Category Archives: Playing Guitar By Ear

Your Guitar Tutor iPhone App

Hi everybody, I am very excited to tell you all that the Your Guitar Tutor iPhone and iPad app is coming very soon! It has been in the planning stages for quite some time because we are firm believers in understanding what guitarists truly want from a guitar tuition app.

Your Guitar Tutor iPhone App Coming Soon!

It wasn’t enough to bring out an app that throws hundreds of chord shapes at you without you understanding them or an app that is a guitar tuner. We had to go a bit deeper into the needs of a guitar player by using our experience of teaching hundreds of guitar students on a one- to- one basis. Understanding the common problems students are having when trying to learn the guitar allowed us to create a system of developing the number one goal guitarists are striving for.

Who doesn’t want to turn on a song and flawlessly be able to work out the chords without all the guess work and frustration that often takes the enjoyment from the creative process?

Well it turns out that this is what most of you want from playing guitar and I can see completely why!

For most of us guitar is not pushed upon us in a serious manner and we don’t have someone making us practise hours a day when we do not want to. Most of us start playing guitar because we loved a band and wished to play just like them and for many of us we unfortunately get disheartened along the way and give up. After talking to a lot of my private students and guitar players around the world it seems that the players who have got good and still love the instrument are the ones who found a way to keep it fun. Sounds obvious right? The problem is being able to learn enough to do what you want to be able to do and not get scared off by information that you didn’t need to know yet. I have made it my job to help you learn exactly what you need to know so you can play guitar and have fun, and hey, if you go on to learn lots more then thats great but for now let me get you playing songs on your guitar without TAB, just your ears!

Chord Type and Progressions

You are going to learn how to recognise chord types such as the major chord, minor chord and the dominant 7th chord. This means that you will be able to hear the types of chords being played in the song that you want to work out so you have eliminated some of the guess-work already.

Progressions will teach you how to hear a series of chords from the song you want to work out and train you to name the progression and play it on your guitar.

Intervals App

You will be able to hear the melody being sung or played on guitar and then hear the notes and know how to play them on your guitar. You will train yourself to hear the distance between notes and know the name for this note relationship, this will make your ear develop and your ability to play melodies on the guitar improve tenfold.

Perfect Chord

Perfect Chord mode will teach you how recognise the chord shape being used in a song so you will instinctively just know which chord to play without trying out loads of other chords.

I hope you are as excited as we are and I will be announcing when the App is released and ready to be downloaded as soon as I can.

Tom Clark

How To Work Out Songs On Guitar By Ear- Part 4

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Hey there, welcome to part 4 of How To Work Out Songs On Guitar By Ear. In lesson you will be learning some of the finer details of working out songs by ear.

So far in this series I have focused on getting you to be able to listen to a song and work out the chords by figuring out the key. By using a capo you have learnt that you can limit a possible 12 keys down to just 2 by using chords shapes from the G box or C box. Hopefully this information alone has helped you a lot but now I am going to let you know even more to try to make this second nature for you.

Your goal is to be able to hear in terms of Roman Numerals when you listen to the chords being played in a song, by thinking this way you will have a name for the sound of a G chord moving to the D chord- I- V (1-5) and you will have a name for a G chord moving to an Em chord- I- VI (1-6). This all relates to the key of a song and so it is important that you can find the correct key as discussed in Part 3. If you wish to know about key centres in greater detail then please see Be The Guitarist.

Also I feel I must mention that this method of using a G box or C box is great for the 90% of players who just want to get stuck in and play some songs on guitar and the thousands of singer- songwriters that make a living out of using a capo and thinking this way. However, some of you may want to understand the guitar in much greater detail and be able to play any chord you wish, anywhere on the neck. For you I recommend that you learn the method discussed throughout this series but also learn from the ground up and understand scales, key centres, modes and the CAGED system at the same time.

The Roman Numeral System

Below are the roman numerals next to the chord name for both the key of G and key of C. The idea is that you can think of chord IV as C when in the G box (Key of G). This way you will be able to hear a I- IV- V chord progression and play it on the guitar much easier because you have recognised this movement as a sound. In a key you also find a VII chord but you will not use it anytime soon for it is rarely used in popular music.

Key of G

I- G

II- Am

III- Bm

IV- C

V- D

VI- Em

Key of C

I- C

II- Dm

III- Em

IV- F

V- G

VI- Am

How to Use This Information

So with this knowledge you may want to get stuck in straight away and if so, then here is an example of this approach to working songs out by ear put into practise.

Ok so we can take a popular track such as Set Fire To The Rain and study the chords used in each section to break down the track.

Adele ‘Set Fire To The Rain’ Chords

(Capo 5^th fret)

Intro

Am- C- G- Dm

Verse 1

Am- C- G- Dm

Am- C- G- F

Am- C- G- Dm

Am- C- G- F

Looking at the intro with your knowledge of the key of C you can now quite quickly see that these are chords found in the C box (key 0f C). A minor is the VI (6) chord, C is the I (1) chord, G is the V (5) chord and D minor is the II (2) chord. Chord progressions are when you move between chords and you find there are some really common progressions that get used to great affect time and time again. This chord progression used in the intro is a VI- I- V- II and is not quite as common as a I- IV- V- I but is still a popular choice.

Keep a look out for more guitar lessons or subscribe to get notified when new lessons are out.

Tom Clark

How To Work Out Songs On Guitar By Ear- Part 3

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Hey there,

So far in this series on working out songs on guitar by ear, you have learnt that it is possible to use your ears to work out songs without wildly guessing which chords to use.

Use the chord shapes of the key of C or G- Key Of C- C, Am, Em, F, Dm, G OR Key Of G- G, Em, D, C, Am, Bm. (See the eBook to learn all about the chords).

Use the capo shifting it up the neck and playing the chord shape C or G until you find that it sounds ‘right’ for a sustained period of time is your first step. Once you have found it to be C or G then you can play a chord off each of the dots shown in the diagrams above. So if the G works over a sustained period of time (perhaps 20 seconds) then use the G diagram to play a chord off each dot and if its the C that works then use the C diagram to do this.
If you are unsure how to build a chord off each dot then you should look at Complete Beginner Guitarist to master the chord shapes you need to learn.

Please enjoy part 4 to learn some of the finer details that will take you even closer to learning songs by ear. If you are interested in training your ear at home or on the go then please find details on the home page by mid- November 2011 to download the Your Guitar Tutor iPhone/ iPad app.

Tom Clark

How To Work Out Songs On Guitar By Ear- Part 2

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Hey there,

Ok so last lesson we started learning about how you go about working songs out by ear on the guitar. Throughout this lesson we will progress further into this great skill and look at more tips to consider.

Finding the bass notes of the chords used in the song- Ok, so most songs you will find in the Free Chord Charts section of my site use 4 0r 5 chords so using these songs as a starting point is a good idea. This means you will need to find between 3-5 different root notes that we will build into chords.
Use my Free Chord Charts to help support you and help you find the chords in use if you need a helping hand and then you can work on when to change chord.
You could make it slightly more difficult than the method shown just above by just looking at which fret the capo is placed at.
Most songs can be played using some of the following chords Key Of C- C, Am, Em, F, Dm, G OR Key Of G- G, Em, D, C, Am, Bm. (See the eBook to learn all about the chords).
Understanding the unique sound the different shape chords have C, A, G, E or D and their minor versions is one of the best skills to develop. (Your Guitar Tutor app will develop this skill). In the meantime you can work on this skill by playing each shape and listening to the sound carefully in order to recognise it in recordings.

Part 3 will be coming very soon where I will further this skill and show you how to master learning songs on guitar by ear.

Tom Clark

How To Work Out Songs On Guitar By Ear. Part 1

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Hey there,

As a private guitar tutor in Brighton, England I have thought a lot about what skills truly make a guitarist set up to achieve their potential. In my last post I was discussing the approaches a guitar tutor can take when giving guitar lessons and some of the results I have seen throughout my time of teaching.

The approaches boiled down to:

Learning songs on guitar
Learning theory and songs on guitar
Just theory

As a student learns the basic chords and some strumming patterns, the question ‘How do you listen to songs and just work them out on your guitar?’ seems to pop up time and time again. At first I found it hard to describe exactly how you go about this, but after a lot of thinking I have devised some ways to work out songs by ear.

Firstly I would recommend that you choose songs that are not overly complicated and that basically means that you should pick simple acoustic guitar songs. You can find many of these songs in the Free Chord Charts section of my website. Choosing a song from an Instrumental artists such as Steve Vai or Joe Satriani, when you only have the basics down, will most likely knock your confidence.

Tips to consider

Understand that it is not cheating if you use a capo when playing and that it is important to have a capo.
Listen to when you think a chord is changing in the song
Try to notice the chord type being used at any time, for example a major chord, minor chord, dominant 7 chord, minor 7, major 7 etc.
Try to hear the shape of chord being used for example; C shaped chord, A shape, G shape, E shape or D shape and each of their minor versions.
On the low E string play each note for a few seconds one after another, starting from the open low E string then 1st fret low E string, 2nd fret low E string, 3rd fret low E string and so on. Once a note sounds ‘right’ play it for a while to make sure it is the correct ‘root’ of the song.
Once you have identified the root note of the song (see eBooks for more information on how to work out the key of a song) it is time to find if you need to use a capo or not.
Knowing the notes on at least frets 1- 10 on the E, A and D string is essential so that you know what chord a C shaped chord actually is when you play it at different frets with your capo on.

Once I found my way to explain to a student that may have a few chords down and a couple of songs under their belt, how to work out songs just by listening, I had to create a devise that would train a guitarist to do this.

You will learn to understand chord types, Intervals, chord progressions- all the skills to master working out songs on guitar.

This tool will be available to you mid- November 2011 completely free and I am very confident you will use it to reach your goal of working songs out by ear. Regular updates will be available to you so that you can grow with the tool and push your ear playing to new levels.

If anything I have written about during this article does not make sense or you need to get your basics learnt then please visit the home page for access to the eBooks where you can learn Beginner and Intermediate guitar.

In part 2 you will learn some more of the tips to master this invaluable skill….

Tom Clark