I have been playing guitar for 12 years or so and something I've noticed about good musicians is that they have this uncanny ability to hear something and play it. Watching someone do it is like magic. It's something that anyone can do with enough practice. I will be the first to admit that even after years of study in college my aural skills are nowhere near where I would like them to be. I built this site for me as much as anyone.
It's the ability to conceptualize the relationship between notes inside your head rather than with your ear. You probably can't tell the first note is E but you can hear it's the tonic or root note of the riff. You can move the relationships around to play the lick or progression in any key. The relationships are what matter.
The generally accepted answer to this question is you have to sing. Yes sing. Sounds odd to say guitarists need to sing to get better at the guitar but it's true. Singing or humming notes allows us to internalize what the relationships sound like. If you're unable to sing a lick back, even if it's in another octave and slow, it's very unlikely you can work out the notes without your instrument. The other half of learning this skill is transcription. Writing out the notes for music you hear. It's what you're doing inside your head when you go from hearing music to playing it. Working out lots and lots of music by ear and writing is down without your instrument to help you is how you learn aural skills.
The goal is to be able to hear a lick and then given the starting note play that lick back without any searching on the instrument.
This website is a tool to help you on this journey. By training on licks that are within your skill level and a little beyond you can incrementally improve you aural skills. You can listen to a lick at work and do your best to write down the music then go home and work it out on your instrument. I'm trying to add interesting licks and licks from popular songs where possible so you can really internalize them.
We need your help! Record a lick in Guitar Pro and upload the files and recording and we will add it to the site. We're shooting for 4 measures or less and we will rank the difficulty with our formula. Single line melodies type licks are good. Licks that showcase an interval or technique and also come from a popular song are even better. The focus is on ear training not guitar technique for beginner licks. The more advanced licks would have bends and other things to challenge the experts.
- 1 point per note in single melody lines
- 3 points per note in polyphonic lines
- 1 points for ever 10 BPM in tempo
- 3 points for every skip (a jump more than a major 2nd)
- 4 points for every skip over an octave
- 3 points if the lick does not start on tonic
- 3 points if the lick does not end on tonic
- Potential bonus points if the lick is just hard for some reason. Syncopated rhythms for example.