Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Playing piano by ear - method?

Hello everyone. I've been taking piano lessons for 8 years, and recently switched to violin. I don't want to stop playing piano though, and I think it's time for me to learn how to play piano by ear. Do you have any suggestions how I should do it? I've been playing by sheets the whole time. I consider myself proficient in that area. But I really need help with developping the ability to play piano by ear, which I would really like. The music style isn't necessarily classic music.

Thanks everyone.

The most important thing is to learn the l -lV - and V chords. So in the Key of C Major you have these chords: C Major, F Major, and G Major.

But to make these chords more modern, we turn them into seventh chords ... C Major 7, F Major 7, and G 7.

Play the above 3 chords over and over and you will do more for your ear playing then most books will teach you. It's also good to learn how to play the l - lV - V chords in all 12 keys.

Thanks for your response! I'll get right to it.

Do you know the course Chordpiano? http://www.chordpiano.com/
Link is safe.
Is it worth the purchase, or can be information be found elsewhere on the Internet?

Welcome to the forum, Hixy.

If you search the Adult Beginners forum for information about the "Piano Magic" program, you'll find there are lots of enthusiastic fans of it there. (Check out Seaside Lee's posts and recordings... he's an example of somebody who's playing very well by ear.) The only thing I'd worry about in your case is that it is designed for people starting off in piano, which you obviously aren't. But the guy who runs the program is very helpful and would probably be happy to chat with you to help you decide if it would be a useful program for you.

Hello,

there's no quick method for that, you just have to start playing by ear. Take for example famous pop hits, typically from the 80's as they were of good compositional quality in general. In the beginning, use songs in just in key without modulations. Try to play the melody just by listening. If you can't, download a midi file of the song and by some computer program transform it into sheet music. Then when you know the melody, analyse it, i.e. think about the relation between the notes and the key's tonic. Typically you'll be able with a little practise to recognise things like "it starts on the fifth and then it goes up a major sixth to get to the key's major third".

When you've reached a certain ability to think about the tones relative to the tonic, you are ready to transpose the melodies to all keys. Apart from learning all the keys really well, it actually forces you to think relatively because it would be to much work for the brain otherwise. Bach used this method of always playing melodies in all keys.

Next step, it you haven't already done this is to play the chords along with the melody. Same here, try to figure it out just listening and if too difficult read them. And also think relatively to the tonic (functional analysis). It's very useful to read up on musical harmony theory. I recommend "Harmony in Western Music" by Richard Franko Goldman.

You should try to listen to how melody notes sound over chords. By playing random chords and notes whith your eyes shut, try to guess the interval between the chords tonic and the melody note that you play in your right hand.