Learn Any Song By Ear (Even Complex Ones)

started streaming what's up everyone happy friday coming to you here from uh good old atlanta georgia you see my keyboard up there we're going to talk about some ear training or how to learn songs by ear some of my strategies that i use this is something that i've talked about really since the very first video on my channel which came out in june 8th 2016. i'm coming up with my five-year reunion on that here in a few months uh discount code for today's live stream is rb 600. uh it's 60 off my beato book youtube um instagram transcription bundle if you like my quick lessons on youtube it has transcriptions of those plus the be out of book 4.0 and 40 off my beado ear training and we're going to be talking a lot about ear training today um and just to let you guys know this is how i basically make a living for my channel is through people buying stuff through my store um and um if you want to support the channel that's a way of doing it where you actually get something for supporting the channel and uh all these things are kind of interrelated i think about this where ear training and music theory and music theory and ear training cannot be separated uh to name something you have to know what you're naming so that actually involves the theory and you gotta think of it like theory is just a way to name things you can talk about things without actually demonstrating them although with ear training i will demonstrate them and talk about how to name them so one of the things uh one of the strategies that i like to talk about is uh developing a vocabulary of sounds that you recognize now what does that mean well let's say i hear uh something like this um turn down a little bit i hear this well i hear that and because i've heard it a million times i'm like well that's the jimi hendrix chord right i just know that chord that's the chord from purple haze right now that chord has a really interesting uh dissonance in it between two of the voices here in the middle of the chord you have that dissonance and that dissonance is a major seventh interval and that particular major seventh interval right is this so because of that when i hear that that dissonance there that is called a major seventh interval so that's part of my vocabulary of sounds that i instantly recognize i recognize sharp nine chords now you don't have to have perfect pitch to to recognize um to have a vocabulary of sounds you recognize you could recognize this and say oh that's a major chord that's what i'm talking about first of all you develop a vocabulary of sounds that you recognize that's why my ear training course goes from recognizing intervals intervals just the distance between two notes right if i go from the note g to the note d that's a perfect fifth interval thank you danny for that um that perfect fifth interval are the two outer notes of a major chord if i put the note in the middle that completes the chord and makes it a major chord if i went uh be that note and that would make it a minor chord now if you're looking at the screen and you know the keyboard you know that these three notes are a g minor chord if you have perfect pitch you know it's g b flat d right no problem but if you don't have perfect pitch you should just be able to recognize that it's a minor chord so you start with intervals or being able to recognize them okay once again an interval is just the distance between two notes okay if you stack more than one interval on top of each other so you've got that g to b flat that's a minor third interval and then you add this note d on the top and it completes the chord you could add any other kind of note and it might make it make a different chord right so um recognizing these sounds first the sound of intervals because they need to become part of your vocabulary of sounds that you recognize so you first learn to intervi into recognize intervals and there's two ways that you can do that you can recognize them when they're played together like this that's called a harmonic interval think of it like a harmony right you sing harmonies together or there's a melodic interval [Music] okay one's played after another like in a melody okay so once again what are the first types of chords that you want to learn to recognize major and minor chords because that makes up most songs if you want to learn any song by ear unless obviously jimi hendrix hey joe because that has a sharp nine chord and that's a very particular kind of chord right that's on the the kind of the next level of chords that you learn to recognize so um so you start by learning to recognize uh major and minor chords now is the structure and how they're um and how they're constructed is that important actually probably not it's not necessarily important to know how a major minor chord is constructive is constructed if you can recognize it let's say i want to i want to figure out a song like um that might not be that easy that uses some major minor chords i was just just thinking about this right let's say you got a song like this you you guys will know this um [Music] hold on billy can you uh turn this down just a little bit hold on i'll do it nevermind there we go okay so um [Music] you guys all know this roxanne right [Music] now roxanne has some minor chords in it but it's got some other kind of chords in it too the first chord is g minor okay the second chord though is f sus4 or b-flat sus2 really then you come up here you recognize that's a minor chord minor chord a lot of minor chords minor chord sus chord and then another sus chord okay what do i mean by a sus chord well that particular chord the last chord i played has the notes um uh has the note c d g okay you say well what is that chord well that's a c sus2 chord now one of the things about recognizing suspended chords uh because they are um they're different than major minor chords they have what i would call a stark quality to them where they're like that doesn't sound major minor what is that when i play that it has a um i call it a a stark quality um because it has two perfect intervals in it um right between the outside notes that's a perfect fifth interval and then between these two notes so you got c to g is a perfect fifth and then d to g is a perfect fourth because you have two perfect intervals it really gives the chord a um a a to me like a mysterious sound okay i wouldn't say an unresolved sound a lot of people say suspended chords because you hear sound like that thank you greg appreciate that people say oh suspended you want to resolve down no that i don't think that that's necessarily true a lot of suspended chords just sound good like they are but they have a particular kind of sound that you need to learn to recognize okay this particular chord here is c sus2 it's related to c major you could say if you take the third of the chord and you drop it down from e to d because it's a suspended second and a lot of people say well it sounds like it it wants to resolve up and you'll hear right there's that sus sound or you could have c sus4 so there's two different types of suspensions suspended two suspended four once again a suspended four has two perfect intervals a fourth here and then a fifth here so both a sus two and a sus4 have two perfect intervals in them right which gives them a particular sound once again this is adding to your vocabulary of sounds that you recognize okay so you first begin by recognizing um intervals there's 12 intervals to recognize the minor second major second minor third major third perfect fourth tritone perfect fifth minor six minor major six minor seventh major seventh in octave right so you learn to recognize those intervals then you move on to basic triads okay now some of you might say well what about diminish and augmented triads well if you if you're learning songs unless you're learning um well unless you're learning songs from the 70s songs from the 70s and the 60s actually have diminished and augmented triads not a lot of them but enough of them where you have to uh recognize for example steroid heaven has an augmented chord or really a minor major seven chord in it or minor major 9 the second chord in it is that and that has a very particular sound to it check it out [Music] that's the second chord of stairway to heaven right when you hear it isolated you're like god that's kind of weird isn't it right but that resolves to that chord right which would be like a minor seven but when you hear this it it's actually part of what we call a line cliche that line cliche is that likely she follows from a to g sharp to g to f sharp to f and then down to e in stairway to heaven once again line cliches are progressions that you begin to recognize because you hear them in so many songs if you want to learn songs from the 60s and 70s so many songs have line cliches in them um another thing to start to learn are inversions i'm going to come back to these line cliches but i want to talk about inversions for a second okay uh i'm going to give the discount code since there's new people on here discount down discount code for today's live stream is rb 600. it's my st patrick's day sale even though i'm not wearing green and yesterday was st patrick's day and i didn't wear green yesterday but my daughters pinched me i don't know what pinching somebody on st patrick's day if you don't wear green do you get pinched i don't know my daughter said that they both pinch me anyway so uh uh so learning to um to to add to this vocabulary of sounds that you recognize right uh we talk about line cliches then we talk about and i want to talk about inversions because inversions really would come next so what is an inversion most of you know what an inversion is but i'll explain it for people that don't an inversion let's say i take a c major chord like this c e g any other order then c e g any any uh any of these three notes that doesn't have c as the lowest note is an inversion if i have egc that's a first inversion chord so i took the uh i have the third of the chord the middle note is in the is the lowest in the bass there's root position first inversion and then with the fifth and base is in second inversion okay so those are the the three inversions of a major chord right we call this root position because as the root as the lowest note first inversion because as the third is the lowest note and then second inversion because as the fifth is the lowest note okay those are your three inversions of a major chord minor chords work the same way if i take g minor okay this is root position because as g is its lowest note if i make b flat i move g up the octave and use b flat as the lowest note that's a first inversion chord and then if i have d in the bass that is a g minor chord in second inversion so root position first inversion second inversion now is it important to be able to recognize those inversions it is for certain types of songs okay i'll give you an example of a song that uses uh uh inversions um let's say you take a or i actually okay that song is maybe i'm amazed okay so maybe i'm amazed i was a paul mccartney song but it starts out b-flat major and then it goes to a first inversion chord here so this is an f major chord but the bass note is a a is actually the third of the chord so we would call this a first inversion f major chord or f over a meaning the chord f over an a bass note that's what these uh inversions are called the next chord was c major then you can go to uh g major this is g major with a b in the bass once again if you take a g major chord the third of the chord is here if i move down the octave then it becomes a first inversion g major chord so the importance of learning inversions is so you can play songs correctly the inversions act they don't matter when they're in the high register really well if you want to learn roxanne correctly this is a g minor chord but the lowest note is b flat so this is actually a first inversion g minor chord this chord here is a second inversion d minor chord this is a second inversion g minor chord this is a root position d minor root position c minor this is a root position b flat sus2 and root position c sus2 okay so the inversions for figuring out songs correctly kind of make a difference okay it's actually really important so how many of those chords in roxanne are in versions the first chord the second chord the third chord fourth and fifth are in root position and sixth and seventh are in root position so basically half the chords in the song are chord inversions right so um being able to recognize those like how do i hear what those inversions are well for roxanne when i'm listening to that um the first time i figured it out i which was in 1978 when it came out i can hear that high e string that no g so i'm i'm part of my strategies for figuring out songs i hear [Music] i can hear the top notes of the chord this is part of the strategies try to listen for the outer voices the highest note of the chord thank you frank so much appreciate that super chat the highest note of the chord is typically the easiest one to hear okay or the outer voices are typically the easiest one to hear now the outer voices here on this g minor chord this note is not easy to hear i don't think for most people but that note to me really sticks out the top note there and so i'm going to listen for that i'm going to go [Music] once i have that high note that melody line in the chords then i can start to figure out well what am i hearing so then i go to the chord quality and the chord quality whether it's major or minor okay so when you're listening to roxanne this first chord in my minor chord ah must be well there's one of three chords that can have this note it could be this is a minor chord with g as the top note right that is g is the top note so you have to really start to experiment with the chords the minor chords that have that note at the top and you can pretty quickly go through the three different chords that have the note g as the top note so right you have that note that chord it's like that doesn't sound like it that's a e minor c minor that doesn't sound right either oh that's definitely it right so once i have that note that top note there can only there's only three minor chords i have g as the top note okay so you kind of need to have understand a little bit of theory here right because um you can hunt and peck for this stuff all day you can really sit around and say okay um what are these chords the tricky ones in roxanne are hearing those sus chords the sus2 chords right or if you think of you hear that song like um what is that walking on the moon that's like a a uh a police sounding cord that's a dominant 7 sus4 chord right that's a g7 sus4 that to me is as recognizable as the jimi hendrix chord once again that's part of my vocabulary of chords or if i hear something that um if i hear that i'm like oh that's from the song josie by steely dan once again i recognize this chord sound here this is a major nine no third chord but i recognize the shape because i've played it and i've and i've become familiar with it over time and um this is what my ear training course does is it teaches you all these different inversions and to be able to recognize you and drills you on these things right because that's ultimately how you get a great ear a lot of people say to me and it's funny because it's always in the when i do my spotify things and i figure out stuff by ear really um on the spot thanks knight rider band appreciate that super chat awesome um a lot of people respond to those spotify things whether it's the top 10 pop or top 10 rock rick figures out the songs so quickly and my voice cracked uh and and i'm like well once i hear the first chord right and figure out what that is my knowledge of theory will tell me that well most most songs that you're on the radio use about four chords right at least contemporary songs do if you want to start learning steely dance songs they they use tons of different chords so you have to have a better ear to figure them out but um the those those types of chords those four chords of of pop or of rock that i talk about are the one four five six so if i hear a chord and it's a major chord i'm like well that's either one four or five so the next chord is probably either going to be let's say it's four then i'm thinking well the next chord's probably either going to be one five or six it's probably not going to be six it's probably one or five right if the first chord is one the next two chords it could be one six five four so really could be six five or four and it's really just deductive reasoning at this point right it's a lot of people think it's magic but it's not if you just have some basic knowledge of theory like what chords are in each key and this is what is in my beato book right right at the beginning i talk about how to name intervals but then i talk about chord progressions what are the chords in each major key okay if you understand that then you can do predictive listening right so once again i hear a major chord i'm like ah that's uh i wonder if that's one four or five oh that's four because i the next chord i hear you know i'm hearing the bass motion like that right so i'm i'm hearing like um [Music] okay i'm like okay well that's 4-1 for sure and then i'm like okay what's next i hear it duh i might go well that's gonna be the sixth chord right or and then i hear that one four six five instantly i know that one so once i hear the first chord as soon as i hear the second chord i pretty much know what the other chords are going to be unless i'm surprised uh one of the times that i heard uh one one of the songs uh that was in the pop charts i forget which one had um so i had a one major three these are the standard kind of chord progression thank you smooth criminal appreciate that that's a major three chord so it's going from c major to e major to f major so one major three four and then this is an inverted four minor chord it's really f minor with an a flat in the bass in first inversion okay now this may sound oh man what this is way too complex rick it's actually not that complex right you have major minor chords that are in three inversions and you have your seven chords that are in every major key if you know that just that knowledge alone and you can recognize a major minor chord and you can hear the interval relationship [Music] and if it goes ba okay i i'm just singing these intervals right before i play them and [Music] right once i hear that bass motion i know exactly what the chord progression is going to be whatever it is you listen to the outer voices what are the outer voices the high notes or the low notes figure out the chord quality p fast thank you so much figure out the chord quality major or minor figure out the inversion right you're pretty much there sometimes you get fooled right i could go like uh like on this like and maybe a mage if it went that's very different right b flat major to f major or b flat major to f major in first inversion right different sound um somebody said it sounds like creep they were talking about this um because creep does use those chords in that key um um now when you get into a little bit more complicated songs that have um what i call signatures signatures are things that you would typically um are melodic lines that are not the melody but are the hooks in the song it's typically the intros have a signature it doesn't matter what decade the 50s the 2021s the 60s the 70s every song has an intro hook they just do doesn't matter uh what genre of music prog metal pop jazz everything has a signature thank you nicole appreciate that the signature is the thing that is really the first statement of a song typically songs that are hit songs will have a what i call it a signature a signature like in the police song the signature's simply a chord pattern right [Music] uh you know if it's um um um dustin the wind has a picking pattern that's a signature right or josie has a signature that's kind of a single note chord riff that's way more complex that's way harder to figure out okay or a song thank you phil phil grew up with the mom and three sisters singing three harmonies it rubbed off thankfully study started violin at seven piano ten well that's this is when all this stuff really happens is when you're uh um when you're exposed to music right and you study instruments doesn't matter what it is uh the disciplined study of an instrument at whatever age that's what actually helps you develop your ear when i say the disciplined study the disciplined study is different than just strumming chords to a song studying implies learning new things and the more new things that you learn the bigger your vocabulary of sounds you recognize are and that's the theme of this live stream increasing the vocabulary of sounds that you recognize and the only way you do that is by figuring out stuff or ear training okay ear training practicing intervals practicing uh identifying chords major chords minor chords diminished augmented suspended chords and then you move to seventh chords and then you get to things like add nine chords okay you cannot separate the music theory from the ear training because part of music theory thank you mark appreciate that thank you h tucker you guys are awesome you cannot separate music theory from ear training they are the same thing the music theory part is how you name what you hear okay when i hear jimi hendrix i'm like oh it's a dominant sharp nine chord i just know it doesn't matter what song it is it can be in the stevie ray vaughan song john mayer's song jimi hendrix song it's in allison chains whatever whoever uses that i recognize that as dominant seven sharp nine chord just gotta figure out what the root is and you know where it is right um and and the more that you do this and the more frequently you do this the more it sticks okay discount code for today's live stream you want to support the channel check out my the autobook um instagram youtube transcription bundle 700 page pdf discount code is rb600 even if you don't you know if you're not going to use it a lot you say you know i like rick's videos i want to support his channel you can do that people are supporting the channel in the super chat here ear training 40 off rb 600 my st patrick's day sale uh any of you that saw uh saw my video from yesterday uh was it yesterday was it yesterday billy did i put out the video i did a video on my talking about my learning um disability that i have my reading comprehension problem that i've always had my entire life um if you haven't seen the video please check it out i think there's a lot of uh uh important things for teachers in there and for parents as well about um just things that my mom taught me about um about how to cope with these things and that you can be successful doesn't it has nothing to do with it with your success in life uh baby gerald thank you so much um i can't wait to share with you with your nephew learning to play the violin he's the perfect gauge there you go do that baby gerald and cleaning supply depot thank you so much you guys are amazing share the video check out my last couple videos thank you so much everybody have a great weekend okay this was actually um i learned more today than everybody else no i always i always tell people well i always learn more when i'm teaching than the than the students that's actually not true but i'm always trying to learn remember developing a vocabulary of sounds you recognize all right all right talk to you guys soon take care bye

Channel: Rick Beato

Views: 246,689

Keywords: how to play by ear, ear training guitar, how to, how to play, guitar lessons for kids, how to play guitar, how to play piano, music theory piano, music theory guitar, guitar lesson, playing by ear practice, music theory lessons, music theory, rick beato, ear training, perfect pitch, relative pitch, Rick, Beato, Everything Music, Chords, Inversions, Harmony, Music Lesson, The Police, Guitar Songs, guitar lessons for beginners, guitar, Piano, beginner music theory, Intervals

Id: HIiKbSBv7RU

Length: 31min 50sec (1910 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 19 2021