Introduction and Fundamentals

Inside each season we’ll explore many concepts and ways to approach soloing, but there are some general fundamentals that will apply to each. We should take a moment to discus them here.

Playing By Ear

In my view, any kind of confidence in soloing comes from the ability to play what you “hear” in your head on your ukulele. Taking what’s in your head and putting it onto the instrument via your fingers is just an internal variation of listening to a recording and then figuring out how it translates to the instrument.

The main difference is that one is tangible (an MP3 you can play repeatedly) and the other is not, held only in your mind.

Starting with ear training allows you to hone the skills it takes to connect music to your fingers with a source that can be repeated until you succeed.

The Hard Road

Playing by ear is not easy. If it was, everyone would do it. I’m not here to blow smoke and downplay its challenge.

However, it’s not as daunting as it’s made out to be. It’s simply different from how many Western folks are used to learning and thinking about things. Playing by ear rejects the systems, rules, and facts that lots of people build their whole lives on and instead requires an abstract and intuitive approach.

This unfamiliar approach is often the biggest hurtle, not the skill itself.

In my opinion, nothing else brings music to life in such a satisfying way as figuring something out yourself. It’s worth the struggle.

If you can play by ear, you don’t have to wait for somebody to tell you what to play or find a TAB. It’s yours. You just listen and play it.

If you take one thing away from this page, I hope it is this: persevere.

You will get frustrated. You will feel like it’s too hard. You will want to look up a TAB to see what the actual notes are.

But I encourage you to hold the line. Don’t cheat. Stay the course and keep banging away at it.

By doing so, you’re building musical stamina and ensuring that 100% of your efforts are going towards fulfilling your task.

Up or Down?

From a playing by ear perspective, any melodic movement does one of three things:

Goes higher
Goes lower
Stays the same

That’s it. If you can discern which of these movements happens from one note to the next, you can eliminate a lot of searching in the wrong places.

Here are some examples to practice with:

MP3

I state the example number before playing it. Listen, stop the recording, assess, and write down your answers for each note pair.

For even more practice, try to figure out what notes I’m playing. Working out two notes is a lot more accessible than a whole melody if you’ve never tried this before.

If you’re having trouble, try to sing the two notes. Correctly identifying the pitch with your voice can help you feel the movement.

In this video, I share the basics of beginning to use your ears to figure out melodies:

Here are some simple, iconic melodies you should figure out. Using a tune that you’re already familiar with allows you to immediately know when you’re off.

Download them to your favorite audio player so you can rewind, loop, or slow them down. Work on each one until you can play the melody perfectly.

MP3