Originally Posted by: alan1965Where should a guitar player start with Ear training? Chords, notes, intervals, harmonics? And secondly, why?
Great question.
What: Intervals.
Why: They are the foundation of music.
The primary characteristic of music is melody. It also contains the other two key characteristics: harmony (sometimes implied) & rhythm. A melody is formed by a series of intervals played in a specific rhythmic phrasing over time.
A melody sounds the way it does (unique or similar to other melodies) because of it's intervals & rhythm.
The primary characteristic of a scale or a chord is the intervals it consists of.
When you want to figure out a song you need to pitch match the melody & the bass motion of the chords to get the chord progression. Whether you studied it explicitly or not, this is done by pitch matching the notes & hearing the interval distances between one note & the next, or one bass note & the next, or one chord & the next.
So, start by automating intervals. Learn to identify them by sound.
Intro to Intervals
https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=362
Studying relative pitches by playing & listening to scale degrees is a great way to train yourself on this skill. The pedal point exercise is great for this.
Intro to Practicing Scale
https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=451
Best of all, you can learn to make the sound of intervals second nature while you are studying scales & chords! In fact it's best to integrate all these things together. That's how you learn intervals, by playing & practicing music & listening for intervals distances.
Then you can learn harmony, chord progressions & how melody interacts with harmony, how it implies it, forms it.
But none of it will really stick in your mind until you get intervals. And the better you can identify intervals, the better & quicker you will understand all the other characteristics of music. Often people that are good at picking up music faster than others are good at it because they grasp intervals better. Even if they don't realize that's what they are good at, it's still the reason!
Hope this helps! Best of success with intervals. :)
