Let’s start with “octave”; that’s the simplest. Two notes form an octave if one is exactly twice the frequency of the other. Because of the way our sense of hearing works, we tend to regard those note as, in some sense, “the same”, even though one’s higher pitched than the other. Two notes an octave apart will be given the same letter name, and on a piano, they’ll be in the same position relative to the repeating pattern of black and white keys.
A chord is a set of about three notes that sound nice together. Sometimes they’ll be played all at once, and sometimes they’ll be played one after another. There’s a sort of rough correspondence between keys (see below) and chords: The first, third, and fifth note of a key will generally form a chord (a major chord if it’s a major key, or a minor chord if it’s a minor key).
A key is a larger set of notes, with certain intervals between them. Any given transcription or performance of a song will be in some particular key, and will use almost entirely notes from that key (the song also usually starts on the first note of that key). Let’s say that someone learns how to play a song on the piano. If they start by hitting the C, then they’re probably in the key of C (assuming it’s a major key). The key of C major on a piano contains exactly those notes that are on the white keys, so the person playing that song will end up hitting the ivories almost exclusively, without using the ebonies at all, or only very little. Well, now, suppose that instead of hitting exactly those keys on the keyboard, suppose you moved each one up by one (counting the blacks and the whites). Now, the first one you hit will be C sharp, a black key, and you’ll be hitting a bunch of other black keys, too, but it’ll still be recognizable as the same song. What you just did was transposing the song from the key of C to the key of C sharp.
Well, we don’t know just how similar the tests were. Anyway, there’s a big difference between the kids trying out for band and the kids taking music as a mandatory course - it was for everyone, not just a self-selecting group.
I originally learned to play the piano by ear. I heard Moonlight Sonata when I was around 10 and just started picking out the notes on the piano until I could play it properly. Eventually I started taking lessons and I started playing the flute when I was 13.
FWIW, I just spent about four minutes on the virtual keyboard to come up with C-C-E-E-G-G-E. Thought I had it, too. Then I played aruvqan’s transcription and realized I was way off.
A few years ago, I spent maybe an hour at the keyboard and managed to pick out “Love Me Tender.” I’m not kidding when I say it was one of the proudest moments of my life.
(I love the song, and at the time I was singing it two or three times a day to my infant daughter. Now she’s 8, and when she hears me singing, she says, “I hate it when you do that.” Clearly she inherited her mother’s musical ear.)
I think you’re also making a fifth assumption - that people can remember a 10 or 11 key sequence. I can’t do that. Remember the old Simon game? A button would flash and a tone would play. You had to hit that button. Then a sequence of two, then three, and so on. I could never do more than five or six.
I’ve given this a little more thought. Consider this:
I’ve managed to work my way 6 notes into Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. I have ccggaa. Now I need to find the next note, which is g.
I’ve only been tapping on a piano for two minutes. I haven’t memorized which key sounds like what. I need to find the next note, and it’s going to be trial and error.
I hit d. That doesn’t sound right. Now I have to remember ccggaa and that d is wrong. I hit e. Still not right. I have to remember ccggaa and that d and e are wrong. I hit f. Still not right. I have to remember ccggaa and that d and e and f are wrong.
That’s too much for me to remember. By the time I finally get to g, I have forgotten ccggaa and have to start over again.
Disregard everything I’ve ever said about music – I was at a birthday party tonight for my uncle, who was playing twenty questions to guess a present. Naturally, I thought it would be funny to stand over the piano and play the “Jeopardy” theme quietly. I fucked up the last little bit (not bad, but enough to make me ashamed). I am a total simp, apparently. Gave a nice little authentic cadence fanfare with melody when he got it right, though! When he was going wrong, the “Dragnet” music (Miklos Rosza originally from “The Killers”) went fine.
This thread really confuses me. You start pressing keys until one of them sounds like the first note in TTLLS then press them gain until you get one that sounds like the second note, etc. Is that really something most people can’t do? I don’t understand how someone can recognize a tune if they can’t tell if something is the right note.
Count me among those surprised that anybody couldn’t do that.
I have no musical talent or training. But occasionally I’ll find myself bored in a room with a piano, or run across some music program on the internet, or whatever, and I’ll try to play something recognizable. If it’s a simple tune, I’ll generally succeed. Just play one note at a time, and keep trying until you find the one that works.
Seems like a much easier problem than even humming or singing in tune… I’m not so hot at that myself, but at least I can tell that I’m off. I just can’t always make the right note come out. Not a problem with a piano.
I see what you’re saying, but I’m not sure that you have to recall the whole of ccggaa every time - you’ve done “twinkle twinkle little”, now you’re looking for the note for “star”. So sing “star” to yourself repeatedly, just that one note, while trying to find it on the piano.
I suppose you might say “but then I’ll know how to play ‘star’, but will have forgotten the rest of it”.
I wasn’t able to play “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”, but I did an awesome job on “Baa, Baa Black Sheep”. Next, I’m going to master the “Alphabet Song”.
Yesterday at church, I asked the guitar player if I could try his guitar. I plucked out “Twinkle, Twinkle” and only made 1 mistake. Then I tried “Für Elise” and played it with only 2 mistakes. I realized partway through that I didn’t have to move my hand to play the notes that were next to each other. That is, I could fret both notes and then just lift one finger and the other note would be ready to play.
I did “play” happy birthday to me on an online “piano” thing (possibly a Google home page gizmo) but there were only 5 or 6 notes to choose from, and I already knew how to play happy birthday on a piano (I was shown 30 odd years ago)
Yes, your post could be considered arrogant, but it depends on the reader’s perception of arrogance. I had a friend who couldn’t for the life of him understand how anyone could not know how to drive a car if they’d never had a lesson (I couldn’t drive at the time), he was convinced I should have learned from watching my father driving.
Similarly my mother thought I should be able to cook a meal because I knew how to from watching her
neither of these were true, and I don’t know of anyone who learned to drive or cook just from watching their parents as a child - probably because you’re not trying to learn to cook or drive when you’re 3.
Neither person was being arrogant per se, they just had/have a strange perception of how people do things.
Few people would be able to associate a note they’ve heard with a string on a guitar, or a key on a piano. most people have to learn to associate something with an outcome - press this key and you get an A (or whatever)
Many people are shocked and surprised that I can do HTML coding without having been taught. I am not shocked or surprised that other people cannot do HTML coding. I do not express dismay that people can use the internet without knowing how to perform basic HTML coding, because I get the idea that not everyone can code, and not everyone even knows what HTML code is anyways.
I’m not entirely sure why other people who can do something, get confused, angry or upset when someone else cannot do the same thing…
But pressing a key does give you an outcome: it makes a sound. The question is not can you sit down and intuitively know what keys to press, it’s whether there are people who can’t tell if the note that came out when they pressed a key is the next one in sequence in a simple song like TTLS.
I’ll admit I haven’t made a serious go of it in a while, but the very idea is madness to me. A single note in isolation? How on earth can you reliably pinpoint that? I get that people can, but it completely eludes me.
And no, I don’t know why I can sing TTLS reliably but can’t conceive of translating it to an instrument. Perhaps it’s just that I’ve never tried or practiced, but the very concept seems alien to me.
Don’t know who you think is angry or upset, and I’m not really sure “confused” is the right word for what anyone’s saying either. Myself, I’m suprised. Saying you can hum accurately but can’t figure out how to play a five note tune on a keyboard is very suprising to me. To me, there is no (internally felt) practical distinction between the tasks.
On reflection I can see that though I feel no real distinction between the tasks, cognitively they’re pretty different. But it takes a lot of reflection to see that. For a hummed tune translates directly into a played tune, and the translation is very straightforward. (Intervals hummed go directly into intervals played.) And it’s really not easy at all to see how someone could deal with the former and not also, even with some thought and practice, be able to deal with its equivalents in the latter medium at least on a basic level.
But the examples given of people attempting to figure out TTLS on the provided browser keyboard illustrate that the thing that suprises me is indeed true. It’s inconcievable to me how it’s possible for someone with normal hearing and tune recognition skills to play for oneself the notes CCEE and think “yes, I think I’m playing the first four notes of TTLS,” but, there you are. It happens. So much the worse for my conceptual scheme.
I imagine that what is happening has something to do with the cognitive distinction between passive listening and listening to things that are happening as a result of your own actions. Perhaps the brain doesn’t treat these activities as of a kind.
It seems to me that you’re thinking of these as two completely different tasks/skills. They’re not. Picking out a tune on a keyboard doesn’t require you to pinpoint “a single note in isolation.” You simple start with any note as the first note and then play it in sequence in a trial-and-error manner until you find the second note. That’s pretty much how you hum a tune. You start with any random note and then move on from there.
You can start with any note on the keyboard, then it is just a matter of finding the next one. Some starting notes are easier because it is all then white keys in the tune.
This has nothing to do with recognizing an absolute pitch, which I can’t do either.
