Learning songs by ear

Fitzburgh

How do you guys suggest going about learning songs by ear. My teacher and I were doing the Pixies Hey last week, and I didn some changes by ear. He can pick up songs by ear pretty quickly. How did you guys learn to play songs by ear?

Also, I play bass.

Vacant

I think that it's something you'll get used to over time. I can't offer any quick advice. Sometimes you can just sit there, strum a few chords, and then realize it's part of a song and continue to play it. I think most people here will agree that with time and practice, it becomes increasingly simple.

Pacomc79

almost everything I do I learn from my ear.

Originally I picked up the guitar as a fun instrument with no structure so I gravitated away from sheet music. I think as I go from here I'll learn a little more theory so I can become a better musician and be more rounded. When I started the majority of my music was on trombone so guitar was a release form that structure and boredom. Now not having that structure, I'd like to read more music.

Fitzburgh

Cool guys, thanks. I figured it would come with time, but i wanted to see if I could speed up the process. ¬_¬

I think I'm gonna try learning simple bass lines like Pixies for starters. Any other recommendations would be cool too.

3manstack

One little tip is to put the song on your cd player and then put your tuner by the speaker (youll need a chromatic tuner).

when the song starts playing the tuner will (most of the time ) start to go to the notes of the chords that are playing, this method has helped me figure out tons of stuff, I get a nice warm feeling when i figure a song out this way rather than tabs.

Try it yourself.