Playing by Ear - Melodies

Playing Melodies, Licks, Riffs, Motifs, and Single Note Lines by ear is all about getting your ear to recognize intervals and train the fingers to follow your inner ear and play these melodies on demand.

Author(s): Curt Sheller Publisher: Curt Sheller Publications Code: UL06m

Main Category: Melody Main Instrument: Any

Subjects: Chords

2026-03-07

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Playing by Ear - Melodies

Playing Melodies, Licks, Riffs, Motifs, and Single Note Lines by ear is all about getting your ear to recognize intervals and train the fingers to follow your inner ear and play these melodies on demand.

Ear training involves the Mind, Hands, and Ear connection. Of the three, the hands need the most work as they cannot heard, see, or make decisions on their own.

Melodies are a great place to start with for getting the fingers to follow your inner ear— what we have heard from before we could eve walk or talk.

Melodies come from four sources:

Scales
Intervals
Arpeggios
Sequences

All four of these can be addressed by training the ear and hands to work together.

Scales

Melodies come from scales. The most common being the Major scales.

There are Six (6) Essentials Scales for contemporary music to master and 17 for someone exploring the jazz repertoire. All melodies will be from one of these scales. The Major(Ionian) being the overwhelming scale use for melodies.

Intervals

An interval is simply the distance between two notes. Scales, intervals, and sequences are all made up of intervals. If you play two notes, melodically or harmonically there is an interval involved. The most common intervals that are used for creating melodies are the close intervals, seconds and thirds. However, ALL common intervals of every scale need to be explored and are used. This typically means seconds, thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths, sevenths, and octaves. These intervals all show up in melodies and improvisation.

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Here are the six essential scales, in open position, the key of C. Check out this video The Seven Scale Modes, Open Position Examples ) to see the Ionian, Dorian, Mixolydian, and Aeolian scales played on ukulele in open position.

Get these open-position scales under yous fingers and your ear (sing them as you play them), as these are used to determine what collection of notes, i.e. scale/key a melody or sequence of notes come from.

What IS a Scale?

A scale is simply a collection of pitches or notes, not really a "this is a Jazz scale", "this is a Blues" or "this is a Rock scale". It's how a scale is used that really matters, not its name.

Most music starts with a scale. The melody, chords, licks, and riffs all can be related back to a particular collection of notes, a.k., scale.

The Six Essential Scales ( in no particulate order ):

Essential Reference Scales

There are two scales that can be the memorized and other essential scales referenced from these two. These two scales are the Ionian/Major and Aeolian/Natural Minor scales. The Major and Natural Minor scales are traditional scales and common scales in all forms of contemporary music.

This lesson explores the Major and Natural Minor scales and their derivations.

QuickStart Scale and Arpeggio Fingerings for Ukulele

This lesson uses the same page format as the QuickStart Scale & Arpeggio Fingering series of books.

QuickStart Scale Fingerings for Ukulele 3 volumes.
C, G, and D tuning. (QuickStart Scale Fingerings for Ukulele )

The QuickStart Scale Fingerings Vol 1 covers the Blues, Pentatonic, Dorian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, and Ionian scales.

Each scale is also available as an individual book. NOTE: the traditional name for each scale is shown in parentheses.