“How Do You Start Learning Songs By Ear?” Advice From Experienced Guitarists

My journey for guitar so far has gone in a lot of directions. I started with lead, then switched to rhythm when I realized chords had a place in my heart. I dabbled with the blues, fingerstyle, bossa nova, but finally stuck to what made me pick up the guitar in the first place, Japanse rock music.

Now, I’m at a place where I have a pretty good foundation. I can learn and play songs within a day or two, and I’m preparing my rookie band to perform this summer. However, another goal of mine would be to create Japanese inspired music, and to do that, I need to study and understand their Japanese music more.

I have dug deeper, and I finally understand how they do it, but it’s been hard to study songs themselves. Not many have chords available, and if they do, it can be very hard to determine the key, and that makes it hard to determine the progression. There’s been songs I wanted to learn to play, and had to pay to get them transcribed just cause I knew it would take me too long as a beginner to figure it out on my own.

But that got me thinking….maybe I should focus more on learning songs by ear.

My Background with Transcribing

It’s not that the concept of learning by ear is new to me. On my introduction page, I have shared clips of songs I learned by ear to play on keyboard and viola, and I have figured out other things by ear, but usually, it’s a guessing game.

I’d figure out the first note of the melody, then play around to get the others. If on piano, after I figure out the meldoy, I’d play around with the basic major and minor chords to see which one fits best. I took music all through school, so I at least have the ability to tell what sounds right or wrong, and if something is sharp or flat.

But you see, while we did learn music theory throughout school, I only realized after learning guitar, that I only learned how to read sheets. Yeah, I may have memorized scales on Keyboard, but I only did that by ear, trial and error. I didn’t know there was a pattern. And since we only learned single note instruments in music class, we didn’t even touch chords and progressions. That was all things I learned on my own after picking up guitar and seeing the patterns on my own.

And sure, I could just keep playing around and guessing the notes til I get it right on guitar, and then build chords out of that….but I don’t want to. It takes a lot of time. And if you’re in a group setting and say ‘yeah, I can play by ear!’ they wouldn’t expect you to sit down and play 5 notes before finding the matching one, or struggling to figure out a certain chord.

I’m not in high school anymore. I don’t have that much freetime. If I wanna play a new song that I like, I don’t want to feel intimidated or have to keep paying for tabs and chords.

So I decided to make that a mission for the year. I have downloaded some ear training apps (I’ve been loving EarForge so far), but also decided to ask the Guitar and Music Theory Facebook group for advice.

Advice From Guitarists

Here are some of the most useful and insightful responses. Everyone learns differently, so I made sure to include a variety of advice:

It’s a time and experience thing, like learning a language, the more you use it and are exposed to it, the more fluent you become at it. Probably the best thing to do to foster a good ear is transcription. Figure out your favorite songs, and when you get stuck, look online for a hint, but then go back to try figuring it out for yourself. I never practiced this intentionally, I just transcribed lots and lots of material, and several years later began to notice that I could pick out things with my ear alone, and actually be right about it.  And you really do, you just start to recognize certain sounds and chords and intervals, and after a while you can kind of “see” in your head what someone is playing just by listening to them. Maybe not note-for-note, but the general idea, good enough to pick up your own guitar and quickly figure it out. Just start figuring out your favorite material by yourself, try not to look it up online, and see how well you do. Start simple. YouTube is a godsend here, you can slow videos down and it stays in pitch, so it makes things easier to figure out. And theory does help, because it narrows down what the likely possibilities are. Rock, pop and blues are easiest, classical music is surprisingly easy, and jazz or fusion is often quite hard. Good luck!

Mike Kohary

Learned to play a bunch of songs and listened to how chords fit together.Learned a bit of theory – not too much, just enough for practical application.Took up bass, learned to hum bass lines… how to locate the tonic.Learned a bunch of standard progressions.Just took time, gigging and listening.I mostly play by ear and can transpose on the fly, and transcribe on the fly too, using Nashville notation – because I learned to hear chord progressions in Roman numerals. That way you can play them in any key without much sweating it.

Guy O.

Generally I break the song down into small chunks and start with easiest section I can hear or look for a good repeating section. Then I try to find roots of the chord or even bass line sometimes. Then I might play some basic power chords and then add notes to see if maj or min. You’ll probably start to see a pattern and just apply to the other chunks

Bobby A.

What makes it easier is always tuning your instrument, and also practicing one or two keys at a time. When I wasn’t busy playing shows, there was a point when I practiced in only a minor or e major for a month or two. Then it became much easier to identify those chords by ear. As far as more complex chords, you’ll eventually learn to associate a certain sound with a different type of chord, and also be able to match pitch on the root of the chord.

Warren H.

Theory helps a lot and yes, it takes time. Little lightbulbs will go off.Any and all ear training will help you along with this. One of the biggest parts, and usually most neglected areas of music theory is ear training. Everything you learn should be paired with some sort of ear training. Finding a program, app, or a friend to work on it together is good. Even better would be developing your voice. Learn how to sing the arpeggios, root movements of songs you are learning. So scales and intervals.It will all meld together eventually

Jonathan G.

My advice: start from intervals. When you are able to hear intervals you can train to recognize short melodies. Then you can train degrees of the scale. After that you can jump into chords and then finding bass notes of chords. Then chord functions should fall into place and you should be able to play “simpler” songs by ear. I mean, it’s a process but how fast you can do it depends on your knowlege now, what you focus on, how fast you learn and if you have someone to train you. But if you do it right you can play by ear in few months 

Matija V.

Basic theory helped me. Knowing what chords are diatonic limited the number. Listening for the bass helped. Soon, I managed to hear what certain things sounded like: perfect, plagal, andalusian cadences, a 2-5-1, borrowing a fourth from a parallel minor. At some point, I started hearing the quality of the chord (e.g. a dominant 7th, a major 7th, 9th), and figuring out how sus4s, sus2s, and diminished chords are used to transition. Certain things, like hearing the quality of a chord does take time and exposure, but others, like using cadences and passing chords, are learned and helps you get where you want to go quicker. Typically, I’ll listen, try to play it by ear, and if I can’t figure it out, look it up. With practice, it’s surprising how quickly you can just pick it up.

Carlos D.R.

Learning arppegios . You learn a scale and all its chords by kearning arppegios fronnit and adding notes or walking a note from it along the scale as you okay the rest of the chord and then you donthe inversion. Over time your ears gets use tonthe sound and you start to memorize the sounds of the shaoe sonwhen you hear them you remember them. You can pick up a arpeggios book uts way faster then jusblearning them all by trial and erroe

Frederick F.

Things come together through repetition and trial and error. I learned chord shapes on guitar by getting songbooks of songs I liked and working out the shapes and slowly connecting them. Only later did I learn what each note was in the fingering and still later the function of that note in the chord- root, third, fifth, etc.I believe strongly in learning to read traditional music notation and that involves learning to accurately interpret rhythm, too. I have always told my students to get their hands dirty with the materials of music every day. Ear training and sight singing are fundamental to developing strong musicianship. Drill your intervals and you’ll be able to move beyond chords built in thirds.

Jimmy M.

Most people will tell you to start by finding the root note of the chord, and that’s certainly important, but what really helped me was when my bass player of all people told me to start with the highest note I can hear in the chord and work my way down

Rick L.

It takes time and I’m certainly not as good in a jazz context as other styles, but I tend to surprise regular music listeners by how fast I can start playing and matching the harmony in their favorite tunes. I can say this, most modern music follows some sort of typical chord progression. Once you realize what it is its kinda easy honestly. Probably the most common is the 1-4-5 progression, or at least the use of those chords in some sorta arrangement. I also spend a fair amount of time in front of speakers with my apple or Spotify music playing random tunes, I tend to start with one note, the find another, then another and so on and so forth. Soon enough, I have a scale and with a good understanding of scales the chords become less guess work and more just sensical decision making.

Danny R.

Start with a single note. Let’s say you hear a chord; use your guitar to explore the fretboard until you get a close note. Let’s say you got A (sixth string, 5th fret); now do some research on the web about A chords that contains that specific note. It gets easier the more you do it.

Joel B.

Usually I hear the chord quality first, that is major / minor / 7ths and other extensions. Then I will hunt for the root notes. It’s very intuitive now, but it required years of study to understand the relationship between chords.Believe it or not, pop music (not my preferred genre BTW) from the 60s and 70s are a goldmine for for learning this because the chord progressions tend to be simultaneously sophisticated yet subtle. I recommend Steely Dan to start.Edit: I forgot to mention to try harmonizing the scale using four note chords rather than triads. The relationship between the maj7 and min7 offer prompts as to where to move next. By keeping this in mind is what makes those songs subtle yet sophisticated. On the other hand, keeping this in mind but using borrowed chords becomes quite exciting.

Reiss P.

For myself, I learned chords from a chord book n from tab books of bands like Thin Lizzy, Hendrix, Metallica, Jeff Beck, Frank Gambale etc.I began being able to hear chords the more I played. If you keep playing n practice playing by ear, you’ll get better with time.

Barrie M.

When I first started learning guitar in 1975, I did not have a plan, or guide. I just wanted to learn to play guitar. I would play along with my albums on the turntable, and use my chord book to learn from. I would spend 3-4 hours a day practicing. I wasn’t really putting effort into learning progressions, but after a while, it became easier to pick out the chords of each song. Changing chords became quicker and with less effort. Then I noticed that I could determine the key of a song by listening to just the first 10-15 seconds of each. I wasn’t aware of theory, so root notes, at the time, had no meaning. Several years after starting, I purchased a metronome, which made a big improvement in my playing. It was 5-6 years into my journey that I was able to sing along with my playing. I could recognize the chord progression of each song after listening to them one time. So, for me, the ‘ear training’ came as a natural learning process. This all took a lot of time and practice. My motto back then, and even now, is “just chip away at something, little by little, and eventually you’ll get there”. Like everyone says, “practice practice practice”.

Terry M.

There is a lot of really good help here posted so taking the advice here is very helpful. One thing I would suggest after you get really good at ear training is to not even have an instrument in your hand and when you hear a song you have never played try and figure the chord progression and key in your head before the song is over. It’s a really good on going exercise.

David S.

What helped me the most was splitting the problem into two parts. Part 1 is, what quality is the chord? Major, Minor, maj7, m7, 7, etc. The most important first distinction is major vs. minor. (There are tons of apps that will help with this–but once you get the basic idea, songs are an unlimited resource). The second step is being able to recognize the bass note–any easy way to do this in songs is to focus on the bass itself (or whatever is playing the lowest note). That way you can say–OK, this chord is E ________. Then by combining the two parts, you’ll be on your way to an answer. Obviously, this will still take a very long time–and ear training can be tricky/deceptive depending on context, so give yourself time and feel pretty good about yourself if you can even SOMETIMES snag a chord by ear–you’ll get there.

Andy K.

Listening and transcribing are key to developing your ear. My advice is if you want to learn a particular style then listen to and transcribe that style.Each style of music has patterns that create the character of that style. If you listen to and transcribe a lot of blues then that will influence how you create.In fact, that’s kind of how new styles are created – as fusions of influence. The same can even be said of particular artists within a style. If you listen to and transcribe a lot of SRV for instance you’ll tend to create something very different than if you listen to and transcribe a lot of Billy Gibbons. Either way blues will influence your creativity, but rhythmic patterns and progressions will vary based upon what you become most familiar with.This is why I say that if you want to create Anime music, listen to and transcribe Anime music a lot. Don’t use tabs or sheet music. Make your own. Even if you end up making mistakes, you will slowly skew your own intuitive style toward what you most listen to and work out.

Jeff C.

Conclusion

Learning by ear can be learned by anyone, but it does take time. Depending on where you are now, you may require a bit more time training your ear around notes and chords first; however, it’s never too early to start.

If you’re a lead player, you’ll find it a lot easier to pick out the single notes and melodies. If you know your scales and figure out the key of the song, you can avoid a lot of guess work as you can eliminate the notes that aren’t in the key. Then, it’s a matter of figuring out the notes in relation to the root. If it’s a slower song, it shouldn’t take too long. Sometimes, the hardest part is figuring out if a slide, hammer-on or bend was played.

If you’re a rhythm player, then it’s always good to build a strong foundation with single notes and scales first. Usually, once you find the note the chord is based off of, it’s just a matter of figuring out what kind of chord is played: major, minor, dominant, diminished, augmented, suspended, 7ths, etc. If you’ve been playing for a while, you should have a pretty good idea of what most of those sound like, but if not, there’s apps out there to help.

Don’t be afraid to dive in. There’s only 12 notes to choose from! Everything is always hard and time consuming initially, but the more you practice, the easier it becomes. And you’ll be far ahead of other players who can only learn from sheets cause they never even tried to learn by ear or create their own music.