The Best Ear Training Exercise For Guitar Players

The Best Way To Start Ear Training For Guitar Players

Tommaso Zillio

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ear training for guitar

How many times you have heard that you should learn to play by ear? And how many times they told you that to train your ear you should learn to recognize all the intervals or some similar exercises?

And even after doing all this, you still had problems trying to play "by ear"? Can you play the melody that is in your head?

Sure, online there are a million and a half tutorials for ear training. Some of them they ask you to recognize intervals, some other ask you to sing notes in chords... But they all have the same two problems:

  1. They are not directly applicable to real life playing. Even if you can recognize all your intervals, this does not automatically mean that you can play on the guitar the melody that you have in your mind.

  2. They are too hard for complete beginners. Sure, it's impressive to see a video where the instructor can sing missing notes in chords or every single pitch in an Am add9/#11... but this is not a good introduction to ear training!

If you thins about this for a moment, you will realize that these two reasons above are PRECISELY why your ear is not great. You do not know how to train your ear, and most of the exercises out there seem useless and/or overly difficult for you.

It's no wonder that most guitar players simply stick to play their guitar, learn a few patterns, and hope for the best. But it's time to change.

Here's my take on it. In the video below I lay down some "baby steps" for a student. You may be surprised by how far she goes in just a few minutes... but you can do the same:

As you can see, it takes only few minutes of exercise to get some significant result. If you liked this video and want to learn more on how to create melodic guitar solos, I suggest you take this free course on chord tone soloing as it will help you find the right notes on your guitar whenever you need them.


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