How to Identify Chords by Ear: Step-by-Step

[@GGGaming-ty7rx]

When trying to recognizze chord progression by ear, should i ignore the singers vocal melody? Or is it also useful in what way? This is my trouble im having. My ears are always attracted to the melody. And i cant focus hearing the bass and chords. Especially when the singer has a beautiful voice and the melody she sings is very catchy

[@UseYourEar]

Hi and thanks for your comment. Yes, if you are trying to recognize chords you should ignore the vocal melody, these are separate parts although they usually have some harmonic relation. I know that's difficult initially but proper ear training allows you to develop the skill of focusing on different parts and isolating single notes and chords in your mind so you can just focus solely on those.

[@bahrikhalil5953]

he did that after hearing the tonic right ? if so , why did you hide that part

[@UseYourEar]

Recognizing the tonic in a chord progression like this is fairly simple when you are trained, and you can guess both the tonic and the chords at the first listening. So nothing hidden here. If you are trying to accomplish the same results by practicing intervals you won't be able to do this at all. That might be the reason why you are wondering "how is this even possible?". That's what I used to think when I was practicing intervals myself and saw my colleagues show off a similar level of skills. It's a mindblowing skill, but actually very achievable if you train and practice properly. The latter is usually missing though.

[@bahrikhalil5953]

@@UseYourEar The thing is, I got confused because when I heard the progression I felt the tonic of the relative minor key (E minor), but he clearly felt it in G major and identified the chords on that basis, so was my feeling wrong, and I should be hearing that chord progression in G major ?

[@UseYourEar]

@@bahrikhalil5953 it's the same, you can feel the tonic of E minor and know that's the 6th degree of the relative major key (G major). So nothing changes on practical level. Minor and major and not 2 separate things, they are relative to each other, it's just one key with 2 different names but the tonality is the same set of notes. What matters is learning to recognize the feelings, 6th degree and 1st degree of the major key have very different feelings. I don't know if you understand the concept? Let me know.

[@bahrikhalil5953]

@@UseYourEar I understand that 6th and 1st have different feeling, but to me, each one of them, have a different feeling depending on the mode you are hearing, I mean , the 1st chord of G major will not feel the same if I feel the minor mode, and in that case , I am percieving G major as the 3rd degree of E minor not as the first degree of Gmajor, and because of that, am feeling the resolution in E minor, not in Gmajor, so are you saying that even if i feel the resolution in the 1st degree of the relative minor instead of the 1st degree of the major, I should use the same approach as when I feel the major mode ?

[@UseYourEar]

​@@bahrikhalil5953 Thinking of a different mode doesn't change the feeling of the notes/chords, modes are relative to each other, you DON'T FEEL the tonic of the dorian mode as having the same feeling of the tonic of the ionian, and so on. If you do, it's because you are switching tonality unintentionally in your brain. And that's a common issue for beginners and intermediate students because they lack tonic retention skills. Tonic of the dorian has the same feeling of the 2nd degree of the ionian mode. By the way, it's also very very confusing and unnecessary to think about modes for beginners/intermediates, you end up not learning anything from it. Modes are an advanced topic and I would highly discourage anyone who is not able to recognize melodies and chords by ear alone in a simple major/minor key (very quickly and intuitively) yet, to take modes into account. Moreover many musicians tend to think about modes even where it's absolutely not necessary, most songs are in simple major or minor keys; pure modal music is very uncommon and very genre specific. So I'm not sure about your specific situation, but chances are you are overthinking it like I did years back and like 99% of musicians do.

[@CorneliusMagnus]

Bro. This looks like you only helped one guy😂😂😂 It is just this one guy in every one of your ads and videos.

[@gainesdominique]

Gotta start somewhere. Buy the program and be #2.

[@UseYourEar]

How many have you helped? Bro? Wanna see more?! check out this video, I couldn't put all of them in this video kzbin.info/www/bejne/gHKYh4CcmZ6iqaM Of course there are many many other people that I've helped and had similar results that will never allow us to share videos of them, it's not that easy to have an average person to agree about appearing in a public video. To not say that, we don't have videos of most of our students while they practice ear training, obviously. If you think this is the only guy who got significant results from our method, check out our reviews here www.trustpilot.com/review/useyourear.com

[@UseYourEar]

I'm sorry for you but there are many others that got similar results and agreed to let us publish videos of their progress. I couldn't put all of them in this video of course, would have been way too long, but you can check them out here kzbin.info/www/bejne/gHKYh4CcmZ6iqaMfeature=shared That said, there are hundreds of other students that got similar improvement which we don't have videos of. We can't film everybody and most people don't wanna appear in a public video.