Play guitar by ear

In the past I’ve used some of the MIT books, old software that’s probably not available anymore and years ago I used to make up my own CDs but never really put in the required effort. I could still improve my ears quite a lot if I did but it’s very time consuming and for what I do it doesn’t cause me any problems.

I’ve never used it myself but I’ve heard good things about Earmaster Pro. There’s also plenty of free and low cost apps that you could use on your phone that do similar things.

The thing is, I’m not sure how much it will help you with what you are trying to achieve. Certainly it’s a skill worth the effort but you could buy one of the MIT books and spend two years working with it and still need more practice.

A lot of it comes with experience and what you are talking about is more about chord progressions and recognition, whereas a lot of the study will go a lot deeper than that.

Sure, try some of the free apps and possibly even Earmaster, i wouldn’t call any of them a waste of time, but personally I would put more emphasis on learning more hymns, buy something like a hymn fakebook and learn as many as you can, you’ll probably start to recognise similarities.

You should then try to transpose many of them into the same key, this way you’ll realise the similarities more. Better still, break them down into chord numbers (Roman numerals) and think of them as their placement from the root chord and key. Practice all of the common progressions like I-IV-V, I-iii-V, I-vi-IV-V etc and try to memorise them in the most common keys. The more you do the more you will train your ear for what you are trying to achieve, it will take time but stick with it.