I can't seem to get away from tab and need to work on playing by ear. What songs would be recommended as easiest to start with?

I made mention in another post about the chord progression of Walk Don't Run coming to mind as I was driving, thought that was a major moment, but it was years ago and I haven't put enough effort into music lately. I want to get back to working on it.

Anyone use those devices that let you play CD's at slower speeds without changing the pitch (guitar trainers)? Worth getting?

What worked for me was to slow songs down on the computer using software that lets you do that without changing the pitch. I think Audacity can do that, and it's free as in beer and speech.

I would slow a bit of the song down and just loop over it over and over and over. And I would fool around on the guitar until I got something. Then I would try it in a few different positions on the guitar to find one that worked best. Drove the family nuts so maybe you should get some headphones. ;)

And oh I wrote out tab this way. Writing stuff down made me remember it better.

This really improved my ear and I was able to pick up songs much quicker after doing this for many months.

Good luck!

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I would agree with what every one has said above, and add.
I agree with P2gee completely as to noodling being the most valuable, at least for me.

Joel

P2gee

I think some of best stuff you can do for ear training is what I call noodling around. That is, not trying to play a song or melody but just experiment with various chord shapes, double stops, triads , ect up and down the neck. I cant count the number of times I have been "noodling" and stumble over a lick or part of a song. At that point then, drag out the CD player or Audacity and it becomes pretty easy to piece the rest of the song together. Noodling around helps me alot to explore the audio range of the instrument I'm playing.

I recommend using the slow down method. I also suggest learning the chords first, then while learning the lead you'll start to learn how the 2 parts are interrelated. This is the key to learning songs by ear, understanding the relationship of melody and chord structure. Try to learn your favorite songs note perfect, then by all means change it to suit your personal style. But it's valuable to learn other players phrasing to help build your own palette.

Good luck.

Danny Snyder

"With great reverb comes great responsibility" - Uncle Leo

Playing keys and guitar with Combo Tezeta

Formerly a guitarist in The TomorrowMen and Meshugga Beach Party

Latest surf project - Now That's What I Call SURF

start with easy songs first,
pipeline, penetration, Endless summer theme.

Jeff(bigtikidude)

Jeff(bigtikidude)

Thanks for the replies everyone, food for thought. I do noodle a lot, and occasionally will stumble across something and go "Oh yea, that's from such-and-such song." Probably more than anything I need to be consistent with practice time and have some focus with what I'm doing.

Ruhar
When I was just learning to play, I spent many hours playing along with a CD/cassette player and constantly hitting the 'reverse' button until I learned a particular phrase of a song.

One nice thing about Audacity is that you can drag across a selection, and if you hold the shift key down when you click on the play button it will loop endlessly. It helps to find start and end points that are a few bars before and after the section of interest and also to fine-tune the selection such that when it loops from end to beginning it is still on the same point in the beat. You can usually find snare drum (or whatever) spikes in the waveform. No stumbling around trying to find the rhythm again.

Audacity does have the slow-playback option, but I don't recall if it will play slowly and loop at the same time.

QuickTime Player will also play back at half-speed, and if you can find a MIDI version of the tune, the notes come out just as clear whatever the speed, and the tempo is artificially precise. Unfortunately, many MIDIs don't have the subtle bends and whatnot; but on the other hand, with a MIDI editor, you can disable whichever tracks you want to keep silent.

If I'm just noodling around or trying to bring a newly-learned piece up to speed, I'll fire up my Yamaha Portasound PSR-400 synth and start up one the percussion sequence presets at whatever tempo I want, and work with that. I plug it into the "CD/MP3 IN" jack of my Line 6 Pocket Pod (headphone amp) so as not to disturb anybody else in the house.

Something that certainly does not help is that many versions of standards use different notes. I thought I had totally messed up learning the bridge part of Pipeline (and committed it to muscle memory!) when I heard a slightly different versions by The Ventures or some such. I googled for some different tabs, and found that there are different versions in tab form too.

Not that I ever am totally happy with tabs that I find. There's usually at least one or two passages that don't feel right, so I'll play them on a different part of the fretboard, or in a different octave, add a few filler notes, etc. I just have to please myself, so I can get away with it. I think of tabs more as <accent>guidelines</accent>.

I'm not a complete idiot. Some parts are missing.

here's another tip, do some searches on youtube for videos you like and where you sort of can see what they are doing. there are loads and loads of videos like these on youtube, e.g. from peopel trying to sell their teaching method book/dvd, from hobbyists showing of, or just online teachers, and sometimes just music clips.

if you can semi see what they are doin, and add your hearing to that, you can figure stuff out a bit easier, and train your ears and your hands. IV done this lately and it works pretty well for me for very fast stuff or weird jazz chords I dont know, I cant figure it out by ear completly, but if I sort of know where fingers are, I can. examples:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPsjgrJTcGA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAeUVyIb5_8&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFvqmIi9Ymc

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https://www.facebook.com/The-Malbehavers-286429584796173/

wow dig the left hand only riffs that Jose is pulling off at about 1:30 in Malaguena.

Jeff(bigtikidude)

Jeff(bigtikidude)