Darwin Deez

train your ears to recognize the sound of the ii chord, etc. the sound of a chord actually depends on the chord that came before it. wild!

I ii iii IV V vi vii°
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
M m m M M m dim

my 4-string guitar tuning is F# D G# B

taking strings off kinda forces you to always play the root note of each chord on the low string, and doing that will help you memorize the structure of the major scale visually along the length of the fretboard as you teach yourself how to play songs. you could do this on a regular 6 string guitar, you just have to be good at left-hand muting (which is hard), so take strings off if you want to train your ear. that’s what I did.

use your ear to find one of the chords in the song you want to teach yourself. play along with the song until you find one right chord. then if it’s major, it’s most likely I, IV or V and if it’s minor, it’s probably ii iii or vi. use the roman numeral pattern to guess and check the other chords in the song while you sing the melody. use it to write your own chord progressions. learn the rules so you can break them!