All pro musicians, whether they’re playing jazz,
rock, bluegrass or country music, have spent their
first few years of practicing bent over a half speed record
player. You might be wondering what does this have to
do with trying to learn to play the guitar by ear. As
you will soon learn from this article, it actually has a lot
to do with it.

Slowing Things Down Is The Key

In order to learn to play the guitar by ear you have to
begin with learning the melodies, chords and leads from a
good recording. To be able to do this, you’ve got to slow the recordings
down a bit. Some exceptional people with really
good ears are able to learn to play some slow songs just
by listening to them at their normal speed. However, even
these folks have problems with learning faster melodies
and need to slow things down a tad.

Many of us can’t even figure out slow songs simply by listening
to them at a normal speed. While most of us can match
a note with our guitar or voice if it’s the only thing we’re
hearing, we all tend to get confused when lots of notes are
played together at once. If we slow the music down some, we can separate
the notes and play them bit by bit until we learn the whole piece.

Slowdown Technologies

Years ago, this slowing down process was done using half speed
reel to reel tape recorders. However, when you slowed the music down,
the pitch dropped. By the time you got to half speed, the
pitch had already dropped significantly. Anyway, for most of us,
half speed is still way to fast. You may even need a 1/10
speed in order to figure out some pieces.

Fortunately, nowadays everything has been made easier with
the aid of digital slowdown technologies. You can now slow the
melodies down as much as you want, without having the pitch dropping
along with the speed.

You Really Have to Put The Work Into It.

You’re probably thinking that spending this much time on
figuring out each note for yourself must be awfully hard.
Why not just buy some books and get over this stuff?

Sure, you can buy a book, but, as it usually happens
with music theory books, it will most likely be gathering
dust on your bookshelf or sitting in your closet forever. If you
really want to learn to play the guitar by ear, you will have to
get involved in this method and figure out the notes from a melody yourself.

While figuring it out note by note on your own is the best way to
go, consulting a transcription book from time to time while you’re
trying to figure out the song is also good. Some beginning
guitar players who want to learn to play the guitar by ear
learn from a transcription book first and then play along
with the original recording at a slower pace to get the rhythm.

You should learn to play the guitar by ear just because this
is a way you can get the most fun. Playing the guitar should be
fun and this is why you decided to learn it
in the first place. The more you time you invest
into the learning process by getting involved in practical
activities, the faster your progress.