Welcome to the Learn to Play by Ear teaching materials page.

We’ll upload a couple of recordings of the tunes, and maybe some video, and notes to this page.

Arpeggios and Pentatonic Scales

Most tunes are built out of scales and arpeggios.  So rather than boring technical exercises, they are the cogs, wheels and gears that are fundamental to learning by ear.

The pentatonic scale is the 5 main notes out of a 12 note scale that are likely to ‘work’ in any tune.  They are the basis of most folk tunes and what the majority of people who improvise are using.

Get familiar with a pentatonic scale, and you become familiar with most of the notes you are ever going to play.  You start to hear and know better what note is coming next – and if you get it wrong – it still won’t sound ‘wrong’.

The Major Pentatonic scale is these note numbers: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6

The Minor Pentatonic scale is these note numbers:  1, flat3, 4, 5, flat7

INTRO to the course (test video clip)