Play Music By Ear Cheat Sheet

Playing music by ear is not a talent people are just born with.

It’s actually a group of multiple listening skills that most musicians learn over a period of time and don’t realize it.

So if you have these skills, then you have everything you need to play a song by ear:

• Match pitch (hear/sing/hum a note and play it on your instrument)
• Identify the distance between 2 notes (there are 2 common ways to do this: using the steps of scale or by just identifying each interval by sound. If you have either of these skills, then you’re good to go)
• Know how chords are built and work
• Hear individual parts of the music (hear that the melody is separate from the bass line, and the melody and bass line are separate from the chords)

If you have all of these skills, then you should be able to figure out a song just from this cheat sheet!