I first started out learning guitar, like listening to albums and trying to copy what
I heard.
Now I mean actual vinyl on a turntable, you should have seen me lifting up the dial and
trying to remember and play a little part and then putting it back and over and over
and over.
It was great ear training.
But it was brutal.
I would spend hours working on one little small section and I never quite knew if I
got it right or not.
Ear training is really important but I didn't want to put my students through that kind
of process.
One day, I walked through one of the classrooms at my music school.
The teacher was teaching a group of five year old children.
She was leading them through a process, I later learned what's called by copy play.
It's a part of the Yamaha educational system for young children.
The teacher would play a simple phrase on the keyboard, and then the students would
sing it back.
Little by little, she would combine the phrases and they make longer melodies.
They were actually the tunes that the students were working on.
What really impressed me is the children were having a great time.
It wasn't like an exercise or work for them.
It was a fun game and they we’re loving it.
I realized that there was something there that I could use with my students.
Now I'm going to show you a system that I develop for guitar players.
And before I do that, I want to answer a question that I know a lot of you are wondering about
why?
Why should I go through the trouble of ear training and it's a fair question.
It takes time, effort, and you don't see the results right away.
It's certainly not like learning a song and then having something to show for it?
Well, the short answer is, it's because the overall benefits are tremendous.
And training your ears will make you a better all around musician.
It'll make it easier to learn new music with or without written notation.
It'll allow you to play more accurately and to tell quickly when something doesn't sound
right.
It also makes it more fun learning music, as you become better at identifying the details
quickly and easily.
Most importantly, you'll develop confidence to know what sounds good for you.
This turns into an incredible freedom.
You won't have to worry about playing by the rules or playing only what's written on paper,
or only playing what you can copy from another musician by road.
And as a side benefit, it becomes more enjoyable to listen to music, as you become more aware
of all the rich details.
Okay, I'm going to play a couple of clips for you.
The first one will show you kind of how the by copy playing works and set you up for a
demo right after it.
I'll show you the notes that you're going to play and kind of get you prepared, then
I'll play a short by copy session.
Now you get the most out of this if you pull out your guitar and play along with me.
Let's do this.
By copy playing is the best way I found to train the guitar player to use their ears.
Now there are lots of approaches when I was growing up and I've told this story before.
We would just listen to albums and copy them, it's very hard.
We couldn't slow him down and there was no way to isolate phrases easily anyway.
Nowadays, we got computers and we can actually slow him down and all kinds of stuff.
But this is an exercise that we use with lots of students at my music school on the keyboard
singing, and it works really well with a guitar.
So to give you a heads up, it's going to sound like this.
I'm going to say listen, and then I'll play a short phrase to a beat, da, da, da and then
you play it back.
I'll say play so it sounds like that.
Listen.
And then you play bah, bah, bah, that was supposed to be you, of course.
You know what I mean?
Okay, so to give you a heads up, this particular exercise is only going to use notes from the
third string and the second.
You don't have to worry about thinking where it's gonna be and did narrow down even more.
It's just these notes.
Sorry, oh, my second fret and third finger, that's it.
I'm not gonna use my second finger, and I'm not gonna venture into any of the other strings.
So you might want to practice just a little bit –
that's a third string, second finger, open second string, first finger, and third finger
and down backwards.
First finger, open, second string, second finger on the third string and then open.
Those are the notes I'll be using and it's good to kind of warm up with them before we
get started.
Have fun with this.
Don't take it too seriously.
Any effort you put in is actually going to improve your ability to hear a note and to
kind of connect that with your fingers.
One, two, ready, start and play it.
Listen.
Play it.
Listen.
Play it.
Listen.
Play it.
Listen.
Play it.
Listen.
Play it.
Listen.
Play it.
Listen.
Play it.
Listen.
Play it.
Listen.
Play it.
Listen.
Play it.
Okay, we'll stop there for now.
If you're already a member of Real Guitar Success, you'll find a complete series of
by copy play exercises.
I'll put a link in the description so you can get there quickly.
If you're not a member yet, no problem.
I'll go into details on how you can get access to these quickly and easily.
I have a quick question.
I want to know what you're doing now to train your ears.
If you have some favorite exercises or methods that you can share with us.
Leave us a note in the comments below I'd love to hear about.
Bye for now.