Ear training drills

Why ear training is the highest-leverage practice

Two musicians can know the same theory. The one with better ears will:

• Transcribe songs faster.
• Play more interesting solos.
• Write better melodies.
• Communicate with other musicians more easily.
• Sound more “musical” in everything.

You don’t need natural talent — you need consistent, low-volume daily practice.

The drills

Drill 1 — Interval recognition (5 min/day)

Sing or hum the first two notes of the “reference song” for each interval. Then have a friend (or an app like Tenuto, EarMaster, etc.) play random intervals; identify them.

Aim: 80% accuracy on all 12 intervals within 6 months.

Drill 2 — Sing a scale degree (3 min/day)

Play a chord (e.g. C major). Without playing, sing the 3rd (E). Then sing the 5th (G). Then the 7 (B). Then the 9 (D). Check yourself by playing the note afterwards.

This trains your brain to “find” scale degrees in your inner ear — the foundation of writing melodies.

Drill 3 — Chord quality recognition (3 min/day)

Listen to chords played in isolation. Identify: major, minor, dim, aug, 7th, m7, maj7, sus4.

Start with just major vs minor; expand as your accuracy grows.

Drill 4 — Bass line dictation (5 min/day)

Pick a familiar song. Listen to just the bass line. Sing it. Then find it on guitar. This is the bedrock of transcription.

Drill 5 — Sing then play (continuous)

Whenever you’re about to play a phrase — solo, melody, anything — sing it first. The act of producing the pitch vocally forces it through your brain’s pitch-processing system. Your playing will improve dramatically within weeks.

Drill 6 — Transcribe one phrase per week

Pick a 4-bar phrase from any song. Spend 30-60 minutes figuring out the notes by ear, no tabs, no chord charts. Some weeks you’ll fail — fine. Try again.

After a year of doing this, you’ll be transcribing at three or four times your starting speed.

Apps that help

• Tenuto (iOS) — interval, scale, chord, key drills.
• EarMaster (multi-platform) — comprehensive ear-training program.
• Functional Ear Trainer (free) — focuses on scale-degree recognition in a key.
• Soundcorset metronome — has built-in ear-training drills.

Any of these for 10 minutes a day, every day, for 3 months, will transform your hearing.

The hardest part

Ear training is invisible. Nobody sees you do it. Your progress is internal and slow. There’s no glamour.

But it is the thing that separates intermediate guitarists from advanced ones. Every guitarist you admire spent serious time on ears, whether they realised it or not.

If you do one thing from this entire site beyond the basic theory, do ear training daily. Five minutes a day for a year.