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Have you ever met someone who could hear a song on the radio, then sit down at a piano or pick up a guitar and start playing the same song, without ever looking at the music for it? That is called playing by ear. If you have ever wanted to play guitar by ear, here are a few simple tips that will help you get started.

Start Simple:

Start out with this simple exercise to test your aptitude for learning how to play guitar by ear. Choose a simple, well known tune, like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Choose a starting note, and see if you can pick out the melody without help from someone else. After you feel you have mastered the simple tune, ask an objective listener to evaluate your playing. If they can identify the tune, there's a good chance that you have what it takes to learn by ear.

Progress Slowly:

Now that you've mastered Twinkle Twinkle Little Star with your chosen starting note, choose another starting note, and pick out the same tune. One of the key elements that all musicians who play by ear must master is the ability to work with any starting note. If you have some understanding of music theory, you will recognize that starting on a different note means that you have changed to another key. This is important if you want to accommodate vocalists with varying ranges.

Complex Issues:

If you don't already know some guitar chords, you will need to study a basic chord chart in order to start building the complexity of your songs. After you've practiced playing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star starting on any note, it's time to see if you can pick out the chord structure behind the song. This is a much more difficult task, and you may want to find a simple version of the song with the chord structure given online for your first try. If you have to look at the chord structure, try changing to a different starting chord and see if you can pick out the tune. You may want to enlist the help of a vocalist if you are not a singer yourself, just to see what the tune sounds like as an accompaniment to a melody.

Once you have reached the point where you can pick out basic melodies and chord structures, you can experiment with more difficult songs. For example, the chord structures for many rock songs are quite simple. You'll find that some have only 3 chords. Take a simple song, like Tom Petty's Free Falling. Pick out the melody as suggested above, and do it in several keys. Then move on to the chord structure, and make sure you can pick it out in more than one key as well.

By following this formula, you'll see that you can play guitar by ear, and use your skills to pick out riffs, licks, and melodic lines, as well as the underlying chord structure to a song. The more you listen to music and practice picking out the songs you hear on your guitar, the faster and easier you will develop your skills in playing by ear.