Why listening is the most important musical skill

I grew up on the island of Maui just starting to play music. And I really wanted to learn, but there weren’t many teachers around. My dad loved playing Hawaiian music. He played a lot of slack key guitar and sang. He was a rancher, a Hawaiian paniolo at Haleakalā Ranch upcountry in the town of Makawao, and music was always part of our life.

His friends would come over to the house and play. On weekends, we’d head way up the mountain to a cabin high on Haleakalā. We’d also go on fishing trips down to Kaupo, a really wild part of the island. We had all the ranch keys, so we could get through gates and down to secret fishing spots. It was great fun and there were always instruments along the way.

Listening Before Anyone Showed Me

I remember Uncle Eddie Wilson: six-foot eight, a Hawaiian cowboy, an amazing player and singer. He played guitar, trumpet—anything he picked up. He was incredible. I always wanted to learn, but no one really showed me. They showed me a few chords here and there, but mostly I just listened as I was growing up.

I got interested in playing around fifth grade at Makawao School. We had a May Day program where each class would perform a song for big celebrations. We did “He Aloha Mele,” a beautiful song first recorded back in the 1960s and later made popular by Peter Moon, one of the great ukulele players. That experience stayed with me.

The Boombox Was My Teacher

Without teachers, I had to use my ear. My ukulele, my guitar, and an old boombox. That was my teacher. I started with cassette tapes. My dad had an old record player, but it was hard to move the needle around. With cassette tapes, I could stop, rewind, and play very specific parts.

That allowed me to play all the time. I always had little cassette projects I was working on. And this helped develop my ear before I even knew what scale I was playing, or even the names of a lot of chords. I just heard them and found them by trial and error.

Why I Still Encourage Learning by Ear

This is something I really encourage my students to do. You don’t have to always see things written down. Today we have incredible resources: video, tablature, sheet music. And at Ukulele Corner I create all of that. But I think it’s important to go back to that original way of learning, the way I started.

Use your ear. Hear something and recreate it. Go without the music for a while. Or use it briefly and then put it away. Get the music internalized. That’s where your expression comes from. And that’s where your personality comes out through the music.

Internalizing Music and Recognizing Progressions

When you learn this way, your memorization sharpens. You start hearing music even without an instrument in your hand: you recognize chord progressions; you might not know the key, but you hear a one chord, a five chord, a minor four. That’s relative pitch, and it makes a huge difference.

Old-School Learning with Modern Tools

These days, the boombox might be your phone. There are apps that slow audio down. You can use YouTube and streaming platforms. The tools are better—but the process is the same.

Listen. Work things out. See what kind of progress you can make.

I hope to see you at Ukulele Corner Academy. We have a lot of fun there, and I encourage you to check out what we’re doing. Aloha.