Ear IQ: Reactive Improvisation

More so than any other skill, "big ears" are the musician's superpower, Big ears will propel you wherever you want to go as a player. You'll be at home on any jam bandstand. You'll be able to solo over any chord changes, in any key. Your solos will be set free from the conscious deliberation of which notes are harmonically correct, over which chords. Your big ears will produce fresh, creative and engaging improvisations organically.

You're not born with big ears -- you have to nurture and develop them. But it's not about reading music, traditional ear training or becoming a music theory genius. It's about learning how to process what you hear and being able to respond to it intuitively, in the moment.

Tens of thousands of hours playing out is one route to take. Thankfully, there's an alternative for those of us not fortunate enough to have that opportunity -- Jon Herington's Ear IQ.

"This is an absolutely fantastic course! If you don't find something great to take away, you're just not paying close enough attention. DIg into what Jon is serving up here -- you won't be sorry." - Kenneth Gonzalez, TrueFire Student

"Learning how to use your ears to guide the music you make is unquestionably the single most important skill you need to develop as a musician. Ear IQ is a natural and intuitive approach for developing BIG ears and powerful improvisational skills. No unnecessary theoretical baggage - no tedious exercises! you're going to listen, play, and learn to improvise your way through all of the material in the course."

Jon has very big ears. He's an amazing guitar player, prolific singer-songwriter, award-winning bandleader, a brilliant producer and session player. In addition to his band, Jon is also Steely Dan's lead guitarist of choice, recording and touring with them since 1999. His pedigree is a mile long, and we've dreamed of working with Jon for a very long time. We're thrilled to welcome Jon to the family with his first TrueFire course, Ear IQ.

"In this edition of Ear IQ, Reactive Improvisation, we'll focus your ears on chords, note choices and improvise over chord changes. In the first section, I'll show you a straightforward and foolproof way to learn to play on chord changes. We'll listen to progressions, listen to all the notes against the chords, create collections of notes to use in our improvising, and explore various techniques to use those collections to create fresh sounding solos that nail the changes."

"This course shows how to listen and evaluate the notes for improvization on a individual song basis, not just relying on a specific scale. This way you have all of the best notes to work with which are customized to each song. This is another one of those courses I constantly come back to and get more out of with each viewing. Jon is a great teacher and I wish he had more courses available." - John Pejril, TrueFire Student

Keep your guitar close because you'll dive right in and play your way through the first section of the course -- no theory, no exercises as promised. Jon gives you his step-by-step approach for Reactive Improvisation:

The Reactive Approach
STEP 1 - Analyze The Harmony
STEP 2 - Evaluate The 12 Tones
STEP 3 - Create Collections
STEP 4 - Find Chord Tones
STEP 5 - Connect Chord Tones
STEP 6 - Target Notes and Chromaticism
STEP 7 - Neighbor Notes
STEP 8 - Add Expression

"In the second section, we'll apply everything we learned, in the first section, to five new sets of chord changes. We'll dig deep into each of these progressions, analyze the harmony, find the most useful collections of good sounding notes for each chord, and I'll talk about some strategies that might be most effective in each case. For example, we'll start with Caroline Yes, a 12 bar blues in A. Then we'll look at I'll Fix Your Wagon, where I'll show you how to apply different collections of notes on each chord. After that, we'll look at a complex progression - In Love With Love, which we'll divide into three manageable sections. I'll also demonstrate the collections for each song and give you an improvised performance with the backing track."

All of the key demonstrations, performances, and examples are tabbed and notated for your practice, reference and study purposes. You'll also get Guitar Pro files so that you can loop and slow any section down as you work through the lessons. Plus, Jon generously includes all of the rhythm tracks for you to work with on your own.

Ready to grow some BIG ears? Grab your guitar and get reactive with Jon Herington!