Chords for How to Play by Ear 🎵 (Explained in 8 Minutes!)

Do you want to learn how to play songs just by listening to them?
Well, a lot of people are going to tell you it [G] can't be taught,
or you've got to be born with perfect pitch.
[D] And not only is all that untrue, [G] it definitely can be taught.
I want to go a step further.
I'm going to make a crazy [C] claim right now that your ear already knows more
than you could possibly realize.
[G] So how can I say that?
Well, if we think of music as a language,
you've been exposed to that language your entire life.
You've been listening to music for [D] years and years.
So the building blocks [G] are kind of already there, whether you realize it or not.
So this is going to be a fun video.
We're going to do some games, some listening exercises.
And [D] I really encourage you to make a commitment to [G] yourself right now
to stay through the entire video.
I don't want you to miss out on anything.
This is going to [Cm] be so eye-opening for you.
[D] And with that said, let's get into it.
[F#] Now, our goal is to play songs by ear.
[Em] Well, what is a song?
There's actually a couple [N] elements to it.
A song is a combination of melody and chords.
So any song you could ever want to play is melody with chords beneath it,
and you get a song.
So for us to train our ears, we have to train those two areas, melody and chords.
Here's the good news.
They both come from what we call a scale.
And a scale is something we've [C] all heard.
It's that classic,
Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, Do.
[A#] That's a scale.
[G] And most people know that melody comes from a scale, right?
Just different patterns of those syllables.
Do, Re, Mi, Re, Do, So, Do.
That's how we sort of get melodies.
But what people don't know is that [Em] chords come from the scale too.
So let me show you what I mean.
Let's start with something easy, say the C scale.
There we go.
Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, Do.
Now [D#] let's turn each of these into a chord.
[C] Here's what I mean.
If we take Do as our starting note,
I'm going to do an every other note kind of shape, right?
I'm just skipping over and taking every other note.
And that is my Do chord.
Now I can [Dm] go up to Re and do a Re chord,
to a Mi chord, and so on.
[C] Now the only thing is,
we don't want to call these chords Do or Re.
For the chords, we want to refer to them as numbers,
like one, two, or three.
So there we go.
If we start on the first note of the scale, we call it a I chord.
If we start on the second note of the scale, it's a II chord.
Then three, four, five, [F] and so on.
I think you get it.
[G] Pretty simple, right?
If you can count, you can do that.
So now [F#] let's finally get to the ear training portion.
[D#] This is the reason you're here.
[Em] And what we're going to do is,
I'm going to play you a quick musical snippet.
[N] And I'm not going to tell you what you're listening for.
But I want you to listen closely,
and then we'll talk about it afterwards.
I don't want to give anything away.
So check this out.
[C] Just take a listen.
_ [F] _
_ _ _ _ Okay, did something sound kind of off about that?
It did, right?
_ _ [F] So what's happening is,
your [G] ear knows where it's [C#] supposed to go.
What your ear wants to hear is the sound [C] of the I chord.
[Em] And the I chord, the sound of it is resolution,
stability, landing somewhere.
Okay, so [F] here's the I chord.
_ [C] _
There we go.
So you knew [F#] the sound, you just didn't know what to call it.
Now you know that that's the I chord.
So let me play another quick [F] example.
Here's the [Em] III chord.
No, goodness.
All right, here's the I chord. _
[C] There we [F#] go.
Now let's take the opposite approach.
Instead of me telling [Cm] you,
here's what the I chord sounds like,
I'm going to play a chord,
and I want you to tell me what it sounds like.
So think about, if you had to put an emotion to this,
what would that emotion be?
So I'll play a few chords just to get us in the key.
_ [G] And now here's the chord in [Am] question.
Okay, what's the sound of that?
Is that happy?
Tense?
Is it resolved?
Like [A#] the I chord?
I would [A] probably say that's sad.
Right?
I mean, it's not rocking sounds like that's sort of a sad [F] sound.
If I'm ending there, [Em] right, that is not a happy [Am] birthday,
which is kind of how I'm feeling now that I'm getting up into my mid [Cm]-30s.
But yeah, so [N] the VI chord, that's what I was playing for you.
And the VI chord's sound is fairly sad.
Now there are other sad chords out there,
[Cm] but you know, the VI chord is usually sort of our go-to [F#] for that sad sound.
Let's do one more example, and this is going to be the [Em] V chord.
So I want you to listen to it and tell me what you [C] think of this.
Right here.
[G] _ Okay, so that is really dissonant and unresolved, right?
I wouldn't end a song there.
[A#] _ _
[F#] _ Right?
So that is the polar opposite of the I chord.
It wants to pull somewhere else.
Sometimes I explain it as having motion because it wants to move.
But that [C] is not a chord we would end on.
[G] Well, here we go back [C] to I.
So that's [N] the V chord.
So there we go.
We've already covered three of the seven chords within our language of music.
And if you can get all seven of them, you're set.
And that's not to say that you can't break the rules
or bring in other chords from outside that framework.
But I would estimate probably about [F#] 80 to 85% of everything you're going to hear
is covered within what we're [F#] talking about, these seven chords.
And of course, we have to get the basics down
before we can worry about breaking the rules,
before we worry about the exceptions, right?
We have to get the basics first.
So let's keep on going and let's talk about melody a little bit.
For a lot of people, melody is easier, which is why I wanted to start with chords, right?
I wanted to get the scary stuff out [C] of the way.
But for melody, we can get a long way [A#] towards playing by ear by doing interval training.
We can get ourselves a lot of the way there.
And so [C] interval training is singing what we call intervals
or the distances between different notes.
[Cm] Here's what I mean.
If I sing [Gm] Do to Re, that's [A#] two notes, that's a second.
If I sing Do to [Em] Mi, that's three notes, so that's a third.
[F#] Okay, so what we want to do is we want to sing each of those intervals
and that's going to help train our ear.
If you're in a place where you can sing along with me, definitely do that.
And if you're not, I mean, you could sing in public.
That'd be kind of awesome, just [A] Do.
But if you don't want to do that, wait until you're in the car.
Wait until you're at home [Em] and sing with me.
This is not optional.
You've really got to sing it to get it.
So here's our starting [A] pitch.
Do, try and sing that.
Do, here we go.
Do, Re, Do.
Now you.
Do, Re, Do.
Next one.
Do, Mi, Do.
Now you.
Do, Mi, Do.
Do, Fa, Do.
Now you.
Do, Fa, Do.
Do, So, Do.
Do, So, Do.
Do, La, Do.
Do, La, Do.
Do, Ti, Do.
Do, Ti, Do.
Do, Do, Do.
Do, Do, Do.
[N] And it doesn't have to be perfect.
I'm not warmed up today.
That was pretty pitchy.
But you know, the point isn't to be a great singer here.
It's just to train your ear on how to get these intervals.
Now, is that difficult for you or was it kind of easy?
I'm going to guess that it was kind of easy for you because again,
going back to the underlying theme of this whole video,
you've been exposed to [D#] scales your entire life.
So going in and singing it really isn't all that challenging.
And the idea is you want to work with this until you don't need the piano.
So the next step is to sing it acapella and then check it with the piano.
Right?
So you're going to want to [N] know your scales.
And there's tons of information out there on how to [Cm] make scales
on whatever your instrument is.
So I'm not going to cover that here.
[Em] But let's say we're doing the [D#] C scale.
I would sing Do, [A#] Re.
Let me check it.
Yes.
Re.
[Em] Then I might sing Do, Mi.
That's right.
[F#] Do, Fa.
Do, [C] So.
And I can check each one [Em] of those as I go.
Now, of course, that's just your [F#] starting point for working with melody.
There's a lot more to it because melodies aren't going to always go back to Do.
They're going to flow from one note to the next.
They're going to jump and skip and maybe start in places that aren't Do at all.
So there's a lot more to it, but this is where you want to start.
Same thing with the chords.
There's more chords we can talk about, but you've got to get your [Gm] basics down first.
Now, if you're interested in going a little bit further with me,
we ran out of time on this video.
I don't want it to be like, you know, a three-hour video.
But I do have a playing by ear course that I sincerely think is the best thing out there
on the internet if you want to learn to play by ear.
And I even verified that I bought some other people's courses to see how they taught it.
And some of the courses didn't even have ear training.
You've got to actually use your ear and then you've got to connect it to your instrument.
So my training, you know, we obviously go through all the chords.
We talk about melodies.
There's rhythm exercises.
So you know when to combine these elements together.
There's so much to it.
I can't even begin to describe all of it.
And if you're interested in going a little bit deeper,
I highly recommend you check out my piano by ear course.
All right.
Thank you so much for checking out this video.
I hope you loved it.
If you have any [A] questions, let me know and I'll see you next time.
_ [D] _ _ [Bm] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _