My Method to Learning ANY Song By Ear

hey everybody i'm rick biato in some of my latest videos i've been going over pop songs and figuring out their chord progressions on the spot as they're going along and a lot of people have emailed me and saying how do you do this well this is using a thing called relative pitch now those of you that have watched this channel for a long time know what relative pitch is relative pitch is basically relating a note to another note right that's where the relative is so if i have the note c and i hear the note i know it's the note e because i know that's a major third interval well the same thing applies for chord progressions when i hear a song and i hear a progression like this i know it's four one five one now what do those chord symbols mean what does four one five one even mean well in a major key there are seven chords the one chord in c major is major the two chord is d minor the three chords e minor four chords f major five chord is g major six chord is a minor and the seventh chord is b diminished and then it is back to c major those are called your roman numerals or in nashville they call those the nashville numbered chords the one chord is always major the four chords always major and the five chord is always major in a major key the two three and six chords are minor and the seventh chord or the chord built on the seventh scale degree is diminished now how do you actually know these things when you hear them the things that i listen for number one is the root movement and the chord quality now the root is not always in the bass but many times in pop music most of the time in pop music it is in the bass so when i'm listening to a progression i hear the bass go [Music] i hear one six four five one next you need to figure out what the quality of the chords are now the quality is whether it's major minor diminished augmented in pop songs today most of the chords are major and minor but you do have sus chords sus2 and sus 4 chords are very common you'll have things like minor 11th chords but there's not a lot of dominant seventh chords so there's very limited harmonic information in most pop songs historically you would have things with the beatles you have major seventh chords dominant seventh chords minor six chords minor seven flat five chords diminished chords augmented chords that was common in music in the 60s 70s and started to be less common after that figuring out the chord quality takes a little bit of practice that's a major chord major minor major i played one five six four all those chords come from the key of c major so i played c g a minor f those are called diatonic chords when they all come from the same key when i did the video of the top 10 songs on spotify there was only one song that had one chord that was non-diatonic one of the songs had a major three chord in a major key the three chord is minor okay in the key of c major would be e minor in this case if the if it was a major three chord it would be e major many times songs do not start on the tonic maybe you'll start on the sixth chord you could start on the two chord the four chord the v chord some songs start on the one chord a lot of songs start on the one chord but you need to be able to figure out what the chord sequence is when you hear it and you can't just do it by hearing one chord if i have an f major chord that could be the four chord in the key of c the one chord in the key of f for the five chord in the key of b flat but to know that you need to know the circle of fifths which will tell you what notes are in each key here is the circle of fifths if you go clockwise in the circle of fifths you're moving in a sharp direction so you have c major no sharps or flats g major one sharp d major two sharps a major three sharps e major four sharps b major five sharps f sharp major six sharps or g flat major six flats then you continue on d flat major has five flats a flat major has four flats e flat major has three flats b flat major has two flats and f major has one flat i know this because i can visualize it really because i've taught it about 100 times here on this channel and i've been teaching it for oh 40 years or so but it's not that hard of a pattern to memorize once you memorize what notes are in each key using the order of sharps and flats here's the order of sharps that means when there are three sharps they always come in this order f-sharp c-sharp g-sharp once you know what the sharps are all you do is you start on the letter a or the note a a b and then c sharp right because that's the one of the ones that are sharped d e f sharp g sharp and then back to a so that gives you the scale tells you what notes to sharp in that scale or the order of flats if you're in the key of b flat that is two flats and that would be b-flat and e-flat in that key to create a b-flat major scale you start on b-flat then you go to the next letter name c then d then e flat that's in the key signature f g a and then back to b flat now all the charts that i've used so far are from my b auto book so if you want to learn more about this you should check that out because that has all this theory in there but let's get back to ear training and relative pitch training so the thing i listen for is the bass motion like i said typically the root of the chord is in the bass but not always so you need to be able to figure out what the bass motion is and what the actual chords are the skill you need to develop in order to get really good at this and fast is intervals if you can master intervals you can master what the base motion is is the base going up a major third is it going down a minor third is it going up a perfect fifth is it going down a perfect fourth once you can hear intervals you can follow the base motion and then you simply plug in whether it's major minor a major seventh chord a dominant seventh chord and you can get great at figuring songs out by ear here's a demonstration that i put on my instagram of me using my beato ear training program which not only drills intervals but drills all types of these things chord progressions everything it's a very very detailed ear training program that you can find on my website but this is me doing intervals quick lesson first thing i do every morning before i even practice the guitar as soon as i get in is work on some relative pitch training using my beater ear training method i'm going to do random intervals i'm going to start with a reference tone c here we go d b flat c g a flat d b flat b f a flat c g b f sharp e d c g e a f d e flat b flat f a flat e c e flat now i've been doing this honestly since probably 1980 or so since i went to college when we first took ear training class so these intervals are very easy for me to do it's almost as if i have perfect pitch once you get good at this by drilling it over and over you can figure out songs i mean that's all chromatic intervals imagine with just simple songs that you hear on the radio just identifying things that are just in one scale it makes it so easy most of the songs that i played in that spotify video even though it was on keyboard some of them were on guitar but most of them were on keyboards they almost all use one four five and six some of them use two but you've got say you're in the key of g [Applause] so i went four one five six but the four chord later on you'll hear oh that's c add nine you begin to recognize these things cause i hear that duh that note in the chord that note is the add nine so you start to recognize the quality of these chords as you develop the ear so i say c had nine g maybe d sus4 i hear that note this would be d major this is d sus4 and then that's e minor seven those little subtleties well like i said as you develop your ear you start to pick those out really quickly as well all this takes is practice you'd be amazed at how quickly you can develop your ear to be able to recognize intervals and the quality of chords to be able to figure out any song that you want by ear that's all for now don't forget to subscribe if you're a first time viewer ring the bell that'll let you know when i go live and when a new video comes out give it a thumbs up leave a comment that's very important if you're interested in the biato book go to my website at www.rickbeater.com follow me on instagram at rickbiota1 check out the new beatto ear training program at beyond yourtraining.com and if you want to support the channel even more think about becoming a member of the biato club thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: Rick Beato

Views: 811,060

Keywords: rick beato, everything music, rick, beato, music, music theory, music production, education, ear training, how to play by ear, guitar lesson, playing by ear, learn guitar by ear, perfect pitch, relative pitch, play piano by ear, song key, guitar tutorial, ear training for beginners, ear training guitar, ear training intervals, ear training chords, ear training exercises, ear training chord progressions, ear training rick beato, figure out any song, learning songs

Id: bFtTvqASQ9k

Length: 10min 13sec (613 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 23 2020