Hindustan By Oliver Wallace and Harold Weeks - 1918
Played By Joseph Pingel
I love to play old piano-blues classics by ear with stuff like this. Having never heard it before, I counted and played the melody line over a few times until I got a feel for the song. The tune is catchy but the arrangement is cumbersome and hard to read. At that point, I THROW AWAY THE MUSIC and just play it. If you know the chords and melody, that's all you need. CF and G. Keep practicing.
P.S. Comment below and tell me how you like this. Thanks!
_________________________________
Joseph Pingel is a pianist, teacher and musicologist. Click here to get the free companion book to this blog. See his other sites at www.KeyedUpPiano.com and www.PlayByEarCentral.com.
© 2013 Keyed Up Inc
Monday, March 4, 2013
Friday, December 28, 2012
Just Do It!
AUDIO POST
You can’t learn to play by ear by making excuses or taking standard lessons. All play-by-earers are self-made. Learn some chords and start playing songs just like the piano was a guitar. Don’t expect miracles to happen in 5 minutes but I think 30 minutes is plenty to learn three chords and figure out how to put them together.
That’s all you need to do. Bang out a basic chord arrangement and sing the song. Your attention is on playing chords, NOT playing the melody line. As you play more songs, add new chords as they come along. It’s a building process with your ultimate short-term goal to learn all the basic major and minor chords (12 each).
Concentrate on C, F and G and get good at playing those chords first, figuring out the changes between them and recognizing their names and positions. You’ll get an adrenaline rush when you learn to play well in C. When you understand one key, you understand them all.
If you just do it, you’ll quickly find yourself in control of your progress.
You can’t learn to play by ear by making excuses or taking standard lessons. All play-by-earers are self-made. Learn some chords and start playing songs just like the piano was a guitar. Don’t expect miracles to happen in 5 minutes but I think 30 minutes is plenty to learn three chords and figure out how to put them together.
That’s all you need to do. Bang out a basic chord arrangement and sing the song. Your attention is on playing chords, NOT playing the melody line. As you play more songs, add new chords as they come along. It’s a building process with your ultimate short-term goal to learn all the basic major and minor chords (12 each).
Concentrate on C, F and G and get good at playing those chords first, figuring out the changes between them and recognizing their names and positions. You’ll get an adrenaline rush when you learn to play well in C. When you understand one key, you understand them all.
If you just do it, you’ll quickly find yourself in control of your progress.
© 2012 Keyed Up Inc
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Simplicity Versus Anti-Music
AUDIO POST
One student that took piano lessons from me was self-taught. He could play by ear with some coordination and rhythm but couldn’t identify the chords. He had no idea what he was doing. He’d been playing for years but had stagnated in his own limited box of knowledge.
“Play something.” I asked
“Let me play you something I wrote.” he said.
I gave him the nod and off he went. The first thing that hit me was a shock wave of volume that nearly blew me over. The sheer madness of no timbre pierced the back of my eyeball as he beat up my piano with the first movement of his symphony.
He started in C and must have modulated to every key by the time he was done, with undisciplined resolution and dissonance. There were 20 different chords, a dozen or more rhythms and endless measures of nomadic wanderings (of the unwhistling variety).
I was astonished that one could string together so many meaningless notes and chords to create what might almost be defined as anti-music. If there is such a thing, this truly came close to it.
“What do you think?” he asked, eagerly awaiting my reaction.
I could see he was proud of his work and I didn’t want to deflate his spirit for his obvious love of music. I told him that it was obvious he had raw talent and desire. I commended his inquisitive nature to have taught himself what he knew so far. His proficiency skills were touted as well above average. But I had to tell him the truth.
“You misunderstand what music is” I began, trying to figure out a delicate way to deliver the message. “Think of some of the greatest songs in the world; Home On The Range, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, The Star Spangled Banner and any catchy top-40 hit. What do they all have in common?”
Simplicity. Good music in 3 minutes is not like a 5 course meal. Good music (form-wise) has a nice melody, a few good rhythms and a strong foundation in 1-4-5. A song has a beginning, middle and end and conveys an idea or emotion within a limited, well-thought-out, time frame. The subject is endless but on a foundational level, I think those things at least define the form.
Music is not something that is all over the place. Most songs have 4 or 5 chords and 3 basic rhythms. Don’t think too hard. Stick to the art form and keep it simple.
_________________________________
Joseph Pingel is a pianist, teacher and musicologist. Click here to get the free companion book to this blog. See his other sites at www.KeyedUpPiano.com and www.PlayByEarCentral.com.
© 2011 Keyed Up Inc
One student that took piano lessons from me was self-taught. He could play by ear with some coordination and rhythm but couldn’t identify the chords. He had no idea what he was doing. He’d been playing for years but had stagnated in his own limited box of knowledge.
“Play something.” I asked
“Let me play you something I wrote.” he said.
I gave him the nod and off he went. The first thing that hit me was a shock wave of volume that nearly blew me over. The sheer madness of no timbre pierced the back of my eyeball as he beat up my piano with the first movement of his symphony.
He started in C and must have modulated to every key by the time he was done, with undisciplined resolution and dissonance. There were 20 different chords, a dozen or more rhythms and endless measures of nomadic wanderings (of the unwhistling variety).
I was astonished that one could string together so many meaningless notes and chords to create what might almost be defined as anti-music. If there is such a thing, this truly came close to it.
“What do you think?” he asked, eagerly awaiting my reaction.
I could see he was proud of his work and I didn’t want to deflate his spirit for his obvious love of music. I told him that it was obvious he had raw talent and desire. I commended his inquisitive nature to have taught himself what he knew so far. His proficiency skills were touted as well above average. But I had to tell him the truth.
“You misunderstand what music is” I began, trying to figure out a delicate way to deliver the message. “Think of some of the greatest songs in the world; Home On The Range, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, The Star Spangled Banner and any catchy top-40 hit. What do they all have in common?”
Simplicity. Good music in 3 minutes is not like a 5 course meal. Good music (form-wise) has a nice melody, a few good rhythms and a strong foundation in 1-4-5. A song has a beginning, middle and end and conveys an idea or emotion within a limited, well-thought-out, time frame. The subject is endless but on a foundational level, I think those things at least define the form.
Music is not something that is all over the place. Most songs have 4 or 5 chords and 3 basic rhythms. Don’t think too hard. Stick to the art form and keep it simple.
_________________________________
Joseph Pingel is a pianist, teacher and musicologist. Click here to get the free companion book to this blog. See his other sites at www.KeyedUpPiano.com and www.PlayByEarCentral.com.
© 2011 Keyed Up Inc
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Oh Shenendoah and Nat King Cole
AUDIO POST
There's much to be said for simplicity when playing piano by ear. We like to overthink what we are doing. Concentrate on the essentials and you too can sound like a million bucks with the right direction.
_________________________________
Joseph Pingel is a pianist, teacher and musicologist. Click here to get the free companion book to this blog. See his other sites at www.KeyedUpPiano.com and www.PlayByEarCentral.com.
© 2012 Keyed Up Inc
There's much to be said for simplicity when playing piano by ear. We like to overthink what we are doing. Concentrate on the essentials and you too can sound like a million bucks with the right direction.
_________________________________
Joseph Pingel is a pianist, teacher and musicologist. Click here to get the free companion book to this blog. See his other sites at www.KeyedUpPiano.com and www.PlayByEarCentral.com.
© 2012 Keyed Up Inc
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
View From the Master's Scope
AUDIO POST
To learn to play by ear quickly, how do you get smart ahead of your time? You learn the insights of the master that points out important concepts that are easy to miss on your own. You won't get around to thinking about the things I discuss here for another 35 years on your own, if ever.
Yet, I think you can perceive a certain truth to my observations as it comes to teaching yourself to become a more enlightened musician on your own.
_________________________________
Joseph Pingel is a pianist, teacher and musicologist. Click here to get the free companion book to this blog. See his other sites at www.KeyedUpPiano.com and www.PlayByEarCentral.com. © 2012 Keyed Up Inc
To learn to play by ear quickly, how do you get smart ahead of your time? You learn the insights of the master that points out important concepts that are easy to miss on your own. You won't get around to thinking about the things I discuss here for another 35 years on your own, if ever.
Yet, I think you can perceive a certain truth to my observations as it comes to teaching yourself to become a more enlightened musician on your own.
_________________________________
Joseph Pingel is a pianist, teacher and musicologist. Click here to get the free companion book to this blog. See his other sites at www.KeyedUpPiano.com and www.PlayByEarCentral.com. © 2012 Keyed Up Inc
Saturday, December 15, 2012
The Play By Ear Hoax
AUDIO POST
Hoax is a big word in playing by ear. “Yeah, I play a little piano . . . “ doesn’t really mean much in most cases. We wore out an already worn-out piano in my grandma’s basement playing chopsticks. My sister Marjorie played Heart and Soul.
To me she was Queen of The Keys. We were real young. I didn’t get it.
A lot of people feel that way when they're older but can’t quite put a finger on it. “How’d you learn to do that?” you ask someone who sounds good to you. “Picked it up here and there yadda yadda . . .” they say. But your vision is easily skewed by someone that may only know that one song, a remnant from lessons past, that they parade around when they get the chance. It's a good thing. Everyone loves praise and, getting it when you play is a nice exchange of emotions. Playing something well will always get applause (no matter how bad it actually might be). Most of the audience is clueless to what music really is. With no base, their vision is realllllly skewed.
My thing was “Morning Has Broken” by Cat Stevens. What’s your anthem? Get a goal!
Some natural geniuses for music just get it. They see the facinating math and symmetry of theory and the reoccuring patterns of similarly-fingered keys. Like 1 and 0 is to computers, the 8 notes of the scale are to music-theorist-mathematicians. You can get lost (a good thing) down the deep woods of the number 8. In the end, after years and years of playing, you realize it’s ALL 8!
You don't have to be Beethoven to have a revelation over the number 8. Musicology is a science of numbers open to interpretation as one sees fit. Knowing the science and playing by ear are also the same thing.
My ex-brother-in-law was a great guitarist at 16 but didn’t understand what he was doing. He didn’t know the names of the chords he was playing. I on the other hand, knew them all and the math of barring to raise the chords on the fretboard. When he put order to his chaos, everything came together.
You know whether or not you have talent. You can either continue to dabble on or, get your play-by-ear house in order and learn those chords.
_________________________________
Joseph Pingel is a pianist, teacher and musicologist. Click here to get the free companion book to this blog. See his other sites at www.KeyedUpPiano.com and www.PlayByEarCentral.com.
© 2012 Keyed Up Inc
To me she was Queen of The Keys. We were real young. I didn’t get it.
A lot of people feel that way when they're older but can’t quite put a finger on it. “How’d you learn to do that?” you ask someone who sounds good to you. “Picked it up here and there yadda yadda . . .” they say. But your vision is easily skewed by someone that may only know that one song, a remnant from lessons past, that they parade around when they get the chance. It's a good thing. Everyone loves praise and, getting it when you play is a nice exchange of emotions. Playing something well will always get applause (no matter how bad it actually might be). Most of the audience is clueless to what music really is. With no base, their vision is realllllly skewed.
What you think is great may not be.
At the Christmas show, a woman flowed her passion through playing “Let There Be Peace On Earth” with an arrangement that brought the Teller Elementary School audience to a lively ovation. After the show I spoke with her and discovered that that was really the only song she knew. That's typical. Put someone to the real play-by-ear test and see whether they can play lots of requests. Most dabblers can’t do that.
The truth about playing by ear is that you don’t just dabble in it. You understand it. You understand how to play those 24 chords and, with that strong understanding, that’s where your piano playing begins. You can concentrate on fingering forever and never understand this crucial fact.
You can’t have songs without chords. You can’t build chords if you don’t start at the beginning. Make a decision to learn the basic chords exclusively and you’ll quickly find that “playing by ear” means the same thing as “playing the piano.”
The truth about playing by ear is that you don’t just dabble in it. You understand it. You understand how to play those 24 chords and, with that strong understanding, that’s where your piano playing begins. You can concentrate on fingering forever and never understand this crucial fact.
You can’t have songs without chords. You can’t build chords if you don’t start at the beginning. Make a decision to learn the basic chords exclusively and you’ll quickly find that “playing by ear” means the same thing as “playing the piano.”
My thing was “Morning Has Broken” by Cat Stevens. What’s your anthem? Get a goal!
Some natural geniuses for music just get it. They see the facinating math and symmetry of theory and the reoccuring patterns of similarly-fingered keys. Like 1 and 0 is to computers, the 8 notes of the scale are to music-theorist-mathematicians. You can get lost (a good thing) down the deep woods of the number 8. In the end, after years and years of playing, you realize it’s ALL 8!
You don't have to be Beethoven to have a revelation over the number 8. Musicology is a science of numbers open to interpretation as one sees fit. Knowing the science and playing by ear are also the same thing.
My ex-brother-in-law was a great guitarist at 16 but didn’t understand what he was doing. He didn’t know the names of the chords he was playing. I on the other hand, knew them all and the math of barring to raise the chords on the fretboard. When he put order to his chaos, everything came together.
You know whether or not you have talent. You can either continue to dabble on or, get your play-by-ear house in order and learn those chords.
_________________________________
Joseph Pingel is a pianist, teacher and musicologist. Click here to get the free companion book to this blog. See his other sites at www.KeyedUpPiano.com and www.PlayByEarCentral.com.
© 2012 Keyed Up Inc
Thursday, November 29, 2012
One Missing Piece To Go
AUDIO POST
If you've played the piano for a long time without being able to play by ear, there's good news. You are just one small missing puzzle piece away from putting it all together.
_________________________________
Joseph Pingel is a pianist, teacher and musicologist. Click here to get the free companion book to this blog. See his other sites at www.KeyedUpPiano.com and www.PlayByEarCentral.com.
© 2012 Keyed Up Inc
If you've played the piano for a long time without being able to play by ear, there's good news. You are just one small missing puzzle piece away from putting it all together.
_________________________________
Joseph Pingel is a pianist, teacher and musicologist. Click here to get the free companion book to this blog. See his other sites at www.KeyedUpPiano.com and www.PlayByEarCentral.com.
© 2012 Keyed Up Inc
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