When you want to play in a band, I’ve learned it’s pretty important to have a good ear and learn to get good with improvising. You don’t necessarily have to but it’s a must so you won’t get lost and won’t play out of key, ya know?

To improve your ear in guitar playing, you can read all kinds of guitar instruction books all you want to but that’s never gonna help ya get a good ear.

To get a good ear in music, all you gotta do is memorize the sound of each note in your head. Knowing exactly what they sound like. It can take hours and hours, days and days of practice to know what a note sound like. There are only 12 notes of music and if you have memorized all 12 notes then you’ll be able to play just about anything that comes to your head. Plus it’s important to know all the intervals too.

As always, it’s also important to jam along to your favorite songs. Figure out songs by ear and forget looking at guitar tab. Many guitarists uses guitar tab to learn songs. That’s because they’re too lazy. Many guitarists these days are too intimidated to learn songs by ear. I don’t know why. Why do you think all the guitar greats like Hendrix, Clapton, Satriani, Anastasio, etc. became guitar virtuosos? It’s because before the age of guitar tablature, all they did was sit there in front of their record players with their guitars in their hands. They would spend all day figuring out songs by ear. That’s pretty much how you become a master guitar player.

I’m not a “wizard” at improvisation yet but I’m sure am getting there and getting closer. That’s the kind of guitar player I’ve always wanted to be. I’ve been playing guitar for at least 20 years now, I think and still haven’t gotten there yet but working on it.

I wanna be that type of guitar player where I’ll just pick up the guitar and play just about everything I hear note for note without struggling. I wanna be that type of guitar player like where I’m playing in a band and nobody will have to tell me what to play or tell me what key to play, I can just come in and jam with no problem. You get the idea, I wanna become the improviser guitarist kind of like all those virtuosos. I wanna become that type of guitar player so I can be able to jam with all kinds of different bands and jam with other musicians.

When you have a dream of what kind of guitar player you wanna be, you gotta stay positive and stick with it. Stay dedicated and don’t give up. My ear in music is getting a lot better, though. I can tell ya that.

Kev