Whatever instrument you play you must have a good musical ear. You can train that! Sure its best to get a quality instructor on an instrument. In fact on some instruments its an essential.
Having a great teacher will cut years off your learning curve in every instance. So get a great teacher and at least learn the basics from him.
But with that said, no matter how you approach learning an instrument, you must get your musical ear ‘fine-tuned’ (pardon the pun 
).
How do you go about this? Simple. Listen to a lot of professional recordings of the instrument you are learning. Get as many CDs as you can get your hands (or should I say ‘ears’) on, and listen closely and critically to a master at work. Pick one to start with. Then comes the critical bit – pull his work apart!
Pick out particular parts you like and learn them yourself. The best way to do this is to slow down the part in question. But this brings problems. For example, if you just slow down a vinyl record it will also change the key and bring it down a few tones.
This makes learning the piece (and then having to transpose back to the original key) a total nightmare.
Another big problem with slowing down a piece of music, is that in many cases the sound quality suffers. Sometimes drastically depending on what you are using to do this. That makes it so much more difficult to hear what the player is doing.
Its still good for your musical ear doing this even with an inferior sounding slowed-down piece, but there there is a much more effective way to approach this. And its a seriously much better way to push your skills forward in leaps and bounds.
‘What is it?’ I hear shouts from the back of the room. Its called ‘Song Surgeon 3′ and it is the answer to every musician’s learning dream, no matter what instrument you play. Now that’s a very bold statement to make but I can assure you that it is 100% true.
It will work for most any instrument. And the best thing about it is that you can learn a piece directly from the original source. Not some error ridden Tab or Sheet Music which is many the times the case.
You can see and hear exactly what it does on my website www.songsurgeonreview.com. The videos there use guitar for examples, but it is effective with any instrument, any player. From the likes of Yehudi Menuhin to Charlie Parker. Can you imagine the benefit of learning from any Musical Master you prefer using this approach? Its powerful.
If you hear a solo you like and want to learn, put it in Song Surgeon 3, slow it down and learn it by ear. If you need further help with it, run by your teacher to sort out any troublesome parts or techniques used which you are unsure of.
A few weeks at this and DAILY practice sessions on it, and you won’t know yourself. You may well surprise your teacher too.
Ear Training is paramount no matter what instrument you play or wish to learn. Song Surgeon 3 will boost your musical ear beyond your wildest dreams if you use it regularly. And this translates into you becoming a seriously stronger musician.