Tag Archives: play by ear

Should You Learn Your Music by Ear?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about when to listen to recordings of music you are learning. I know a lot of students like to listen to a bunch of recordings of a piece to get familiar with it before they start learning it. Then as they’re learning they keep listening and listening. Maybe they find one performance they particularly like and just listen to it incessantly. Naturally, they’re going to imitate that performance. There are two reasons why I don’t recommend doing this. Listening to performances to see what music you’re interested in learning is great. Of course listening to music is enjoyable and valuable. However, when you want to learn a piece of music, you don’t want to be highly influenced by any one particular interpretation. Also, you want to challenge yourself to see if you can learn something from the written page and see what you come up with. Naturally, there are styles of music where learning by ear is the best approach when the sheet music is incidental to the original performance or recording.

When I start working on a piece, I don’t listen to any recordings at all!

I learn the whole piece until I have it on performance level. At that point I’ve carved out a concept of how to play that piece. That’s when I first listen to recordings. That way when I listen to those recordings, they don’t overly influence me. I get a different take, but I come to my own conclusions about the music, and I think you should do the same thing. This method really helps you to understand how to decipher rhythms, phrasing, expression, not to mention the notes of the music, and to come to an idea of what tempo you like.

Give yourself the opportunity to find your own way.

If after you’ve learned a piece of music you listen to half a dozen recordings and everybody plays it way faster or slower than you do, you might rethink what you’re doing. Maybe there’s some validity to the common wisdom. Maybe there isn’t though. Have you ever heard Glen Gould recordings where he plays tempos that are drastically different from other people? Sometimes that can be enlightening. So, go with your convictions! But the only way to have convictions is to not be influenced before you learn something. So. don’t depend upon recordings to help you learn pieces by ear because you’ll never be able to express your true inclinations of the music if you never give yourself an opportunity to explore them. I hope this is helpful for you!

I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
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How to Play Music by Ear

Many people ask me, can you learn to play by ear or is it something you’re born with? I personally believe that everyone can improve their ability to play by ear. Some people just have an innate sense that allows them to play by ear without much effort, while others will have to work harder at it; the bottom line is, anyone can learn to do it.

Now there are limits to what you can achieve. If you’re tone deaf you probably won’t get to a level where you can transcribe Charlie Parker solos but you can definitely train your ear and improve.

The single most important thing you must do to train your ears is sing. Last week we talked about Why You MUST Sing Your Music and this topic has parallels. I was very fortunate to study solfeggio, which is sight-singing with the syllables (Do Re Me Fa So La Ti Do). When this is sung correctly it quantifies all the pitches in a scale. But you can do the same thing without having to practice sight-singing for years.

Try and quantify the pitches within a scale. Take a song that you know and try it out. The example I give in the video is Yellow Submarine by the Beatles. If you break down the first note in the song you can begin to construct the other notes around it by simply singing up and down in pitch. For example, take Yellow Submarine in C major so it starts on a G. To find the next note, determine whether the pitch goes up or down (in this case it goes up) and find the next note – which is A. When you get to the next note, it drops dramatically in pitch so it’s a bit more difficult to find. If you had years of theory training you might be able to tell it’s a perfect fifth, but even if you have no training at all you can figure it out by going down step-wise through the scale. Sing the pitch of the note in the song to yourself and then sing the pitches of the scale going down one by one until the pitch matches (which in this case is a D).

With a little bit of practice anyone can learn to interpret and play music by ear. You just need to start singing and testing yourself!

Thanks for joining me, Robert Estrin Robert@LivingPianos.com

How to Identify Musical Chords by Ear

Today we are going to talk about a very important subject and something that is indispensable for every musician – identifying chords by ear. In an earlier video we talked about how to identify the differences in chords through their construction. Today we are going to explore how to tell the differences between chords from their sound.

Listening is very helpful for this subject, so watching the accompanying video is highly recommended.

Let’s start out with the most popular chord of all time, the major triad – three notes arranged in thirds with a major third on the bottom and a minor third on top. To put it in simpler terms, the first, third and fifth notes of any major scale. So in the key of C major, the major triad is composed of: C, E & G.

The major triad produces a pleasing sound. It’s something you’ve heard countless times and it produces a happy sound. Compare that to a minor chord (which has a minor third on the bottom and a major third on top) and the sound difference is very noticeable. The minor chord tends to evoke more melancholy emotions. Try playing the C major chord and the C minor chord one after the other. Listen to the differences in their tone. Now try playing a major and minor chord in a different key. See if you can identify the differences in sonority. Close your eyes and listen – you will start to be able to tell the difference just by the sound.

Telling the difference between major and minor by ear is something most people can distinguish by ear rather quickly. However, this is only the beginning!

When it comes to augmented and diminished chords, many people find it difficult to tell them apart at first. The diminished chord has two minor thirds – making it a smaller chord. A diminished chord has a strange quality to it that certainly distinguishes itself from the minor and major chords because of the diminished 5th created by the outer notes of the chord. Play a major, minor and then diminished chord in the key of your choice and see if you can discern the differences in the sound.

When it comes to augmented triads, you have two major thirds on the top and bottom. This creates an augmented 5th between the bottom and top notes. When you play augmented chords, you will notice its unique sonic character. At first you may confuse it with the diminished chord. But if you play back and forth between augmented and diminished chords in the same key, you will hear a striking difference in sound. Close your eyes and listen to the differences between the two chords. Listen for the larger outer interval in the augmented chord compared to the diminished triad.

Augmented triads suggest or imply whole tones since the chord is built upon every other note of a whole tone scale.

Soon you will get accustomed to the sound of these chords and you will be able to distinguish the differences between them just from the sound. If you keep practicing this and get better at identifying these chords, you will be able to expand upon the variety of harmonies you can identify by ear.

Thanks again for joining us here at Living Pianos. If you have any questions or comments about this topic or any topic at all please contact us directly at: Info@LivingPianos.com or (949) 244-3729.