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I've heard of how people and even some famous musicians had never learned to read music but they instead learned to play their instruments by ear. My question is how exactly do people learn to do this?
I've heard of how people and even some famous musicians had never learned to read music but they instead learned to play their instruments by ear. My question is how exactly do people learn to do this?
You listen to the music over and over until you hear it in your head ans then translate it to an instrument.
Can you hum Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and play it on the piano tonight? I'm sure you can. Everybody can play by ear.
When you do it often enough, you become so good that you can hear major/minor chords and scales and intervals and can basically play back whole songs without knowing them.
If you play or sing enough songs (for me it's on a piano), you gain a sense of how most melodies just follow the scale ("when you know the notes to sing, you can sing most anything", ya know), and once you've figured out what the "home note" is, you can pick out the rest of the melody somewhere in the scale.
When I was in high school I bought a lot of rock/popular sheet music, and learned it on the piano. I'm NOT a good player, and can't coordinate my two hands very well, but I really enjoyed it anyway. I think that gave me more music sense than I would have otherwise. Many of those songbooks also have chords at the top, so I learned how chord progressions work that way.
So yeah, I still have a keyboard, and still pick out melodies and (if they're simple) chords from songs that get in my head.
I can just hear the song note by note and figure it out in my head. I guess it is easier since I have perfect pitch. It is easier for me to play by ear than to read music.
You listen to the music over and over until you hear it in your head ans then translate it to an instrument.
Can you hum Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and play it on the piano tonight? I'm sure you can. Everybody can play by ear.
When you do it often enough, you become so good that you can hear major/minor chords and scales and intervals and can basically play back whole songs without knowing them.
I agree completely! That's how I explain it to people when they ask if they would be able to play the bowed psaltery. I give them the above "pep talk".
When I was a child, I started playing by ear when my parents bought one of those Magnus chord organs from G.C. Murphy's. So, maybe there is a "born with it" to this talent. That's how I learned the electric organ and the Irish pennywhistle, ending up with my beloved bowed psaltery. I also played a friend's hammered dulcimer and Celtic harp on first try. So, if you can play by ear, as others have said, you likely can go from instrument to instrument though lessons are a great help for chord progressions and other "stuff".
You can always rely on having sheet music in front of you, but it's nice to not need it.
I've heard of how people and even some famous musicians had never learned to read music but they instead learned to play their instruments by ear. My question is how exactly do people learn to do this?
They don't learn it, it comes naturally. You've either got that gift, or you don't.
I never learned how to read music, but I can play the piano. The way I learned was partly with written music for a few days. My girlfriend showed me the location of the first note on the piano. I plugged away counting up and down the music sheet for a few days. Something clicked in my brain. My mind memorized the sounds of each keys. I can hear music in my mind (always could), and my fingers automatically go to the right keys. It's sort of how you type on a computer keyboard without thinking of each letter.
Some people just have an ear for music. They can pick up an instrument they've never played and the sounds that come out of it are pleasant. For other people it sounds like nails on a chalkboard. My son has this talent. The most memorable was the violin. I regularly heard a girl the same age as him practice violin. She had an expensive teacher. OMG the sounds she made with the violin were dreadful. My son picked up a violin and everything sounded beautiful the very first time. He did learn how to read music eventually, but he also can play without music via replicating existing songs he has heard or creating his own songs.
I often whistle songs like that. So I guess playing by ear is similar to that once you play around with an instrument long enough.
If you are whistling, then you are playing music by ear. It's all the same thing. There's just different levels of it.
Some people are sorta born with it but mostly not. The vast majority no.
The main way most musicians learn to play by ear is by listening to countless records non stop while sitting there with your instrument and rewinding and pausing little parts of the songs and solos until you can play it as close as possible to the recording. If you get serious about it, you notate it out. It's called transcribing.
Any good musician has spent a thousand hours doing this. Really good musicians way more. At least good rock and jazz musicians. But most good classical musicians have done a lot too.
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