(A Study of Strategies Among Ear Players in Rock Music)

KG Johansson
School of Music in Piteå
Luleå University of Technology (2002)


 

The purpose of this study was to describe and explain strategies used by ear players to hear and play chord progressions when playing unfamiliar rock songs. To this end, three rock songs were written and recorded especially for the study. One song was designed to be very easy to play for experienced rock musicians, using three chords, combined in standard patterns. The second song was written to be a little more difficult, containing some unusual chord progressions; and the third song used chords and chord progressions that are very seldom heard in rock music.

To find possible differences between instruments, and between players with formal education and players without such education, the six informants were one bass player, one keyboard player and one guitar player with formal education, and one bass player, one keyboard player and one guitar player without such education. In a combined test and interview, the informants one by one played to the three songs at first listening, without having heard the songs before and without knowing anything about the songs except which keys they were in. The informants´ playing was recorded on video and audio tape. Immediately after playing the songs, the informants watched the video tape and commented on their own playing; the interviewer also had the opportunity to stop the tape and ask the informants about interesting points. After this, the informants were interviewed about their playing, and about their views on ear playing in general. The informants´ playing on the audio tapes was transcribed to sheet music and analysed together with the audio and video tapes – the video tapes showed hand movements and other body language that the audio tape could not record.

The results were divided into listening and playing strategies. Listening strategies found were: listening for well-known harmonic formulas; listening for instrument sound and idiomatics; listening for the bass part and deducing the chord from this; and listening for the melody to deduce chords from this. Playing strategies found were: playing chords or melodic figures; playing by searching for the bass part, and if possible, building the chord from the bass note; and finally, playing by either consciously building up one´s knowledge of the song, or by using ”instant learning”, something that several of the informants showed by not only repeating what they had played correctly, but also repeating mistakes: it seems that what is once played stays with the player, and is thus instantly learned.

The main differences between the three instruments studied was that bass and guitar players tend to play more than keyboard players, who might be more used to fulfilling a role of not playing all the time; and that the keyboard players in this study went less for finding bass notes and building chords from these than the guitar players did – the task for the bass players of course being just finding bass notes, not playing chords. There was little difference between the group with formal education and the group without such. Differences found were mainly in the informants´ way of talking about their playing.

Conclusions in short: ear playing is learned by playing by ear, and furthermore, genre by genre; by playing for instance heavy metal or 1960´s rock by ear, one learns such styles and becomes a better ear player in these, by learning clichés, harmonic formulas and other stylistical traits of the genres.


Song 1, “Always Come Home”

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Song 2, “You Could Get Lost”

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Song 3, “Roller Coaster”

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