Play What You Hear Exercise

Ear Training Ear Training - Introduction
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what is meant by “in position” ? thanks

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Exactly. :slight_smile: “In position” means you try to stay as close as possible to the fret you started with so in the example you gave, you would try to stay in frets 5, 6, 7, 8 (if your first finger started on the 5th fret, or 5, 4, 3, 2 if your fourth finger started on the fifth fret) and play on any string in those frets, but if none of those notes in those four frets sound right (aren’t high or low enough for the melody you’re playing), you can go up or down a couple frets outside of that, if you need to.

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I am struggling with this. I did learn how to play Happy Birthday from Justin PROPERLY so maybe that’s the wrong song? maybe I am in my head too much? Any more tips on how to do this?

Maybe the key is to simply not give a sh*p? I tried doing this for 5 minutes and it was horrendous. No instruction, no guidance, not even a starting note and I felt so naked and exposed for not having any understanding of the fretboard!

I took today off, I think I will heed the 5 days a week practice schedule despite having played for nearly 3 years because I do get burn out when I typically practice 8-12 days without a rest.

Any tips for tomorrow? I will try something I have zero instruction with but think I know well even if I don’t; twinkle twinkle little star… not sure what else to do.

What other question since we are working with intervals should we stick with the notes in a given octave ONLY when working out a song? so 12 notes for each song? will that simplify the exercise or does that oversimplify it and create restrictions we don’t necessarily want?

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Wow, @Lasher, sounds like you’re thinking too much. (Psst: personally I don’t mind, but I think the moderators here do not like cussing. Not sure why, since the average community member is old enough to have seen the Beatles live.)

Here are a few tips:

  1. You should choose a melody that you know very well (in your head), but don’t know how to play on guitar. Personally, I would choose a song that I love and not some nursery rhyme, but whatever.

  2. It doesn’t matter what note you start on.

  3. You don’t need to know any scale. You’re just hunting around for the right notes. If you knew the correct key (given your choice of 1st note), then you could use the major scale to restrict the possible notes, but you don’t know the key.

  4. The song may span more than one octave, so be ready to go there. Most of the notes in most melodies fall in one octave. Often just one or two notes go up high, more than an octave above the 1st note.

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@jjw1
Thank you