you might find the motivation to play by ear simply from needing to do something well.

Maybe you have friends who excel at being doctors, lawyers, "A" students, athletes or slug taxidermists; comparing yourself to them, you might say, "I can do more with my life than I've been doing. I dig music, and I don't buy all that crap about 'only the gifted need apply.' So, let me find a way to achieve something significant in music. Let me learn to play by ear. That would impress me."

Negative motivation can be pretty powerful. If you hear someone -- including yourself, especially -- tell you that you have a tin ear, or aren't musically gifted or talented, this could be great negative motivation to prove to yourself you *do* have what it takes to play by ear.

Resources

What Web resources are there for learning to play by ear?

Guitarist Tom Hess has an encouraging and practical article on ear training at http://www.guitarnoise.com/guitar/20030102.html. This is an excellent starting point for putting together a program to teach yourself to play by ear.

Software that builds your ability to recognize pitches and chords is freely available on the Web. A great example of this is the good-ear.com applet; it's for beginners and advanced musicians. Good-ear helps you recognize chords, intervals, and other essential ingredients of music.

The Functional Ear Trainer, at http://www.miles.be is a simpler but effective tool for putting a note in a musical context. It's your job to identify the scale degree a note falls on, in the context of a scale. As with the good-ear.com trainer, you can make it more or less difficult for yourself.

Earmaster at http://www.earmaster.com has a free download of their software for you to try out. Earmaster has existed in one form or another since 1994, and is in its version 4.0 incarnation now. I've used a previous version and found it a pretty useful ear builder. There's other software for ear training; enter "ear training" in the search engine at download.com or simtel.net for other programs, which will likely produce some usable demo downloads at least. Wholenote.com has ear training resources at www.wholenote.com/basics/et.asp.

Keep in mind that playing by ear and training your ear are not exactly the same thing. When you want to "play by ear," you're talking about making music based on what you hear. When you're talking about "ear training," you may be making music, but you may also be doing exercises that don't sound musical. For instance, a program may play one chord for you and ask you to identify it. That's not musical -- or, at least not as musical as transcribing music, for example. Identifying a chord in isolation, apart from a progression of chords, is *helpful* for building your ear. Just understand that doing this is not making music.

What not to do to play by ear

We could also call this section "Good habits to help you play by ear."

One thing you can do build your ear is play scales from starting points different than the root. Raise your hand if you play scales only this way. You know, C to C (if you're playing C major). Okay, if you raised your hand, start learning about *modes*. A mode is just a scale played from a note other than the root. For instance, play D, E, F, G, A, B, C, instead of just C to C all the time.

By doing this, you're conditioning your ear to other common sounds in music. So, when you hear this particular sound, instead of saying, "what scale is *that*?" you say, "Oh, that's the Dorian mode. Cool." Dig this article by Mike Livengood for a good intro on modes: http://www.guitarnoise.com/guitar/scales/modes_intro.html

One habit *not* to do is spend too much time with exercises that build only finger technique without concern for the sound you're making. Exercises in this category include anything that *bores* you. Man, there's nothing worse for training your ear than playing stuff that turns your ear off.

I'm thinking of an example of such an exercise: it's a chromatic scale you play on each string, using alternate picking to play each note a half-step away from the previous note. Yes, alternate picking is important. Yes, the chromatic scale is useful to know for some situations, and deserves to be learned. But we can create exercises that make *music* from these musical ingredients. Put 'em in a ii-V-I progression, for starters. In short, to build your ear, play exercises that keep your ear interested.

For you to do

Please take the time to learn to play by ear. Start with simple melodies and songs you dig. Then, learn how easy it is to harmonize melodies. The next time you want to learn a new tune, commit to learning at least the first four measures by ear. Then use the sheet music or chord chart if you need to. Desire and persistence are key. The feeling you get from playing a tune you figured out by listening to it is obscenely satisfying. I blush to think about it.

Click here for software that can help you play by ear. Use it for 30 days for free.

Guitar Chords (GC) builds your chops and helps you identify the most important chords by ear. GC shows you how to substitute and combine chords; play Jazz, Rock and Blues progressions; transpose songs; put chords to a melody; apply fingerpicking, alternating bass, arpeggios, and much more.

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