The EAR-Guitar App

Ear-Guitar goes back to the roots of learning music and teaches you to make music naturally through your hearing. Everyone will agree that music is primarily perceived through the ear, so why shouldn’t we also use our sense of hearing to learn music? More and more often, however, music is taught and learned only through the eye (sheet music, tabs, and graphs). Let’s go back to the real core of music making and how countless famous musicians learn music through their ears.

The principle is simple and quickly explained: hear the melody, sing and memorize the melody, and then transfer it to the instrument. With just a little music theory, you can transfer the melody to the instrument with ease. Because if you know that a melody is usually composed in a single key, you also know that there are only 7 notes to choose from to play the melody. This way, you’re not randomly searching for tones on your instrument. You’ll start with simple melodies with only a few notes, and in time you’ll be able to play complex, longer melodies in various keys across the entire fretboard.

Even though Ear-Guitar is primarily aimed at guitarists, any instrument can benefit from this app. Because the basic principle remains the same for every instrument. Only transferring the melody and playing in other keys will be an individual challenge for each instrument. The guitar is relatively simple in this respect, once you have mastered the 5 different positions, it is easy to transpose the melody to any key.

A few words about Edwin Gordon’s Music Learning Theory, which has greatly influenced this app. Edwin Gordon’s principle of “Sound before Sight” also underlies this app. Music should always be perceived first through the ears rather than the eye. In addition, the beginner songs deliberately follow a specific musical content structure, which Gordon prescribes in his Music Learning Theory.

What does the future hold for this app? For sure, the song selection will keep growing and my wish would be to dedicate an entire category just to pentatonics. Sooner or later, a rhythm section will be added, which will borrow heavily from Edwin Gordon’s Music Learning Theory. And last but not least, I have an improvisation section in mind.

In this sense, I wish everyone who uses this app a successful and joyful music making far away from dry and numb note reading.

Michel Heinzmann