The Steel Guitar Forum

Does anyone have any advice on playing by ear? So far, that's how I'm having to learn. I slow down clips of my father and listen to my strings to figure out what he's doing.

I just learned my first Cajun two step today. It's a pretty cool experience to learn a new song on this instrument. I just wish he were here to give me pointers....

Attached is a clip of him as well as one of me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRs-fq7 ... e=youtu.be


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3EK5Uo ... e=youtu.be

Look up ear training. There are books, and I bet there are youtubes. Recognizing what you're hearing is harder than figuring out how to play it once you know what it is.

I'd suggest that you forget ALL.......
of the many tunes/artists that are lurking around out there.

Take but a single 'cut'.......... Put that record on a player and listen to it, not for listening pleasure alone, but using your ears to dissect it in depth. Listen FOR.....the subtle things you'd normally ignore if you were merely listening for pleasure. Do this for an hour or so.

Next time you go to that cut, try playing nothing more than the chord changes. See what you can figure out. Stay off of the pedals.

From there, on step at a time, try to play the song.

First of all you should determine whenever possible what tuning the player is using. Not all songs on an LP are the same steel player. Many times the guitars/tunings are not the same from song to song.

There are so many different session players and tunings being used, it really does make it difficult for most of us.

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I tried playing by ear, but couldn't keep the picks on.

Do what Ray says! To this >>> https://archive.org/details/GrofeGrandC ... iteormandy

Bud, Ray: while I agree, it helps to know HOW to listen and what to listen for.

Thanks for the tips!

Here. This is my attempt at writing about ear training,
It might help.
http://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=224154

Thanks for the link, Mr. Lane! I'm curious as to how your style of playing sounds. Do you have any videos posted on youtube?

There's a bunch.
My youtube channel is at www.youtube.com/steelguitarlane and there's a bunch. A few clips from shows, a few Gear demos, and some discussion of changes, a few bits of my playing.

Lane Gray wrote:There's a bunch.
My youtube channel is at www.youtube.com/steelguitarlane and there's a bunch. A few clips from shows, a few Gear demos, and some discussion of changes, a few bits of my playing.

Great videos! Gives me more reference material to work with. Do you know anything about what I was told is called, seconding? If so, I'll shoot you an email tomorrow with some questions I have. An old school pedal steel musician that I asked about it gave me a bit of info., but I'd like to get your input on it.

I don't recognize that term. I might well know the concept, but under a different name. My number's 8162060239, and I'll be up all night driving (I have hands free), if you wanna talk about it.

Jason, I don't know anthing about the Cajun tuning (even though, as the closest responder to you, geographically, I've experienced that music many times as a listener), but I gotta say that your dad sounds awesome in that clip. He's burning up the fretboard! I think your journey into psg-land - following in his footsteps - is quite inspirational. Good luck to you - I'll be watching closely.

Jason,
I play strictly by ear and here's what I would recommend. Approach it in steps. Lets say that you hear a lick or phrase in a song that you really want to learn. Assuming you already know what key the song is played, First, figure out where the lick/phrase is being played. Above the 12th fret or below. Second, narrow it down to which position/fret....A,G,C,D,etc. Third, (here is where you have to start listening very closely), listen for individual notes. If two notes are played together, listen for the loudest one and find it. The other one will be within finger reach and almost every time, on the same fret. Keep in mind that it may require a pedal or lever, or in some cases both, to get one note but not the other even though the notes are being played at the exact same time. Hard concentration and very close listening are essential. Especially if your going for "note for note". Happy picking!

Mitch

If we're talking about playing songs by listening to the melodies and developing an innate understanding of how the chord changes will probably work (even if you've never heard the song before), and not strictly pitch-based ear training, I'm sure there are lots of us with similar experiences.

I always saw learning to play by ear as similar to learning to drive a car with a standard-shift transmission: You concentrate closely to what's going on, and you eventually develop a sense of when to change and what to change to.

I wish there was a shortcut; but if there is I've never found it.

Personally - even though I had several years of music education and was eventually a woodwinds major in college - I learned to play by ear by growing up playing piano, guitar and bass in the Pentecostal church where my dad was the pastor. Virtually all the traditional old hymns we sang back then could be played with 3 (and occasionally 4) chords, and it really didn't take all that long to learn to hear the changes. If I was playing piano, I occasionally referred to the lyrics to see which verse we were on, so I wouldn't still be playing when everyone else ran out of words and stopped singing; but I otherwise ignored all those staves and notes and symbols on the page - even the key signatures if they weren't the keys the song leader wanted to sing in. If I was on guitar or bass, I never even cracked the hymnal.

But I suspect every one who learned to play by ear did it a little differently.

Some players get books or other media that have the chord changes printed over the words, showing when to change chords and what to change to, in the hope that they'll learn how to play by ear from them. It often works, yeah. But it's been my experience that those books also often become crutches, and so many players end up so dependent on them that they're dead in the water without them. Pull out a song they don't know, even if it's a simple 3-chorder like "Crazy Arms" or "Keys In The Mailbox" or "Frauline," and that panicked look comes into their eyes; and you end up telling them the chords as you play. Even that would be okay if it worked, but it's always a toss-up as to whether or not they'll remember the chord changes the next time you play the song.

There are several good methods described on this thread for playing by ear, but in the end they all involve the same basic aspects: Listen, Concentrate, Remember and Start Simply. And Don't Give Up!

Again, I wish there was a shortcut. And if there is a shortcut I'm not aware of, PLEASE let me know about it and I'll find a funny background picture and put it on a meme plate for posting on Facebook!

Don, one shortcut is in recognizing the "flavors" of the scale degrees relative to the chord. 2 (or 9) just don't sound like 6 or 3.
That's why I wrote that big long thing I referenced.

Listening to the Grand Canyon Suite, I'm reminded how much easier it was to do as a child. (I believe it was the first LP we got with our 'suitcase' stereo.)
With a clear mind, the tone paintings came to life.

We listened to fourths and sixths in piano, recognizing the scale degrees as Lane described in his intro to ear training.
With a quieter mind, the flavors of combinations of tones was more clear; they were also newer, and I had more headroom.
I hear them in the Grofe's suite, the clues to where the changes are going, and realize how much I relied on ear training.
What I don't remember is whether I analyzed what I was hearing. We were too young to concentrate; it wasn't hard work.

A tuner tunes in what he'd tune out. So focusing hearing, not necessarily concentrating, allows the brain to do the work.
Having the ears open all the time like a child still seems to be the way to learn from what we hear.
There is truth to the saying that our bodies function like music; musical thinking, listening, support learning.

Did any of you sing shape notes? Surely that would be excellent ear training for simple music that stays in one key.

My first accidental exposure to ear training was learning the piano rhythm parts to Heart and Soul as an early piano student. That repetitious I,vi, IV, V progression made a lot of things about the underlying structure of music make sense.

Hi Lane,
Do you have the link to the Johnny Cox, Playing the Melody so we can start from the beginning? thanks............clark

Here, Clark. I haz the Google Fu.
http://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=223573