When I put on a track, if I don’t know the key I will run up n down the D string till I feel it’s most consonant with what I’m hearing.
What is your technique to find the key?
And any other tips? I know as notes go lower they become muddier and harder to recognize, perhaps using higher pitch strings will help more than lower?
Perhaps using more strings is better? A chord?
I tend to look for what the resolving chord is in a progression. That is often, but not always, the key of the song.
After that, there might be a key modulation somewhere, often in the bridge or sometimes even from verse to chorus, think crazy train!
@Tom_Gilroy posted about a different ear training program that I purchased as well, although I started out with it pretty strong last summer and then school took me out 
Planning to prioritize it again this summer at least for 20-30min a day. The program puts emphasis on getting you to practice what you hear as the tonal center in a song or piece of music. And this is what I do. I try to let my ears conceptually and practically decide where that tonal center is or what feels like the home base for the song. You can also just look at the sheet music and see the number of sharps or flats.
What program is that? I’d be interested in checking it out!
For over a decade I gave guitar lessons and my niche was showing people songs they wanted to play, on the spot. Often it was stuff I’d never heard, so I had to figure it out right then and there. I’d always start with identifying the key.
It wasn’t far off from you said how you do it, though I think I’d use my low E string (made sense since so many guitar songs have power chords or barres etc). I’d always first make sure I could hum the “do” note though. From there, educated guess at the note that was the key, it was off, slide up or down a few frets till it was right. So it never really took me more than like 2 or 3 tries. I had lots of practice though lol!
While it’s highly dependent on the sort of music we’re talking about, for most stuff, I try to discern the chord progression first. It can help to focus on what the bass is doing here. After you do this for long enough, you can start figuring out chord progressions in your head, even if you don’t know the key immediately, and then actually figuring out the key shouldn’t take more than a couple of seconds with the guitar in hand.
As for how to identify different chords aurally, I don’t really have an answer other than practice/repetition. shrugs
It’s called Use Your Ear. Highly recommended.
Ah cool thanks, I’ll definitely check that out!
Can you explain more on this program Tom? I’m really looking into ear training atm this is the website? The Best Ear Training Courses and Private Lessons | Use Your Ear
Why do you recommend it?
That’s the website.
I have family visiting this weekend, so I don’t have time right now for a detailed response. I’ll write up a proper reply on Monday when I have time.
Cool thank you man.
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I ask my GF with perfect pitch if I can deal with the eye-rolling about asking “obvious” questions at that particular moment.
Eagerly awaiting your reply Tom. I bought Rick Beatos stuff… not impressed at all.
Humm… thats a good idea, find a girl with perfect pitch and i’ll be sorted lol
Firstly, I wrote a post on this topic last summer, which is here:
It’s an absolutely monstrous post, but it fully describes my level before discovereing Use Your Ear. The short version, is that I had mediocre (not “bad”) aural skills, and was unable to progress any further despite having spent time transcribing and doing ear training exercises based on the typical interval and chord type recognition exercises.
I felt that this was my greatest weakness as a musician, and I wanted to address it. I started looking into ear training programs, but most that I found were based on the same interval and chord type recognition exercises that did not work for me.
Discovering the Use Your Ear method changed everything for me. The UYE method is focused on developing our internal representations of a tonal framework. Essentially, we learn to identify and retain the tonic note and we identify the notes by their characteristic “gravity” (need to resolve) towards the tonic.
There was never anything wrong with my ears. There were issues with my internal representation of the major scale which affected my ability to retain a tonic and identify scale degrees. There were issues with my approach and thought processes while listening. We call it “ear training,” but it’s really the mental programming of internal representations of musical structure. Our internal representations and our interpretive processes improve, not our ears.
I haven’t worked through the complete UYE course yet, but my aural skills have improved significantly. It really is an excellent course and I recommend it wholeheartedly. Even the familiarity with the basic premises and the discovery of what I had been doing wrong would have lead to some improvement.
There is also a smartphone app called Functional Ear Trainer, which teaches the user to recognise scale degrees by hearing the resolution ot the tonic. It’s nowhere near as powerful as the full UYE method, but it’s consistent with the UYE approach and the randomised testing helped me to program my mental representaions of the twelve tones in both major and minor keys.
Thanks Tom, it’s very interesting indeed. I do not have $500 to spend on such a course however regardless of how good it is.
I remember those perfect pitch courses advertised in magazines in the 80s and 90s, interesting that they may be in fact legitimate even if poorly organized.
Thanks for your dissertation, I will keep it in mind.
That’s absolutely understandable, it’s expensive. I definitely recommend trying the Functional Ear Trainer app, the trial version is free and the full version is very cheap.
it’s 500 dollars??
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I paid €397, and I felt it was worth it.
I’ve spent over that in a few days for a bit of fun so I don’t disagree… Though that was guaranteed fun lol I think thats my main issue, as it would take a lot of effort from me anyway to get into a course, I guess it’s just priorities.
Does it have legitimate studies backing it up? I’ve yet to read that other topic you posted, i’ll check it out.