"I just started playing - it was almost a

religious experience"

Meet Inga-lill:

Inga-lill had been dreaming of playing bass since she was an 11-year-old girl in Sweden, but it was more than 40 years before she finally decided that it was time to actually pursue her dream:

When I was 11, girls just didn’t play bass - nobody even discussed it. I played clarinet - boring, boring - and then I didn't have the money or time or space or anything. But then I went to see the movie Bohemian Rhapsody - twice in a week - and I realized that I missed music so badly and I realize that actually, I CAN afford it now. I found myself in the middle of a music store and buying a bass. And that action has given me so much energy - you can’t believe it. SO much energy. It’s changed my life! Just connecting to a dream.

I absolutely LOVE this. Inga-lill is a testament to the fact that age is no barrier to start learning new skills and right from the start, Inga-lill knew that she wanted to play by ear.

Right from the start, I wanted to be able to take the thing from [my mind] to [my fingers] without ‘passing go’. I thought it was possible because I don’t think people THINK all the time when they are playing; I think they are just playing...So I had this goal, this dream, right from the start and then I went down to YouTube, and there were a few teachers I saw and a few teachers that I liked and you were one of them.

Playing By Ear - And Even Improvising - For The

First Time In Her Life

Not long after, Inga-lill joined my course Level Up Your Ear and even after the first week, she was learning songs by ear - something she had never done before:

I was sat in the kitchen...and I was trying to figure out Amazing Grace and suddenly realized it was a 4th to start with, then a 3rd. I think a lot with the intervals…So I started, “Amaaaazing Graaace” and I realized that I don’t have to think about the notes, I can just think about the fingers and places on the bass. I don’t even have to think that this is a minor 3rd or major 3rd. I can just put my fingers like this. I can skip that whole part in my brain and just focus on the pattern and it made it easier. So I went through the whole Amazing Grace, and my husband said, “Oh well that was nice!” And I started, “It was MORE than nice, I have to tell you! This was the first time I played anything by ear.” He said, “Well you can do it...blah blah blah” So I had to tell him again, “This is amazing!"

Figuring out simple melodies like Amazing Grace was a huge win - especially so early on in the process - but Inga-lill didn’t stop there. She went on to bigger and better things - like improvising for the first time in her life - ever:

I’m involved with a very small band…we’d been meeting in a church and rehearsing Georgia On My Mind, and then I just started thinking, “Oh - what happens if I try this; if I do a 3rd or a 5th?” And I just started playing! I didn’t restrict myself, and sometimes it was like chords made in heaven. I embroidered the bass line out. I felt like I was free…It was almost a religious experience. That was my first time improvising on any instrument - even though I had played clarinet for 15 years. I flew home

Learning to play by ear goes beyond simply learning songs quickly or being able to ditch tabs. Yes - those things are absolutely possible, but when you learn to play by ear, a whole world of opportunities opens up. Like improvising or creating new bass lines or entire songs.

Playing by ear lets you take the music that’s in your mind and get it out through your fingers and onto your bass ‘without passing go’, to steal Inga’s words. This is exactly what happened for Inga and it’s literally a dream come true for her.

She’s also now using her newfound playing by ear skills to make music with her daughter:

My daughter who plays some piano doesn’t know the names of the notes or anything...But now we have actually started practicing Jingle Bells. So she plays Jingle Bells and I stood there with my bass and didn’t have any notes or anything and started thinking, “It starts with an F, then it goes [sings]” I was figuring it out by ear with my knowledge of chords and chord sequences. The more you know, the more you can play.

Inga-lill’s system for playing by ear is unusual in that it has very few steps and is very intuitive. It looks like this:

Notice that she really only focuses on one element of playing by ear; the intervals. For her, this makes perfect sense and this is what she has to say about it:

The intervals want to follow each other in a certain way and that’s when I realized that my fingers know the way more than my brain does. So my fingers would go to the right place, and I’m just, “What!?! What’s happening? What are you doing, fingers?!?”...The sound gets a muscle pattern - it’s connected. The sound that I hear comes out in a certain pattern in my fingers, and that’s very exciting.

“You mentioned in an early module that you should listen to the sounds and intervals around you, and that I do a lot...I listen to sounds around me, and in songs and I try to get to know the feeling that the interval gives me...It’s very rewarding because I get a faster connection to the intervals that way...What does that sound like? What does that feel like? Then I start to hear that everywhere and in every song. So I guess it builds upon itself. I now realize that I’m quite musical.

On The Fence About Joining Level Up Your Ear?

Here’s What Inga-lill Had To Say:

[Playing by ear] will open up your playing in a way you can’t realise before you’ve tried it. You can’t realize something you haven’t done, but it will. It’ll make it more FUN to play and it’ll give you a larger musical world because you’ll start to listen to music in a new way.

[If you are] someone who struggles to find notes and tabs for the songs you want to play, take the money and attend this course instead, because then you wont’ need them...If I didn’t have the LUYE framework, I probably could have figured it out by myself, but I think it would have taken me about 3 years.

I’d be honored to have you as a student in Level Up Your Ear and help you do all the things that Inga was able to do, but enrollment is only open until this Friday night. If you’re interested, just click the button below and register on that page.

Read The Full Details About Level Up Your Ear