two songs by ear so far

The more songs you learn this way, the easier it gets. Rock has a lot of common changes, and you'll soon begin to recognize them as being similar to another song.

 

Congrats I took the same road you did and I actually started going back and correcting tabs.

 

I prefer learning by ear ... some songs with lots of changes I need chord charts ... and some songs with complex riffs I need tabs ... But my ears is where it starts and ends.

Chords and tabs online are quite often partially wrong, and sometimes your ear hears it wrong. The more you play the better your ears will get.

 

"Good ears" is one of the prerequisites to be a gigging musician. The more you can do to develop your ears, the better.

 

No kidding! Often I wind up producing chord sheets when our two guitar geniuses can't get a song straight or play it the same way. Without exception, whenever I try to cheat and use online chord sheets (even as a basic structure to work from) the constant errors make more work than they save. Worse is when somebody learns a song from a bad online resource - what a timewaster!

Keep up the ear work. It will eventually become much easier than written material -- and then it becomes a useful tool to use on the fly or even when playing to figure out where to go.

 

It's true. I reckon a lot of these online tab clowns just cheat and copy off the last online clown. It's like a never-ending clown circle. Some of them are so bad it beggars belief.

 

Dunno if any have keyboards available. I just put a basic 88-key digital piano in the music room. Right away I was able to play along to the bass part of a song I couldn't quite get. Now to figure out the best fingering on the bass!

 

Excellent tip!! ... last summer I had my wife keep her eyes open when she was 'garage sale surfing' ... for $20 she found a pretty decent keyboard, stand and bench ... I used it for a while, but have gotten away from it ... it did seem to help picking up intervals easier, just as Craig mentions ...good reminder I need to get back on it !!

 

i am a firm believer in learning as many songs as possible by ear-the more you learn, the more you understand about musical patterns and the next tune you learn becomes easier and faster to retain.

 

I still learn virtually every song by ear, and I can read music.