As well as practical playing skills, musicians need to develop good aural abilities. The main areas in which you need to develop secure aural awareness are as follows:

Chord identification

Learning to recognise the sound of different types of chords is a very useful skill. Being able to distinguish by ear between major, minor, dominant and diminished chords is helpful not only for working out songs from recordings, but also as an aid to composing your own songs and chord progressions. As a guide, major chords sound bright, minor chords sound mellow, dominant chords have a slightly aggressive bluesy edge, whilst diminished chords sound rather dissonant.

Recognition of cadences

Cadences are musical ‘punctuation marks’ created by using a combination of chords that imply a resting place. A minimum of two chords need to be used in order to create the resolution. Cadences nearly always appear at the end of songs, however they also occur in other places during the course of a song, such as at the end of a phrase or verse.

The two most commonly used cadences are the perfect cadence (V to I) and the plagal cadence (IV to I). The perfect cadence creates a strong and complete ending to a phrase. In the key of C major it can be played as either G (or chord G7) to C. The plagal cadence is also often used to end a musical phrase, although its effect is more subtle than the perfect cadence. In the key of C major the plagal cadence is played as F to C. Recognising the sound of cadences will greatly help you recognise the movement of chords within a progression. A knowledge of cadences is also a great aid in writing effective chord progressions.

Interval identification

An interval is the distance between two notes. Therefore, all melodic phrases are made up of intervals of one kind or another. As many tunes are constructed from the major scale, a good grounding in the intervals of the major scale will help when trying to work out the notes of a melody. The core intervals of the C major scale, for example, are as follows:

C to D major second
C to E major third
C to F perfect fourth
C to G perfect fifth
C to A major sixth
C to B major seventh
C to C octave

The unique sound of each of these intervals can be learnt by either singing through the scale step by step, or by relating each interval to the start of a well-known melody. For example, the Christmas carol ‘Away In A Manger’ starts with the interval of a perfect fourth.

Rhythms and timing

It is important that a musician can recognise the time signature of a piece of music, as this is one of the most important factors in establishing its feel. The most common time signatures in popular music are:

4/4 used in most pop and rock songs
3/4 used mainly for ballads and country music
12/8 often used in blues and jazz

Learning to keep time and maintain an even pulse in these time signatures is a basic prerequisite for becoming a good guitarist. Playing along with a metronome, or even a drum machine, can prove really helpful in developing these skills.

Reproducing phrases

The ability to pick up melodies, licks and riffs by ear is an essential skill, especially for musicians looking to play in a group. Many guitar players have learnt largely by this method of listening to recordings and then working out phrases and solos by ear. With the widespread availability in recent years of transcriptions for all styles of music, the emphasis on this approach has changed somewhat, but nevertheless the ability to hear a phrase and then reproduce it remains a crucial one. A good level of aural awareness in this area will make learning pieces and songs much easier and quicker than relying upon working things out solely from the written manuscript. Attention should be paid not just to the melodic aspect of aural recognition, but also to hearing rhythms: it is the rhythmic shape of a phrase that gives it its structure. These abilities will prove useful when jamming with other musicians, as it becomes easier to join in with melodies that are not immediately familiar. Also, the direct link between inventing phrases in your mind and being able to execute them on your instrument will help in improvising and playing solos.