If a guitar is the only instrument available, show your student a simple movable one-octave major-scale fingering. It’s important that you and your student first do this exercise together so you can give him feedback on the accuracy of his pitch until he starts to be able to recognize it himself.
For Janie Barnett, getting a student to learn to match pitch is a question of focused repetition: “I’ll sing the pattern, and they repeat. Move it a half step, sing it, they repeat. They can’t stop, and they can’t look around the room. They have to keep their eyes focused on a spot, and I keep going. As they stay inside the process for a length of time, their focus gets better, their ears tune in a little better, and they start to be more consistent.”
As soon as a student is able to, she should sing along with whatever she’s playing—the lyrics to a pop or folk song, a blues lick or a jazz arpeggio run, or a basic scale exercise—to strengthen the connection between her ear and the guitar.

More Advanced Ear Training
Once a student has a good grasp of time and pitch, work with him to develop ear training skills that will help him reach his musical goals. Here are two advanced exercises that can be used with any style of music.

I–IV–V in Any Key
Show the student two I–IV–V patterns using simple barre chords (or power chords, if she can’t play barres yet): one with the root of the I on the sixth string and one with the root on the fifth. She doesn’t even have to understand what I–IV–V means. The goal is to connect the sound of the pattern with how it lays out on the fretboard.
For example, with the root of the I on the sixth string, the root of the IV is on the same fret on the fifth string and the V is two frets up on the fifth string. Show how that pattern can be applied to any key by sliding it up and down the neck. You can then put on a song like “Louie Louie,” have her listen to the bass line, and ask her to slide her finger along the sixth string to find the root notes and the appropriate pattern. Use this same exercise with a ii–V–I with advanced students who are interested in jazz.

Signature Sounds
You can help students learn the sounds of particular chords or licks by pointing out popular songs that prominently use those sounds. For example, songs that use diatonic thirds include “Brown Eyed Girl” by Van Morrison, “Fly” by Sugar Ray, “Heaven” by Los Lonely Boys, “This Charming Man” by the Smiths, and “Clean Up Woman” by Betty Wright.

Annabel Chiarelli is currently Assistant Director at the American Institute of Guitar in New York. She has played in many bands and taught many students over the years.