How to Learn Songs by Ear

1. Learning songs by ear is a super effective way to train your ears

The first couple of years I played guitar, I’d regularly hear that ear training ‘is good for you’. I didn’t really know why (tabs seemed to be working fine), but sure, I listened. And so, I tried all sorts of apps, books and exercises. Most of them were focused on recognising things like chord types, scales and intervals. I got better at the exercises eventually, but it never seemed to impact my playing.

My ears improved dramatically when I stopped using tabs, and started to use my ears all the time. I’d figure out licks, vocal melodies, bass lines, chord progressions and stuff I heard on tv. And that’s when I really started to notice my experience of playing guitar change. Instead of ‘memorising frets’, playing became more intuitive. Sometimes I thought I’d forgotten a note or chord, but my fretting hand would automatically play the right thing. Slowly but surely, it started to become second nature to hear something and just play it immediately.

2. Learning by ear develops your inner musician

When you learn a song by ear, you’re strengthening the connection between your head and your hands. You’re training your ability to clearly hear a sound in your head and to then get that sound out of your instrument. This skill is a core part of your musicality. It’s the key to musical expression and it impacts pretty much every aspect of your playing: playing by ear, improvisation, songwriting, timing, performing live… It's why I like to start figuring out songs by ear even with complete beginners: it's how you develop your musicality from day one.

This is also the reason that many players who stick to TAB and sheet music for many years start to feel like something is missing. One student put it well when he said he felt like a ‘guitar operator’, instead of a musician. By developing your inner musician, you avoid the plateau of boredom, tediousness and ‘emptiness’ that can set in after playing mostly TAB or sheet music for a few years.

3. Learning by ear allows you to explore your own taste

Your taste in music is what makes you into a unique musician. Every artist has their own blend of influences that makes them special. As a musician, your ability to figure out music by ear is critical in being able to explore your taste. You’ll be able to learn anything you like without needing sheet music or a YouTube tutorial, whether its a movie soundtrack, video game music, some obscure band, or a B-side that no one seems to care for, but that you know is pure genius… It’s a great feeling when you don’t have to rely on lesson videos, TAB sites or sheet music to play the music you love.

But it’s not just practical to be able to learn music by ear. By figuring things out yourself, you’ll also gain a much better understanding of the song at hand, and music in general. It ingrains the sound in your ‘musical system’ in a much deeper way than when you’re just copying a tab. You'll gain a more thorough understanding of what’s going on in the music.

4. Learning by ear trains you to hear in greater detail

When you work out music by ear, you’re listening to music with a lot of focus. This trains your ability to perceive music in finer detail. For example, you’ll be able to pick out all the different instruments and hear what they’re playing, note by note. You’ll be able to identify subtler sounds within the mix, and discern individual notes in faster guitar licks. I like to call this ‘hearing in HD’. You can compare the difference to watching a pixelated, low-quality YouTube clip uploaded a decade ago, versus seeing a high-quality video on a 4K screen. Overall, this ability will enhance your listening experience and allow you to enjoy music on a deeper level.

1. Listen to the very first note and hum it

Focus on the first note and try to match it with your voice. See if you can hum it or sing it. If you plug one ear with your finger, it can be easier to hear yourself. Also, pausing the music right after the first note has played helps to focus on it.

2. Find the very first note of the melody

Now, while you’re humming the note, let your hand float towards the fret that you think will give you the right note. This is an intuitive process, so don’t overthink it! Is it the correct note? Is it higher? Lower? Try to slide up or down the string you’re on, until you find the note you have in mind. In the beginning, finding notes will be a lot of trial and error and that’s entirely okay! With practice, you’ll get faster at this.

3. Write the note down

Found the note? Great! Be sure to write it down. Writing the note down helps you keep track of where you are. I like using TAB for this, because it gives you both the note and the position on the fretboard where you’re playing the note.

4. Repeat the process until you've found all the notes

Now that we have the first note, focus on the second one. Is this second note higher or lower than the first note? Or is it the same note? Try and find the right fret. To make things easier, stay on one string. Just slide up or down, until you find the correct note. Once you find it, write it down and repeat the process for each note until you've found the whole riff or melody.

5. Figure out the easiest way to play it

If you stick to one string as I recommended in the last step, the melody might be a little hard to play. So once you’ve found all the notes, now it's time to look for a way to play the melody where you don’t have to move up and down the fretboard as much. To do so, you’ll have to move some of the notes to other strings.

To move a note to a different string, you need to do a little math. When you go one string higher (that is, higher in pitch and physically closer to the ground), that’s the same as moving up five frets. So if you then slide back five frets, you’ll have found the exact same note! For example, the seventh fret of the A string is the same as the second fret of the D string. (Sidenote: there’s one exception to this math: when you're moving from the g string up to the b string, which is four frets instead of five!)

1. Tune into the bass

The lowest note in music determines how all the other notes will sound. That’s why harmony always starts with the bass note. So, the first thing you want to do, is listen closely and tune into the bass line. This may take some practice, because we're used to listening to instruments that take a more prominent place in the mix, such as the guitar or vocals.

Bonus tip: use an equalizer

If you're using something like Apple Music, Spotify or VLC media player you can try boosting the bass frequencies using the equaliser. This can make it a bit easier to tune into the sound of the bass. It depends on the recording, but generally speaking it should help to boost anywhere from 60 to 400 hertz. So experiment with that area until you find a setting that makes the bass easier to hear for you. Also, keep in mind that earbuds or laptop speakers often don't have the most powerful low end. So trying a different pair of headphones or speakers might also make it easier to hear the bass.

2. Figure out the bass part

Now that you’ve tuned into the bass, it’s time to figure out what the bass is playing. First, make sure you've got the bass line in your head. Check this by singing or humming along with it. Next, figure it out one note at a time, until you've found the first five to ten seconds of the song. This process is pretty similar to learning riffs and melodies by ear, as described above.

3. Figure out the root note

The next step is to listen to the bass line and figure out which note is the so-called ‘root note’. Think of the root note as the foundation of a chord. It determines the 'letter' we use to name a chord. For example, the root note in a B minor chord is B.

Determining which note is the root requires you to listen to which note is emphasized in the bass. You’ll get better at this with experience, but there a few things to look for. Listen to which note the bass plays the most often and the longest. Listen to which note the bass plays on the first beat (‘the one’) of a new bar (a.k.a. measure). And on which note does the bass sound the most 'at rest'? Those are all things that can help you figure out the root note.

4. Check if the chord on the root note is major or minor (or neither)

Say you found the first root note is G. Now we want to find out what type of chord we’re dealing with. Try playing a G major chord and a G minor chord. If you play both options along to the song, you’ll hear that one of them sounds pretty good while the other hurts your ears a bit and sounds plain wrong. So that will tell you if the chord is major or minor!

Now, there’s a small chance that a major and minor chord both sound wrong. If so, you might have gotten the root note wrong, or you’ve run into a more ‘exotic’ chord type. This is where it helps to have your ‘chord library’ in order, so you can try a few different chord types. Here’s a few options to check:
• half diminished chord
• diminished chord
• augmented chord
• sus chord (sus2 or sus4)
• a slash chord (i.e. a chord where the bass isn't playing the root note)

Don’t worry too much about this though! Below I’ll give you some suggestions for songs to figure out by ear where you don’t have to worry about these more ‘exotic’ chord types.

5. Check if you need to add an extra note to make it into a seventh chord

If you found a major or minor chord in the last step (i.e. not one of the exceptions I mentioned), the sound of the chord might still be a bit different. This is most likely because this chord has one or more additional notes that give it a richer sound. The first options you should check:
• dominant chord (for example: ‘G7’)
• major seven chord (for example: ‘Gmaj7’)
• minor seven chord (for example: ‘Gm7’)
• major minor seven chord (for example: ‘Gmmaj7’, this one’s rare)

6. Repeat this until you’ve found all the chords

Repeat these above steps until you’ve found all the chords! Very often, songs only use three or four chords, so this can go quite fast. Also, remember that once a chord has been used once in a song, there’s a big chance it’ll be used again!