PLAY PIANO - HOW TO PLAY PIANO BY EAR
By Ronald Worthy
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Training
your ear is much the same as training your dog: you keep shouting
orders at it until it recognizes what a certain sound means.
For example, if someone sat at your
piano and kept playing major chords without interruption for two
straight days, you would no doubt recognize a major chord any time
one sounded during the remainder of your life!
Or you might have the same
dedicated friend strike nothing but major thirds: C and E, D and F#,
F and A, etc. And the next time you heard your car horn you would
probably exclaim, “Hey! It’s a major third.” (Most car horns are
“factory-tuned” to a major third.)
Once your ear is trained to
decipher certain sounds, you can pretty much drive all of those
around you to a padded cell with your recognitions. “Hear that train
whistle? It’s a perfect fourth!” Or when a car horn passes you on
the highway producing the sliding Doppler effect: “That car just
produced a tritone portamento descending!”
In spite of that, many of you have
written requesting some tips on how to play piano by ear, so here it
goes:
The first order of business is to find
that friend who will sit and pound out the sounds for you. The best one
that we can recommend is your tape recorder, or a cassette recorder. It
should have a numerical counter on it so you can rewind to a specific
spot accurately. (Thanks to the electronic age we live in, we can all
become better musicians than would have been possible some years ago.)
The tape recorder should be set up on a table close enough to your
instrument so that you can operate it with the least amount of hassle.
You now must record a series of sounds,
which you wish to learn. The question is whether to start learning
melodic intervals, chords, rhythms, and chord progressions, whatever.
Most teachers would recommend starting with melodic intervals such as
skips of a major third, a perfect fifth, major sixth, etc.
For example, the first two notes of
“Here Comes the Bride,” is a perfect 4th. In the Key of C, the notes
would be C to F! In the Key of F, the notes would be: F to Bb.
But I personally feel, you should start
with chord progressions. It is a lot more fun, and gets you right into
the “mix” immediately.
You can train your ear in melody
easily enough by continually picking out melodies of songs on the
piano. The operative word is continually. And later on in your tape
recorder exercises you can record easy melodies, which you will
later take as musical dictation.
So if you want to start playing
piano by ear, just practice and study very simple chord
progressions. But before recording any progression, I advise you to
record the tonic note. (The first note of the scale)
For example, if you are playing a
progression in the Key of C, record the single note C followed
immediately by the progression. This will orient you to a “home
base” and make things a lot easier.
Copyright 2005 RAW Productions
About The Author
Ronald Worthy offers additional
instruction at:
http://www.mrronsmusic.com and
http://www.playpianotonight.com
