So, how does one go about learning to play music by ear?

Cafe Society
1

How does one go about learning to play music “by ear.” This is obviously addressed to people who know how to do it, or who have at least talked to people who do. I know how to play off sheet music, and it’s boring.

There are all kinds of places on the web promising to teach this sort of thing, for a price, but I don’t feel like laying down my money sight unseen. Besides which, I should think a reasonably intelligent person should be able to figure this out him/herself. Unfortunately, I don’t have anyone around I can learn from.

I’m into keyboards, so I need to know both melody and harmony. Maybe even a bit of counterpoint, for all I know. I’m working on ear training with melodies right now. I can pick out songs fairly readily, but it takes a bit of time. I expect I’ll be able to speed up considerably over time, though. I find it quite hard to figure out intervals in my head, but as soon as I hum them, I know exactly what they are.

Harmony is more painful. The basics I’ve already got: most music (that I’m interested in) leans heavily on the tonic, subdominant, and dominant triads, with occasional support from the dominant seventh. But that isn’t enough to keep it interesting for very long, obviously, so I have to learn a lot of stuff. Also, there’s the matter of my having two hands, and how and when to put intervals and chords in the right hand (at the moment I’m mostly stuck on playing the melody as single notes with the right while plunking out chords with the left). Another problem is having the two hands collide with each other. And most difficult seems to be the various ways of breaking up chords. And voice leading. And when to use root position vs. inversions. And when to use open vs close position chords. And a million other things.

So here’s my hypothesis: there’s no really good way to approach this but to just work on different songs, and experiment with things to see what seems to work. Practicing listening to the way different chord progressions sound without playing the melody is probably a good exercise, as well. Right now I’m on a very steep learning curve, but, with enough repetition, the brain will subconsciously put everything together until I have a collection of tools that I can put to use very quickly.

I imagine that for specific kinds of music, like blues, a book would be of some help, but mostly, I think I’m on my own.

So, is that the way it works? Are there ways to speed up the process? How many years of work am I looking at before I can really sit down and improvise a scorching rendition of “When the Levee Breaks” without resorting to sheet music and memorization?

Thanks.

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You might try The Perfect Pitch System.

I have thought about buying, but have not - I have no experience with it and can’t vouch for it.

If you *do *buy it, please let me know your opinion! :slight_smile:

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Before I went to Kindergarten, someone showed me the mechanics of how a piano worked, and I figured the rest out by myself. One teacher taught me the names of the notes, and another one showed me how to play with both hands. With that knowledge, I was able to play much more advanced music by ear than I could on paper, and the teachers gave up. Their reason was that they didn’t want to make me learn the method because I was already doing what the method can’t teach you. I went on to learn drums, bass and guitars without instruction, and I never did learn to read music. I’ll hear a song, and if I can physically execute it, I’ll play it back to you. That’s the kind of playing-by-ear that’s built-in. I don’t know if it’s possible to teach a person how to have the ability to create music.

My wife is the opposite. She was indoctrinated in the method early, and can play so well from sheet music, it’d scare you to death. She has performance and pedagogy degrees. But she has an extraordinarily difficult time playing the most basic songs by ear. She will not improvise. She can not break out of that way of playing a song that sounds like it’s a piano teacher playing it. If she were reading charts, she could play with the best, but could not come up with anything of her own invention.

If you have the ability to operate a piano, you’re already part of the way there. Try to disregard all the rules you know, and just play something. Chord progressions, anything. The great majority of pop music piano parts on records are played as accompaniment, not carrying the melody. Put all thoughts of trying to play the tonic and a chord with the left and chords and melody with the right, out of your mind. Unless, you know, you want to be a lounge pianist. Learn where the chords you’ll use most often are. Find out how they resolve. Try playing them in other keys. Play along with songs you know. See where the chords go. The more progressions you learn, the more you’ll be able to go there from memory.

I personally would not trust any person on the web, asking for money, who says they can teach you to do that. Unless they meet you in the flesh and assess your skill and go from there with a program of some kind that they teach you in person, it’s another way to separate you from your cash.

My wife says there is “The Suzuki Method” in which you learn to play short phrases that the teacher plays, then longer ones, then to string them together from memory. After several years of this, they start to teach you to read music and play from that.

How many years before you can play a scorching rendition of anything? Oh jeez, a lot of them. Count on ten, minimum, from where you are now, to build up the knowledge and skill level necessary, and to be able to play with authority and command of the instrument.

4

Look at Band-In-A-Box, from PG Music. It is a program for accompaniment.

You lay out your song as a progression of chords, select a performance style (blues, rock, country …), and it plays at whatever speed you want. You can look at the generated music, turn instruments off and on, and it will loop forever.

I love it - I sit there with a progression loaded up and play along (piano or guitar). I usually turn the piano off, and just have bass and drums and a bit of fill. You can see the upcoming chords, and you just play along as much as you like.

You can then look into the styles to see how things are put together - turnarounds, descending bass riffs etc. And some of the add-on packs are designed to teach specific styles, too.

It’s fun, and there is nothing like playing along with other instruments to motivate you and make you listen. I started with tapes, and I ruined a few, too. Winding back all the time. This is much better.

Si

5

Thanks, fishbicycle. Especially since you seem to be saying what I’m thinking (mostly). No, I don’t want to become a lounge pianist; I can’t even stand to drink in piano lounges. I’m mainly interested in the melody line because it’s obviously going to control the rest. Somebody’s gotta play it, and at this point it looks like that somebody’s going to be me. But I am also spending time just fooling with chords, as you suggested, because I love the way they sound.

I’m hoping to get at least semi-decent in substantially less than 10 years; I’m 57 after all. My 6 years of lessons ought to help, if I can get these fingers moving anything like they used to.

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si_blakelySounds intriguing, if a little pricey. I’ll check out they’re demo. But criminetly, could they possibly have a worse looking web page?

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Hey, when you’re 67 and on top of your game, you’ll be able to join The Grateful Dead or The Allman Brothers, and fit right in!

And when you’re 87, you can be the only person in the Old Folks’ home who wakes everybody up to a rousing rendition of “What’d I Say.”

8

Is it something people can be taught to do? I thought it was like having perfect pitch, rare and innate.

The only person I know who could play (piano) by ear just figured it out on his own very young. When he was four his mother gave his older sister and my brother piano lessons and he’d listen. Then he’d play back what he’d just heard better than either of the kids actually being taught! (Much to the other kids’ dismay) Obviously he couldn’t read the sheet music yet, since he was four and couldn’t read at all.

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The 90’s called - they want their web page back. I suggest not bothering with their Mega-Packs, just get the core app and whatever Style disks you thing you want. It was written for Jazz musicians, so there are lots of jazzy styles I never use.

When I play keys, I try to get the bass line going on the chords, driving the rhythm. My Right hand is also playing the chords (maybe in arpeggios), but picking out the melody notes and intervals as it goes. Then again, I’m usually singing the melody line, so I don’t try too hard, it generally just needs to pop in and out - people fill in the rest if they know the song.

Si

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Say, elfkin, that’s how I got found out by my piano teacher. He would play me the piece beforehand, so I had an idea of how it was supposed to sound. Then, I played what he played, and could not reconstruct it from the sheet music to save my life. One time, he played it wrong, and I played it back wrong. That’s when he realized he didn’t want to mess with my ability. The Method will squash all of that right out of you. I hope the kid in your post went on to become a musician. He reminds me of me at that age.

11

Some people are better at holding a tune in their heads than others, but you can practice and increase your skill at ear listening, like most other things.

Some people, the notes get in the way. My son is dyslexic. It took us a while to realise that he could not sight-read music easily - not like his sister. So he shifted to a jazz/blues piano course with more emphasis on ear and improv playing, and he did much better.

Different strokes.

Si

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As a child I took piano lessons which started with the Suzuki Method. True Suzuki Method (As I understand it, which may not be accurate) puts a lot of emphasis on hearing music and then playing it. Learning to read sheet music, but getting a feel for how a piece should sound by listening to it.

This is (perhaps) even more true with Suzuki Method for Violin, where a lot of attention goes into learning proper posture, how to hold a violin, bow to one’s instructor, stand quietly, etc. before you ever get to play a note. Works OK in Japaqn, not so hot with American children and their parents. So says my friend the violin teacher, who teaches a lot of small children to play the violin using a modified Suzuki Method.

Stepping away from the Suzuki Method for a moment, I would argue that playing music by ear is a talent. It is innate in some people, many of whom started teaching themselves how to play the piano by ear while yet too young for formal lessons. But, that doesn’t mean it can’t be cultivated.

Stepping away from music entirely, people have different learning styles. Some learn best by listening, some by reading, and some by doing. Music highlights some of those differences, but I think you should not underestimate the power of PRACTICE in making a difference between someone who plays primarily by ear or by reading music. Not to say that someone who is skilled in one form of learning music can neccessarily learn the other way, especially if they aren’t motivated, but even if one will never be as talented as the truly gifted, I see no reason why one can’t improve one’s ability to learn by ear.

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I agree that it’s an awful page. However, I agree it’s a program you should possibly consider buying…
AFTER…
Spending a huge amount of time simply with a keyboard, piano or whatever. Until you can produce the harmony of a song reliably, you can forget about anything fancy with the melody. And harmony is the backbone of pieces, and the piano is a harmonic instrument, like it or not.

14

I play four instruments that I learned to play by ear, beginning with the guitar over thirty years ago. It’s not something that can be taught, really. In fact learning to play by ear is something one usually does* in lieu* of formal instruction, whatever the reason for the lack of formal instruction. You sit next to the radio/turntable/cassette-player/CD-player for hours and hours and hours, and you try to recreate what you hear. You can speed up the process by playing with other people and picking up things from them, but the basic skill of recreating what you hear is something you develop simply by doing it, and some people can do it better than others. You just have to pay your dues with hours of practice—that’s why people usually learn to do it when they’re young.

15

Some people are better naturally at it than others, but relative pitch (the ability to distinguish the space of intervals, chords, etc) is readily learnable. Absolute pitch, aka “perfect pitch”, is a curious thing. I’m not 100% convinced that it’s completely innate, but the scientific evidence seems to point that way.

Don’t sweat perfect pitch. Most musicians don’t even have it, and some of the best “play by ear” instrumentalists I know don’t either. I think it’s a little more useful than a “party trick” (as some instructors seems to dismiss perfect pitch), but good relative pitch training is much more important. Perfect pitch would tell you what key something is in, or what the individual notes are, but relative pitch is what you really use to hear the melody.

There’s plenty of software out there for ear training. Just Google for it and you’ll find stuff. Otherwise, just listening and plucking away at an instrument helps, but this seems to become more and more difficult the older you get and if you’ve never played an instrument before. I started piano when I was 8, and I can pretty much pick up any instrument and eventually pluck out a tune on it. And I do not have a particularly good ear compared to really good musicians.

16

Pitch is not a big stumbling block for me. I have good relative pitch, and I can almost always pick a G out of thin air. Why G? Don’t know, but it sticks in my head. And like I said, I can generally recognize intervals if I hear them or sing them, though I’m less good if they’re in my head.

I can also tell chord progressions that I know quite readily, e.g., a full cadence or an amen cadence. I figure that if I can get that far, maybe I can extend it to just about any group of chords, or triads at least. I’m not so sure about all those 6th and 7th chords in jazz.

Anyway, carry on.

17

**pulykamell **is right, relative pitch is learnable and with relative pitch you can do a lot. Once you get relative pitch down fairly well the intervals become obvious and all you need to do is find a pitch to go off of and everything else falls in place. I did not have the ability to play by ear when I first started. I got so I was pretty good at it for a while, when I was teaching some people and playing a lot of covers. These days I don’t play any covers and don’t teach so my ability has dropped quite a bit. I can still do it but it takes much more work.

Another thing to do is to learn keys well. If you can distiginush the key and know scales well (modes works really well for guitar*) you have a big advantage in that you know right away what notes are available, and if there is an acciental in the piece you’ll probably pick it out pretty quick.

Slee

*I don’t know how much modes help on piano. Learning the modes on guitar is huge, it opens up the whole neck.

18

Since I can neither read music (longish story) nor play by ear I shut up, but I was tempted to say that “you just do it.” My uncle couldn’t read music but early on he picked up a guitar and played music after a little stumbling. Once he learned the fingering, more or less by trial and error, he could play any stringed instrument except the violin family.

He also played the saxaphone, clarinet and I’ll bet he could have done a pretty good job on oboe and bassoon.

19

This reminds me a bit of Ian Anderson - vocalist and flautist of Jethro Tull. He was basically self-taught, and used many non-standard flute techniques to create the sound he wanted.

When his daughter started learning flute (at school, I presume) Ian discovered that some of his actual fingerings were non-standard too, and his daughter had to show him the proper fingerings.

Si

20

They’re not such a big deal on the piano from the standpoint of hitting the notes. But a lot of folk music is modal, and I guess it would be proper to call the blues scale a mode, so yeah, I think it’s important. It’s clearly easier to find a note in its native mode, rather than say, well, this is A minor but with this sharped and that flatted.

Jeez, you’da thought maybe he’d have picked up a book at some point.

Thanks for all the replies so far.