5 Tips On How To Identify Chords By Ear
By Dylan Andrews
As guitar players, we all want to learn songs by ear.
And most know that the key to doing this is ear training.
More specifically, it is knowing how to identify chords by ear.
If you're unsure if you have a trained ear, here are a few symptoms to look out for:
- Having to look up chord charts when learning a song
- Relying on videos to teach you how to play
- Looking up tablature to find out what is going on in a song
If you do any of these things listed above, you need more ear training practice.
If you want to stop wasting time and become the player you want to be, you need to know how to identify chords by ear.
This article will show you five powerful tips that you can start using today to train your ear to hear chords.
Use these tips consistently in your ear training practice, and you WILL see a massive improvement in your ability to identify chords by ear.
Tip #1 - Understand Chords
Understanding chords is crucial because you need to know swhat to listen for.
Without understanding how chords work, you won’t know how to identify chords by ear.
To understand how chords work, watch these videos below:
Tip #2: Find The One
Now that you understand how chords work, finding "the one" chord is the next step.
The one chord determines the key and how all the other chords react. It will be hard to identify chords by ear without finding this.
A few ways to identify the one chord is by listening out for:
- Which chord feels like you could end the song on
- Which chord has the greatest sense of resolution
- What chord does the music keep coming back to
- Which chord feels like home or like you have arrived
Hint: Most songs usually start with the one, so listening to the first chord is an excellent place to start. Keep in mind that this is not always the case.
Step 3: Decide if each chord is major or minor.
Training your ear to hear the difference between a major or minor chord will make things much easier.
This is because major and minor keys only have three major chords and three minor chords.
If you can train your ear to correctly tell between major and minor, you will have only three to choose from instead of seven.
Start putting this into your regular ear training practice routine, and you will see a difference.
Step 4: Listen To The Bass Guitar.
It can be tough to identify chords by ear when listening to a song because a lot happens.
You hear the drums, guitars, singers, and so on.
You need to ignore everything and listen to the bass guitar.
The bass guitar usually plays the root of each chord; this is an excellent way to hear how chords move.
If there is no bass guitar, listen to the guitar's bass notes and ignore all the others.
The Freeze Technique is an excellent technique for identifying chords by ear.
This is where you only focus on one chord or one small phrase at a time.
When you hear a chord or small phrase, pause the song and try to find it on your guitar.
Once you figure it out, go on to the next one until you have identified every chord by ear.
Guitar players make the mistake of trying to figure out too much at once. This is one reason most find learning songs by ear to be difficult.
Step 5: Start with simple songs.
Don't start with complex music that uses a lot of chords or unique scales. Choose songs that have 2-4 chords in them and start there.
By doing a quick search, you will find tons of these songs.
Choose one, and it doesn't matter if you like it or not, and start practicing.
Take your time with it and be patient.
If you consistently practice everything I talked about here, you WILL see results.
If you want to train your ear in the fastest amount of time and become the guitar player you want to be:
Click here to learn more about online ear training lessons