Playing from music OR by ear...REMEMBERING??

Hey guys.....I wander what you do...regarding learning songs.
I can go learn a song from music...play it for a while...then after some time...can't remember it all...Yes I am 69 but it seems it has always been like that.
So is learning to play by ear the answer?
And can virtually anyone learn to play by ear??

My sister and I both play. I play by ear. She needs charts. I wish I could read as well as she does. She wishes she could play by ear. So I think the answer is NO.

Although I read music also...
I prefer to just hear the chords in my head and play..

also let me add it gives you more freedom to be more creatively improvisational with your music any way you feel free to ..

I'm just glad I don't hear the chords in Boo's head.
(Just kidding Boo!)

Same here! Sometimes I remember all the words, but when I'm having trouble with the lyrics, I have them on my Netbook PC right in front of me. Accessing them takes less than 2 seconds.

Gary

Do Google search and you will find plenty of books and videos on how to learn to play by ear, (It can be taught to most people but it requires effort) however a good understanding of Music Theory (Chords etc.) helps, along with knowing (Or having quick access to) the circle of fifths.

Some people are just naturals, however in most cases they have problems learning to read music. (If you can do both you are laughing)

Bill

I tried playing by ear, but it was straining my neck muscles, so I went back to using my fingers.
Seriously, no easy answer here. My mother could play any music you put in front of her on the piano, but couldn't play happy birthday without it. She was jealous of me because I could play without music.
I can read music and when I was getting started it helped a lot. Over the years I can hear the notes and chords better in my little pea brain. Only time I would read now is if it were something really strange to me that I'd never heard.

I play by ear, but find myself turning to another band member asking "how does that song start?"

Many songs are similar , especially with instrumentals and ethnic music. Sometimes I'll start one with the intention of doing of different one..age doesn't help.

A LOT longer learning process with new stuff though. All listening and committing to memory, which obviously doesn't always work. Reading and going would be so much easier. It is like learning a foreign language, maybe I'll do it someday.

I'm mostly use and prefer the lyrics with the written chords strategig placed just as we could see in Georgia post.
Or, I simply have a note with chord progression if I it's sogs I don't remember well.

Hi,
Sadly I have to read everything. After playing a tune a number of times I do start to remember it, but, that’s not the same as playing it by ear.

I blame my early music education. It was reading only and Classically oriented. My ear training was terrible well into College. I now use my IPAD for Lead sheets. I've learned to improvise on my own but just don't have that photograpic memory some musicians have.
I did some research a while back for the manager of a music store who didn't believe some of the top entertainers use monitors. Imagine doing the same songs your famous fo at endless shows and still needing a helper "just in case" Makes me feel OK as I don't do the same songs over and over .

+1
Thanks, Bill ...

+2 Bill and Tony, I’m from that school too.

Well,
I guess I'm not alone...back when I had my Yamaha HS-8T organ...friends would come over and I could play many songs by heart....not looking at the music...but then I had a lot better memory! Now seems like I have to use the music to learn a song, then IF I play it often, well OK, but after a chunk of time....got to go back to the music...

And Rikki, sure glad to see your posting on my topic...

I don't take a sheet with me. If I don't know it well enough by memory, I skip until I memorize it in practice. This simplifies my load, big time. My biggest compliment is how I remember 'all that'.

I have the Android and all that, but keep it for practice. I can usually figure stuff out and read fairly well to speed up the process. LOVE jazz fake books and learned chords as an organist (as was my Dad) a long time ago. Never knew how valuable it would be as an arranger player.

Life is good.....

Hi Lee, been a while , what are you playing nowadays.

Stumbled across some old posts from 10 years ago, amazing how many of us are still here.

All of my vocals I had typed out with the chords on top of the lyrics. Can't remember all the lyrics as I started doing vocals late in life.

I always studied the chords to everything I played for the most part and the ones I didn't know I'd have the pianist or guitar play whisper them in my ear as we played the gig and I could get by with most tunes playing melodies and improvising with the Sax.

If you aren't able to listen to a tune and hum it, forget about playing by ear. If you can't do this then you are tone deaf.
You must have an ear.

I’ve got lyrics for all songs on my keyboard monitor. For some reason, I can remember the melody once I see the words.

I usually forget intros and first lines but once going it comes back. I've played by ear for as long as I can remember. I'm also classically trained so I can read as well although I'm not that good.

I think I learn tunes in terms of intervals and chord "shapes" because it I know a tune sufficiently to have a go at playing it at all then I can play it in any required key. Strangely can't do this with classical stuff that I've memorized.

You can train your ears. Until my early 20's I had real trouble decoding jazzier chords especially where the bass bears little relation to the rest of the notes like 9ths, 11th and such. This changed after I got an Elton John songbook. As he uses a selection of such chords I found that playing songs from the music enabled me to "hear" the chords. Admittedly we are not talking Oscar Petersen.....

What this also taught me was that a lot of pop sheet music, and indeed chords you find on the web, are wrong. Not necessarily by a lot,but wrong nevertgheless. This includes that Elton John book, by the way. That must have been someone's transcription of the songs as Sir EJ doesn't read music.

I was a slave to the fakebook for many years until I read that one must trust their ears and, also, trust your brain to develop finger memory. I am fortunate to have a good ear, and can easily remember each note in most songs I have heard. My problem, of coarse, was to translate it from my brain to the keyboard. Hearing intervals accurately was my first step, followed by learning some theory and the circle of fifths. In simple terms, if you know the intervals and the scales, you are on your way to playing the melody. The rest will help with chord progressions.

I know this is a very simple approach from a simple, self taught man, but it's a start. The biggest hurdle for me is psychological; I want to hang on to my security blanket(sheet music).

Maybe this will help here

Have fun

Bill

I play everything by ear which allows me to choose any key I want
to play the song in.One thing I can`t do is sight read a piece of
music that I`ve never seen and don`t know the song,I would need a
lot of time to sort it out.

Good find, Bill. Very informative.

Gary

I'm both.....formally trained but play by ear also. I've always had a pretty good ear, but lately using a friend's exercise has improved my ear 1,000%. And I wasn't doing the exercise to improve my ear. It just happened.

The exercise is simple as pie. Just make up a melody line and play it VERY slowly (VERY SLOWLY) one note at a time, but.......think "pitch"...where you want the next note to fall according to the melody you hear in your head. You're on a C note and you can hear in your mind the pitch of the next note. Do you think it would it be a 2nd, 3rd, a suspended 4th, an augmented 5th, dominant 7th, flatted 9th, etc. Take a few seconds and then go for it. Hit the note you think it is. It will probably be wrong, but your mind will hear that's it's "wrong." The next time you're in that situation, your mind will remember the "wrong" note and NOT go there again. Eventually you'll start hearing the "correct" interval and your fingers will automatically go to the right place. It's taken me about 3-4 months now of doing this religiously every day, but now I can recognize intervals clearly AND quickly. As in most endeavors, nothing happens for quite a while and then one day it ALL happens. One day your pitch recognition becomes industrial strength almost overnight if you keep at it regularly.

I actually started doing the exercise because I'm fascinated with how horn players from the classic band band era improvise so easily...how they just hear in their heads what they want to play, and.......they play it. So I started listening to what they were doing and I began improvising very slowly.....one note at a time to replicate what they were doing at fast speeds.

Most of you know already I've always been into "power of the mind" principles with many things in addition to music. There's two well-known books called "The Inner Game of Tennis" and "The Inner Game of Music." They both deal with "Power of the Mind" principles as applied to tennis and musicians. Also.....Maxwell Maltz states in his book "Psycho Cybernetics" the following, which is exactly the way it is: "You will never be great at ANYTHING (that includes music) until you believe in your mind that "you are GREAT." A person who wins millions in the lottery, is still not rich until he finally believes in his mind that he is rich. It took me many years to fully understand that and apply it to music!

While I always find your insights interesting, I have to wonder about the last statement in "Psycho Cybernetics". I have played with people that think they are great, but in reality, stink. Not only that, they never improve. I, on the other hand, think I am good, but not great. The difference is that I improve at something I am working at every day.

Thanks for the video link on playing by ear.

A modern days keyboard course learns the pupils many things..

There are excersises for :

- playing by ear
- reading music and playing as you read a new piece
- improvising
- memmorising your parts
- playing piano style, with left hand bass, or just 2 hands
- playing keyboard style with left hand chords
- improving skills trough playing etudes and other piano excersises
- playing in a band
- recording your own music, and playing on top of it
- creating styles, midi files and other backings
- using an arpeggiator
- reproducing the sound of acoustic instruments like guitar, woodwinds and brass on your keyboard
- playing keys and singing on top of that (even using VH )
- playing organ
- mixing music
- different kinds of dsp and how to use them.
- different kinds of synthesis

There are so many things a keyboardist meeds to know and do..
Both playing by ear as well as playing from sheetmusic belong to that..

There is allways something to improve..
There is no instrument as versatile as a keyboard..

Wow, A lot of superb information, and a big variance on what people are doing. A lot for me to digest and try...MANY THANKS and keep it coming as I think in some small way it could help others here too.....

Bachus, can you recommend a course that you described?? I have a few, but nothing that good. After a few years not having a keyboard, I am saving for a Genos.....so will be starting up again soon. I used to play organ, so chords I get.

Rikki, no keyboard right now, getting a Genos soon!....glad your doing well, yep, a lot of us still here.

I watch a lot of XSTV and see that at a lot of concerts with the big stars are using, what at first looks like sound monitors, out in front of them. When I look closer, I see that these are indeed teleprompters with the lyrics and chords scrolling by. I noticed that Steve Winwood had an iPad on his Hammond with lyrics that he would scroll thru.

Billy Joel and Brian Wilson both have what look like special monitors for viewing lyrics and arrangements.

I personally use an iPad Pro for viewing all my music and now only have to bring my iPad to gigs and jam sessions rather than a milk carton container filled with sheet music. I will never be stumped again. I find that having this safety net is worth the self criticism and guilt of feeling dependent of having sheet music to jog my memory.

I have seen major artists from Frank Sinatra to Billy Joel using monitors for their lyrics ...
I absolutely DO NOT understand the 'stigma' or 'guilt' associated with using music sheets, laptops, tablets, WHATEVER, for lyrics and/or chord progressions ...
More power to the 'purists' who state they never use anything but their memory for lyrics and chords but no one will ever convince me that haven't more than once changed a lyric line or chord progression because their mind went blank for a second ...
I use the Pro12 tablet instead of music sheets and have absolutely no problem with that ... I would rather have it in front of me when I need it than have to fumble through a lyric or chord progression
To each his own ...

Its not one course...
My piano/keyboard teacher uses a lot of different resources to archieve all of this...
The last few years i have been trying to concentrate on piano mostly...

You will not find this in a single printed course...

It's all about stage presence .... as a solo performer you need to look at the audience and have eye contact & smiling, enjoying yourself etc, not have their head and eyes buried in a tablet, book, charts, etc, etc, for the lyrics and music it just don't look right to the audiences view of you as a OMB ...... yes it might ok when your in the background playing with others, your not the focal point of the performance,...but at the front of the house it's a no no in my book.

Or, if you are not so gifted, learn to read ahead with a side glance.

I used to video myself performing to see what I looked like if I was in the audience...try it and see it certainly does help you fine tune your stage presence..good luck

Donny PLEASE, nobody is talking about having "their head and eyes buried in a tablet, book, charts, etc, etc, for the lyrics and music ..." I am constantly interacting with the audience, and when I am no longer having a good time doing this I will hang it up ...I'm talking about using it as a reference ... and if it was OK for Sinatra, I think it's OK for me ...

Tony only MY opinion ....

Yes, but sometimes an opinion comes off as a lecture ...
It's all good ... we're good ...

Lee, like Bill Clinton said, "It depends on what your definition of "some time" is. Unless we have played our songs so often that it has sunk into muscle memory, then it will fade sooner than we would like. When I have a song memorized into my finger muscle memory, my mind can actually go into highway hypnosis, where my mind can drift off, and my fingers are still playing accurately, and I can't believe my finger are playing without me for a stretch. Of course, such episodes defeat one of my loves of music, which is to use it for active meditation. However, like meditation, the monkey mind has to be perpetually guided back to centered focus. My learning songs by ear, involves a lot of trial and error (“In search of the lost chord”) so I think I would benefit from learning songs by sheets. It's all about reinforcing learning and memory. Learning to read music better, is on my bucket list. In answer to, "Can anyone learn to play by ear?" I don't think so. We all know some people that are "tone deaf" and cannot sing or whistle a tune. Some people cannot discriminate pitches well. That's certainly a challenge if you want to be a musician.

Under the heading of "Its a funny old game"....

At times I play bass pedals. If I hit a complete mental block when playing a tune from memory, to such an extent that i have to stop playing with my hands, I continue playing the correct bass with my feet even though I am not remembering the chord structure. Then my brain resets, I remember where i am in the tune and carry on at the right place.

My drummer colleague reckons it's something to do with muscle memory. He says he knows I'm going to go blank about 10 seconds beforehand because my playing sounds less relaxed than usual!

I attended a “Play by Ear” course in a music store where I was tuning their pianos. He said, “If you can whistle or hum the melody of a song you can play by ear”. The course was being advertised in T.V.

So what is left? Chords and how they progress through a song; commonly called Chord Progressions. A good part of the 50’s music can be player with three or four chords. That means If I learn the Chord Progression I can play at least 50 to 100 songs by ear. Once you sing, whistle, or hum the melody you will find which chord sounds best.

1-I believe that you cannot give a song your best until it is memorized the chord progression – you will find the melody. Ex. The song More. A quick glance at the music and I memorized the song. The first part of the song used a Chord Progression that I had seen in many times. The second part of the song had another popular Chord Progression that I had seen man times. And so the story goes on.

2-Not being able to read music it is like walking into a library filled with knowledge and not being able to access any of it.
I believe that this is a subject that can help many who visit here – if we all post our ideas of “How To” it will help many play/perform better.

John C.

stop saying to yourself I CAN't DO THAT,...playing by ear is all about you interpreting the music in your own way.....just memorizing isn't really enough..you have to play the song effortlessly sometimes different every time because you can playing by ear that's the beauty of it vs the written chart if your playing alone, everyone cannot do it, but those who do enjoy the benefits of walking alone without your eyes glues to a page all the time,.....it's a different story when playing with others and you all have to be in sync playing the right parts etc,...

lets face it there is NO magic pill for playing by ear...sit down every day WITHOUT THE MUSIC in front of you, and play your songs, over and over again, only repetition which might take years so what? where you going is the key to this?.... you will get the right results and you will be a better player because of it,...don't give up, make your mistakes, forgetfulness, over and over, every day, ....but eventually you will start to be able to just sit down and play songs, sing, with your mind not a chart,....music is a beautiful journey when it's played & created thru your soul,....go for it and good luck....
don't be lazy try it!

I agree, fully, with Donny. I have never been able to fully read the dots and transmit the information to my hands. However, I have always been able to merely listen to a song and determine the chord progression and after a couple practice shots, I was usually able to play and sing the song. Granted, there are likely lots of transition chords that I missed along the way, but they eventually came into play. Now, I freely admit that it is rare when I play a song in the written chords. However, that is only because those chords are often well out of my vocal range, and I depend heavily on my vocals for every performance. So, in my case, that library is already in my head and it's just a matter of extracting the information from my aging brain and transmitting that information to my fingers.

All the best,

Gary

Reading is a necessity if you work studio sessions. That being said, much work is based on uncharted (read "very fast") variations on the lead line.

A word of caution: I sometimes prepare a "cheat-sheet", either electronic or paper. If I don't throw the card away after the first couple of performances, that damn card will get yellow and fall apart many years later, without m ever learning it.

Reading is GREAT, but it's a tool, not a clutch.

The head of the jazz department at the University of Kentucky tried to get a job at the club where I did a duo with a drummer (on B-3).

He pulled out his charts. I called a tune he didn't have. IO sent him home.

R.

Russ, I agree with the studio sessions, however, I don't have worry about that part of the business - never did.

Most of the readers I know personally, many of whom are excellent readers, cannot play a note without having the dots in front of them. Additionally, they playing is often very stilted and regimented sounding - there was no emotion or feeling whatsoever in their performance. Audiences pick this up instantly, IMO.

The vast majority of the entertainers I've come across during the past 60 years never had a piece of sheet music in front of them while performing on stage. They never had to think twice about any song someone requested, and either they knew it, or they did not. If they knew the song, they fired right up and began playing and singing the song, and their audiences loved every note and word. Ironically, many of these folks were excellent readers and highly trained musicians, but you would never have known it when they were on stage.

All the best,

Gary

BUT....we're starting to conflate things. It's not one or the other; read or by ear. There is no reason they have to be mutually exclusive. I believe that every musician is better served by being able to read and read fluently. They should not only be able to read standard sheets but 'fake' sheets as well. Believe me, the guys and gals coming out of Juliard and yes, even Berkelee, can both read it and fake it, especially the jazz guys. When you IMPROVISE, you ARE playing 'by ear'. It may be within a structure but it's not what's written on the sheet.

There is nothing I'd like better than to be able to read better. I truly believe that all these great players that can play anything as long as the music is in front of them but can't play 'mary had a little lamb' by ear, are either talentless OR (and most likely) victims of the teachers that trained them. For those of you that were formally trained, how many of your teachers included ear training as part of your lessons? I'm guessing less than half. Heck, I even know of teachers that actively DISCOURAGE students from playing by ear, thinking that it detracts from the formal learning regimen.

There is no question in my mind that formal training is going to produce a much more technically proficient musician. Practicing those scales (in all the keys), understanding the relationship between chords, chord recognition, theory, etc., etc., and just the discipline required to prepare for all those inevitable kidde concerts, has GOT to have it's benefits. Sure, there are always going to be the Errol Garner's and Jimmy Smiths (neither could read music), but those guys are 1 in a million. So unless you think you're also 1 in a million, you probably are not going to reach that level without a little outside assistance. JMO.

chas

The recorder section of my E80 has a feature called Minus one.
This mutes the melody line of a midifile for you to play it using whatever instrument you like.This is like playing by ear because you have to memorise the melody before attempting to play it.I have tried it here with a song called One moment in time using a piano.It was an intersting challenge because I didn`t know the song but I liked it.