Why guitarist have bad ears
As guitarist we are particularly challenged when it comes to developing a good ear compared to a lot of other instrumentalists. The guitar is a fairly easy instrument to begin to play, but opposed to a lot of other instruments, the guitar doesn’t force us to develop our musician skills, and this is why guitarists especially are struggling with their ear training skills.
Lets compare the guitar to the piano, violin and the trumpet to learn what exactly is the cause of this. Piano players only need one hand to press down a key and thereby produce a musical note. This allows them to play harmony (chords) and melody (single notes) at the same time. This means that whenever a piano player is playing he/she is always listening to the melody and single notes in relation to the specific harmonic background. This makes all the notes, scales and arpeggios stand out a lot more and its very easy to hear, when something sounds wrong. This way the pianist gets an instant harmonic feedback every time they sit down to play piano. This is not the case with guitar as we need two hands to produce a note. This means that we are not always playing over a harmonic background, which makes it a lot harder to hear when a note is wrong. Just listening to a not by itself will tell us nothing, but listening to the same note over a specific chord will instantly tell us if the note is consonant or dissonant. In the case of an ionian and a lydian scale there is only one different note (the raised 4th of the lydian scale). This is note very notable, when playing the scales by themselves, but when they are played over the same chord, the raised 4th, will sound very different than the natural 4th.
If we compare the guitar to a trumpet or a violin, we see the main difference between the instruments is that on a trumpet or violin you have to create the note from nothing every time you play it. The violin as an example has no frets as opposed to the guitar. For this reason it makes a big difference if you move your fretting finger back a couple of millimetres. This will make the note sound flat on a violin, but it will not make a big difference on guitar because its a fretted instrument. It will of cause sound less clear if you get to far away from the fret, but the pitch remains the same. This is essentially the same when we compare the guitar to a trumpet. Even though the trumpet doesn’t have strings you still have to create the notes by controlling the airflow through the vents. So playing the violin or the trumpet will automatically develop your ear because its impossible to make any of these instruments sound good without it.
Unfortunately the guitar does not demand a good ear of the player which is why guitarists tend to lack in this area. On guitar we tend to learn everything either through tabulature, scale patterns or chord shapes. The process is essentially like this “look at a piece of paper -> place you finger on the fret you are told -> strike the string your are told -> create a sound”. This method can be described as “musical dictation”. Just as the practising of writing diction will not make you a great writer, practising musical dictation will not make you great guitarists or musicians.
All in all guitarists are in a particular situation when it comes to ear training, as we get absolutely no help from our instrument itself. This means that we have to focus extra hard on developing this skill as a supplement to all the physical training that we already do on the guitar.
About the author: Janus Buch is a professional guitarist and teacher running Bredballe Guitarskole. If you are local to the area and are looking for Musikskole Vejle Janus Buch is offering the absolute best that you can get.