The Roadmap to Playing By Ear

When playing the piano by ear, the science of music organizes your musical mind and controls how you get around.  It’s the plan.  It’s what all musicians that play by ear have in common; they all  know how to get around.



While many get lost in the notion that “getting around” is some mysterious skill, it’s not.  The system is the same for everyone who wants to learn it.  It's simple and is based on first knowing the basic major and minor chords (Command) and thinking numbers over tones.   It’s a combination of set, minimum proficiency skills and a focused way of thinking.

Become The Smartest Beginner In The World

You can become the smartest, inexperienced musician in the world with specific training and direction.  Finding your way around the key is a numerical roadmap but that understanding is served up raw.  It only documents how to get from one place to another.

However, it doesn’t convey any style whatsoever to your playing (but that’s a small price to pay for learning the basic chords quickly).  When you reach Command, you are years ahead of others who’ve never even thought about it.  So what if you aren't playing with style after 4 months of concentrated learning?  At the start, giving yourself the tools to go forward is far more important. 

Before You Can Play With Style You Must First Play Without It

Putting yourself in a position where you analyze the chords, their similar fingerings and places on the keyboard, puts you in a different league altogether than other piano students.  When you reach Command you’ll feel great independence knowing chords as a reflex.  At that point you will be able to take it to the next level.

Many neo-piano-methods attempt to teach you to play with style before you are ready.  Often the tips and tricks you learn are out of context to your level of ability.  Though tips and tricks are good, they are most often the mask of being a faker. 

Standard And Faker Lessons Are The Same

You either understand what you are doing or you don’t.  It all starts with learning the positions and recognizing the chords.  If you do that, you will become a diamond in the rough; an inexperienced expert. 

Otherwise, your training is just rote memorization out of context to your  musicianship.  There’s no difference between sight-reading (following) classical music or blues licks when you don’t know what you are doing.

Take time in the beginning to study the roadmap.  Learn how to read it and you'll go directly to where you want to go.  

Treading Water

You need to get to a point where you can tread water in just a few keys and understand how to read the roadmap. That doesn’t make you an Olympic swimmer and likewise, Command alone doesn’t make you a great pianist.  However, it does give you independence and teaches self-reliance (which is the only way of a true musician). 

All you have to do is learn those 24 chords, follow the roadmap and TRY.

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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

The Gift of Playing By Ear

 

When it comes to playing by ear and playing the piano in general, there are always people that play better than you.  Just like any skill, some people just have natural abilities but the deck is stacked against you if you don’t have at least one “gift.”

You might have more than one if you are lucky.  What are they?

The Gifts 

1.    The desire to express one’s self musically.

Your motivation to play music is at focus.  If you want to get good you have to have strong desire.  There has to be a spark because without it, music is not a priority.  In the beginning it is the desire to learn the instrument.  After that it is the desire to master music.  Desire is a gift.

2.    Superior, natural-dexterity skills.

Some have long skinny fingers that are controlled with piston-like motion and have a knack for accuracy.  It goes beyond being well-practiced (but that is much of it as well).  Their fingers just know what to do. 

3.    A natural understanding for music.

My young son loves gymnastics unlike anything else.  Put him in a matted room with apparatus and something clicks.  Gymnastics captivates him and he always wants to do it.  If you feel that same way about music then that is an important gift. 

“Playing By Ear” ISN’T a Gift

“Playing by ear” is a term that means everything to everyone which is far too broad a definition to be valid.  It is totally misunderstood by those that can’t do it, and those that can have misconceptions as well.

Playing by ear is a combination of proficiency, knowledge, experience and exposure to mass quantities of music.  All come together to create a musician that possesses an independent ability to play the piano.  It’s a self-made thing that builds on skills and understandings from the beginning, not just tips and tricks.

You Have To Be Able To At Least Swing The Bat

On the most basic level, playing by ear is hearing a song in your head and picking it out on the piano?  Some say this is a gift.  Maybe so because not everyone can do this (and even some experienced musicians are lost).  That stands in the way of playing by ear and akin to tone-deafness.

Staying on key is another problem.  When singing accapella, some people start singing in one key and wind up somewhere else.  Again, no help there.  This wandering of melody tends to carry over to the piano.

I always have hope for everyone.  You can only get better.

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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

How To Play Anything

Reading music is a major part of playing the piano by ear.  Ideally, you want to look at any lead sheet with chords and make your own arrangement.  The Ultimate End Game is to quickly interpret and play any song that is written; familiar or not.

The best music in your future is stuff you don’t know.  You can only go so far as a musician until you master this skill so focus on  learning it well, early in your training. 

How Do You Figure Out Songs You’ve
Never Seen or Heard Before?  

Suppose you pick up a jazz REAL book that has about a thousand songs with lead lines and chords.  Besides playing chords, there are two things required to figuring out a song;

Counting and Reading a Composer's Intent.

Within the pages of a score (or  even a simple lead sheet) there are many signs of intent to size-up.

Does it appear fast?  Is it easy to count?  Is the beat-note tempo in line with the verse meter?  Do the lyrics affect melody phrasing?  How fast should it be?  Is there something unique?  Why is it in 2/2 vs 4/4?

My membership into the Hidden Universe lets me evaluate composer intent in seconds.  I’m always looking for unique, creative streaks but overall, once you read thousands of pieces you see a lot of the same intent over and over.

Where to Begin?

The tendency is to locate and play songs in the book that you already know but that’s a very small percentage of the overall book.  Of the songs you know, you may not like them or they may be in hard keys to play.  However, as you page through the REAL book you see lots of songs in C, F and G that you could play if you only knew how they went.

This is where most people stop because it just seems too hard.   Well, get over it!  Everything's hard when you don't understand it.  Study and master counting and take command of this crucial skill.

Make Up Your Mind 
 To Be a Good Musician

That means you don't run at the first sign of adversity.  If you want fast progress, follow the Yellow Brick Road and master counting. 

Fake books contain the best songs ever written; jazz and popular standards; songs that have stood the test of time.   

Those are the songs you want to learn.

Most people, however stop before they start because of poor counting skills. There comes a time, after bypassing all the songs you don't know, that it becomes obvious to you that really, you don’t know anything about figuring out written songs.

When you master counting, the entire musical world opens up to you.  You realize it is the key to figuring out anything and unlocks a limitless musical library

All You Need To Know 

Counting is a limited discipline in either half or quarter beats.  The following equation is where it begins and ends:

One Beat is counted: 
1 + (one-and) or 1e+a (one-E-and-uh).

That’s it!  The big secret.  Spend an afternoon studying music pieces that you know and don’t know and figure it out.  Take the time to school yourself in this master skill now, early.  Explore the questions you have along the way.  Find answers that satisfy your questions.

While rhythms are endless, the equation 1+ equals 1e+a is the full science you need to concentrate on.  When you actively look, there comes a point when the light goes on and everything falls into place.

Chords PLUS Counting 

Playing chords to your own arrangement is part of it but you won’t be able to go anywhere until you figure out how the song goes.  That means you have to be able to play an accurately-counted, one-note melody line of the song with your right hand.  That’s a REQUIRED skill.

Once you’ve got the one-note rhythm and melody down in your head, all you have to do is add chords and voila, a song is born.  You must learn to count accurately as a second nature.

To fly high you can't get there by winging it.”

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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

Play Piano Like Guitar

The most amazing concept you can apply to learning to play the piano by ear is one simple realization.

You Can Play The Piano 

Just Like The Guitar

If you think that is obvious knowledge, it is not.  Those words are simple and unbelievably powerful.  I’m not the first to say them but am certainly the most emphatic.  It's mind-expanding and heart-palpitating to think you can learn to play the piano as well as you might the guitar in so little time. 

There’s no beating around the bush.  Applying this concept is a major game changer for piano players and hopeful students.  The very fact that you know that you can play the piano like guitar gives you immediate direction and purpose.

This is a revelation since music has always been taught the most complicated way possible.  We’ve become indoctrinated to think that “complicated” is the only way it can be done.  The paradox is, the  “complicated way” is much easier to understand if you learn the “easy way” first.

Captivity vs. Freedom

 There is no comparison of outcomes for two approaches that are so different.

• The standard method, you are totally dependent upon reading music to progress.

Sight-reading, scales and fingering exercises are never-ending means to improvement.  


They’re important yes, but those skills do not teach you to understand chords, structure and how to play music without written music.  You need to look elsewhere for that.

• The chord method approach, you learn to play chords and songs with or without music.

“Chords,” in this case means the basic major and minor chords and their inversions; a level called "Command."


There are 24 chords with 33 different fingering positions between them.  What stands between you and freedom is 33 different fingering positions on different parts of the keyboard.

When you concentrate on chords you learn quickly.

Goal Driven

Command is a level that is goal driven and gives you freedom that can be measured in results.  As you focus on learning chords you can’t help but learn to play well.  You can only get better and your results will improve.

Quick progress comes on the guitar or piano when you play chords first and start the building process.  Theory comes later.  It’s a stark truth of Command and there is no wishy-washiness to it.  Chords first and theory later.

You Have To Get Out Of Your Own Way

There are many levels of playing that limit peoples’ progress.  The play-by-ear skill is hard to define without knowing what to look for.

It clearly starts by practicing chords exclusively and taking FULL charge of learning them until you get it.


Taking FULL responsibility is the problem.  You’ve got to concentrate on the goal for a couple months and resist the urge to tumble back to the comforts of what you already know.  Keep your eye on the prize.  Force yourself to learn in this area.

Use written music to follow chords above the staff but don’t read the notes; just the chords.  Chord-out songs one after the other and develop a “can-do” attitude.  You’ll start recognizing patterns and shortcuts in no time.

Give up the notion of practicing something a million times to get it right before moving on.  For learning chords, that’s counterproductive.

“Moving On” To The Next Song
Messes With Your Mind

We are programmed to think that the next song we learn should be harder.  That follows the standard lesson approach of “graduating pieces” and presents us the biggest challenge we face starting the next song.  We’re all afraid of the next song!!!  It’s the unknown that magnifies our fright and tells us the next song has to be a bigger challenge.

That’s the wrong way of thinking.  Reality says the next song is just like the one before it.  It has chords and rhythms like all songs.  It is generally and structurally the same across the board.

Play As Many Songs As Fast 

As You Reasonably Can

There’s no time to waste spending a couple weeks learning just one piece.  Play your own chord arrangement of that song and get on to the next one.  Turn a lot of pages in popular songbooks and move quickly from one song to another.


Can’t play something?  Work on it a bit and then go on to the next song.  Try it again tomorrow.  Don’t read the music, learn the chords.  Look at them.  Memorize them.  Analyze them.

Saturate yourself in materials and -good or bad- start playing hundreds of songs NOW.

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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

And It Was Good - Composer Intent

I took a play-by-ear hiatus and visited Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.  It took Mr. Gutzon 14 years to blast out the rock and chisel the faces.  Then, they were done.

Just think about the day he made that final decision.  Realizing finality-of-task, he looked at his work and, in His best image as a mortal man he declared it was good. 

“Yeah, that’s good.”  he said.

Knowing When You’re Done

It's the same with musical composition.  The same song can be written with any time signature at least a dozen different ways.  Some ways are easy to count and follow and others are not.  Some do not capture the feel of the song at all.  The same song written in 2/2, 4/4 or 6/8 may say the same thing but some time signatures don’t express obviousness as well as others.  It’s a judgement call.

The composer has to find the happy medium that discloses -in the most obvious manner-  how the song goes.  There are dozens of variables in composition that conflict with each other and the composer has to be the referee.  It’s a tougher call than you might think.

Any Time Signature Can Be Used

To Write Any Song.

How can that be?  It just is.  Music is in-motion in space and time where a series of  4 triple-beats (in 12/8) is equal to 4 beats (in 4/4).  A beat is a beat.  This is another way that music is infinite.  It's the hidden universe where any time signature can be used to write any song.  

When you see something numerically opposing or confusing, ask yourself what the composer is trying to say.  You’ve got to learn to look for intent but first you’ve got to be aware that intent always exists. Intent is just somebody’s opinion.  Now, consider the dozens of ways a song might have otherwise been written. 

This is what Chopin is talking 

about when he says 

“Simplicity is the highest goal . . . achievable when you have overcome all difficulties.”   

 It’s the challenge a composer wrestles with to lay out his intent in the most obvious manner for all to see.

The goal is to compose in an infinite world of choices, in the ultimate quest to say exactly what you mean.

How Do You Know When You’re Done?

You just know it.  It’s just like the last part of a puzzle that snaps into place.  Once you get all the disciplines to work together in harmony, everything comes together into one defining moment of expression. 

“Yeah, that’s good.” you say.

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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-Dimensional Thinking In The Music Galaxy

Throughout taking standard piano lessons, we are piece-mealed music theory at the rate and order that the teacher thinks best.  When you end lessons, you may grasp some theory but overall, lack the full picture because you don't have all the pieces to the puzzle.

It's a puzzle that you cannot see without first having all the pieces laid out before you.  Once you have that, it is much easier to put that puzzle together to see the full picture.

But nobody thinks about the full picture

when they teach theory.  

Everything is a one-dimensional fact; delivered without any insights into motion.  However, music is not one dimensional!   All theories interact in concert.  You cannot realize those relationships by studying any one theory in and of itself.

There is an underlying river of motion beneath the surface that organizes all the moving parts.  For example:

Time signatures show the intent of a composer that most people don’t even realize is there. 


Written songs use note size-scales that give a good indication of implied speed.  Recognizing that innuendo is the skill of a play-by-ear master.  That's how they can interpret thousands of songs they’ve never seen before in fake books.

Then, there's counting.  

You must learn to count notes like an expert until you “get it.”  You “get it” when you can easily play a one-note melody line of a song you’ve never seen before; another skill of the play-by-ear master.

If you think what a seasoned musician knows is too vast for you to understand, you are wrong.  In the end, everything distills down to simplicity.  Even the most complex of concepts is rooted in one simple relationship of notes or another. 

Approach learning theory on a multi-level understanding with a higher goal in mind.  A pro's knowledge may be vast, but the categories are well-defined and limited.  Once you know those categories you have a proper syllabus to base your learning quest.

Always focus on inter-relational concepts beyond music theory.  The one-concept-at-a-time approach is flawed in that it doesn’t give the whole picture, reveal the end result or show the working machine in motion.

As far as I am aware, there is no inclusive goal to teach music theory as a unit in motion.  However, to become an expert quickly, you’ve got to be able to see this particular light.

You’ll never ever see it with one-dimensional thinking. 

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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

Bach Was a Hack

Playing by ear is perceived as a hack skill.  You may not be able to sightread a technically-written concerto but still be able to play it by ear.

Knowing chords, you can play anything and that puts you right up there with the top players in the world.  What?  You and Herbie Hancock in the same league?  Maybe not skill-wise but I guarantee, Herbie knows his chords.

Knowing the chords is just your foot in the door to the Hidden Universe - the minimum plateau of membership.

I’m Better Than You

There’s no “who’s better or best” comparison between the classical pianist and the play-by-ear hack.  They both wish for the talents of the other but what they want most are the skills of the hack; to understand the instrument and be able to play by ear.

Embarrassment and Snubbery

A“hack” is one that lacks technical training.  Therefore, it is far easier for the classical pianist to master the hack’s skills than the other way around.

But it’s so embarrassing for some classical players to admit they lack in this area.  They can’t concede to learning anything of value from the rogue musicians on the other side of the tracks.

Instead, they snub and shudder at the very thought of even associating themselves with the word “hack.”  After so much academic breeding, to lower themselves to the teachings of a hack feels somehow demeaning.

Everyday, “Classical Rebels” are shedding their pride to become “closet” hacks. BUT WAIT!  You really don’t have to cover your face!

Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and all the longhairs were hacks too!

Hacks First and Composers Second

Imagine the music scene back then.  You’d go to a Mozart concert and he’d play variations of all his hits.  We tend to romanticize and marvel at Mozart's amazing abilities but how was he any different from the modern day rock star? 

Just like today's solo artists, all he was doing was jamming  an 18th-century-jazz style.  That's all it was, classical improvisation.

The composers of fame were far more than hacks but without that basic command of chords, they couldn’t have written anything.

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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