Play Guitar By Ear - Finding The One Chord

Play Guitar By Ear - Finding The One Chord The first important step in learning to play guitar by ear was to introduce the eight bar song form. Now, it s time to develop a system for identifying common harmonic patterns used by successful songwriters. Musical content: The key skills to learning to play by ear is the ability to understand musical form and content . Remember, all musicians who play by ear have learnt to do this, they just don t know how to explain the process! Finding the one chord: Our next step in learning to play guitar by ear will be to learn how to play two chord songs . As we have discovered the eight bar song format is a great place to start as our basic musical template, we will now need to learn the underlying mathematical codes for creating successful, logical chord progressions. Professional musicians use a numbering system to identify chord progressions that makes it easy for them to learn songs quickly and change keys effortlessly. It s extremely simple, and as we all know ... simple works! Here s how it works: The first chord we need to be able to find by ear is the one chord, this is the key chord. When a performer says "let s do XYZ song in the key of G" the one chord for that song would be G . Chord one reference chart: Key of C ... 1 chord = C Key of C# ... 1 chord = C# Key of Db ... 1 chord = Db Key of D ... 1 chord = D Key of D# ... 1 chord = D# Key of Eb ... 1 chord = Eb Key of E ... 1 chord = E Key of F ... 1 chord = F Key of F# ...1 chord = F# Key of Gb ...1 chord = Gb Key of G ... 1 chord = G Key of G# ...1 chord = G# Key of Ab ...1 chord = Ab Key of A ... 1 chord = A Key of A# ...1 chord = A# Key of Bb ...1 chord = Bb Key of B ... 1 chord = B In 98% of two chord songs the very first chord is a the one chord, as you can see we are off to a great start. More good news ... 100% of two chord songs finish on the one chord. That means if we were trying to play a two chord song by ear we would have a good idea what the first and last chords were! Here is an example of a two chord song in the key of D . | D /// | ? /// | ? /// | ? /// | | ? /// | ? /// | ? /// | D /// | As you can see, we re not sure what all the chords are, however we do know the first and last chords. I ll include one more example in the key of A . | A /// | ? /// | ? /// | ? /// | | ? /// | ? /// | ? /// | A /// | Each baby step forward in learning to play guitar by ear will build confidence in our ability to work out other songs by ourselves, eventually there s no limit to how many songs you can learn and remember Mike Hayes is a teacher, author, speaker and consultant. Get his tips and tested strategies proven to boost your guitar playing his membership site at http://www.guitarcoaching.com today.