More Tips On Ear Training

April 1st, 2008 Print Tip E-mail Tip

When you are figuring out a riff or melody by ear, it's a good idea to count the number of notes you have to work out. Break down the melody into bite-sized portions, and literally count on your fingers the number of notes to be determined. This helps turn the abstract and intangible into the concrete and comprehensible.

One good way to develop your ear is to figure out the vocal melodies of your favorite songs. Singers sometimes use a technique called melisma. This occurs when you sing more than one note over a single syllable—think of the first word of "The Star Spangled Banner"—"Oh-oh". Picking up little details like these let's you incorporate them into your guitar solos and gives your solos a desirable vocal quality (see How To Make Your Guitar Sound More Vocal). Practice working out jingles, snatches of songs, parts of a movie score, Christmas tunes—basically any melody that floats your boat. Believe me, in time your ear will get better. When I first started developing my ear, I often sat there stumped, staring at the guitar fretboard with a baffled look. I knew the melody had to be on there—it was played on a guitar in the first place! Now I fully expect to accurately figure out any melody I wish, and I just about always do. I'm certainly not ready yet to do full song transcriptions for Guitar World or Guitar Player though. So you will definitely get better; just refine your ear every chance you get. If you were truly tone-deaf, you wouldn't love music as much as you do.

One tip if you get stuck on a melody or riff: Just remember the next note can only go up, or down, or repeat—that's it. Notes do repeat fairly often (especially in vocal melodies), so keep this in mind. Also, expect the unexpected. Some great melodies use the chromatic scale (basically every note on your guitar) to some degree. So "improbable" as it might seem, the melody might ascend fret-by-fret over a number of notes. As always, let your ear be the final judge.

Working out melodies and developing your ear is, in my opinion, the absolute best thing you can do to advance your musicianship and make you truly understand and be fluent in the language of music.