A chef can taste a soup, and know that someone put rosemary in it. A mechanic can listen to a car engine, and tell if the valve train needs work. But can a typical rock guitarist listen to the song he or she is playing, and identify the chord voicing the keyboard player is using? Does this same six-string player pay attention to the chemistry between the kick drum pattern and the bass line?

Listening – it’s probably the most overlooked facet of musicianship.

A lot of guitarists hone their skills in the isolation of their practice room, and then take this sense of separateness with them to the bandstand. But as we know, a band is a living, breathing, very organic entity. For a musician in a band to fully understand the situation he or she is in, listening is essential.

As listening is such a broad term, I’ve broken it down into several different categories.

Harmonic listening would refer to hearing the chords, intervals, and tonalities of the moment. Harmonic listening is vital to surviving sitting in on a gig, and especially to acing auditions. In plain English, being able to tell what chord the bass player is implying is very helpful if you’d care to play in the same key as the rest of the band. And bandleaders prefer people to play in at least a similar key!

Dynamic listening refers to listening to the song as a whole. How does your volume level fit in? Is it too loud, or too soft? And are you listening to the actual tone emanating from your guitar? Remember that the goal of a musician is to play cleanly, and musically.

Objective listening, or “playing for the song” can be a tough pill to swallow. It’s the act of determining what the song needs. Does it really need those swept arpeggios and furious tapping? If you can step back, listen to the song as a whole, and honestly answer yes, than go for it! And if the answer is no, be a selfless musician and leave it out. As a side note, playing for the song doesn’t mean throwing technique out the window. I hear musicians who couldn’t improvise to save their backwards-mullets-emo-haircuts use that excuse all the time. “I just play for the song, man.” But sometimes a burst of fire is exactly what is missing in an arrangement. So, if the song in question needs shredding, add it. If it doesn’t, then don’t. You must first objectively determine that by employing objective listening.

Communicative listening is where things get fun. It’s the process of communicating with the other musicians. For example, how the rhythm section is grooving? How is the conga player approaching the sixteenth notes? A good communicative listener can turn a mediocre gig into something stellar. In addition, if one wants to lock in with the rhythm section (and that’s a given), communicative listening is essential.

Now that we’ve got a better grasp on the different skills of a good ear, how do we develop them? Some of the topics outlined above can be practiced at home. Others are best learned on the bandstand, as terrifying as that might seem.

Harmonic listening can be developed in the practice room, via diligent practice with books, recordings, computer programs, etc. The good news is that learning to recognize intervals, scales, and chords can be accomplished at home, and often with free software and web sites. I have several such sites linked on my webpage, www.poodleman.com.

I suggest that you start with learning to recognize different intervals. Move on to scales, and then, chords. After all, a scale is a series of intervals, and a chord is those same intervals played simultaneously. Ricci Adams has an excellent web site at www.musictheory.net with plenty of free ear trainers on just these very subjects.

Dynamic listening is the process of awareness. The next time you sit down to practice, pay special attention to your sound. Is it too thin? Thick? Are you a shredder who likes to sound like a pack of mosquitoes? Maybe that’s why you’re not getting the gigs you want. Fiddle with that gear, and dial it in just right.

Remember, your sound will change when your volume does, and especially when there’s a drummer involved. You’d be surprised at how few musicians pay serious attention to their tone when they’re playing. Start listening to your own sound, and you’ll have a significant edge in the field.

Objective listening is a skill that can be developed many ways. One of the best is to listen to skillfully arranged music. Pop tunes are great here, but if you’re looking for something with a more sinister edge, I suggest listening to an Ozzy Osbourne album. Ok, ok, I’m forcing my personal music tastes on you here. However, in my opinion, Ozzy’s songs present a great blend of dazzling guitar pyrotechnics and solid riffs while still remembering the guitarists’ role of supporting the vocalist when he or she is singing. Other genres outside of rock also present a great learning opportunity, as the guitar parts in these songs are usually a bit more “slick” and subtle – witty one liner jokes of the musical world.

On a philosophical note, objective listening insight can also be gained from everyday interactions and conversations. Do you really consider your latest complaint a valuable addition to the conversation you’re having with a friend? If it does, then say it. And if it doesn’t – leave it out.

Communicative listening is best practiced with at least one other musician. Trading licks in a non-threatening fashion is an ideal way to get better, especially if you jam with a more advanced musician. I’ve learned volumes in this way.

And of course, the best way to do business here is to jump in way over your head, and join a band that you can barely hang with. Your ear will develop, or you’ll lose the gig. It’s a great way to learn! I call it “The All Terrain Vehicle Gymnastic Educational Method.” Put simply, either you succeed at doing a back flip on an ATV, or you don’t! And the same goes with joining a band that’s above your skill level.

So next time you’re around other musicians, start to listen with a vengeance. Don’t “zone out” – Listen up!

Perfect Pitch – There are certain musicians who have the uncanny ability of being able to identify any pitch you throw at them. That means that if you played a B flat on your instrument, they could tell you what it was immediately with little or no hesitation. Because of this, if they develop this interesting ability to its full extent, they can also learn to listen to something and play it back without much effort. Some musicians using this strange and bewildering musical sixth sense can even transcribe stuff without even using their instruments to help them along the way. Pretty cool, don’t ya think? I know this bassist who not only has perfect pitch; he also has a photographic memory, the ability to look at something and kind of take a mental photo of it, and recall it perfectly. Just like looking at a photo for reference, a Polaroid camera in his brain. He can just look at a chart of anything, take a mental snapshot of it and play it back without having to look at the chart again. Jeez, I can hardly even read a chart!

How to get it – Unfortunately, if you don’t have it now and you’re old enough to be reading this without the help of your Mom or Dad, it’s probably going to take a little work. Most of the musicians who have perfect pitch developed it as kids. I would assume it’s because they started learning music while their brains where developing and their brains got wired for sound better then the rest of us. Guitarists generally don’t have perfect pitch. I think the reason for this is simple: we guitarists tend to start playing later in life. Pianists often get started by their parents really early in life, some as young as four or five.

Colors – Most musicians, who have it, describe the sounds of certain notes as colors. There are some courses and programs to develop perfect pitch. I don’t know if they work or not but I have an open mind. You may want to try one of the programs out for yourself. If it works out, let me know and I’ll do it too.

Not Exactly Perfect – I don’t have perfect pitch, I have what we call relative pitch (I’ll get to it later). If God came out of the heavens and asked me if I wanted perfect pitch I would say; “Sure, God.” But if he only gave me one wish, I would chose world peace over perfect pitch. Perfect pitch would come somewhere between free strings for life and a complete ban on whale hunting.

Will Perfect Pitch Make You the Greatest Guitarist in the Universe? – I’m not sure, it can’t hurt. I know a lot of musicians, some of them have perfect pitch but most of them don’t. One thing I do know for sure, perfect pitch or not, all the really great players I personally know have good ears. It is important to develop your ear. I know one musician with perfect pitch, a pianist. He can tell you what any note is, figure out any phrase in half the time it takes me, listen to song once and play it back for you. But you know what? He really isn’t that hot a player. Because of his gifted ear he could definitely be a better player than me but I don’t think he really works on all the other stuff that I did. He doesn’t write well, doesn’t understand scale/chord relationships and doesn’t seem to practice very much. I would love to have his ear but I wouldn’t trade it for the other things that I have as a player.

Relative Pitch – Relative pitch is a little different than perfect pitch. People who have relative pitch have the ability of recognizing what one pitch is in relation to another. I know I just confused you, sorry. I’ll give you an example: If you play one note and tell me that it is an E note and then play, let’s say, a B flat note without telling me that it is a B flat note, I would know what it is because my ear tells me that the interval between the first note (E) and the second note (B flat) is a diminished 5th. I just know the sound of a diminished 5th interval and because I know my music theory, I know that the note that is a diminished 5th from E is B flat. The cute girl sitting next to me in the car on that day in Studio City would know the B flat without having to hear the E note first.

E Note on the Brain – To be honest, I’ve been playing guitar long enough that I have a built-in E note in my head. The reason is because the first thing I play when I pick the guitar up every day is the sixth string which as you know, is an E note. After 25 years, it just kind of got engrained in my brain. For that reason, half the time I can usually tell what any single note is by itself even without the first note to compare it to. It is still relative pitch because I’m still mentally comparing the note in question to an E note, the E note stuck in my brain. Someone with perfect pitch doesn’t have to compare one note to any other note (even a mentally created one) to know what it is. By the way, a Diminished 5th is the interval that starts off the Jimi Hendrix song, Purple Haze. In the case of Purple Haze it is a B flat and an E, try it. I know the sound of Purple Haze’s intro so I know the sound of a Diminished 5th interval.

Developing Relative Pitch – You can develop relative pitch with a little practice. Take a look at the intervals below. Memorize what they look and sound like one by one. I also included some song names that will help you to remember what the intervals sound like. After you get used to the sounds of all the intervals, have one of your guitar player buddies test you on ‘em. I’ll start with the easier intervals first:

Perfect 4th – Song examples: Here Comes the Bride, Amazing Grace.

Perfect 5th – Song examples: Love me Tender, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

Major 3rd – Song examples: When the Saints Go Marching In, On Top of Old Smoky

Major 6th – Song examples: My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean

Diminished 5th (Augmented 4th) – Song examples: Purple Haze intro, Maria from West Side Story.

Major 2nd – Happy Birthday

Minor 3rd – Greensleeves

Minor 2nd – Jaws

Minor 6th – Love Story (in reverse)

Minor 7th – Star Trek Theme

Major 7th – I have no idea for songs for this one. I offer a challenge to all readers of this lesson: find a song that uses this interval and I’ll be eternally grateful. Someone once told me the theme to Superman starts with the interval of a major 7th. but the song isn’t common enough to be of any use.

Get used to the sounds and shapes of all the intervals. Move them up and down the fingerboard and on to other strings. You will find the shapes will stay the same till you get to the fourth and third strings. Get together with a guitar friend and test yourselves: have him play an interval and see if you can tell what it is by its sound. You’ll find your ears improving a little everyday and before you know it, you won’t need a beautiful brunette to tell the names of various daily pitches anymore.

Until next time…

And besides your upset neighbor, there are much better reasons for doing some form of ear training. Actually, there may be only one, true reason for building your ear: it allows you to get more enjoyment from making music.

If you don’t learn to recognize what’s happening in a piece of music when you hear it, you’re missing out on the whole point of making music: to create those sonic vibrations that make you and others feel good. An ear that can’t tell the difference between a major sixth interval and a perfect fourth interval, and that can’t figure out at least simple melodies, is like having a mouth with no taste buds: you’ll never get the flavor. But, at least with food, what you eat will nourish your body. With a tin ear, you’ll get no nourishment at all.

Do I hear a protest? Do I hear you saying you can’t train your ear, or that you don’t have an ear for music? Developing a musical ear is not, not, not! a question of innate, God-given ability! It’s a question of your desire to make music. Don’t take my word for it: give Jamie Andreas a visit. Read this article on her site: Natural Talent. Then, read some more, at Troy Stetina’s excellent series of articles at Guitar Instruction: Help and Advice.

Everyone can develop their musical ear. And the reason to do it is simply to enjoy your music making more.

Now that we know why to get some ear training, where can we get some?

The Internet is loaded with resources to help your ear bark, sit up, play dead, and fetch the paper. You could even use these resources to identify the sounds you hear in music. Imagine!

What do you look for in a good ear training resource? How do you know if a particular resource is helping you recognize important musical elements? Here are some criteria for an ideal ear training resource. Use this list to help you determine if a book, CD, play-along, or garden vegetable is useful for building your ears.

Essential elements

The ideal ear training resource should

- train your ears with music, and not just individual notes. In fact, it should have more than just chords, too. When an ear training resource plays sounds for you and asks you to recognize them, a passerby who hears the sound ought to be able to say, “Oh: that’s music”

• It should be fun.
• It should be challenging.
• It should keep score — including showing your score from one session to another. Wouldn’t it be cool to look back five months ago, at your inability to identify a major second from a major sixth, and compare it to the 99.9% you now get in identifying all intervals?
• It should test you on harmonies, rhythms, and melodies.
• It should be interactive.
• It should produce sounds that you can’t predict.
• It should have a limit on the amount of time you get to respond. After all, when you’re actually making music, you usually need to hit the right notes at the right time,” true?
• It should allow you to respond with different input devices — guitar, piano, kazoo, etc. Ideally, it should allow you to sing your answers. The next most important instrument is a keyboard (for pianos, not for computers). Everyone (including “non-musicians”!) ought to play some piano.

When you’re studying for a music degree in college, no matter what instrument you play, you probably have to take an intro keyboard class.

Ideally, an ear trainer would also let you respond with a guitar. (Did you know that MIDI guitars exist now?)

Where to look

Now, where can you find an ear trainer that meets at least some of these ideal qualities?

One place is here: The Improviser. This is free software called the Improviser. (Say with a game show host baritone. “A new car!”) There’s even a tutorial presentation that shows you how to use it.

The Improviser is fun, free, interactive, provides random questions, quizzes you with music instead of meaningless, out-of-context tones, and will cut your toenails if you ask nicely.

How does the Improviser help train my ear?

The Improviser builds your musical ear by pretending it’s a guitar teacher who throws some notes your way. You respond to these notes by playing your own notes.

There’s no guesswork about which notes you have to play. After you listen to a few of the melodies that the Improviser creates, you’ll be able to predict how they finish, once the “teacher” starts playing a new melody. This ability to predict the melody note, to hear it before you play it, is the goal of all ear training.

If you find yourself unable to answer the musical questions that the Improviser puts to you, it doesn’t mean that you have no musical ear; you do have one. You need only develop it with tools more geared to beginners. One such tool is the online Ear Trainer.

Ear training with the web

Of course, there are lots of other ear training resources that have some of the ideal qualities in the list. But, it could be tough to find ear trainers that have all ‘em.

Your best shot for the most effective ear trainer might just be a good old-fashioned human being. I know they don’t make ‘em like they used to, but kick the tires, give one a test drive and…Seriously: ask your guitar teacher what kind of ear training he or she has done, and get him or her to write up and work through a program for you.

At the very least, a good teacher should help you train your ear by helping you play songs by ear, and by harmonizing melodies. You can learn how to harmonize a melody with Guitar Chords, which you can download.

Now on to the juicy stuff: where can you find cool, free ear training tools on the web? Start with these links:

The Ear Trainer. Highly recommended. Drills you on intervals, chords, scales, cadences, jazz chords, note location, and perfect pitch.

WholeNote’s ear training exercises.

Guitar Noise articles, including this one: Happy New Ear by David Hodge.

Doing ear training with (free) software

Transcription is an excellent form of ear training. It meets many of the criteria for a good ear trainer, given in the list above. Transcription is basically just listening to a tune and writing down what notes and chords you think are in that tune. You might also call it “playing by ear.”

The usual way of playing by ear is to sit down with your guitar and your favorite tune on a CD or tape, listen to a bit of the tune, and maybe play or sing some notes against it. This can feel very rewarding when you “get it,” and also can get frustrating if the tune is fast or has complex chords.

How can you make this transcription process easier? For one thing, you could take a more holistic and rewarding approach called Co-composing. Read How to Co-compose in Transcription: the Hows and Whys.

It would also be great if you could slow down a tune so you could hear every nook, cranny, note and chord. This is kind of tough to do with a CD or most tape players. Even if you could slow down a tune this way, the pitch changes, so you end up playing in another key, which could involve re- tuning your guitar. This is messy.

There are programs that make this a little less messy for you: they let you slow down a recording of your favorite tune so you can hear what’s going on. One such program is called Slow Gold.

As cool as Slow Gold is, we want to focus on free stuff, right? So, back to our question: how do you slow down a recording as much as you want without losing the original pitches? Answer: MIDI files.

Transcription and playing by ear though MIDI is a practical, fun way of doing ear training. Here’s what you need to do it:

• an app that plays MIDI files, whose play speed you can control
• a MIDI file of a favorite tune
• a way of seeing the notes in the MIDI file, so you can check what you think you hear with what’s actually being played. Let’s call this the Note Viewer.

Where can we get these tools? You probably already have a MIDI player on your system. But, it probably can’t change the playback tempo. Stay tuned for a player that can. We’ll get to it in a few paragraphs.

Where do you get the MIDI file? For starters, try this simple search on Google.com: “moon river MIDI” (Any snickers about that, and I’ll turn your guitar into a Twinkie.)

Or, in Altavista’s advanced search, enter “link:moonriver.mid” (without the quotations).

Remember to have your virus programs up and running when digging around for strange files like this! (There’s an excellent, free virus scanner called AVG.)

How do you see the notes?

Now for the next tool in your “playing by ear” toolbox: the Note Viewer. What exactly is this and where can you find one for free?

The Note Viewer takes as input the MIDI file, and gives output in the form of notes you can see,” whether that form is tablature, standard notation, text, or ancient Sumerian Cuneiform.

Great, but, where do you find such a beast? You have a number of options here. One of ‘em is a piece of freeware called Power Tab.

Power Tab

Power Tab is great for learning songs by ear. For one thing, it shows you where on the fretboard to play the notes and chords of a tune. You’ll appreciate this feature especially when you want to learn a tune written originally for a piano or other instrument besides the guitar.

Midget Freeware

Another application that shows you the notes you’re transcribing is Midget.

Midget, Beta Release 3.50, available at http://www.silverblade.co.uk, is a freeware tool to compose (and playback) MIDI music.

I downloaded and tested Midget with no problem. Yet, the developer reported to me that it crashes on his system. So, be aware that it is a beta version.

Midget has a fairly intuitive interface, doesn’t take up too much hard drive space (about a 700K download), and most important for our purposes, you can use it to learn tunes by ear.

Although you can use sequencing/composing software like Midget to see the notes in a MIDI file, I want you to realize there are other tools for seeing these notes.

Other options

A friendly fella by the name of Jeff Glatt wrote a free and highly hip tool called the MIDI disassembler. Its name tells you what it does pretty accurately: it reads in a MIDI file, and spits out a text file showing every note and MIDI event. Get the details and download here.

Option ABC

If you’ve been reading the Guitar Study newsletter, you might recall another freeware tool that could help you transcribe tunes in MIDI files: ABC software.

Here’s a quick reminder of what ABC is. It’s a form of music notation, different from standard notation and tablature, that is extremely easy to read. For example, an A note is written as “A.” It doesn’t get much easier than that.

For more info on ABC, see this newsletter.

How does ABC notation help you transcribe MIDI tunes? Answer: Freeware. You can use freeware applications that convert music from one of the music notation systems — standard notation, tablature, and ABC — to another. For example, you can get an application to convert ABC notation into MIDI files.

You can also use some ABC apps to do the opposite: convert from MIDI to ABC. That’s what we want to transcribe our MIDI tune with.

The basic procedure is to feed the MIDI file you want to see the notes for, to an app that converts from MIDI to ABC. You’ll get a text file, written in easy-to-read ABC notation, that shows you exactly what notes your ears think they’re hearing.

Your job

No matter what software you use to do ear training, remember that the most important piece of software is the one in your head. Always listen first, then write what you think is being played on the recording. The very last step in this process is using software to check your hunches.

Copyright Darrin Koltow. All rights reserved.

We’ve covered the art of listening to intervals and chord types because there’s no way to figure out a song without being able to hear the changes in the chords.

We’ve also gone over some of the typical song structures you’re likely to encounter as well as a few standard chord progressions endemic to pop/rock/folk/country ad infinitum.

Primary and secondary chords of any given key? Check.

Covering my butt by saying that, obviously some songs may be harder to analyze than others and that, of course, all of this takes a bit of practice so don’t be discouraged if it seems hard at first? Yes, I think I just took care of that.

Well, then, I think we’re ready to tackle this in earnest. Ready?

Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby

We’re going to go over two songs that I actually worked out over the week between Christmas and New Year’s. And, just as we’ve done in our previous columns, we’ll start out with a fairly simple song and then try our hands at something a wee bit harder. Finally, I’ll go over a song I worked out years ago to demonstrate you why you have to be prepared for just about anything.

Before we start, I make certain that my guitar is in tune with “real life” (a keyboard, electronic tuner or pitch pipe). If I am unable to do that, then I at least make certain that it is tune with itself and hope that whatever adjustments I may have to make later will be few.

The first thing you need in order to figure out a song is a copy of the song. I try to use cassettes because I feel easier about all the stop/starting I may have to do. CDs are fine, but I am much more likely to program my player to play the song six or seven times in a row. I know these things are supposed to be fairly indestructible, but I still worry about it.

Another reason I tend to use cassettes is that I have a radio/cassette player at work and I will often tape a song that I’ve heard on the radio that I’d really like to learn. It may be an old favorite that for some reason I’ve never taken the time to learn or it might be something fairly new that just really appeals to me. It might be a song that someone has asked me to play in the past. For the record (no pun intended), I try to learn at least two songs a month this way. First, it helps to be constantly adding to one’s inventory, but more importantly it keeps me practicing my listening skills.

And after extolling the use of cassettes, I want to make a very important point. The speed of recording machines vary – what I think might be perfect pitch will not matter much if the machine plays noticeably fast or slow. Another thing to realize (if you’re taping off the radio) is that quite a number of stations actually speed up the songs when they’re played on the air. Nothing significant, you understand – you’re unlikely to even notice. But when you’re working off your tape it’s all likely to have a cumulative effect. One way to combat this is to start the tape with a song you know (preferably something simple in E or E minor) and use that song to tune your guitar. It should not be a drastic change, a quarter to half step at best. Any more than that, you should just use a capo instead.

(Oh, why do the stations do that? Because all those fractions of a second saved can add up to an additional two or three commercials a day. Or as the good folks at accounting would say, “Ka – CHING!” That’s the sound of a happy cash register! Do people even use cash registers anymore?)

Next, it’s important to be fairly familiar with the song. Before I even get out my guitar, I make sure I know how the song goes. I don’t need to know all the lyrics, but I do need to be able to hum the melody and recognize the structure of the song. If I do know the lyrics, I will already have them written out. The first song we’re going to puzzle out is Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby from the new Counting Crows album, This Desert Life. And, of course, without further adieu, let me present the official disclaimer:

This file is the author’s own work and represents his interpretation of the song. It is intended solely for private study, scholarship or research.

Okay, having decided that this song pretty much follows the verse/chorus format and, decoding Adam Duritz’s lyrics, I set the first verse and chorus out in the following manner:

Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby – Counting Crows

Verse 1:

Well I wake up in mid-afternoon ’cause that’s when it all hurts the most
I dream I never know anyone at the party and I’m always the host

If dreams are like movies then memories are films about ghosts

You can never escape you can only move south down the coast

Well I am an idiot walking a tightrope of fortune and fame
I am an acrobat swinging trapezes through circles of flame
If you’ve never stared off in the distance then your life is a shame
And though I’ll never forget your face sometimes I can’t remember my name

CHORUS:

Hey Mrs. Potter don’t cry
Hey Mrs. Potter I know why but

Hey Mrs. Potter won’t you talk to me

The reason I’ve written it out this way is twofold. One, I’ve left some spaces in which to fill in the chords and two, I’ve deduced from listening to the song that, musically, the verse is essentially a set of four lines that gets repeated twice. The first two lines are musically the same, so there’s no need for me to figure them out a second time. Likewise, the first two lines of the chorus are the same. Good listening can help eliminate needless work.

Now, we have to figure out what key the song is in and what key we want to learn it in. That may sound strange to you, but trust me, you’ll quickly see what I mean. The chords in the introduction, and most of the song, sound like major chords. Now it’s time to find out which ones.

Okay, relatively painless.

Learning By Example

Not that I need any encouragement, but let’s get a bit philosophical for a moment (hence the “relatively painless” tag). What, exactly, is a song? What differentiates a song from a simple bit of music? Its length? The number of chords used? If my Webster’s New World Dictionary defines a song as “a piece of music for singing,” then is an instrumental piece not a song?

Before we can go figuring out that song we want to learn, we need to have a sense of song structure. By “structure,” I am referring to various conventions that have been widely accepted over the course of hundreds of years. Much of this may seem like old hat to many of you, but take a moment to think about it. A lot of what makes a song a “song” is the familiarity of its structure. Even when we’re listening to a song for the very first time, there is usually something about it that makes us feel comfortable, feel at home. One of the reasons that many people have a hard time with classical music is not the music itself, but rather one’s lack of knowledge of its structures and conventions. Because it is unfamiliar it is (seemingly) unfriendly. As I told you in my first column, our comfort with what we know (coupled with our inability to move outside our area of comfort) is occasionally a weakness. But in the study of what comprises a song, this comfort can be a big help.

The best way to study song structure is to use the same method we use studying music theory – we simply make analyses of the huge history of song that lies before us. Pick a song, any song, and we’ll look at how it’s organized. Most songs nowadays start out with an instrumental introduction, but it wasn’t all that long ago (depending on how you view the 30’s and 40’s) that a majority of pop songs had lyrical introductions. The introduction is usually followed by the first verse and then the chorus. Now let’s not get all hung up in semantics. By “chorus” I am referring to the part of the song (lyrically) that tends to be repeated. It’s the “everybody, sing along” part. Often, but not always, it will incorporate the song’s title as part of its lyrics (and sometimes, as in Knocking on Heaven’s Door, the title is all the lyrics the chorus contains). The chorus will usually be followed by a second verse (musically identical to the first verse), then the chorus again. After the second chorus, things usually get interesting. There will either be an instrumental verse (usually featuring a solo of some sort), or what is known as a “bridge” or a “middle eight” (and I’d love to know where this term comes from. I’ve heard numerous stories and maybe one day we’ll devote some time to this…). This section is often very different musically then the rest of the song. Finally the song will usually go through the verse and chorus one last time and end with some kind of flourish that we call an outro.

Let’s look at an example and two variations of this style. But first, the official disclaimer: This file is the author’s own work and represents his interpretation of the song. It is intended solely for private study, scholarship or research. By the way, I picked all these examples from the Guitar Tab pages here at Guitar Noise. You don’t have to go far to get your hands on a lot of examples to study. To analyze a song’s structure, you should ideally be listening to it. But since we can’t do that here, I’ve tried to pick songs with which I think most people will be (relatively) familiar. We’re not going to worry about the song’s chords for the time being – I just want you to concentrate on its structure. If you don’t know the songs, just find one that you do know and work with that. As always, feel free to email me any questions you might have.

PSYCHO KILLER – Talking Heads

Intro: Musically same rhythm and chords as verse

Verse 1:
I can’t seem to face up to the facts I’m tense and nervous and I can’t relax
I can’t sleep cause my bed’s on fire Don’t touch me I’m a real live wire

CHORUS:
Psycho killer, qu’est-ce que c’est better run run run run run run run away
Psycho killer, qu’est-ce que c’est better run run run run run run run away Oh______ ayayayay

Verse 2:
You start a conversation, you can’t even finish it
You’re talking a lot, but you’re not saying anything
When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed
Say something once, why say it again

CHORUS

BRIDGE:
Ce qu’elle a fait, ce soir la ce qu’elle a dit, ce soir la Realisant, mon espoir je me lance, vers la goire Okay
Ayayayayayayayay

Verse 3:
We are vain and we are blind
I hate people when they’re not polite

CHORUS

OUTRO: Same chords and rhythm as intro

As you can see, this is almost a textbook example of our standard verse/chorus format. The only significant difference is that the third verse is half the length of the first two.

Now, not every verse/chorus format has a bridge, either. Here’s an example with which most of you should be familiar:

Hotel California – Eagles

Intro (musically, it’s half a verse)

Verse 1:
On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair
Warm smell of colitas rising up through the air
Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light
My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim I had to stop for the night
There she stood in the doorway; I heard the mission bell
And I was thinking to myself this could be heaven or this could be hell
Then she lit up a candle, and she showed me the way
There were voices down the corridor, I thought I heard them say

CHORUS:
Welcome to the Hotel California. Such a lovely place, such a lovely face
Plenty of room at the Hotel California Any time of year you can find it here

VERSE 2:
Her mind is Tiffany twisted, she got the Mercedes bends
She got a lot of pretty, pretty boys that she calls friends
How they dance in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat
Some dance to remember, some dance to forget
So I called up the captain; “Please bring me my wine.”
“We haven’t had that spirit here since nineteen sixty-nine”
And still those voices are calling from far away
Wake you up in the middle of the night, just to hear them say

CHORUS:
Welcome to the Hotel California. Such a lovely place, such a lovely face
They’re living it up at the Hotel California What a nice surprise bring your alibis

VERSE 3:
Mirrors on the ceiling, the pink champagne on ice
And she said “We are all just prisoners here, of our own device”
And in the master’s chambers, they gathered for the feast
They stab it with their steely knives, but they just can’t kill the beast
Last thing I remember, I was running for the door
I had to find the passage back to the place I was before
“Relax” said the nightman, “We are programmed to receive”
“You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave”

OUTRO: (Instrumental – Guitar solos traded over verse chords)

Here you should notice two things – first, the choruses are not exactly the same. The lyrics in the last half of the second chorus have been changed even though it remains musically the same. Secondly, there is no bridge or final chorus. After the third verse the song repeats and fades over the chord progression from the verse. Another thing I’d like to point out here is that some songs in the verse/chorus style start with the chorus. Sugar Mountain by Neil Young and the Traveling Wilburys’ End of the Line are examples of this type.

Okay, one final example of how one might vary the verse/chorus structure:

1979 – Smashing Pumpkins

INTRO: (musically same as one verse)

Verse 1:
Shakedown 1979 cool kids never have the time
on a live wire right up off the street, you and I should meet j

Verse 2:
Junebug skipping like a stone with the headlights pointed at the dawn
we were sure we’d never see an end to it all

CHORUS:
and I don’t even care to shake these zipper blues
and we don’t know just where our bones will rest to dust I guess
forgotten and absorbed into the earth below

Verse 3:
Double cross the vacant and the bored they’re not sure just what we have in store
Morpine city slippin dues down to see

CHORUS:
that we don’t even care as restless as we are
we feel the pull in the land of a thousand guilts
and poured cement, lamented and assured

BRIDGE:
to the lights and towns below faster than the speed of sound
faster than we thought we’d go, beneath the sound of hope

Verse 4:
Justine never knew the rules hung down with the freaks and the ghouls
no apologies ever need be made
I know you better than you fake it to see

CHORUS:
that we don’t even care to shake these zipper blues
and we don’t know just where our bones will rest, to dust I guess
forgotten and absorbed into earth below

OUTRO:
the street heats the urgency of sound
as you can see there’s no one around

There are quite a few interesting things going on here. First off, there are two verses before we reach the first chorus. Next, we see that not only in the second chorus lyrically different, but it also flows directly into the bridge. Finally, there is an extra line in the final verse, which creates an impression of it being totally different from the other verses. So you can see that there are quite a few ways to tinker with this verse/chorus structure. Being able to recognize what’s going on gives you a handle on how to figure out the song.

Another popular song structure is simply one verse following another. Many Bob Dylan songs, such as All Along the Watchtower and Tangled Up in Blue use this style. Neil Young’s After the Gold Rush and Hey Hey My My are two other good examples.

Why is it important to be able to recognize the structure of a song? Well, the most obvious reason is that when you are trying to figure out a song, you only have to figure out a part once. If you can say, “This is the verse,” then you will not have to puzzle out the chords for a second (or third, fourth, etc.) time. Likewise with the choruses. So, for instance, instead of sounding out the chords to all ten verses of Shelter From the Storm, you simply decrypt the first verse and then you’re home free.

But perhaps a more important reason to familiarize yourself with popular song structures is to prepare yourself for sitting in with people and playing an unfamiliar piece. When you’re jamming with some friends and someone introduces a song that many people might not know, you know have some common ground on which to work out an arrangement. If the person tells you that each verse is so many measures long and followed by a chorus of so many measures, you don’t have to worry about not knowing the song – you’ll learn it very quickly and will find yourself enjoying the experience instead of dreading it.

Progressive Thought

Musically, songs consist of chord progressions. This is not a universal truth, but a fairly convenient generalization. The Talking Heads’ song Houses in Motion, for example, consists solely of an Em7 chord, but if you simply sit and strum an Em7, I can pretty much guarantee that what you’re playing will not sound remotely like the song. What makes this particular song work are the various riffs and rhythm patterns (vocal as well as instrumental) that the band members are tossing about – it’s almost like a game of catch. Again, you will always be able to find exceptions to any generalization in music and music theory.

But the generalizations will help you immensely if (a) you know them and (b) you can recognize them. This is where your practice with interval recognition can pay big dividends.

In order to help us out, I’m going to set out a few of our primary and secondary chord charts for the five major keys guitarists tend to play (bonus points for noticing that we’re using the given scale’s flat seventh, which is a half-step lower than the regular seventh, as the root of the VII chord!):

I – IV – V (the blues becomes rock and roll)

Okay, most of you are familiar with what is known as “twelve bar blues.” This is the format used in the vast majority of blues songs. In a nutshell, the verse of a song (and it’s usually all in verses) is twelve measures long. Each measure (marked by a “/”) is four beats (“-”) and follows this pattern:

I – - – / – - – - / – - – - / – - – - / IV – - – / – - – - /
I – - – / – - – - / V – - – / IV – - -/ I – - – / – - – -/

So if someone tells you that a song is twelve bar blues in A (as in “A”nother blues song!), you know that it will play out as follows:

A – - – / – - – - / – - – - / – - – - / D – - – / – - – - /
A – - – / – - – - / E – - – / D – - -/ A – - – / – - – -/

A popular variation of the twelve bar blues changes the first four measures like this:

I – - – / IV – - – / I – - – / I7 – - – /

Now, if someone wants to play this version in D (another “D”amn blues song), we just fill in the appropriate chords:

D – - – / G – - – / D – - – / D7 – - – / G – - – / – - – - /
D – - – / – - – - / A – - – / G – - -/ D – - – / – - – -/

Pretty simple, isn’t it? In addition to the blues, this I – IV – V progression was used a lot in the early days of rock. Many of Chuck Berry’s songs follow this pattern. And it’s still used these days by all sorts of artists like the BoDeans (Good Work), or with slight variations (in this case, substituting the final IV with an addition measure of V) by Bruce Springsteen (Pink Cadillac) and the Rolling Stones (Respectable). By the way, you can find out more about the this progression, not to mention the blues in general, with lessons like Before You Accuse Me, right here at Guitar Noise.

I – IV – V (the eternal medley…)

Another hugely popular use of I – IV – V is the Louie Louie progression:

I – IV – / V – IV – / and on and on and on…

I don’t know how many songs use this – I’ve long lost count. Hang On Sloopy, Twist and Shout, La Bamba are but a few. An interesting variation on this uses the VII (and it’s the flat VII we’re talking about here) instead of the V:

I – IV – / VII – IV – / and on and on and on…

If you play this in E (E-A-/D-E-/), you might recognize it as R O C K in the U S A, That’s What I Like About You or Wild Thing depending on how fast or slow you’re playing. Again, that’s just to name a few.

I – VII – IV (look, I’m a rock star…)

Perhaps no other progression sings out “rock and roll” as much as this one. It’s usually done in a one-measure-apiece style such as this (and, again, we’re talking about the flat seven in these progressions):

I – - – / VII – - – / IV – - – / I – - – /

No matter what key you decide to try this out, you’ll recognize some song. Taking Care of Business, Sweet Home Alabama, Take The Money and Run, the verses of Sympathy for the Devil – it all depends on how you vary the rhythm.

Sneak Preview Alert:

And, again in what is becoming a tradition of sorts, I’m going to have to spend another column on the “why” of this particular progression, and others like it. It’ll be called Scales Within Scales and at this point I hope to have it online sometime next month.

Next column, we’re going to put these past two columns into practical use and wrap up the “figuring things out yourself” thread for a bit. I’d like to recommend that you review Jimmy Hudson’s column entitled Key Changes between now and then because it will be of great value to us in this final stage.

As always, please feel free to bookmark this page for easy reference and please take some time to analyze some song structures on your own. The Guitar Tab page is perfect for this kind of work. Questions, either via email or on the Guitar Forums are encouraged. By the way, my email address has changed with the new year. You can now reach me at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until next week…

Okay, so I started writing a column on how to dissect a song, to see how it was put together. But that made me think, “Wouldn’t it be great if I could demonstrate this without the use of TAB? I could show how to figure out a song simply by listening to it off a tape or disc or whatever!” And this would be terrific, ’cause if a particular song didn’t have an existing TAB file, you would at least have the chance to piece it together for yourself. Kind of like the old “if you give a man a fish…” routine.

So I began yet another column on this new (and rather lengthy) subject. And, of course, I realized that this wasn’t going to be very helpful, either, without covering one important point. We had to go back still further to learn something even more basic – how to listen critically to a piece of music so that you’ll be able to hear the clues and cues that enable you to tell what a song is doing structure-wise. And so, barring any more “revelations” (I hope), here is that column.

This may come as a shock to some of you, but it wasn’t all that long ago that there was no internet. No OLGA files. Guitar tablatures were as rare as World Series appearances by Chicago baseball teams. Way back then, music was etched in plastic and eight-track tapes were considered haute couture.

If you wanted to learn a song you had to hope for one of two things – that the song was out in sheet music or that someone you knew knew the song and was willing to show you how to play it.

Otherwise you had to figure out the song yourself. And you did this by listening.

Now, although I hate to say it, not everyone is capable of figuring out music by ear. Just as not everyone is cut out to play an instrument or sing or strum a consistent rhythmic pattern, some folks cannot pick out the clues that enable you to learn a song by listening to it. Believe it or not, there are tone deaf (and just plain deaf) musicians. I met a woman at a party last weekend who used to go out with a heavy metal guitarist. She’d tune his guitars for him because he was not able to do it himself without an electronic tuner. “What if he went out of tune onstage?” I asked. She answered, “He’d never know unless someone told him.” I inquired, “Even if his amp was turned all the way up to eleven?” (you can see why I’m rarely invited back to social events…)

But let me add that more people can develop this ability to listen than not. A lot more. Nowadays, though, why should we? TAB and the internet have pretty much made us all incredibly lazy. I can press a few keys and get all the information I need. Let someone else do all the hard work. It’s the “hard work” (or any “work”) label that puts us off. We have to put in effort and “effort” and “fun” tend to cancel each other out.

Against this argument, I offer one point to you – the more you know the better guitarist/musician/writer/person you may become. It all depends on how you choose to use or not use what you learned. If you choose to learn nothing, then there will be nothing to apply to your playing and there you will stay. As simple as it sounds (no pun intended), knowing how to listen is an art in itself, and it is a talent you can develop. But it will take some commitment on your part. And believe it or not, the results you get from putting in the effort are incredibly enjoyable.

“Let’s Start At The Very Beginning…”

…a very good place to start. Here’s our C major scale:

The first thing we’re going to work on is recognizing intervals. An interval is the distance from one note to the next. We name the intervals according to their place on the major scale. From C to E, for instance, is called a third (okay, a major third – more on that later). C to F is a fourth, while C to G is called a fifth.

From C to A is a sixth. D to B is also a sixth. Do you see this? The starting note becomes your root and B is the sixth note in a D major scale.

But, naturally, it’s not as cut and dried as we’d like to think it might be. How so? We also have to take into account that there are half steps in between the steps of the major scale, as we saw in the article, Theory Without Tears. Let me ask you – what is the interval from C to E? Right, it’s a third. How about C to Eb? Technically, this is also a third, but we call it a minor third. A minor third is a step-and-a-half away from your starting note instead of two full steps. To distinguish between the two types of intervals, we call the “regular” third (two full steps) a major third.

Using this new found knowledge, we can see that D to F is not a third, but a minor third. And E to C? Right again, E to C is a minor sixth.

An eighth, from C to C, D to D, F# to F#, and so on, is called an octave. I’m sure you’re all familiar with that one.

Okay, pick up your guitar and play the open (low) E on the sixth string.

Strike the string again, get the sound firmly in your mind and then strike the A, or fifth string. Listen to the “spacing” between the notes, the distance from the one note to the next, as if they were parts of a scale.

This is a fourth. Now repeat this exercise, but this time use the D and G strings. This is also a fourth (you already knew that). The intervals are the same even though the notes are not. Can you hear the interval? When I first started developing my ear, picking out intervals seemed very hard. I would actually sing “do, re, mi” aloud in order to figure it out. Now when I tune my guitar, I’m still actually “singing” the intervals in my head.

The tricky thing to remember is that wherever you decide to start is “do.” The point is not to recognize what note it is, but what the interval between the notes is. This is a significant difference and I cannot stress it enough. Few people have perfect pitch but just about anybody can sing a scale well enough to figure out the interval from “do” to “la,” “fa” or “te.”

Okay, I can use my guitar to help me to recognize fourths and thirds. Wait. Thirds? Sure, since the G and B strings are tuned to an interval of a third. How about fifths and sixths? Well, I can actually use my guitar to demonstrate any interval. Pick a string. Pick a fret. If you can’t sound it out, write it out (I know you’ve been waiting for that one). If I hit an open A string and then the third fret of the D string (which is F), I have a minor sixth. Try out different intervals and really listen for the differences. With practice, you will find that intervals are very distinct and recognizable, regardless of what key you’re in. Sing a note and then try to sing a fourth, a fifth, or whatever. Test yourself out when you have a minute or two, in the shower, walking to the store, waiting on hold. You can do it in your head. If you take even ten to fifteen minutes a day you will surprise yourself within two weeks. The more you listen the easier it gets.

Majors And Minors – It’s All Relative

Once you’ve practiced on intervals we can move on to chords. Again, the focus is to recognize the type of chord it is and not which exact chord it may be. For the sake of not driving ourselves insane, we’ll concentrate on major and minor chords for the time being and worry about the weird stuff and the really weird stuff at some point in the near future.

I am assuming (and yes, we all know what happens when you assume…) that you know how to make an E chord and an E minor chord. But just in case:

We’ve already discussed the difference between major and minor chords in Theory Without Tears. It’s simply whether the third is a regular third (two whole steps up from the root, as in a major scale) or a minor third (one-and-a-half steps up from the root).

Now take some time and really listen to the difference between the two – there is an entirely different tonality. Now try a few other major and minor chords that you know. A and D are good choices to try. If you usually jam with a friend, test each other – one plays a chord while the other tells whether it is a major or minor (again, it doesn’t matter which major or minor, just whether it’s major or minor). Also, it’s no fair if you can see your friend’s hands. Close your eyes if you have to.

Once you’ve gotten pretty good at this it’s time for the next challenge.

Try playing a G chord followed by the E minor. Again, here are the fingerings:

Can you hear how similar they are? If we look at the notes that make up the chord, we see the following:

Notice that these chords share two of their three notes. This is because E minor is the relative minor of G major. The relative minor shares the same notes in the major scale, but it’s root is the sixth of the major. Here’s our G major scale:

In order to find the relative minor we look for the sixth and make that the root. Therefore, E minor is the relative minor of G major and the E minor scale would look like this:

Now some of you may be already jumping way ahead of the game – “Hey, this makes sense because songs in E minor tend to have a lot of A minor and B (and B7) chords and those would be the IV and V chords and G and C and D would be the III, VI and VII and hey, maybe this is why G scales work well as leads in blues songs in E and wow isn’t this cool?” Yes, it’s all pretty wild how everything comes together. But please be patient for a bit and do a few more “mundane” exercises. Down the road, we will be covering the minor scale (and basic lead lines) in greater depth.

Just as you listened to the difference between the majors and minor, now take some time and hear the difference between a major and its relative minor. To make it a tad easier, here’s a chart of a few major/relative minor keys you can use (but please feel free to make out one of your own, listing all twelve possibilities as a test!):

The difference is subtle, isn’t it? But it is still a detectable difference. Again, give yourself tests, or, preferably, test yourself with the help of some friends. And again, the object is to tell the difference between major and minor, it is not to name the exact chord.

Familiarize yourself with the tone of the chords. If you stick with it, take a little time each day, listening will become second nature with you before you know it. You’ll be able to hear a song on the radio and say, “Hey, that’s a minor chord. This one’s a major.” You’ll amaze your friends.

Okay, maybe they’ll just look at you like they think you may have been out in the sun just a tad too long. You will amaze yourself.

If you’ve gotten this far, give yourself a big pat on the back (or a good-sized bowl of your favorite flavor ice cream!) and take a deep breath because the hardest challenge is still ahead.

Sevenths Heaven

You may have noticed when I diagrammed the E minor scale that I listed the seventh (VII) as D(#) and wondered why I did that. You may have noticed that I’ve generally avoided discussing sevenths in general. It’s not so much that I’m afraid of them as it is that I’m a bit in awe of them (not to mention that everybody seems to argue about them). They are powerful yet playful, mysterious yet straight forward. We’re going to try to get a bit of a handle on them here in order to work on our critical listening skills.

This will be brief and will undoubtedly raise even more questions. That’s cool because sevenths are definitely a subject to which we’ll be returning for in-depth study.

Part of the problem dealing with seventh chords is the names we give them.

Unlike a major or minor chord where the third is a major or minor third, the seventh chord is a minor seventh unless we specify that it is a major. If I say play an A, you automatically play an A major. If I say play an A7, we automatically add the G note (minor seventh) to the chord. Only if I ask for an Amaj7 will you play the natural seventh (G#).

Each of the sevenths has a very distinct sound. Let’s try a sampling by playing the following:

And here are the actual notes of the chords:

Okay, you should be used to the drill by now – play each chord and listen to the differences. Personally, I’m very enthralled by major seventh chords. They have an almost exotic flavor to them. Even when I’m writing a rock song I will toss a few into the mix to spice things up.

Regular sevenths evoke quite a different response, one of unrest, of unfinished business. They always seem to be leading somewhere else. Can you hear this? In music theory, a seventh is traditionally used to make a transition from the root (or I) to the subdominant (IV). This transition is called a resolution (This is one of those points you should remember – there may be a test later!). Even the use of this term “resolution” implies that a seventh chord is incomplete, that there must be a following chord that will bring it (and our ears) to a final point.

Do you remember our chord chart from the open tuning lesson, the one that shows the main and secondary chords of a given scale? Here it is in the key of D:

Now let’s test this out and see how the seventh chord flows into the fourth of any given scale. One really does seem to complete the other. If we’re in the key of D and we play a D7, we’d follow it with the IV, which in this case would be the G chord. Give it a shot:

Do you hear what a smooth transition this is? Do you want to see why? Let’s look at notes of the chords:

You see that the D is common to all three. Now let’s quickly review the D major scale:

Okay, if we “rebuild” our G chord so that the D note is on the bottom (or, if you prefer, think of it as building the G chord in the sequence in which it would appear in the D scale), it would look like this:

Uou can see to go from the root chord (the D) to the subdominant (the IV, or the G) we simply replace the III and V with the IV and VI. When we change the D to D7, it looks like this (and I’ve staggered the notes to read as if they were in the D scale):

The G is now surrounded by the F# and A while the B is also surrounded by the A and C. The fact that the F# and C are half steps from the G and B respectively causes the illusion of the “leading” effect. The III and V merge into the IV while the V and VII merge into the VI. It really does sound like the D7 just naturally flows into the G.

Let’s take a little quiz (See? I told you there might be one). If you are playing the following seventh chords, what chord (more than likely) will you use to resolve it?

That was fairly simple, wasn’t it? You just figured out what would be the fourth in any of those scales and then you knew that the F#7 resolves to B, the G7 to C, the A7 to D and the B7 to E. Sometimes theory is simpler than math! If you can train yourself to recognize seventh chords, then you will almost subconsciously find yourself learning to pick up the fourth as well.

It’s amazing how this works.

At this time of the year when we’re all busy resolving to do all manner of things, I’d like to encourage each of you (that is, if you really do believe you’d like to get good at this) to spend some time developing your ear. Ten, twenty minutes a day, whenever you’re listening to music, whatever works. Hum a scale and pick out the intervals. When you sit down to play, explore the major, minors and sevenths to see if you can recognize them simply by listening. Again, you don’t have to say, “That’s a C major, that’s a F major seventh…” Simply try to identify the form of the chord.

Now, if you’re listening to the radio (or your CDs), there will undoubtedly be chords we haven’t yet covered. Don’t get discouraged if there’s something you don’t recognize. You will once you learn what it is. And don’t get discouraged if you think it’s taking you some time to develop this skill, after all, you are trying to learn something completely new and that always takes time.

I’d also like to encourage you to read (or reread) Jimmy Hudson’s excellent column, A Study on Intervals, which discusses that topic in greater detail. You’ll also find more on various chords types in both The Power of Three and Building Additions (and Suspensions). And, as always check out some of the terrific articles you can find on our music theory page as well as those on our ear training page.

As always, please feel free to bookmark Guitar Noise for future reference and don’t hesitate to email me your questions – either directly or at the newly revamped Guitar Forums. And now, if you’ll excuse me for a moment, it seems I have three more columns in various states of disarray which require my attention…