Regardless of your role in any musical context, having a good ear can only be a good thing. I am not talking about perfect pitch, which is incredibly rare, or even relative pitch that can be attained with lots of practice, but simply knowing if something is what you think it is.
You can apply these skills in many areas. For example, knowing if your guitar is in tune or if the intonation is in need of adjusting. This can also be applied to learning songs, writing and developing music - we are going to discuss all of those points in this blog post.
Recognising Chord Types
The main way I help students improve their ear is by some rudimentary ear training by way of listening to chords and identifying the tonality of that chord. Depending on when you read this, there may or may not be a series of exercises published on The American Guitar Academy’s Japanese YouTube channel (you can find it here) that will start you off if you need some practice.
Recognising major and minor chords is where you would typically start, and this should give you most of the skills needed for a majority of pop songs, at least in the West. Those of us that have worked on this instantly recognise a major chord as just that, and the same for the minor chord. However, starting off you might need to analyze the chord and determine if it sounds happy or sad, then remember that happy chords are major and minor chords are sad. This can be progressed to include diminished and seventh chords and the possibilities extend as far as harmony itself does.
Having this knowledge, or at least making an effort to improve the skill, will help when learning songs. These can be existing pieces of music, but there is always the temptation of just searching for the chords on Google (see my blog post on learning songs to get my top tips in this regard). However, what if the song you are learning doesn’t have anything published online? Using your ears and any knowledge of theory is the only way to go. Even if there are many chords in the song you can’t figure out straight away, you can at least start to figure out what family they belong to.
Melody
Much the same as chords, melodies have a tonality and often come from scales or arpeggios, the latter being chords with the notes being played separately. Once again, your abilities can be expanded as you progress, but being able to recognise the changes in intervals is very useful. Many of my students can hear the difference between a major and a mixolydian scale, despite those scales being only one note different - this is without any training too!
Simple melodies tend to only stick to one scale, or at least very close to one. However, a great example of an exception to this rule would be stylised musicians such as BB King and the other blues greats - part of the signature blues sound is mixing major and minor tonalities in certain places throughout the progression.
Another area that being able to hear melodic differences is when learning to implement modal scales (lydian and dorian etc). Being able to listen for and genuinely hear other players use them will help you immensely - it did for me! Listening to Joe Satriani helped me grasp the lydian scale, and countless hours listening to fusion guitarists made the dorian scale seem so much more than just minor pentatonic with some extra notes added in.
Oftentimes, learning lots of different scales can actually make your playing too rigid and stale. From personal experience, I can tell you that if you spend too long thinking about what scale or what arpeggio to use where, it can really hinder the end product. Instead, singing a melody or hearing one in your head, and then being able to translate that to the guitar, is a much more natural approach. It could open new possibilities and incorporate scales you don’t even know yet, or simply approach a scale you do know in a way that you haven’t before - this link is to an example I created, showing a great way you can play the E Major scale in a less conventional manner.
Intonation
I mentioned earlier about intonation, and I thought it would be useful to discuss this further. Intonation is how in tune the guitar is all over the neck and not just with the open strings. For example, the third fret on either of the E strings should be a G note, but for a guitar with poor intonation it could be sharp or flat, in extreme cases not a G note at all!
Knowing how to adjust the intonation on your guitar is very important, though it is a topic for another time. The further up the strings you go, the more likely the intonation is to be in need of adjustment. When it is very slightly out it is almost unnoticeable unless you are playing slow chords, though the guitar really does start to sing when it is set-up just right. Having a good ear should enable you to notice when the guitar needs a slight adjustment, a new set-up or even just a change of strings (some coated strings last so long that they deteriorate in other ways, so they could feel nice but the intonation might start to slip).
Arrangements
Steering away from the specifics of recognising chords and melodies, being able to hear entire songs in a different light is something that not everyone can do. I am talking of arrangements of songs done in a completely different style to the original - other examples of arrangements would be changing the structure of a song to suit a live performance - we are not talking about that.
Let us look at two examples, these are some of my favorites at the moment.
Scary Pockets - I Believe in a Thing Called Love
This song was originally written by British rock icons The Darkness, and Scary Pockets have given it a contemporary, funky edge. There is no real point comparing the two versions as they are vastly different - the only real connection is the lyrics. Instead of the big guitar riffs, there is a slow and spaced out line played in unison by the guitar, bass (Tal Wilkenfeld is a living legend!) and keys. The original also has three guitar solos and many melodic fills, whereas the Scary Pockets version puts the only solo onto a synthesizer. This all goes beyond just playing the song on different instruments.
Postmodern Jukebox - Stayin’ Alive
This great rendition of a 1970s classic is described as a “ragtime rockabilly swing” cover. Not only is the style completely different from the original by Bee Gees, but it is very stripped back in terms of ensemble - there are only three people performing!
I would recommend checking out both of these groups; Scary Pockets and Postmodern Jukebox are experts in giving songs a new lease of life and have spawned hundreds of similar channels, each seeking to claim some of that fame.
Final Thoughts
A good ear, borne out of natural skill or hard graft, is only going to make you better at what you do. It can fill in the gaps of your knowledge of music theory and help you use what you already know. Your improvising will be more natural and improved all around as a result. Communicating with other musicians will become a more straightforward affair, you will also be able to interpret others thoughts with a higher degree of accuracy.
I simply can’t state enough how important it is to work on your ears, and it doesn’t need to be something you do actively. Any good guitar teacher, or musician in general, can help you improve with this and there is only one place to go - The American Guitar Academy!
Alex
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