I often get asked questions about learning to play by ear. Some students are worried that learning to read will dampen their natural abilities to play what they hear, others who are good readers want to develop aural skills with a view to creating their own music or learning to improvise. My opinion in both cases is that having both reading AND aural skills can only turn us into much better musicians and as such, we would do well to develop both sides equally.

So, what practical steps can we take to develop these skills?

Aural / Ear-Training Skills

1. Aural / Ear Training Skills

The corner-stones of learning to play music by ear are built by listening to it with a critical ear. To start the process you will need:

• Pitch recognition - identifying whether a note is higher or lower, and reproducing it on your instrument/voice.

• Interval recognition - hearing and understanding the distance between notes (eg minor 3rd, perfect 5th). This is essential for figuring out melodies quickly.

• Chord recognition - hearing and recognising chord types (major, minor, dominant 7th, diminished 7th, etc.).

• Harmonic function awareness - knowing how chords tend to behave (eg tension/release patterns) lets you predict and create progressions.

• Rhythm recognition - being able to reproduce rhythmic patterns accurately, including syncopations and swing.

Music Theory

2. Music Theory

Theory acts like a map that supports your ears and helps you understand the structure of music.

• Scales and modes - recognizing which scale a melody is drawing from.

• Chord–scale relationships - understanding what notes “fit” over certain harmonies and why.

• Common progressions - such as I–IV–V, ii–V–I, other popular 'pop' progressions, blues patterns, etc.

• Song forms - knowing typical structures (verse/chorus, 12-bar blues, AABA/sonata form etc) helps organize what you hear and experiment with similar structures in your own playing/writing.

3. Instrument-Specific Technique - you need enough control to bring music from your brain out into your fingers.

• Fingering fluency - you can move freely without hunting for notes.

• Pattern fluency - knowing the shapes of chords and other patterns, inversions, scales and their voicings on your instrument.

• Range awareness - recognising immediately where a heard note would “live” on your instrument.

 

Audiation

4. Audiation (Inner Hearing)

This is the bridge between the human ear and the instrument. Once you have acquired some of the skills mentioned above, you'll have the facility to:

  • Hear notes in your mind before you play them.
  • Predict the next note or chord, or guide the progression where you want it to go.
  • Mentally “singing” what you want to play.

Musicians who transcribe (write down what they hear) easily have strong audiation.

 

Singing Ability

5. Singing Ability (Even Basic) - this is not about being a professional singer, I'm talking about just making a noise! 🙂

You don’t need to be a vocalist, but being able to sing back what you hear, even roughly, massively improves:

  • interval knowledge and accuracy
  • melodic recall
  • rhythm memory
  • connecting ear → voice → instrument

Pattern Recognition & Musical Memory

6. Pattern Recognition & Musical Memory

Developing long and short-term memory for musical shapes. Developing the ability to recognise and reproduce:

  • motifs
  • licks
  • cadences
  • harmonic patterns

This knowledge makes it easier to group together various chunks of information as you're listening.

 

Putting It All Together

7.  Putting It All Together

So, in summary, to reproduce music by ear, you need a blend of:

Listening skills (aural training)

  • Understanding (theory)
  • Internal hearing (audiation)
  • Execution (technique)

The good news? All of these can be taught and learned, just contact me for details.