Make Beats Online

Learn to Play By Ear

Posted on 13. May, 2009 by admin in Play By Ear

One thing I have learnt in my long and lustrous career is that you do not need to be an accomplished musician, but to learn to play by ear is important though.

A certain beat mostly derives from a really simple melody. After you learn to play by ear and you can take a melody you heard earlier to your sequencer, you then have a huge advantage over all the Average Joe’s out there.

Don’t want to be an Average Joe? Click here!

This is not to say that there isn’t any need for musicians playing real musical instruments, but for the purposes of making hip hop or rap beats, it isn’t that necessary. Once you have established yourself, you could also then go and hire real musicians to play just like the big dogs do.

In any case, a basic ability to play is usually more than enough to get the job done for most of the beat makers out there.

Those people that have practiced extensively are usually able to play by ear, but there are some programs, videos and books readily available for you to learn to play by ear.

As like with anything else in life, being able to play by ear is a skill that will be picked up quicker by some and may take a bit longer for others. I used to struggle a bit with this, but I just carried on working at it. The aim is not to give up.

I remember when I picked up the guitar for the first time that I just wanted to give up. My fingers were extremely dumb and I just could not press the chords. I didn’t give up and today I am far more proficient with the guitar.

Never give up as it is a very valuable skill for any aspiring beat maker to have.

Always try and dedicate some time to listen to other music and try and listen for what notes, scales, samples and melodies are used and how they all fit in with each other.

Click here to learn the secret method of pitch recognition and how to learn to play by ear.