ear training

ive been playing about a year and a half and i still have real trouble trying to work out songs by ear.

its becomimg a bit of an issue now so i was wondering does anyone else have this, or any tips on working stuff out by ear?

I took an advanced placement music theory class my senior year of high school, and we had to do a lot of ear training exercises. Since then, I haven't had much trouble hearing out songs.

We used musictheory.net a lot to practice. There are a few ear training tools under in the "Trainers" menu.

I use a Tascam CDGT guitar trainer. It can slow a CD track down to as much as half speed without loss of pitch. Really excellent piece of kit for ear training (Tascam also do an MP3 version of it as well).
There is also software around that will do the same job on your PC but I don't know how good it is.

i didn't really do much. imo it's just a natural abilty but i guess you can leran it too

Ok this may sound starange but this has helped me.

when playing a scale, say C major, sing along. (and try to stay in pitch)

Once you have that done, play the first note, sing the second, play the third etc. (spot check if needed)

This is supposed to help you train your ear AND help you visualize what your going to play be fore you play it. (visualize is a back word)

Also see if you can get your hands on perfect pitch it has some excercizes too that can help

ah cool guys, cheers.

@tele, are you talking about perfect pitch itself or a program?

I usually try to start off at C like in European music and then try to find the right note. Picking and other techniques are sometimes hard to decipher.

I was talking about the perfect pitch program you should be able to find it out on the net. I was working it for a while but lost interest

jesus my ears are terrible right now but I have a bit of hearing loss making it harder to ear train