Some people are born with perfect pitch, or the ability to hear and name notes, intervals, chords, scales, and harmonic progressions in music. Some develop the ability to hear these things relative to a particular song or musical key. This is known as playing by ear. Learning to hear these musical elements is within reach of anyone who is willing to work at it. Here are some tips and tutorials to help you begin to hear and recognize music notes.

Learn your Instrument

Before you get started learning to play tunes by ear, though, you’re going to need to know a few basics — like how to hold the instrument and get it to make musical noises, for one. It’s best to get started off on the right foot, so devote some attention to the matter right at the outset.

Learn with “Call and Response” Teaching

The easiest way to learn to play by ear — and probably the best way, for that very reason — is using a method known as Call and Response instruction. Using that method, the teacher plays a few notes, and you repeat them. The teacher repeats those notes and listens to your response. until you’ve “got it”, and then the teacher moves on.

At the very beginning, you may only repeat one note at a time. But within a day or two you’ll be repeating pairs and triples more easily than you would have imagined. After a while, you’ll find yourself easily acquiring a phrase at a time. One day, you find yourself learning entire parts, and possibly entire tunes!

Learn by Picking Out Tunes

This process is harder, but fundamental. It’s what you’ll be doing when you practice tunes you learned with the Call and Response technique, and its what you’ll do to improvise, interpret, or embellish a tune with ornaments.

The best way to do it is to play any tune you can sing in your head. As Radim Zenkl once said, they can be nursery rhymes, advertising jingles, or songs you heard growing up — anything at all. What’s important is that you figure out how to play them on your instrument.

Tip:
When you get stuck on part of a tune, jump ahead — maybe even to the end of that part. Sometimes it’s easier to know how to start when you know where you’re going!

Learn Technique

Each tune has its own set of technical requirements after you spend a bit of time learning the basics of the instrument, move on to playing tunes right away. That makes it fun. Instead of spending years aquiring enough technique so they may one day play, they get up an running in the shortest time possible.

Although it might seem like sight-reading and sight-singing are dependent on the musician’s eyes, a skilled ear is the real key to unlocking these tricky areas of music. The exercises that constitute ear training will develop your sense of pitch, intervals and rhythm, making it possible to sight-read with confidence.