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Was watching Part 1 of Benny G's series on "How do I improvise Music?". The video is a bit academic, but I thought it had a lot of clarity. He breaks improvising into four parts in the video.
1. Audiation - hearing a phrase in your head
2. Decoding - Translating that phrase to intervals/scale degrees/notes
3. Encoding - Visualizing the notes on your instrument
4. Executing - Playing the phrase you visualized
He makes the point that if you are weak in any of these areas that you will struggle improvising.
I thought it was an interesting framework to think about and really clarifies what different types of practicing address. Technical exercises learning shapes and the fretboard will help with 3 and 4.
Ear training, transcribing, and becoming familiar with common phrases is will help with decoding and probably audiation, too.
He also has a video on audiation which I haven't watched, yet.
Personally, I think I need to improve in all of the areas.
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01-26-2026 01:37 AM
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The method he seems to suggest is to first identify intervals by ear. Then determine the starting pitch and convert the intervals to absolute notes and then finally find these notes on your instrument. I don't think this type of "decoding" is prerequisite for playing by ear. Most people can sing a melody of a song they like without first identifying the intervals. Even as a kid I could play simple melodies on instruments I was somewhat familiar with without "decoding". I think that's how most people play by ear. Familiarity with an instrument and developing a feel for how to access sounds you hear on the instrument is a subconscious process. I think most people practice this by working on playing melodies by ear.
Last edited by Tal_175; 01-26-2026 at 10:45 AM.
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A practice routine needs long term commitment and flexibility. (IMHO)
Stick with it and give the exercises time to get into your head (sub-conscious mind).
(Remember, it will probably take months before the rewards will become tangible.)
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I haven’t watched the whole video but you’re describing audiation, which he seems to put first
Originally Posted by Tal_175
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Maybe watch the video first. Audition is only the first step of playing what you hear on your instrument in the way he breaks it down. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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Okay I did. He does mention that, as you become fluent in a language, you drop the need for translation. So you mention being able to play simple melodies by ear on instruments you were somewhat familiar with. I’d guess the simplicity and the familiarity are doing a lot of the heavy lifting there. If you were less familiar or the melodies were less simple, then you’d probably engage in more of a process. Originally Posted by Tal_175
Id also say this whole method seems more relevant to folks where these skills are super out of balance. Your typical experienced hobbyist who plays really well but hasn’t worked on musicianship in a deliberate way — the hearing and translating has to do a lot of catching up to keep pace with the hands. With a kid, this sort of thing just needs a little encouragement and it kind of just develops that way.
All that said, I don’t really love this video I don’t think? Not sure why.
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I was mentioning that I was doing that even as a kid to point out that "decoding" does not seem to be an integral part of how we play by ear. I've done more formal ear training since then. I am still not sure if formal ear training is a necessary pathway to getting good at playing by ear. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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There is also part 2 where he gets deeper into this step:
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Probably because he makes a relatively simple process sound complicated. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
The Simple Simon directions are: Try to play what you hear. If you're paying attention while you're doing that, you'll discover what is preventing you from succeeding at it - lack of fretboard knowledge, trouble hearing certain intervals, etc. It's not rocket science.
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Playing by ear is the complete absence of any perceived "decoding/encoding" aspect. The reason for that is not that it isn't happening, but that it is happening at subconscious levels.
From my May 25th post #89 in the FRETTING OR PICKING HAND - WHICH DO YOU FIND MORE DIFFICULT? thread in the GUITAR TECHNIQUE sub forum:
================================
According to Wikipedia, it's the cerebellum... (wow!)
has been implicated in the regulation of many differing functional traits such as affection, emotion including emotional body language perception[38] and behavior.[39][40] The cerebellum, Doya proposes, is best understood as predictive action selection based on "internal models" of the environment or a device for supervised learning, in contrast to the basal ganglia, which perform reinforcement learning, and the cerebral cortex, which performs unsupervised learning.[33][41] Three decades of brain research have led to the proposal that the cerebellum generates optimized mental models and interacts closely with the cerebral cortex, where updated internal models are experienced as creative intuition ("a ha") in working memory.
The cerebellum contains more neurons than the total from the rest of the brain, but takes up only 10% of the total brain volume.[11] The number of neurons in the cerebellum is related to the number of neurons in the neocortex. There are about 3.6 times as many neurons in the cerebellum as in the neocortex
Purkinje cells receive more synaptic inputs than any other type of cell in the brain—estimates of the number of spines on a single human Purkinje cell run as high as 200,000.
Divergence and convergence: In the human cerebellum, information from 200 million mossy fiber inputs is expanded to 40 billion granule cells, whose parallel fiber outputs then converge onto 15 million Purkinje cells.[11] Because of the way that they are lined up longitudinally, the 1000 or so Purkinje cells belonging to a microzone may receive input from as many as 100 million parallel fibers, and focus their own output down to a group of less than 50 deep nuclear cells.[28] Thus, the cerebellar network receives a modest number of inputs, processes them very extensively through its rigorously structured internal network, and sends out the results via a very limited number of output cells.
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Well he makes certain pedagical claims:
- Improvising freely results from (among others) mastery of identification.
- Lack of identification results from not knowing how to mentally map melodies to a numerical/intervallic system such as solfege.
In other words, one has to be able to map what they hear into a numerical sequence either intervallically or w.r.t. chord/tonal center. So an inevitable conclusion of the claim is that when you hear a melody, you have to be able to identify it mentally as, say, 3-4-7-1 of the current chord before you can improvise with freedom. Note I am not saying that he says you have to do this during improvisation. But you won't be able to play what you hear unless you develop your identification to a point where you can mentally know the steps in the melody.
These are based on not just the video in the OP and the part 2 above, but this one also:
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I am not disputing that identifying melodies in solfege w.r.t. a reference note is a useful skill. I disagree with that being a necessary prerequisite to playing by ear. But it is an interesting subject, nevertheless.
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Some people skip this step and just go straight from audiation to a fingering on the instrument. That is the ultimate goal if you are a guitar player. Originally Posted by Tal_175
And maybe integrated approaches that passively develop these skills is a better approach.
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I would say that most guitarists do that, the understanding of what they are playing came later - if at all. Originally Posted by charlieparker
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Yes, as if communicating phenomenological engrams (what you hear in your mind's ear) telepathically to your hands (and this is all they need to sound it through the instrument)... direct; sound request -> sound result. Originally Posted by charlieparker
Everyone has this to some degree; it really becomes something as the extent of its application encompasses increasingly more of what you can conceive and execute.
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Part 2 is probably better because he gives concrete suggestions to improve audiation and encoding most of it revolving around transcribing both jazz masters, common melodies like Happy Birthday, and melodies you imagine. Originally Posted by Tal_175
For decoding, he recommends visualization before playing and again transcription.
I. also, really liked some of his suggestions for improving audiation if you lack ideas which mostly boiled down to melodic variation of something familiar.
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I've worked on formal ear training on and off for many years. I am at a point where I can do really well on ear training quizzes. I can recognize intervals and chord types when prompted. But I don't think I am engaging those muscles when I play by ear. The process of "identifying and knowing" is too slow and cognitive for playing by ear in my experience. Originally Posted by charlieparker
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Well, that's why he says you eventually learn to recognize bigger vocabulary pieces like this is an minor arpeggio starting on the 3rd. I don't think you consciously think of all the intervals or scale degrees when doing that, but I think you should still be able to do that away from the instrument. To me that is the important part. Originally Posted by Tal_175
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I recognize patterns, voicings, licks through exposure. For example if I start using a bebop lick, I start hearing it in the records. If I use a certain chord voicing, in time I start recognizing it when I hear it etc. Originally Posted by charlieparker
Are you interested in the approach described in the video because you have certain ear training goals? For example are you trying to get better at playing what you hear in your head? Or are you trying to get better at recognizing the building blocks of phrases when you hear them (arpeggio from the 3rd etc.)?
Suppose your goal is to get better at playing what you hear. Do you believe writing down solos that you transcribe using solfege to be a more effective method than just working on singing or audating a melody and playing it on guitar? Does working on solfege a more efficient way to get better at playing what you hear? Is that the fundamental claim of the videos?
Note I am just trying to make to bring some clarity to the objectives of the methods described in the videos.
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In one of his videos, Tuck Andress said that he wanted to be able to instantly recognize and play musical phrases away from the instrument, so he went go to a library with a tape recorder and sheet music pad to transcribe Wes Montgomery solos. It was very difficult at first but it got easier as he persisted at it. He said doing this led to a real breakthrough in his playing. Transcription without your instrument is a high bar, but imagining how notes and chords will sound before you play them can be very fruitful.
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I want to get better at decoding. I can do simple melodies that I know well fairly easily, like Happy Birthday or Home on the Range, etc. Originally Posted by Tal_175
But I can scat sing a jazz solo that I can't decode in real time to play in the moment. If it is quarter notes and more melodic, I usually don't have a problem. But sometimes I hear in my head a faster run/arpeggio more complex material that I can't decode. I would have to record and more slowly pick it apart.
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I see. So you want to be able to analyze melodies you hear in your head in terms of melodic building blocks like intervals and arpeggios etc? Originally Posted by charlieparker
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Well, it isn't just about analysis. I can't play what I hear in my head in real time so currently, I use a lot of licks joined up with melodic fragments I can hear. Originally Posted by Tal_175
I just want to get to where I can seamlessly play what I hear. It's only part of what I am working on. In parallel, I am just transcribing and learning licks.
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It seems counter intuitive to me that the most effective method to get better at playing what you hear in real-time is to get better at analyzing them with the solfege method (and writing down intervallic sequences in numbers). I would think just working on playing what you hear by first singing and then playing on your instrument would be a more direct path. Again I am not claiming one way or another. It is possible that working on analytical breakdown gets you to play what you hear (in the moment) faster down the line than transcribing directly on the instrument. But is that your belief? Originally Posted by charlieparker
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Sort of yes, because I think there is a tendency to use the hunt and peck method when you go directly to the instrument. I have seen Christian recommend similar in his videos that you should try and sing a line first before playing it on your instrument. I am open to trying both, though. Originally Posted by Tal_175
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