Posted in: Guitar by oliclark578375 on April 27th, 2011 | 0 Comments
By training your ears to recognise perfect and absolute pitch, individuals will be able to improve their musical ability. Whilst the title relates to guitars, this is my area of interest, it is actually relevant for all musical instruments no matter which genre.
The ability to play a musical instrument, any musical instrument, relies on a degree of physical talent. For instance, with a guitar the ability to strum or pick the strings whilst placing your fingers on the corresponding strings to either form chords or pick out notes is a necessity. Without these skills you are not going to get very far.
However, the ability to understand and recognise what you are playing gives you the ability to play, write and possibly perform songs and give them your own twist as opposed to simply mimicking someone else’s moves, licks and runs.
One of the most disappointing things I see is that this skill is not being taught in schools. As human beings we like interacting and imposing ourselves on whatever we are doing whether it is music, sports or gardening!! The greater our understanding of something then the greater our ability will be to master the subject we want to excel at.
To be able to play an instrument with others, jam or seriously perform, in a proficient and interesting way relies on being able to play by ear. This is to have an understanding of relative pitch. Don’t you just envy those ‘natural’ players who can simply pick up their instrument and sit around with others?
The step on for this is for someone to play a note and for you to recognise it instantly. Then a series of notes so you can then tell which key the piece is in…. then bang you can come in and improvise again or write additional complementary parts – in fact, whatever you want to do.
I have also discovered that it does not matter how old you are, you can learn how to play guitar by training your ear at any age. Thankfully music does not discriminate. I wish I had learned when I was a child; in fact it should have been on my school curriculum.
In my search for perfect and absolute pitch I have discovered many methods that will enable me and my sons to learn how to play guitar by training our ears. In fact, we have already begun – well if they aren’t going to teach it in schools then I had to do something.
If you want to find out how we are doing it then please visit us here http://bit.ly/trainyourear
