Learning Music By Ear for All Stringed Instruments

Book and Audio CD Learning how to play your musical instrument by ear is a skill that is vital to your development as a musician. While reading music is also a valuable skill, in many forms of music—folk, old-time, bluegrass, rock, Celtic, blues, country, jazz—you are not typically going to have a music stand sitting in front of you at a jam session or stage performance. Also, in these genres of music, it is very likely that a given song that you want to learn will not be available to you in written form and so the only way you will be able to learn the song is if you know how to do it by ear. If you work to develop your ear, and your “musical memory,” a lot of music that is not available to you now will be accessible. With a well developed ear, the following skills will be easily attainable: 1) You can learn new songs that are not written in standard music notation or tablature. 2) You can learn the songs, licks, riffs, and phrases that you hear on recordings by your favorite musicians. 3) You can create your own arrangements to songs that you already know. 4) You can learn how to improvise. 5) You can take solos on songs that you have never heard before. 6) You can take any musical phrase or melody that you hear in your head and find it on your instrument.