Sir Could you give me some tips or exercise to play guitar by ear or how do i develop play guitar by ear
Difficult to say without knowing how far you want to go with it. For most of us it’s just a matter of experience, learn many chord progressions and do a lot of transcribing – over time you just get better at it. That being said, if you want to go deep then it probably is best to go with a proper practice schedule / training program. There are books available for this kind of thing and also training software which can be a good way to improve relative pitch and chord recognition.
Thank You Sir for your reply. I have been playing Acoustic guitar for nearly ten years now But some where i feel i am stuck when its comes to playing by ear. The songs that i play is for church setting. Some songs which i play has only 4 chord progression, by hearing it couple of time i get the chord…but some songs like the old hymns which i struggle to get the chord work bez it has lot of chord work or after every 2 or 3 words there is a chord OR if i am ask to play on the spot for some meeting or some people start singing in congregation i struggle to get the chords….but i see some musicians get it instantly and play by ear.
Recently i have been asked to lead the worship Team in our church, becz one of the person who was leading the band is migrating. I would like to sharpen my earing skill….as you responded earlier …which book or software? would you recommend becz there are lot of books available….but are not that helpful.
Appreciate you Patience and Response!!
Tony
In the past I’ve used some of the MIT books, old software that’s probably not available anymore and years ago I used to make up my own CDs but never really put in the required effort. I could still improve my ears quite a lot if I did but it’s very time consuming and for what I do it doesn’t cause me any problems.
I’ve never used it myself but I’ve heard good things about Earmaster Pro. There’s also plenty of free and low cost apps that you could use on your phone that do similar things.
The thing is, I’m not sure how much it will help you with what you are trying to achieve. Certainly it’s a skill worth the effort but you could buy one of the MIT books and spend two years working with it and still need more practice.
A lot of it comes with experience and what you are talking about is more about chord progressions and recognition, whereas a lot of the study will go a lot deeper than that.
Sure, try some of the free apps and possibly even Earmaster, i wouldn’t call any of them a waste of time, but personally I would put more emphasis on learning more hymns, buy something like a hymn fakebook and learn as many as you can, you’ll probably start to recognise similarities.
You should then try to transpose many of them into the same key, this way you’ll realise the similarities more. Better still, break them down into chord numbers (Roman numerals) and think of them as their placement from the root chord and key. Practice all of the common progressions like I-IV-V, I-iii-V, I-vi-IV-V etc and try to memorise them in the most common keys. The more you do the more you will train your ear for what you are trying to achieve, it will take time but stick with it.
