How To Learn Songs By Ear On Guitar 👂

hey guys dave here from guitar zero to hero and in this video i'm going to be teaching you some awesome tips and tricks on how to learn songs by ear which is one of the most valuable skills that you can develop as a guitarist and musician in general so let's get stuck into it and if you enjoy this video and want to learn a whole lot more about ear training then head to the link in the description below now what any beginner or even intermediate player needs to understand is that chords and chord progressions are the backbone to any song now without them the songs melodies riffs and solos all have no context to work on if we can understand our chord progression and key then everything becomes a whole lot easier from working out finger picking patterns in solos as often finger picking patterns and riffs are simply based off the underlying chord that is being played at that moment so where do we begin when trying to figure out chord progressions or chords now the best place to start when figuring out a chord progression is to figure out the bass notes of the chord progression or simply what are the lowest notes that you can hear in the song what is the bass guitar or the bass synth doing now typically a chord progression is anywhere from two to four chords being repeated over and over obviously there's more complicated progressions out there but a lot of modern day pop will generally stick to two to four chords so we simply need to listen to the song and identify those bass notes until we see that they just start to loop over and over again for that particular section so a chord progression loop for the verse a chord progression loop for the chorus etc etc so it's at this point where we'll need to use our er and our guitar to play a game of higher or lower in order to find our note so let me use a super simple single note example and then i'll use a real world song example later after that so here's a bass note now what we're going to try to do is listen to it and then experiment playing notes on our low sixth string until we find a match now there's only 12 musical notes available to us in the musical alphabet so from the open e to this 11th fret we have e f f sharp g g sharp a a sharp b c c sharp d and d sharp so those are the 12 musical notes in our musical alphabet out of those 12 notes one will be a match so we just need to do some trial and error here now one of the best tips when searching for your note is to hum the notes yourself now this way you can keep it in your head as opposed to having to listen to it over and over so listen to the note hum it and then experiment [Music] so i'm pretty confident that we've got a g sharp here or an a flat the more that you practice the better you'll get at it and once you've found a match then great you can write that note down and continue on with your next note so now let's find a chord progression in a real world song example now this is a song from one of my old bands if you want to listen to it there's a link in the description below so we're just going to basically figure out all the bass don'ts until we have something that just loops again and again so let's listen to the song so listen to that first note i'll play it one more time listen to it hum it and then experiment it's one of these 12 notes i think that's the one so you know what i'm going to write down a d note that's our first bass note next one [Music] hum it experiment pretty sure that's it so our next note is a b-flat next let's move on that's our third note which is a c so i'm going to write down c as our third base note [Music] sounds like that just goes back to the second note we had so another b flat there and let's let's see everyone sounds like it's just going to start looping again and again for the verse so we have our four bass notes d b flat c and back to b flat now to further verify these notes what we can do is play the power chords of these bass notes now the great thing about power chords is that they're neither major or minor so the power chord shape will work on top of almost any chord when you're in the preliminary stages of working out a chord progression now it's great to use so you can listen for yourself and see if you're in the right ballpark so to play a power chord you locate the root note with your index finger so that's the d and then your ring and pinky will be playing up two frets on the next two strings so that's our power chord shape and we can apply that anywhere up and down the fretboard on the sixth and fifth strings so let's use the power chords on top of our song just to verify that the notes that we've figured out so far are correct [Music] sounds pretty good all right so now where do we go from here how do we know whether our chords are major or minor now in general a major chord will sound happy and a minor chord will sound sad so that's one clue but to really have a better understanding on what will be correct it's important to know what key we're in now the key of the song is the group of notes that forms the basis of our musical composition they're the notes that we're allowed to use so think of it as the ingredients that we're allowed to use in our recipe or our song in this case so what we can do is actually refer to this awesome chart called the nashville number system now if you want to grab a free pdf copy of this then head down to the link in the description below what it essentially tells us is the seven diatonic chords that are possible in every single key so that helps us to know whether we should be playing major or minor chords so what we can do is use our bass notes as clues to try to figure out what key we're in so which of these keys has those notes the d the b flat and the c there's a couple of options here so you will again have to use some trial and error but for this particular example we're in d minor slash f major so that will mean that our chords will be d minor b flat major [Music] c major and back to b flat major [Music] so now let's try those full chords on top of this song and see how it sounds [Music] sounds pretty good at this point if you're confident of your key then you could be rest assured knowing that the rest of your song is more than 95 likely to be made up of one of these seven chords now i will note though that the seven chord the diminished chord is very rare and usually if you hear a bass note that correlates to that seventh degree it's usually a five chord with the seventh degree bass note so for this key example you'd be much more likely to bump into a c e with that low e bass note than an e diminished chord like this so let's say for example that you had bass notes that sound like this that were descending you had an f and then you had an e and then a d instead of playing f e diminished and then d minor it would actually more likely be f c e and then d minor just be sure to note that so from here it's more or less a rinse and repeat process to find the rest of your chord progressions so we've found the verse now we need to find the chorus find the bridge and then you basically figured out all the chords and chord progressions to your song then once you've figured out all the chord progressions you can then look at figuring out all the lead lines like the solos and the lead riffs you now know your key so you know the seven notes that are within your scale now one little exercise that's really good for your ear training is to actually use that hum method to try to figure out vocal melodies in songs so let's listen to the vocal melody in this particular track everyone was right about you so listen to a song you like listen to the vocal melody and try to figure it out on guitar everyone was so let's stick with that first note every next on every [Music] was right about you everyone was so you've just figured out the vocal melody on the guitar and that's a really good exercise and it's a lot of fun as well because you can then play that vocal melody along with the song so let's give that a shot everyone was right [Music] so that's a really great and fun little exercise so pick a really simple song that's just new something that you like and try to figure out the vocal melody using that hum method now this is a somewhat brief overview of my own method for learning songs by ear but i'm really pumped to announce that i've just released my newest course called learn songs by ear which is a full step-by-step course that guides you through my exact method for learning songs by ear in the course broken up into seven modules i teach you all the great and useful theory tips and tricks that will help you become an independent musician and hopefully you'll never have to watch my youtube videos again as you'll be figuring out songs by yourself if you want to find out more then head to the link in the description below anyway i hope this video has helped you on your path towards learning songs by ear which is a really really important skill for any guitarist or musician thanks so much guys if you've enjoyed this video hit that like button hit subscribe for more in the future and i'll see you guys next time on guitar zero to hero cheers

Channel: GuitarZero2Hero

Views: 407,667

Keywords: how to learn songs by, how to learn songs by ear, how to learn songs by ear on guitar, learn songs by ear guitar, learn songs by ear, learn songs by ear bass, ear training guitar, guitar ear training exercises, guitar ear training, guitar ear training for beginners, how to figure out chords by ear, how to figure out chords for songs, figuring out chords by ear, figuring out guitar chords by ear

Id: B6T1nMvMy4k

Length: 12min 0sec (720 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 19 2020