Train your ears to know which notes are playing in a chord

[SeeingInMidi]

How do people do it? Whenever I try to write down notes for a bunch of chords in a song that I enjoy listening to, I can really only hear the highest and lowest note of a chord, I can't really distinguish the rest of the notes in between. Especially in EDM when the synths are so squashed and distorted.

I'm not looking for tricks like using an eq or using melodyne, I want to legitimately learn how to train my ears to pick out what notes are being used to create said chord.

*Was never taught proper Music theory, self taught in theory(ish).

[tehlord]

This is a basic part of music theory exams.

It's just practise, listen to chords and try and pick out the notes one by one.

[BertKoor]

It's just practise, listen to chords and try and pick out the notes one by one.

+1. Do it often (analyse songs) and you'll get better at it. Start simple and work your way up.

[xx JPRacer xx]

It's like muscle memory. Practice! You'll get it after a while. A long while!

[Ogg Vorbis]

If you get the outer notes, you can infer what's going on in the inner notes by asking, "is this harmony major, minor, diminished, etc?" Then you can deduce some or all of the inner notes. You can also sit with your instrument and use the "hunt and peck" method.

A lot of EDM chord streams are produced by non-keyboard players who use the "claw method," which is getting a basic triad in the right hand and moving the same shape up and down the keyboard in parallel. You can start with this idea and try it out.

Occam's razor frequently applies.

[tehlord]

Start off with chords you know as well. Let's say you play a C major triad. You play each note individually and then as a chord, you know what you should be hearing and it makes it easier to pick notes out.

Also, learn what each interval sounds like (so a fifth sounds like a cavalry charge for example ). There's only a finite amount of notes in a chord, so once you know what each interval sounds like it becomes far easier to pick them out of a chord.

[sammy24]

I think it's a combination of ear training and educated guesswork. If you can hear it right away, great. That's the eventual goal. If not, as Ogg said, you might have to try to guess. And the more you know about music, the better your guesses will be.

But I'd suggest one addition to that -- once you make your educated guess, SING the note, and then see if you can hear the note you're singing in the music! Also, you should be able to tell if the note you're singing fits with the music (that doesn't guarantee they're using that note, but at least you can tell if you're on the right track).

By the way, you are right, the outer voices are much easier to hear. That's one of the main reasons there is such a focus on soprano/bass, or melody and bassline in music. These lines are more prominent in the music, and that actually gives them more importance, because of that. So if you can hear the top and bottom voices, that's something.

[tapper mike]

With EDM you get a lot of Pads. pads are sometimes simple power chords but more often then not they are a combination of different sounds in unison and octaves slightly detuned from one another. This makes identifying the note value difficult at best.

Sadly many conventions used to establish guestimates on what chord progressions are go out the window as those with little theory knowledge may not even make an attempt at forming a "progression" Such was the case with the synth Britannia movement. Where a lot of punk rockers who couldn't play guitar swapped them for synths that aside from having a sense of rhythm couldn't play a synth either.

[murnau]

if you have the lowest and highest note there isn't much left to discover in a chord i'm afraid.

sure it depends of your skills but you should concentrate on the basic notes, especially in EDM they dont use complex progression or difficult chords.

[NasKingston]

I think the root note is what really matters and then with time you get better at defining the chord. Sometimes people want to be able to play chords by ear when they can't play chords fluently in general.

[Aroused by JarJar]

I think the root note is what really matters and then with time you get better at defining the chord. Sometimes people want to be able to play chords by ear when they can't play chords fluently in general.

I agree. You can try this to train yourself: loop a section of the song that has the progression. Now sing along and sing the chord progression in sustained tones. You can't sing the chords (unless you can sing more than one tone at a time!) Don't sing the bass line or the lowest note, try to sing a line that sounds like a monophonic version of the chord movement.

What will happen is that you'll be singing the root tones of the chords. This might not work in complex music or music that sounds simple but has hidden complexity (with chords of fifths or seconds and so on.) But it will work in almost all popular music.

Now pick out what you're singing on a keyboard.

Let's say it goes C....D....G....C

Now you listen to the chord characters. C what? Okay, it sounds major. D what? sounds minor...G sounds *really* major... and so on.

C-d-G-C

Here's where elementary theory will make everything much easier. You need to learn the sound of major, minor and dominant first. Then comes diminished. Later you learn augmented and non-tertian chords, don't worry about that at the beginning.

Once you learn these basic sounds you'll know that you've got

CM-dm-G7-CM (for example)

The amount of "theory" you need so far isn't much. You can even do all this without reading a note.

You've got the roots and characters of the chords, but what are the notes in the chords? Well there you need to learn basic theory. The most useful thing to learn is the Roman numeral system, or the Nashville system (basically the same thing). You learn tonic, dominant seventh, tonic and know that's I-V7-I, for example. You can learn this without ever reading or writing a note.

The real secret is thinking of everything in terms of feeling, character, motion, and "where it's going". I guarantee you that you already know I-ii-V7-I. You might hear the chords as bright, dark, really-bright-wants-to-go-to...bright. That's what a chord progression really is, not the exact notes. That's why you can add and take away notes, play in different tunings, etc.

Hope this is helpful. It's hard to describe years of work in a couple of paragraphs!