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TrueFire Ear Exam - Week 6 - Win a free guitar!

1,455 views 路 Published 2 June 2009 路 0:41 路 Indexed 1 October 2026

Channel: TrueFire 路 2009 路 Music

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TRUEFIRE'S EAR EXAM - http://www.truefire.com - Put your ears and theoretical knowledge to work by naming the chord and spelling out its voicing correctly. Here's how it works...

Check the Fire Sales Forum every Wednesday, over the next 10 weeks, starting April 22, 2009. Well post a thread with a link to watch an Ear Exam video from Brad Carlton on TrueFire TV.

Brad will play a chord and maybe even give you a hint or two. Put your ears and theoretical knowledge to work by naming the chord and spelling out its voicing correctly as shown in the following format:

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Good luck!


We encourage everyone to post as many questions or post as much advise, guidance, hints and theory as desired. While folks will indeed walk away with some pretty cool swag in this promo, its primary purpose is educational in nature. Heres a a few tips ... l 

1-Youll note that Brad gives you a BIG hint  ALL 10 chords have their root in the bass. Lets assume this means the low E and the low A strings. 

2-Youll also note that we do show you Brads right hand. You can see which strings he is strumming and/or arpeggiating. Another BIG hint as youll be able to see which string is producing which note. Also youll be able to determine whether he is starting with the low E or the low A string. 

3-You also have access to the looping tool, which means you can find the section of the video where Brad is arpeggiating the chord (playing one string at a time) and then loop that section so it will repeat until you stop it. 

4-First identify whether its a 6th or 5th string root (low E or Low A) by ear or by watching where Brad starts his example and then simply play different notes on that string until youre tuned in to the note (much like tuning your guitar). Now you have the root note and already know a part of the chord name! 

5-Another hint that Brad will give you is whether or not the chord is physically challenging or not. If so, expect to have some pretty significant stretches between fingers for some parts of the chord. Meanwhile, since you now know the root note and string where youll play the root note, you also know the general position of the chord on the fretboard. 

6-Also keep in mind that some of the notes may be played as open strings and some of the strings may be muted. 

7-So, now its just a question of repeating the process of listening to the loop youve set up and trying different notes on the next string until youre in tune with that note. Try to hum the interval between the root and the next note (or as you get further into the chord, the note you know followed by the next note that you are trying to find). Contrary to what you may think, there is a very limited range of possibilities, you just have to peck away until you stumble across it OR you may suddenly find that your ears are starting to hear the intervals between notes and that my friends is what this little game is really all about. 

8-OK, so now you know the chord and its exact voicing. And you know at least the first part of the name (the root note!). All thats left to do is analyze what scale degrees the other notes are to determine the correct chord name. Yes, you will need to know some chord theory to accomplish this but this is NOT rocket science. If youre not familiar with chord theory, theres no time like the present to hone this essential skill. There plenty of resources online (Google chord theory) or just sit back and wait for one of our members to run it down for you here on the forum (theres more than a few cats here that Id bet will publish some pretty insightful reference material). In the meantime, download the following PDF appendix excerpt from our Chord Cookbook course, which covers a lot of good info about chords, formulas and theory. 

http://truefire.com/chordcookbook_appendix.pdf 

9-Finally, feel free to ask whatever questions and discuss the examples and theory in general with other members of the forum. Folks are free to discuss anything at all EXCEPT the actual name and voicing of the chord. So, thats a pretty big loophole that I hope everybody will take advantage of. 

Enjoy!

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