I've been trying to teach myself to play by ear for a while now, and my method of learning has been pretty straightforward so far; I simply just try to figure out the melodies of songs that I hear. It used to be the case that this would be an excruciatingly slow process, where I would need to slow down the music to half or quarter speed and repeat the phrases many times over by trial and error before I figured it out, but now, I am fairly competent at doing it in real time on the first try (given that the phrase is not too fast and has mostly diatonic intervals).
However I feel like I've reached a wall; I can't seem to incorporate any sort of harmony into this process. The reason for this may seem simple, that is, melody is played over time, and harmony is instant. I can go as slow as I need to figure out a melody, but I am having a very difficult time isolating particular harmonies in the music I listen to because I can't "pause" a chord or interval as it is being played. I feel like I may need a new strategy for tackling this skill.
In the mean time, I will likely continue with my "trial and error" method of just playing chords until they sound right, but the issue with this is that my ear is not trained enough to determine if what I am playing actually matches the music I am trying to recreate, a catch-22. Perhaps I should just continue and I will get better this way, but if anyone has any alternative strategies, I would love to hear (heh) them. Also if anyone has any suggestions for music with simple harmonies that a beginner could try to figure out, that would also be great. Thanks
Submitted October 09, 2022 at 02:26PM by whydidyoureadthis17 https://www.reddit.com/r/Learnmusic/comments/xzr4o1/how_do_i_get_to_the_next_level_of_playing_by_ear/?utm_source=ifttt