Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Play By Ear... how to master it coming from play by sheet?

With piano, I always learn by sheet music for some time, and I can play and pick up sheet music. I can never play by ear.
What is the best way to be able to play by ear? Are there youtube videos (or other resources) that are really good or effective at getting to be good at playing by ear and being able to invent chords to match songs, etc.?

My perception of playing by ear is to be able to reproduce a melody with L accompaniment that would sound nicely but not necessarily 100% copy of the original.

If you learned a piece of music like a Mozart piano Sonata using a sheet and reproduced it note-for-note without the sheet, this is just good memory. Playing by ear would be playing the melody of a Mozart Sonata and filling in the L accompaniment into something that would sound like him you go. More like Jazz improvisation.

Once went to a party. A professional viola player was there playing the piano. What he played was a tune that sounded like something written by Rachmaninoff but he improvised it on the spot. When you learned a piece by reading off the page many times before playing without the sheet you're still learning from the sheet. If you listen to a song like "Stairway to Heaven" on the radio and reproduced the melody on a piano with added L accompaniment, this is playing by ear. You haven't read a single note off a page besides trying to reproduce something that sounds like the original.

I'm not sure if there is any 'best way' to learn how to play by ear. I'm also not sure if everyone can naturally do it. It may be more of an inherent trait that you either have or don't.

Reading sheet music is very difficult for me. It always has been no-matter how much I practice. It gets a little better with a LOT of effort, but not much. I've analyzed this closely and have concluded that what I'm about to play (as notated in the written score) is not what I'm hearing in my head at that moment and so as a result I don't end up playing what is written. I improvise instead playing what I'd rather hear instead of what is written. I guess I could force myself to only play exactly what was written, but I would have so much conflict in my head as a result I'd probably lose my place constantly and end up not playing anything.

The exact opposite situation may exist for others who can perform a piece beautifully when reading the written score, but without it, the piece completely falls apart. I think it really just depends on which method comes more naturally to you.

The best simple advice I could offer up is to never play a piece exactly the same way twice. Always try to change/mix it up in some small way, even if it means just changing a few notes here or there or just playing the piece with a slightly different mood to it. If you keep doing this, over time you will notice that you will be able to play the piece with many slight variations to it. If you keep doing this, especially with different pieces, you will start discovering all kinds of new sounds, fills, endings etc that you will be able to inject into other pieces and before you know it, you will be able to embellish/improvise the music you are playing without even thinking about it because you will start to hear all of these 'alternative' ways to play something in your head as you are playing it even though it's not the way the score is written.

Over time, this may become easier and more natural to do; or it may not. It just depends on the inherent- natural musical traits you posses. Like I said, I suck at sight-reading but can do okay playing by ear. Others may be just the opposite. It just depends.

Don't give up trying though as even slight improvements can be hugely beneficial at times. (Like when you lose your place...in a LIVE recital!). No better time to be able to 'wing it',...... at least until you find your place again!

For me its the other way round. Playing by ear is natural for me but I'm still getting to grips with sheet reading.

Anyone can learn to play by ear. That's what a kid would do when given a new toy (as doubtless many kids would be, in slightly less than a month's time ) of a dinky little keyboard. He would play around with it, trying out random keys until he gets the hang of the fact that there is a logic to the way the white keys go, and discover where the 'do' in do-re-mi (assuming he's seen The Sound of Music) starts from, and start trying to play familiar tunes on it.

Of course, he'll just be trying to play one-finger notes first, and he might never progress beyond that......but we adults can do better, and start adding stuff in LH, possibly trying out various combinations of notes until we find the ones that fit the melody.

So, it's evident that the first pre-requisite is familiarity with the keyboard, otherwise you'll just keep trying out random notes until you come upon the right ones by accident. And it's obvious that unless you can 'hear' in your mind what it is you want to play, you cannot play it - therefore aural skills are a must. Keep developing it. When you've been around as long as I have (which is very long, as I'm old & grizzled ), you notice a few things - like the fact that many people (many more men than women) can't tell the difference between a major sixth (or sometimes a perfect 5th, or even a 4th) and an octave, as evidenced by the way they sing "Happy Birthday". Can you play the tune of Happy Birthday in C major by ear, straight off, without 'trying out' on the piano first? Do you instantly know the intervals between the notes? What about the intervals between the notes of The Stars & Stripes Forever - and can you play it accurately first time (again, in C major - do everything in C major first)?

Only after you've got that easily - meaning that if someone sings a short diatonic tune in a major key to you that you've never heard before, you can instantly reproduce it on the piano in C major (if you have perfect pitch, you're probably wondering what I'm harping on about, because you'll 'cheat' without thinking about it.....) - you can start to think about what harmony will fit the tune. Again, it's all about developing the ear. Can you 'hear' in your mind the harmony for Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star? (There are only three different chords required). You might have to sing (or whistle or hum) it aloud first.

Therefore, you also need to know the basics of harmony. With just I, ii, IV, V, VI you can harmonize most tunes, so you need to know what they sound like (again, use C major for everything) in different progressions.

Remember, you can never train your ears enough. My aural skills improved very quickly when I moved to a new high school where we had daily weekday school assemblies, when hymns were sung to the accompaniment of the pipe organ. While everyone around me were singing the tune, I was trying to pick out the bass line and singing it instead (softly, of course ) and trying to work out what the harmony was (not as straightforward as just working it out from the bass note, as chord inversions are frequently used in hymns). And my aural skills improved even more when I joined the school choir, where sight-singing was expected. By then I could easily play pop songs by ear (no internet then, so no easy access to sheet music, therefore that was the only way I could play them on the piano), complete with harmony, which I played around with by adding frilly stuff (often derived from Chopin and Mozart ).

Therefore:
1) Develop aural skills.
2) Get very familiar with the keyboard (play around on it - anything that comes to mind - with no sheet music in sight).
3) Learn basic harmony.
4) Develop more aural skills.......

Bennevis got a lot of the important things about playing by ear. And it can be developed for sure. When I started playing guitar in the early 80s there were very few even remotely accurate transcriptions of rock/pop songs to be found in music stores. I remember looking. And being quite disappointed. Although Motley Crue's "Shout at the Devil" for easy piano was quite amusing. Not only was it not even close, but why???

So, buckle down and learn songs by ear.

Pop and Rock songs are relatively easy compared to other genres and really not a bad place to start.

Here are a few tips on actually starting playing by ear/transcribing:

Headphones make it a lot easier. Pan the original music to one side, and your piano to the other side. That actually helps a lot. Not necessary, but easier. Impossible to do with accoustic piano though.

Slow the original down. Much easier to do these days than it used to be. As your ear gets better you'll end up slowing things down less, and then only for really fast or trick parts. Oh, this is so much nicer than it used to be with tape.

Before trying to play the song, just listen to it all the way through. Then listen again, and map out the song. You should be able to map out the song form without putting any notes down. ABA etc... From there, you can start tackling the sections, and know how many bars there are in each section, and even if phrases or progressions repeat in the section.

Finding the melody is usually easy enough. In pop and rock, you can usually go by the bass for what the chord progression is.

I came across a video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRaU4-gZ48o

I wonder if this is something that is worth spending 40 minutes on to try to finish it to help with the process of being able to play by ear. Maybe there is no magic bullet, but if it helps, then it is worth it to me! I like something more guided and instructional to complement some of the advice others have provided.

Generally I can listen to a song and know how to play it with one hand by piano or figure it out, but it's the accompaniment that I struggle with using the other hand.

These guys are giving you good advice. Training your ear is the main thing, and I really think that transcribing music you enjoy is the quickest and best way to train your ear. There aren't many situations in life where the quickest way is also the best way, but I think this is one of them.

Equally importantly, however, is actually understanding what you just transcribed. If you only transcribe 8 bars per day--a decent goal if you can keep it up--you will learn to play by ear much more quickly, if you take the time to analyze those 8 bars after you write them down. What key is it in? Is the first chord the tonic chord, or some other chord? What is the Roman numeral for each chord in the progression, and what is the logic behind it? If you truly understand each 8 bar phrase that you transcribe, you'll find that transcribing the next 8 bars is much easier. Pretty soon you'll realize that you can sit down at the piano and play by ear.

I came across a book (manuscript-sized, published by Faber) called Piano by Ear by Lucinda Mackworth-Young, which seems to me to be an excellent practical guide to this subject, and is focused on what has been discussed by various people (not least yours truly ) in this thread. It's suitable for near-beginners to intermediates, and is also a useful guide to harmony and improv.

Note that the book is written in British English, therefore words like crotchets and quavers are used, and some of the songs used might not be familiar to Americans.

https://www.amazon.com/Piano-Ear-Improvise-Accompany-Simple/dp/0571539025/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1543504125&sr=8-1&keywords=piano+by+ear%2Fmackworth-young

Personally, I think practical-based books like this are far better than surfing YT for videos purporting to teach you all you need to know about anything.

I'm still poor, but it can be developed, though I'm far from where I'd like to be and don't have a clear direction. Now I can at least accompany basic children's songs on guitar using I-IV-V chords and get it right... most of the time. Looking forward to more posts on this line as I can't really say what exactly contributed to my progress.

I have this book but I did not have time to go through it earlier.
Recently I started it and it starts off really easy. Exercises are clear and encouraging.
Almost all songs were unfamiliar to me, but it was not a problem; I found each one on youtube and listened to it a couple of times before doing the exercise. And for each exercise the author gives a list of song that all follow a similar pattern, so you can choose one or go through all of them like I did

I will try to remember to return here after a month or two to report my progress.