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Guys,

I am looking for a playing by ear set for contemporary pop and rock stuff. I am a pre-intermediate player.

Mark Harrison's set offer what i exactly want but is it good?

http://www.harrisonmusic.com/


Can you suggest anything you think will be better than this set? I will put 200 bucks in this set. So i gotta make sure this is my best option.


Thank you .

Helluuu?

Are you sure you need to buy something like this? Playing by ear is figuring out, on the piano, a tune or tune+accompaniment by means of trial and error. Greater experience results in less trial and error.

There must be some tunes that you 'know' (if you know what I mean!) but which you have never played on the piano? Your job is to figure out, more or less by guesswork, what notes to play on the piano. The more you do it, the less guessing you'll have to do. It takes a long time and there are no short cuts.

'Play like' books might just help you to 'play like' but it's a lazy option if all you have to do is read the music put in front of you. Reading music is unlikely to help you to play by ear....IMO. It's essential to go through the toil and hard graft of figuring things out for yourself.

Dire, you are sick man, aren't you? You are sick of me asking something else every single day. And so am i ,man.


You know i started learning improvisation a couple months ago but then i saw it was used to just make up stuff. Not make up the playing of an existing song. Oh, wait, you already warned me about the improvisation anyways.

Anyways dire... So you are suggesting that i should experience and learn ear training my own. Is that understood correct?

Can you please be more open why you think these books are not useful? There are some people here benefited greatly from these online courses. Don't you think?

I don't know man. I don't have a teacher too(to teach contemporary). So i feel extremely lonely. Especially if i don't have a book to help me.

You're obviously a keen student, Fatih. No one can possibly complain about that!

Yes, it's my belief that you don't need to pay for any tools relating to playing by ear. It should be purely a matter of personal effort, application and hard work. If there are some tools that help you to apply yourself then I guess that's a good thing but, to be honest, I'm not aquainted with what's on offer in the teaching tools market place. It might be wiser to wait for some feedback from someone who's actually used the Mark Harrison course. I'd be interested to know what kind of approach it uses. I would always prefer to pay in stages and by results rather than splashing out a lump sum at the outset.

Mark Harrison has 16 free YT vids. He seems pretty understandable.
I like Bill Hilton's free vids too. I agree 200 USD seems a lot to me. (3 tanks or petrol)
dire's quite right, nobody can hear for another.
But I think most start (non-classical) listening for chord changes. Made easier if one is given the key. Maybe even the chord progression.
Fleshing out a melody gets mentally taxing quickly. Hence the suggestion for learning to play a known melody first.

But I believe in learning a song anyway you can. Then comes a decision. To commit to memory or not. The level to which one must know a piece seems great, but it's not. It's a doubt vs. confidence thing. For me it's a lazy vs. ambitious thing. If I'm happy and comfortable playing from a lead sheet, why bother? Looking up and loosing one's place is the why. Having to pack around a folder too. I just have to decide.

I agree with diretonic, but wish to comment on Mark Harrison's materials. I have seen his books and think they are quite good. They are not really "how to play", but intended more to build on piano skills you already have. His books/CDs on ear training would help you play by ear, but they don't teach you to play by ear. Instead, they train your ear to recognize intervals (the distance between two notes), chords, and that sort of thing, all of which really helps when figuring out music by ear. Any schooled music student would have taken these kinds of courses in school. He also has a set of music theory books that apply music theory in a very practical manner to understanding popular music and how it is put together. Then, he has a book on playing popular piano, but it isn't a beginner's book. Instead, he shows you all manner of licks and phrases and how to use them to create pop style music. You are learning the vocabulary needed to create and play these styles of music, but NOT how to play piano.

The best thing you can do is get software that slows down MP3s and/or WAV files on your computer without changing pitch. Such software also allows you to set a start and end point for a small section of the music so you can loop it over and over as you figure it out. Obviously, you already have a computer, since you are posting here, so just get the appropriate software.

Transcribe! is quite popular and inexpensive:

www.seventhstring.com/xscribe/overview.html


Tony

+1

I think this set might fall short of what you want. It looks like a set of tools that can be helpful in getting you playing by ear, but it doesn't put it together and lead you through it as you might be thinking.

There's probably worse things to spend money on though. Harrison's books are well regarded so it's not like it's a scam.

Definitely NOT a scam and in a completely different league than many of the self-teaching piano programs available these days. Mark Harrison's books and accompanying CDs have been around a long time, used by some music schools, and have withstood the test of time. I just purchased the download versions of the Pop Piano Book and associated MP3s, the ear training books and MP3s, and the music theory books and MP3s (i.e. the entire set). These are for the long term and then you can go back to them as often as desired. They are well worth it. Buying them as PDF/MP3 takes up a lot less room than books, and are easier to use with your piano if you have a laptop or ultrabook or even a tablet.

I am not suggesting everybody must buy these, but for those who really want to learn this material, Mark Harrison's materials are high quality.

Tony

Book of Mark Harrison - highly excellent material, very professional; but it will not replace what you yourself learn by ear from recordings. You will see numerous warehouse of patterns is strictly consistent with the style, but not related to a specific music. On the other hand, you can be absolutely sure that during transcriptions of live music you certainly will make mistakes. And these mistakes - a mandatory part of the learning process.
Thus, the truth is in the middle, between professional printed materials and obligatory transcriptions from sounding music. One supports the other.

+1 !

Thank you very much guys. Tony and Nahum , thanks for letting me know abour your thoughts about these books.


Seems like everybody thinks i should get my own ear training , listening and trying to play some records. So do i pick a song, slow it down and try to play the same thing on my piano? No sheet and no chord chart. Just my ears. Is this how i should do it?



And my level is pretty low yet. Can you name a couple of easy songs that i can at least attempt to play? Easily hearable songs perhaps.

There is no way for me to recognize chords yet. So it mustn't be a chord dominated song. Right?

Give me a place to start guys !

Where would you like to start? Name your first dozen - imagine an ideal world.

Dozen? Hehe. I don't think i can do that. How about starting with a Youtube piano version of a song? Like , instead of starting with the original song? Because it is much harder to hear the piano part when all other instruments are ringing.

John Lennon- Imagine?

Start with something simple and just piano so you are not trying to separate the piano from other instruments. Maybe something played slowly with arpeggiated chords so you are only hearing a very few notes at a time. One suggestion I can make is to check around on Youtube for some solo piano playing, maybe by somebody who is not professional so that the video is doing something easier.

It would be good idea to teach yourself something about basic diatonic harmony - at least how simple chords are built and then the harmonized major scale so that you know what chords go in a particular key. That will go a LONG way to being able to predict what the chords will be.

Then, you can listen for the lowest note in each chord. Once you identify that, and you know what key the song is in, you will have a pretty good idea as to whether the chord is major or minor. If you know how to build basic chords, you can then figure it out.

It is unfortunate that so many people make this stuff unnecessarily complicated when it comes to theory, when for most pop music, it is really simple:

1. There are only 12 notes to work with. These repeat over and over in different octaves. You can readily see that pattern on the piano.
2. There is a "template" of intervals for the major scale, and everything else (even minor scales) are derived from this, as well as chords. The template is "a whole, a whole, a half, a whole, a whole, a whole, a half". Memorize this like a multiplication table. Think of any other scale as being derived from this by modifying other notes in the major scale to get the minor scales.
3. There are "templates" for spelling chords. The most basic of these are the major (1, 3, 5), minor (1, b3, 5), augmented (1, 3, #5), and diminished (1, b3, b5). Four note chords add the 7 (or b7) according to stacking thirds for the harmonized scales.

Build a major scale on each of the 12 notes we have to work with, using the template for the major scales, and you have the major scales in all 12 keys, and now you know the key signatures.

This is the essence of what music theory you will want to know to help you figure out tunes by ear. Whatever else you would need to learn, you should learn as you need it, rather than diving off the deep end into endless discussion about theory. If it doesn't directly apply to what you want to play, forget about it. There is a lot of ego behind spouting all kinds of needless theory. Don't waste your time on it. More than likely, such people can't really PLAY anything using all that.

I really think this is pretty much what you need to get going. Youtube is an excellent source for material to start learning with. There are plenty of plug-ins you can download for your browser (assuming you use Firefox) that will allow you to download Youtube videos to study.

Then, you can install a free program called VLC (www.videolan.org/vlc) that will play these videos, allwing you to slow down and set loop points so you can figure it out by ear.

None of what I have described here will cost you any money. You can find plenty of web sites that will give you more information about music theory. Instead of getting lost in all the nonsense surrounding theory, stick to the stuff I listed above and you will be fine.

Tony

The reason for picking a dozen songs would be to find out what genre you were looking at and what your favourites might be.

My approach would have been to pick out the melody and just add some suitable chords. Once you get the chords you can arrange the voicing to suit.

John Lennon is strong on rhythm but relatively poor on melody - even by his own admission. Compare the melody of Imagine and Help! with McCartney's Michelle or I've Just Seen A Face.

If you still want to do Imagine, can you pick out the melody - maybe just the first four lines? Will you be singing it or playing the melody? If you're singing it what key will you choose?

I kind of agree with Tony B here- that you probably want to put as much effort into learning some theory in addition to your existing plans to ear train.

Trying to learn songs by ear without much understanding of 1) chords, 2) intervals, and 3) keys would be an uphill battle indeed... unless you are hoping to only learn the simplest of melodies. To wit, the first thing I do when trying to learn a new pop song by ear is 1) Figure out the key, and 2) Figure out the chords!

Also, I'm afraid most Pop songs are heavily chord based, so it is something that can't be avoided.

It should not take too long to learn just those 3 theory concepts, and then when you understand and are armed with these patterns, it will make it a lot easier for you to learn by ear.

This may be cheating:

If you Google "Lennon imagine lead sheet" you'll get pointers to quite a few free lead sheets -- chord symbols, and melody. It's the bare structure of the song.

"Realizing" those lead sheets -- figuring out a bass line, and translating chord symbols to block chords and arpeggios -- might be a good place to start. You'll be listening to piano versions for ideas. There's a lot of stuff that's missing from a lead sheet.

Tony, Zrtf , blueston and Charles, thanks guys.

Before starting guys, i need to tell you something. I joined to a band. I was given 5 songs to play(using chord charts). I figured the solo parts of all songs ! I am not bad at it. But there are some arpeggiated parts in songs that i can't get. For example listen to this. After every line , the keyboard guy plays something.

For example let's take 00:38 . He plays some arpeggios for 2 seconds. It is brilliant, but i can't get what he plays.

Em------Am-----G-----D
Yeryüzünde aşk durdukça

This is the chord chart of the part coming right before it.

https://youtu.be/tcuKK6I14g8



Tony , that was a long message. But i assure you that , i have way more theory knowledge than those you wrote. Which is a good thing, right?

zrtf, i will work on it man. Let me try and tell you how it did go.

blueston, to my understanding, i should be familiar with the main styles on the contemporary music. I should probably have played a dozen of them before too. Otherwise there is no way to get what is played in that particular music with your ear. Even if i can figure it out, i am sure i can't play it.

Charles this is a good idea. I will do that too.