I'm posting this as a sort of extention to the earlier post on perfect pitch. Hopefully this will help explain why it is that "perfect pitch" is of relatively little value to the pianist and encourage come pianists to share their ideas on playing by ear.

Many people believe that "playing by ear" is some magical way of knowing what the notes to a song are without reading them. It is actually much more down to earth than that. First of all, "by ear" is really not a good way to refer to it as it is actually based more on conceptual memory, vision and hand memory than "the ear." Let me give some examples.

When someone who can "play by ear" hears a song, they do not hear a bunch of notes and think "that one's a B, and that one's an F#, etc.", but rather separate the song into a number of aspects, just as one might separate a painting into theme, colors, perspective, etc. One thing a player by ear does is know the types of chords (major, minor, etc.) by their sound. This is learned through experience. Another level is knowing the position of chords in what might be called a "universal key." For example, going from G to C in the key of G is the same, musically, as going from A to D in the key of D, and the musician "hears" this as the same thing. These two chord changes have the same "quality" within the context of any key. Another level is knowing which chords are in which "position" in a given key. The IIm chord in C is Dm, in G is Am, etc.
There are two ways of knowing the relative positions of notes - relative to the tonic, and relative to any other note in the key. A fundmentally different skill, but of course related in the mind, is hand memory - the skill of the hand performing various actions automatically without thinking about it. A particular chord inversion is something the experienced pianist does as easily as you write the word "can" without thinking about it. The same basic idea is involved with particular fingerings of notes. These are also "hand memorized."

Now to "playing by ear." When a musician wants to "play a song by ear," he "hears" the song in his head and effortlessly brings all of the things in the paragraph above into play. In the paragraph above I said that the musician "separates" the song into these aspects. That is really just a way of talking about it. The thing to understand is that he or she is not actively thinking, "Now I'm thinking about this chord, now my hand is performing these motions." It's as effortless as your writing a sentence you've heard but never written. The various aspects come into play automatically, and differently in every song, since every song is different. Yet there are places when songs are similar, and the musician takes advantage of this. There are a relatively few basic chord changes and chord progressions, and the experienced musician knows these like the back of his hand. The "12 bar blues" is a good example of one of these progressions.

These abilities are not some inborn ability, but rather are skills that are developed through practice in both playing and listening. Of course the person's natural ability does play a part, but it is still very much a matter of acquired skill.

Perhaps one of the most important observations to make about playing by ear is that the musician is not even aware of what notes he is playing! Of course, if he stops he knows that this one's a B and that one's a D. But when he's actually playing the note names are absolutely irrelevant, just as the color names are irrelevant to the painter as he is creating. Another thing to understand is that the musician is not necessarily even aware that he is learning these skills on a conscious level. He doesn't think, "now my hand is learning this chord fingering, now I'm learning to associate that chord change in this key with that fingering," etc. It's very "organic," as it were.

I could go on and on about this, but I hope I've given the non-"player by ear" an idea of what it actually entails. As you can see, knowing the pitch of a given note without a pitch reference has nothing to do with playing by ear.


My experience in playing by ear is mostly on the guitar. Perhaps some pianists can contribute their perspectives on playing the piano by ear.

"These abilities are not some inborn ability, but rather are skills that are developed through practice in both playing and listening. Of course the person's natural ability does play a part, but it is still very much a matter of acquired skill."

After my 6-year old daughter, who had no previous muscial training, had been taking lessons for about 3 weeks, she began playing her sister's suzuki violin repetoire on the piano pretty much error free. A few weeks later, she was adding simple left hand accompiament to the tunes.

The 9-year old violin player, began playing simple tunes without a score about 2 weeks into her violin lessons. Again, she had no previous training. I am not a musician and never fostered a musical environment for these girls.

I don't know where this ability came from, but it was hardly acquired.

I'm wondering if they have perfect pitch. The younger is able to sing an A note on demand and identifies C in every octave. On the other hand she consistently mixes up F and G.

The older one can't name any notes, but on hearing any key on the piano, can instantly reproduce it on the violin. I've heard it is virtually impossible to have perfect pitch if you started musical training after age 6 and she didn't start until age 9.

Your girls have natural ability, and likely some degree of perfect pitch, but they still had to aquire the nuts and bolts. They weren't born with some special piano gene, or a different type of ear. They learned fast because the are smart.

All talent is to me is I.Q. in the relevant areas mixed withe sufficient interest in the subject.

One thing to keep in mind is that the piano and violin are linear instruments, making the association of musical pitch and physical location relatively natural. You have to remember that they have (I assume) heard music since they were born. We learn to arrange things in rows and lines at a very early age, and we can apply these basic ideas to new circumstances. Likely they are been picking up musical and spatial "ideas" from hearing music, and the instruments provided them with a way to express abilities ther were already developing in their minds. What they are excelling at is not perfect pitch but rather the association of musical distance with spatial arrangement (the keys on the piano, the fingering on the violin). It's hard to know how, and to what extent, perfect pitch is associated with musical ability. It may be that there are millions of non-musical people out there who have perfect pitch, but no one will ever know. It would be an interesting thing to do a study on.

Playing by ear is a matter of interval-recognition, not note recognition.

I agree. I've been playing by ear for 50 years (as well as sight reading). I can nearly always get the chord changes for most pop songs, but sometimes fumble for the correct notes. Even though I do hear the song in my head. I do not have perfect pitch, but some degree of relative pitch I think.

MrPianoTuner, Bravo. I couldn't have said it better myself! That's a 100% accurate description of my musical abilities.

Reference to MrPianoTuner.

In my view this is one of the finest explanations of how I have played since a child.(Now 78) The pitch matter is rather obscure as you either play the correct notes or not, surely?

I can sit here at the PC keyboard and think of one of many of my jazz numbers I play and run it over in the mind only. Not sing it, or whistle it as can do neither in tune. But I sure can get it right on the piano.

I have always substituted a singing non-ability to the easy way of playing music from the connection between the memory of the song/or music to the correct piano keys/chords for that
composition.

Again on the pitch matter I have really no idea wether or not I have any type of pitch.

I have more or less complete knowledge in the sub-conscious brain of what sounds come from any single or combination of notes on the piano. Is that sense to anyone else please?

Please tell me if some people cannot hear when they play wrong notes. Tone deaf? how do they manage?

Alan

When I started playing by ear, I sometimes didn't recognize wrong tones. Sure you recognize them when you play along with a recording, but if you try to recall the melody from your head then in the beginning you can easily play the wrong keys on the piano and think they are right.

I blame it on a "lazy ear", not on actual tone deafness. (Someone who is truly tone deaf cannot appreciate music at all.) Only after playing dozens of songs this way does the ear begin to listen actively and does your relative pitch improve.

No doubt that after a lot of playing your (subconscious) mind also stores the various sound combinations: that is how I learned to choose the proper chords while playing melody on-the-fly.

Matthijs,and others.

Some songs/music are very difficult to remember as they have complicated sounds, one that comes to mind is 'Laura'. Anyone tried that one by ear. So quite how we know without a scientific analysis what is our pitch knowledge, is any ones guess.

I have no music theory either except to know what all the piano notes are called. And never read any score except to learn tonic-sol-far as a child.

This way of playing (By ear) is feasable as any follower of Erroll Garner will testify.

Alan

PS, if you like the guitar John Pizzorelli and his father are very good jazz style virtuoso's. have been on Montreal Jazz Festival presentations via TV broadcasts on Sky in UK.

I have always been puzzled by this whole area and I struggle greatly with playing piano by ear.

Background

I can read music and sight read piano scores well (not at Diploma level sadly but plenty good enough for everyday use)
I can play guitar, even quite complex guitar runs and chords, quite quickly by ear (with some trial and error)
I understand at least the rudiments of music theory and chord structure - though it was 25 years ago

So why can't I play piano by ear?

I can play a melody line by ear quite easily. I can embellish it because that is just a skill acquired through playing lots of classical pieces.

But I have to really work at putting together any kind of half decent left hand accompaniment.

Alan, I was intrigued by your statement that you can hear in your head the sound that combinations of notes will make. How complex are these note combinations that you can visualise. I can picture simple triads and 7 chords, major and minor, but I start to struggle beyond that.

If for example I take a typical Chopin Nocturne and look at the score, I can work out the melody in my head. The pitch may be slightly of but the rhythm and intervals are clear enough. However, when I look at the oft used left hand pattern of a bass note and then two ascending chords, I find it next to impossible to picture the sound for a piece that I don't already know. If I had perfect pitch then presumably I would be able to do this.

I feel I have rather meandered off track in this post. I suppose in essence I would like to acquire the knack of playing by ear as some pianists appear to do very well.

Adrian

YES YES YES

I was seriously about to type the same exact thing, but you did it better

Adrian - There are three related, yet different things here that you mentioned. First is reading music, which is what I like to refer to as the musical version of paint-by-number. Another way of thinking of it is reading phonetically without knowing what the words mean. This has nothing whatsoever to do with playing by ear.

Secondly, there is the technical ability to play particular pieces. This is primarily "hand memorization."

Thirdly, there is the theoretical matter of scales, chords, etc.

Playing by ear is the connection of an inner sense of musical distances (relative musical distance, distance from the tonic, harmonic intervals such as 3rds,etc., the sounds of chords, etc.) to the "musical words" -the gazzions of motions your hands have learned through the experience of playing. Unfortunately, I don't know how to talk about the "inner sense" of musical distance that connects these things, any more than I can talk about what happens in between my thinking what's 7 X 5 and soon thinking 35. All I can talk about is what I was doing as I learned it. The first thing I learned was the riff from Day Tripper. Other than a couple of chords, it was the first thing I ever learned. It took me about two days to figure it out. But what was happening was that my mind, through trial and error (and having absolutely nothing to do with theory or "perfect pitch") was learning to associate musical distance with places I put my fingers. I really think that the key to playing by ear - at least in my case - was figuring things out for myself. There were times when I would play a phrase on my cassette player, stop it, and try a few notes. I'd get it wrong. I'd rewind and do it again - and again - and again. (It's exactly what kids on skateboards do when they try to do some trick over and over.) I didn't know what a major scale was. I didn't know what a whole or half step was. I didn't know what a 3rd was. HERE'S THE IMPORTANT THING! When I finally did learn what a 3rd was I thought - "I know what that is! I've been doing that for a year and half!" It's like learning to spell a word you've been using for years. It's simply a matter of finding a name, a way to talk about something you've internalized through practice and experience. The same goes for chords. Long before I knew anything theoretical about a major chord, I knew one when I heard one. It's not unlike a child knowing the difference between sweet and salty before he knows what sugar and salt are. Imagine that you never had the experience of actually TASTING sugar or salt, but learned all about chemicals, how to spell the words, etc. Then along comes someone who "knows them when they taste them" and you can't figure out how they do it. They do it because they knew, from experience, what sweet and salty REALLY ARE - the experience of taste. The same goes for all of these musical things - they are something you experience interally while doing music, figuring things out, memorizing, etc.

Too often people try to do it the other way around. They learn all this theoretical stuff, but they don't have anything in their mind to connect it to, and so it's just an abstract idea that they can only associate with other abstract ideas.

I think that learning to play by ear is something you need to do, or at least start to do, before the age of 19 or 20. It's not unlike learning a language or advanced math. I'm not saying it can't be done, but I think it's a realistic generalization. You go and find 1,000 guitarist who can play by ear and I'll bet you anything that the vast majority started playing between the ages of 15 and 17.

I guess what I'm getting at is, playing by ear isn't something you "learn to do." Rather, it's something that HAPPENS NATURALLY when you spend lots of time figuring things out the hard way. Again, this is just my experience.

Maybe we have a different opinion on what playing by ear means, but I'm 30 years old and I just learned to play by ear recently, just like many other members of Piano Magic, many of which are much older than me and who have never even played before. So with that part of your post I have to disagree.

Originally posted by Mahlzeit :
I am happy to hear this - I'm 42 and I would still like to learn it

I am a bit like AJB, I think - I'm an ok sightreader for my level - I can sing from the score both soprano and alto-part if its not very complex harmony - I can hear the wrong notes in music that I am familiar with like Mozart - Bach and Chopin - but no chance that I can play by ear.

I can easily get down the RH melody line - but if I want to play LH chords or to sing the melody and play only chords I have to "analyze" the melody - find the right scale the II, IV, V chords and so on and my playing still sounds very "immature" and terribly boring.

Ragnhild

hey Ragnhild

you're the perfect age

I started at 41

regards


Lee

I'm sure some people learn to play by ear after the age of twenty, just as some people learn foreign languages and advanced math after that age. Yet it is common knowledge that young people learn these types of things much quicker than older people. I see it with customers all the time - when parents and their kids take lessons at the same time, and the kids are in book 53 before the parent is through book one. I don't mean to discourage anyone - I'm just making observations.

Another thing to consider is how you started in music to begin with. Pretty much all guitar players play by ear. The two dimensional layout of the strings and fret board are not conducive to sight reading. On the other hadn, chords and scales make up patterns that are easily recognizable on the guitar. They are the same in every key, if you discount open strings. I dooubt there is an instrument better suited to teaching theory than the guitar since the layout is so intuitive in this area.

A guitar player moving to piano is going to already have all the knowledge for ear playing, and just needs to translate it to the new "user interface". On the other hand, a complicated score will bewilder him.

Playing in a pop style arena is also more condicive to ear playing. If that is your background, then it will seem easiest.

I would guess that those of us that play classical extensively are the best sight readers. They are often the poorest ear players. This is just because in the beginning they approached the instrument that way.

The youth thing has merit. It is scientifically factual the children absorb knowledge faster than adults. Consider that we become fluent in our language in maybe 2 to 3 years doing nothing but being around other speakers. Yet an average adult actually taking lessons in a language will not do as well.

I, for one, have developed my ear, or rather my relative pitch recognition skills, significantly since I was 20 - actually since I was 35, (12 years ago). I always wanted to train my ear better but found it very difficult. With the advent of music software that has changed.
The software that has helped me most is called EarMaster, out of a small shop in Denmark I believe. I found version 4 to be much better than version 5. I use melodic dictation drills almost exclusively. I listen to 5 or 7 note chromatic sequences and try to pick them out in one or two listenings. It's very difficult at first but also rewarding when you make progress. It's really nice when you can hear a 7 note sequence of random chromatic pitches at about 65mm and then notate it on the screen in one try.

Beginners would need to start with much easier drills but over time, the skill can be learned, just like playing the piano. Plus, even small amounts of progress can increase your perceptive abilities noticeably.

I have been away from this topic but tend to see MrPianoTuner and his theories of by ear playing something I recognise. This subject means different things to different people.

I have said this before. I know what sound will come from playing any note or chord by being a master of the keyboard. You have instant ability to play these notes automatically because you know from memory what sounds will come from these notes/chords/and any other combination of notes. There are not that many anyhow. They can all be found in the 12 tones and semi tones of an octave. Chords of course produce harmonics and the instrument is capable of great musical events, as we all know.

Having mastered the sounds of the 12 single notes as a child it was then up to the sounds I learnt from the recordings and the radio, to have the music I wished to play in the head. My mother helped my to pick out tunes. Once I got the memory of popular songs I would soon find them on the keyboard.

Yes, I agree pitch recognition is an abstract and I had not really thought about it at all. Though someone once told me I had absolute pitch.

I cannot sing at all though I know how a piece of music should sound I use the piano to make the music instead of my vocal chords.

I have edited this post.

Alan