How do I learn to play guitar by ear?Playing by ear is a learnable skill, not a talent you're born with. The forum consensus: it comes from doing it regularly, starting simple, and letting your ear build up over months of practice. Start with songs you can sing V8 suggests picking something so melodic you can hum it from memory — even a nursery rhyme works, since it'll likely use the major scale and lyrics help lock in the timing 1. His other tip: skip the guitar and start on the bass. Bass lines are repetitive and use few notes, so figuring out a simple riff like Seven Nation Army teaches you to hear individual notes without the overwhelm 1. Work it out yourself, not from tabs JoEllis and others say working songs out by ear was harder at first but pays off — you learn to actually listen and find your way around the fretboard 5. Banditman describes it as training your ear to work "like a mixing desk", picking out each instrument's part 5. It takes reps, not shortcuts Bob-Dubery, our Resident Finger Picker, admits even he gets songs wrong — but analysing his mistakes sharpened his hearing. His motto: the more you do it, the better you get 3. Keira WitherKay, our Session Ace, says play a few hours a day and chords start to sound clear over time 3. A trick for pitch Once you can tune by ear, hum a note in your head, then match it to an open string and move chromatically until you find it 4. Note: relative pitch (hearing intervals and chords) is the practical goal — several members argue perfect pitch is overrated 3. If you're stuck, ask the community for exercises they've used. From these forum threadsHow to Learn Songs by Ear: A Complete Step-By-Step Guide (2018): V8's step-by-step ear method: start with singable bass riffsear training (2011): Bob and Keira on how ear training actually develops over timePerfect Pitch Ear training (2009): Hum-and-match chromatic exercise for finding pitchesDo you work things out... Or do you get tabs off the net??? (2009): Why working songs out beats tab crawling, per veterans
