Re: question about figuring chords by ear


tysteel3000@xxxxxxx wrote:
Hi everyone,


I'm a pianist/keyboardist but I thought this question would be best
asked on a guitar newsgroup, as guitarists are generally more used to
transcribing music than a lot of pianists. A lot of them just read
from *** music and don't really listen to recordings and write down
the chords, so my question about how to do this would be best asked of
those who are probably more practiced at it.

What I'd like to ask is, how do you figure out the chord progressions
to songs, especially if you are someone who does not have "perfect
pitch" ? My problem is figuring out exactly where the chords change
within the song. Sometimes it's easy to pick out the chordal changes,
and sometimes it's more difficult to spot. What should I be doing?

Let me give you an example. Today, I was listening to the beatles
"past masters" cd and was listening to one of their early songs, FROM
ME TO YOU. I was trying to figure out where the chords changes and I
was notating that over the lyrics. What should I do here to figure
out the exact places where the chords change? Is there a trick to
this? I have read how it's been recommended to listen to the bass line
and supposedly whenever that changes, it indicates a chord change. But
it's hard to hear the bass at times. When you are figuring out the
chords, do you amplify the bass part so you can hear it better and
discern where the notes change and etc? That's my
problem....sometimes the bass is so low in the mix. I'm just
curious what the methods are to figuring out these songs....if someone
has some very useful advice, I'd appreciate it very much. I really
want to get better at this, because if I don't, I'll never be a full &
complete musician.

thanks

If you can't tell when chords change, maybe you should get your ears
checked???

To figure out the chord changes from a song, I figure out how to play
the root notes on the low E and A strings, translate them to chords,
figure out which chords are major, minor or 7th and then figure out the
easiest way to play the chords on the neck.

Chris

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