Playing guitar by ear is actually really simple to do. You may not believe so at first, but the truth is that if you start out by learning how to play by ear, then you'll be able to play almost any song you hear on the radio, your iPod, at a party, etc, almost instantly.

But how do you start out by playing by ear if you can't even play guitar now?

Well the first key to success is to realize that a guitar only really has 12 notes that keep repeating over and over again. There are just larger and smaller string sizes, and there are 6 strings on a normal guitar.

These extra strings just make it easer to play chords, they don't add any extra complexity to the number of notes you can play on a guitar.

As soon as you realize that the notes on a guitar just basically repeat over and over again, you just then need to start looking at chords that contain "octaves" which basically means "two of the same notes played at the same time."

One thing you must realize to understand octaves correctly is that even though two notes can technically be the same... one can be higher than the other.

When two notes that are the same are played at the same time, but one is higher than the other, that's called an octive.

Most rock music, or pop music contain "power chords" which are just an octive with one extra note added.

Once you start to "get" octaves then you can play them anywhere.

But how do you pick out notes from the "air" and then play them back on your guitar?

The first step to success in this process is to learn to tune your guitar by ear.

Once you're able to do that, then you'll be able to map notes you hear on the radio to your guitar, and then realize that you can play it almost anywhere on the guitar neck becuase there are only 12 repeating notes.

This may not make sense to you at first.

But here's three action items for a foundation of success to your guitar playing "career."

Aciton item 1.) Learn to tune your guitar by ear

Action item 2.) Look up and understand octaves

Action item 3.) Look up and understand power chords

I've also included 3 videos below on these subjects.

Just those three items will propell you further ahead than 90% of all people who play guitar.

And you'll learn much quicker too.

Have fun!