Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum how to tell a high or low note from another note?

Well the good news is that very few people can do that. What you need is ear training (lots of websites and apps on that).

The skill you need is called "Relative Pitch".

So starting from let's say C, you see if you can tell an interval of 1-8 (white notes only) in relation to C. And you need to learn this going up and going down.

It's just memorizing (but always in relation to some base starting note).

This is essential to learning any musical instrument. You don't have to sing it. You just have to recognize it.

So for example, play these note pairs:

C D
C E
C F
C G
C A
C B
C C (Octave up)

Memorize. Rinse. Repeat.

jazzwee, I would not say that the ability to recognize or reproduce named intervals by ear is essential to playing any musical instrument. It may be essential to playing by ear, but it is not essential to playing by reading music, or to simply memorizing music. Witness me, who am fairly weak at explicit interval exercises, but I can sing in tune, and when playing something I can tell if it sounds right or wrong.

I am not speaking against your exercise as a useful exercise for adak; I am just speaking against whether this is an essential skill for all musicians. Some of us do manage to make music while working around the lack of this skill.

[ETA: I wish I did have this skill, but I have survived musically without it for many years. Some, maybe many, things would be easier for me if I did have it, though, I don't deny that.]

I think this is the important element here. Apparently you have good relative pitch to accomplish this. That's really all it is. Recognizing that something is wrong.

I would just say anyone learning even sight reading would be disadvantaged greatly if they didn't know they were playing it wrong.

I witnessed my own kids do this in the early stages. They're just reading the score without paying attention to the music. We can't have a teacher next to us every time we play and then we have to spend tons of time to undo the permanent mistake embedded in our playing because we didn't know it was wrong.

If someone cannot tell whether a note is higher or lower than another, how do you expect him to "memorize" the sound of precise interval pairs. Hearing is something that gets developed. It is something that comes into focus.

Well I can hear it if it is obvious, like comparing a C2 to C3, C3 is clearly the higher one. But if a song is played like C4 C# E4 D4 etc etc, and the notes are close together on the keyboard, and the length of the key press varies, and the volume varies, then it is harder to pick out. How can I translate the sound of the notes in my head to the keys on the keyboard. Afterall there are only 12 repeated keys so the choices are not unlimited.

Isn't that the point? To start developing it? Maybe you're translating the word memorize to something akin to something textual.

But of course intervals can be memorized (for example in connection with a song for example).

Let's say one wants to remember the intervals from 1-5. What if you used a reference like "Row Row Row your Boat Gently Down the Stream"?

Row=1 (C)
Your=2 (D)
Boat=3 (E)
The=4 (F)
Stream=5 (G)
Merrily=8 (C octave up)

I just picked this song at the top of my head. I'm sure one can find others.

Of course the song "Do-Re-Mi" would be more obvious. But I didn't think of it when I typed above...

What you are experiencing here is just a speed recognition issue. I encounter this all the time when I'm transcribing music and it goes too fast. Obviously at the beginner level it is even harder. So the solution to this is "slow it down Apps". Lots on the Iphone/Ipad and software for your computer as well. When it is played very slowly, the intervals will be obvious. If you're trying to decipher what Keith Jarrett is doing in 16th notes, it requires very advanced training.

Jazzwee, I know what you are describing. This is also not for myself. I have been doing picking out and playing or singing melodies since I was a small child. But if the OP's sense of pitch was not at all developed, which was the first impression, then you don't go straight to picking out C and then D. The distinction is too fine. But now it appears that the OP is merely trying to catch music too fast. That's another story. I took him at his word when he said he could not hear if one note was higher or lower than the next.

I'll mention one more thing, since I see that you are using a keyboard. I often find with singers especially that some have trouble matching the pitch of a piano. I think it's the complex harmonic sound that sometimes can confuse the ear as to what the actual main pitch is.

So what I do, and what I'd recommend, is to switch to an organ sound, which is more of a fundamental sound (it also doesn't decay, which can also help). Once I can get a student to hear notes and intervals and match an organ sound, we switch back to piano.

Tried the organ sound, can't say I prefer it.

Any tips to hear the same note in different parts of the melody? I don't always want to rely on the ups and downs of the melody. Like for example, lets say you know ahead that there is a repeated note, so if for example ACDECE, from A to E is rising, the it backtracked to a certain note, this case its C, but in a song it is not always which note it backtracked to cause the melody can be a distraction.

Some organ sounds help, some not.
Several ones on my Casio CTK-800 help (and it's only a "complex toy", not much a "piano"). It's "definite" enough. It has a little of odd-harmonics (3rd, 5th) which help define the main pitch and avoid confusions.

I don't know how are the organ voice(s) on the Privia PX-150, but if it's like those cheaper, piano-first, less-tinkerable instruments with only 1 organ voice (from 6-7 overall), like the Yamaha Arius series (YDP 141, 161 etc) THEN it may be worse.
The Arius'es I tried have the only 'organ' voice with strong components identical to themselves 1 octave below and 1,2,3 octaves above, so coupled with not-great speakers that attenuate low or high frequencies too much, it makes relatively hard to distinguish, say (D2 from D3), or (D5 from D6).

Hmm, it sounds like you are trying to understand the "rules of melody" which, although there are arguably some rules on, the best thing to say is: For melody, the rules are there are no rules

And whether you can remember that a note is the same as a recent one is probably going to depend as much upon harmony and rhythm as the pitch itself. I sing in a choir and for all of us, amateur and professional alike, sight reading can be amazingly easy or blindingly difficult and it's not always clear why. Which is one way of saying, I think you are looking for answers that may not be there - or, at least, are more complex than you may imagine.

I suspect the best thing is to take songs you know well, try to sing along, play along, understand them and then go from there. Baby steps.

I wasn't stating that there were "rules" of melody.

I want to be able to pick out the notes of a piece of music. For example if I want to pick out C's, and the song is played ABDGBCBABCAB the C's might be hard to hear.

FYI, There are no notes known as "K, J, S, W", but there is an "H" note in Germany.

I know, I just mashed the keyboard.

Not sure what you're getting at here. What exactly do you mean by trying to "pick out the notes"? Are you just trying to identify, for example, that the only C's in this melody are the 8th and 16th notes? If so, why? Or are you going for something else -- maybe that you ultimately want to be able to hear a melody and play it back accurately. If that's the case, I don't know if this exercise you propose is the best one to use to get there.

Oh you shouldn't have done that! Don't lose hope, you'll get there, behind every cloud there is a silver lining, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, it is always darkest before the dawn! Ain't no mountain high enough, ain't no valley low enough to keep you from getting from C to C# babe! You have to believe!

RIP Casio Privia PX-150.

I wasn't stating that there were "rules" of melody.

I want to be able to pick out the notes of a piece of music. For example if I want to pick out C's, and the song is played ABDGBCBABCAB the C's might be hard to hear.