Ear Training for Guitar

In the first article on ear training for guitar you learned why ear training is important, what an interval is and the names of the most common intervals. In this article you will learn how to recognize these intervals by ear.

Association is Key

Most people actually have a better ear than they might think. The key is taking what you already know and learning how to apply it to the guitar.

For example, you might be able to hear the first few notes to “Happy Birthday” in your head. The interval between the first two notes is easy to figure out – they are the same notes. Now suppose I told you that the interval between the second and third notes is a major 2nd. Whenever you need to recall what a major 2nd sounds like just think of those notes in “Happy Birthday”. Try it now.

Now suppose you were trying to figure out how to play “Yankee Doodle” by ear. Again, the first note is just played twice in a row so that is easy to figure out. The second and third notes sound just like the second and third notes of “Happy Birthday”. So you know that the interval between those notes is a major 2nd.

So now you know what a major second sounds like. If you can associate a song with each interval then you will soon be able to quickly recognize these intervals by ear.

Note, do not get frustrated if you cannot recognize them yet. It takes time and practice to become really comfortable with them. In my Ear Training for Guitar course I give plenty of audio examples including intervals, chords and musical phrases so that you can practice learning them.

You can use the first two notes of these example songs to help you remember what each interval sounds like. Or better yet, find your own examples.

Hopefully by now you can see that if you can play any interval on your guitar and you can recognize any interval when you hear it, then you can play anything that you hear. Remember - this will not be an overnight process. It takes some time and it takes some work.

Also, you don’t have to master every interval and chord before you will start seeing benefits. I found for myself that my improvising greatly improved almost right after I started training this way. To this day, I still cannot listen to the Brandenberg Concertos once and then play them back note for note but my ability to learn songs by ear, to improvise and to write songs has skyrocketed. Try it for yourself!

As always, I would love to hear your feedback. If this article has helped you, I’d love to hear your success story. If you think it can be improved to help others, I am very interested in hearing what you have to say. You can contact me a info@myOnlineGuitar.

I also offer the “Ear Training for Guitar” course which you can purchase from this site. The course expands on the material in this article series in much more depth and also provides new material not covered. The course includes diagrams, examples and audio tracks which will help you to develop a great ear and to become a better guitarist – guaranteed!

Good luck.