Tips on Ear Training

Tricks of Transposition

by Joe Carr

After many years of teaching guitar, I realize I have been holding out on my students. A student will bring in a recording and ask if he/she can learn the chords or a solo to a certain song. I'll listen and decide whether the student is ready for this material and if so, I'll write out the chord progression or transcribe the solo into tab or standard notation for the student. The process may take only a few minutes, but transcriptions may take up one entire lesson or more. Although I ask the student from time to time whether he hears a slide here, an open string there, a IV chord here, I do most of the work.

The sad part is that while the student goes away happy, I haven't really helped him become a self-sufficient musician. For those of us who learned to play before the current education explosion, learning to play was a slow process of trail and error--breaking down the licks on recordings one-by-one or maybe asking a good player to show us a lick or phrase. Although this kind of learning is slow, the concepts and techniques have time to sink in really well.

OK, I've decided to come clean. Here are my tricks of transcription. I'll start simple and build from there. Let's say we are trying to learn a Tony Rice song and solo from a CD.

Tools:

1. Pencils and Standard Music or Tab paper OR Computer Notation program.
2. CD player
3. Adjustable speed tape player or digital "Lick Grabber"
4. Guitar tuned to standard pitch

A. KEY and POSITION

Listen to the entire song to determine the key and position the guitarist is using. Modern recordings generally use standard tuning, but older and non-professional recordings may not be tuned to A 440. Flatt and Scruggs tuned high on many of their early recordings to achieve a bright tone. Listen for the characteristic sounds of each instrument for clues as to the tuning. A stray open, ringing string on any instrument may be just the clue you need. In G position, guitars and banjos sound the same capoed at the third fret or fourth fret, but fiddles and mandolins sound very different played in Bb and B. Use your guitar to find matching notes and chords. If you thing you have found the key, let's now focus on the guitar part.

On stereo recordings, the guitar may be lounder on one side. Even if the guitar is placed in the middle of the mix, the fiddle or banjo may be panned hard to the left or right. Use the balance control to find the place where the guitar is heard the best. Listen to the recording again and try to "hear" what position the rhythm guitar is playing in. The "G" shape, for example, has a characteristic sound no matter where the capo is placed. In other words, even capoed at the 4th fret, a "G" chord sound like a G chord because of the order of intervals in that particular chord shape. Also, use your guitar sense. If you think the song is in the Key of F, where would it most likely be played on the guitar? The possibilities are many, but let's look at the more common ones:

1. Open (non-capo)- While open F is possible in bluegrass music, it is unusual. Certainly, Tony Rice could do it, but it is much more common in swing styles. If you hear ringing strings in the chords on the recording, chances are there is a capo somewhere.
2. First Fret Capo - E positioin - The great open E sound is unmistakable.
3. Third Fret Capo - D position - D position is also readily recognizable and is a popular way to play in F. (Be aware that guitarists sometimes tune down the E string to D when playing in this position.)
4. Fifth Fret Capo - C position - Lots of pickers use this for "Beaumont Rag." Most folks can hear the sound of C position.

The last note (and the highest note in pitch) strummed in a chord (often the first string) is a good clue of the capo position. If you keep hearing the A note (first string, fifth fret) every time an F chord is played, chances are the capo is at the third fret.

B. CHORD CHANGES

Before you tackle the specific chord changes of the Tony Rice song, let's look at Joe's General Chord Progression rules. These may be very obvious to many of you, but it has to be said:

1. Songs usually start and end on the I chord. If it's in G, the last chord is almost always G. The first chord is often G too, but there are many exceptions. For instance, in the key of G the first chord of "John Hardy" is C.
2. If the last chord is I, (which it almost always is), the next to last chord is most often a V chord. In the key of G, D or D7 is often the next to last chord.
3. Many bluegrass tunes use a I-IV-V progression which, in the key of G, is G, C, and D. Learn the I, IV, V sequence in every key you play in. A large number of bluegrass and old-time country songs use these three chords in different orders.
4. Many older mountain songs have a single progression for the verse and chorus (i.e., "Pig in a Pen").
5. If the verse and chorus are different from each other, chances are the chords will do something new at the beginning of the chorus. If the song has been loping along in G during the verse, look for a C (IV) or D (V) to start the chorus. These are not the only possibilities, but they are very common.
6. If the progression moves to a major chord other than I, IV, or V, try II or VI. In the key of G, an A (II) chord sometimes shows up ("Goodbye Old Pal") or occasionally an E (VI) or E7 ("Salty Dog Blues").
7. If a minor chord appears, it will often be a II minor, a III minor, or a VI minor. In the key of G, these are Am (II-) as in the "Beverly Hillbillies Theme," a Bm (III-) as in "Dixie Hoedown," or an Em (VI-) as in "Foggy Mountain Breakdown."

Here are the chords and numbers in the key of G:

• G (I): usually played major
• A (II): usually played minor, sometimes major
• B (III): usually played minor, sometimes major
• C (IV): played major, sometimes 7th
• D (V): played major or 7th
• E (VI): played minor, sometimes major
• F# (VII): rarely in bluegrass, sometimes as major (Ex. "Sitting Alone in the Moonlight")

Using these rules as a guide and your ear as a tool, play the CD and pause the recording at the first suspected chord change. Sing the first note of the song at the place of the change and try to find the appropriate chord. When you think you have found it, double check with the recording and then move on through the piece. Once you have made it through a verse and a chorus, most of the work is done.

C. THINGS TO LOOK OUT FOR

1. Most bluegrass songs use the chords of the verse for the solo section (breaks) but some use the chorus and others use both.
2. Be aware that some songs have a "bridge" which may occur only once and may be unrelated chordally to the rest of the song.
3. If a song changes key or modulates, it usually moves up in pitch one whole step or two frets (G to A). Half-step modulations (one fret) also occur (G to G#). To modulate to a new key, musicians often use the V chord of the new key. To get from G to A, you might use an E7 (the V chord of A).

This skill only develops through practice, so promise yourself to learn at least one new song a week from a recording.

D. TRANSCRIBING SOLOS

After you have determined the key of the recording, the position the guitarist is using, and the chord changes, you are now ready to start breaking down the solo. There is a possibitlity that the soloist is capoed differently than the rhythm guitar. Bands with two guitars and multi-track recording make this possible, so check that the solo guitar sounds like it is in the same position. If this checks out, move on.

I use a two speed cassette recorder for most of my transcription work. The desired passage is recorded at full speed and then played back at "slow" speed which is approximately one-half the "fast" speed. The result is that you then hear the passage half as fast and one octave lower than it was originally recorded. The trick is that you have to hear the octave drop and adjust for it when you search for the note on your instrument. I switch between speeds often to check that I am still in the right octave. If the solo moves to the fifth and sixth strings of the guitar, it gets harder to distinguish the individual notes. I'll save my tricks for this problem for the end of this column.

As a teenager, I used a four speed record player to slow down recordings. Thirty-three and a third RPM records can be played at 16 RPM with the same resultant octave drop. A little fine tuning of my guitar to the record and I was on my way. South Plains College Creative Arts Director John Hartin told me of the lick stealing technique he used as a kid. With guitar in hand and a standard record player on the floor, John would place his foot against the side of the record. With careful pressure adjustment, he could slow the turntable down enough to understand the fastest licks. In my twenties, I bought a reel-to-reel recorder and used the seven and a half and three and three-quarters speeds to slow down the licks. Somewhere I still have piles of tapes filled with solos-no songs, just solos.

Digital technology has produces machines and computer programs capable of slowing music down without changing pitch. This technology continues to improve, but for now I'll stick with cassette tape. The basic techniques are the same no matter what system you use.

If you are working with a cassette player or a digital "Lick Grabber," you should transfer the solo section from the CD to cassette or into the "Graber's" memory. Listen to the solo several times at full speed. Transcribe as much as possible at full speed. Play the first few notes of the solo and try to sing them. Now look for those notes on the guitar. Try for the first note only if necessary. Once you think you have the first notes, play the music at half speed and try playing along. Any mistakes should be obvious. Make adjustments and move on. If you are writing tab or music, write down these notes in whatever notation form you are using. (Some players prefer to memorize as they go. It takes longer, but you will know the solo when you finish. Many times I write as I go and then I'll have to learn the solo from the paper at a later date.)

If you are new to tab or music writing, don't worry too much about getting the music into proper measures with correct time values. Just get the numbers on the right tab line or notes on the staff. This music is just for you and you already know how it sounds. You just want a reminder of where to put your fingers!

Continue note-by-note or phrase-by-phrase until you reach a logical stopping place. Play what you have done so far over until you can play it without stopping and compare it to the full speed original. You may hear subtle differences that you missed at first:

1. Are there left hand techniques such as slides, hammer-ons, pull-offs, bends?
2. Do some of the notes seem to ring longer than others indicating open strings?
3. Do the notes sound thin and tinny like unwound strings or more fat and dark like wound strings?

Make any needed adjustments and rest your ears. A few minutes of hard listening will really tire your ears and brain. If you reach sections you just can't figure out, skip them and continue with the easier parts. Many times I'll get stumped and quit for a day. The next day, the notes sound incredibly clear and obvious to me.

Continue until you have completed the solo. Congratulations! Right or wrong, you have begun.

E. OTHER ISSUES

Now that you have one under your belt, let's look at some issues. As any given note can be played several places on a guitar, finding the right one can be a big job for the transcriber. I have sometimes written entire phrases in two or three positions and learned each one to see which one made the most "sense." Sometimes using questions 2 and 3 above help me hear where the notes are being played. A combination of positioins might be the answer. Slides and open strings are often indications that the guitarist is shifting position.

If you are studying one particular artist, some things may start coming easier. After transcribing ten Tony Rice solos (or learning them from someone else's transcription), you will have a sense of some of Tony's favorite "places" on the neck. Armed with this knowledge, you may develop an intuition about where a given Tony solo is headed. This kind of insight into how a player is thinking is one of the invaluable benefits of transcription work.

After you have finished with a section or the whole solo, try to get some feedback from a musical friend or a guitar teacher. What you want to know is: "Does this (me) sound like this (the recording)? As you develop, you can trust your ear more and more, but early on, you should get some feedback. Don't get discouraged if your transcription is way off base. Ear skills can be improved with work. Its funny that ear skills are among the most important skills for improvising musicians and yet there is very little instructional material available. I'm affraid we teachers would rather keep you coming back by doling out licks and solos instead of giving you the tools to do it for yourself. (Give a man a fish, he has a meal; teach a man to fish, he has a livelihood.)

F. ADDITIONAL TIPS

1. If the original recording used a capo and I want to slow it down just a little, I use the variable spped feature to drop the pitch a whole tone or more and adjust my caop accordingly. Example: If the original recording is capoed at the second fret and played in G position (key of A), I can adjust the recording to play back in G (one step lower) and remove the capo from the guitar to play in G. This is especially helpful on bass runs that turn to mush at half speed.
2. If necessary, I will retune the guitar one whole step or more lower. This way I can take a song in G and lower its pitch one whole step to F. With the retuned guitar, I can still play along in G position.
3. By combining the effects of the variable speed and half speed controls, I can find a place where the music is slower and the low guitar notes are understandable. Then I tune the guitar accordingly. The two most helpful positions are : (1) Full Speed, minimum variable, and (2) Half Speed, maximum variable.
4. Some modern guitarists, mostly in rock music, tune their guitars down a step or more for a bigger sound.

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This article by Dan Huckabee appeared in Flatpicking Guitar Magazine, Volume 1, Number 4:

Hey Everybody! I'm Self-taught!

or

How to Figure Out Licks Off of Records

This issue we are going to talk about some dangerous waters where beginners rarely dare to tread. Figuring out your heroes' licks all by your lonesome, right off the record or CD, without anyone around to hold your hand, might seem to be frightening and even impossible, but with a few good do's and don'ts, you'll be on your way to independence and controlling your own musical destiny.

In 1965 (age 14), I figured out my very first lick, and boy was I proud (ok, shocked). It was a little D-chord position lick from "Mister Tambourine Man" by the Byrds. To be honest, it hadn't dawned on me (at the time) to even try to figure out music without my teacher to show it to me.

I was riding my Honda 50 step-thru over to a friend's when I saw a garage band working out on "Not Your Steppin' Stone" (by the Monkees), and I stopped to listen. After their mom made me get my bike off the lawn, I noticed that the Lead Man (Joe Rogers), was playing the little riff exactly the way it sounded on the record. In those days, there were no famous stars teaching video lessons, or books with "artist transcriptions". Only Mel Bay's "this is a pick", teaching you how to play the chords to "Froggy Went a Courtin". So I was puzzled how this 13 year old knew this guitar part from a song that had just been released on a new album.

I asked Joe who taught it to him, and he said that he figured it out by listening to the record. He took me in his room and showed me how he slowed down his record player from 33 to 16, which kind of "magnified the music", allowing him to search around on the guitar for the notes, taking one at a time. He said, he was just curious and decided to try it, and it worked.

Man, that was the revelation of my life! That innocent little suggestion that Joe Rogers gave me in 1965, eventually led to me becoming the National Dobro Champion in 1976. There sure weren't any dobro books when I started learning, and I didn't even have any way to find out what tuning it was supposed to be in. How did I learn? By putting the record on the ol' turntable and doing a lot of huntin' and peckin'. Come to think of it, I've never so much as sent Joe a Christmas card in thanks for changing my life, but maybe he'll see this article or I'll run into him through e-mail and thank him that way.

In 1975, I discovered the first and only company that was putting a half-speed switch on a cassette machine, (which was a far cry handier than the ol' turntable method), so I bought one and became a dealer that same day, determined to tell the world about figuring out licks off of records. I started placing large 2-page spread adds, suggesting to figure out licks, and after about 10 years, a few other dealers started following suite as a result of customers calling them in response to my ads.

Today, several manufacturers have responded by producing machines especially designed for figuring out licks.

Don't get me wrong, people lifted licks from records long before I was born, I'm just responsible for bringing the concept "out of the closet", and Joe was responsible for turning me on to the phenomenon. What I've done for the past 20 years, is provided a place for people to call to get the machines, and ask questions about how you do it.

First of all, (and this is a big misconception) it's not just for the advanced pickers! Your ear needs to start developing on day one, right along with your fingers. This is very important! We start all of our beginning students with an elementary lick figuring out lesson, on their very first day! They bring a cassette recorder to their lesson, and we record a couple of simple songs onto the tape. They take it home and try to figure it out. This is the essence of musicianship in it's purest form. You hear a note on the tape, you stop the tape, you humm that note.

STOP IT RIGHT THERE! You humm that note? Hey, what have you just done? You've figured out that note on a musical instrument. What instrument? Right! The "vocal chords".

So next we want to take it from your voice, to your guitar. Lets review:

1. Play it on the cassette machine
2. Try to humm it.
3. Try to find that note you are humming, on your guitar.

From cassette, to voice, to guitar. You have just witnessed the process that made famous people FAMOUS! You have just witnessed the process that develops your ear muscles. Listening, searching, getting it wrong.

When you hit the wrong note, is it too high or too low? Play every note on the whole #@%$* guitar if you have to. We're all tone-deaf at first. Arnold was skinny before he worked out for months and years. If you hit a wrong note, and you know it's too high, guess what? That's right, you got an ear for music! If you can't tell if it's too high or too low, you need to work out, by trying to find notes "one at a time", on your guitar.

If you get it right the first time, you already knew where it was, and you didn't get a workout. When you get it wrong, you are listening. Who judges whether it's right or wrong? You do.

So how did your voice find the note? Well, you tightened and loosened your vocal chords to make your voice high and low till your EAR told your voice that it found the note it wanted. Your voice is an instrument that you have somewhat "mastered", because you've been humming songs since you were a baby. Your guitar is a different story. You're not as confident or adept at finding notes on it as you are on your voice. That's my whole point. You need to peck out so many simple little melodies like "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and "My Country Tis of Thee," that finding notes on your guitar, becomes as easy as finding notes with your voice.

Trust me, as soon as you've pecked out (by trial and error), as many tunes on your guitar as you have with your voice, your guitar will become an extension of your ear. This will make you quite powerful! Your ear will have some big muscles! You will be able to play anything you can humm. And I mean, you'll be able to play it on the first try. You won't be looking around for it, your fingers will intuitively go to the right notes with no mistakes.

Just remember that figuring out licks from CD's is the same thing as searching for the melody notes to "Mary Had a Little Lamb". You take one note at a time, until you've gone from beginning to end. An advanced Tony Rice solo is no different than a simple children's melody other than it's faster and there are more notes.

Anyway, this process is called "matching a tone". Actually it's the same thing a tuning up, (unless you're watching a tuning meter). In that case you're tuning with your eye instead of your ear. If I put some tablature on figuring out licks at the bottom of this article, you'd be learning with your eye which would defeat the whole purpose of this article.

To learn to play the guitar really well, you must develop your ear, and you MUST spend some of your time away from tablature, teachers, and lesson videos, in order to challenge and exercise your hearing. Wasn't it Socrates who said, "That which is used develops, and that which is not used, wastes away."

I have recently compiled my 20 years of counceling people on the fine art of figuring out licks, into a 2-hour video called "How to Figure out Music From Recordings". It will provide you with everything you could ever want to know about the process, and it demonstrates all the machines, how they sound, and how they are used from a consumer's perspective. If you would like some free literature on it, you can call us at Musician's Workshop 800-543-6125.

So until next time, be curious, employ a little patience, and start developing those "ear muscles".