Tips for Figuring Out Chord Progressions By Ear (part II )

(Make sure you've read part 1 first...)

In this part, we'll look at several steps/approaches you can take to get better and quicker at deciphering chord progressions.

First tip is to listen to the song you want to learn on HEADPHONES, preferably good quality headphones. This confers multiple advantages – generally, you can hear in finer detail and guitar parts are often panned in one speaker or the other, in that case you can remove the other side so that you can more clearly hear the guitar. Listen as focused as possible, without your guitar and with your eyes closed.

• Sing along with songs as much as possible. Scat sing solos or other parts. Also sing single notes on the guitar in real time as you play them.
  
  
• Figure out guitar solos note for note and melodies/other guitar parts, this will help your ear, which is a preliminary step toward figuring out progressions.
  
  
• When you identify bass notes of a chord in the progression you're working on, play the third or flat third, to determine if the chord is major or minor.
  
  
• When you believe you've found each chord, play them along with the song.
  
  
• Sometimes the chords will sound correct when you imagine or voice the melody/other parts over your playing of the chords but when playing with the song it may reveal a discrepancy you didn't previously hear.
  
  
• Learning common chord progressions and identifying several songs that use those common progressions is a great way to familiarize yourself to the point of being fluent at identifying them – it's surprising how many songs that at a distance seem fairly disparate are actually similar or the same!
  
  
• Get an ear training/chord identification app for your phone/tablet and spend some time everyday with it.
  
  
• Learning to figure out chord progressions by ear, like virtually every aspect of playing guitar or bass is a highly developable skill, remind yourself of this if you're getting discouraged.
  
  
• And last, make a list of 50 -100 songs you love, that you'd like to figure out and get to it!