Play Guitar by Ear, Episode 2

By Darrin Koltow

Playing by Ear, Episode 2
- almost rules
- listen
- sing
- learn a major scale pattern
- Piano: no pattern needed

In this lesson of Playing by Ear we're going to actually play a melody by ear — on a piano. Remember from last lesson that learning to play by ear on the piano is a zillion times easier than guitar *and* that what you learn on the piano you can transfer to guitar playing. If you don't have a piano or keyboard, don't worry: I'm going to show you a couple of places where you can get a virtual, simulated piano for your computer. This includes you, too, Macintosh user.

Almost rules

Let's talk about some skills that are almost required to play by ear, but that you can easily build. I call these skills "almost required" because I don't like anyone telling me I'm required to do something, and I suspect you're the same way. At the same time, these skills will massively help you play by ear.

One of those almost required skills will probably seem obvious to you, but we need to mention it: listening. You have to listen, with concentrated effort, when you're learning to play by ear. That means putting on headphones, tuning out all distractions, and imagining yourself crawling inside or surfing on top of the sounds coming from your CD player or computer. Spend time listening without singing. Singing is also important, but listen first, then sing. By doing this, you devote your full attention to the impressions the notes are making on you.

In a sense, you're listening with your feelings. Music is the kind of thing that directly affects your psyche; it can immediately trigger emotions within you. So, when you listen with concentration to a piece of music, you're actually listening to your emotional responses to it.

We don't need to go overboard with this. For instance, when you hear Steve Vai or Yngwie Malmsteen fire off a billion notes in 1 microsecond, you're not going to be able to identify the emotions that each note — or actually note *change* — has on you. But, with some training, you *will* be able to identify the overall feeling that you get from listening to such a dense concentration of notes.

Almost a rule: sing

Almost rule number next: sing. After you listen, and believe you have the melody in your head, sing. You don't need any instructions to do this: you've probably been singing all your life. But what you may not realize is that singing reinforces the music in your head. If all you did was listen, the first time you tried to sing your notes would not match the notes you heard. In other words, your intonation would probably be poor compared to the more precise notes you get when you sing more frequently.

When you're learning a tune by ear, sing the melody again and again. Isolate parts of the melody you're not sure of, and repeat those several times. It may also help if you close your eyes when you sing, so whatever your eyes are seeing doesn't distract your mind from the sounds you're creating.

Think of how babies learn to speak: they babble to themselves, besides doing other things. That babbling helps them reinforce the sounds they heard mommy and daddy teaching them. If the baby never babbled, and instead tried to learn the language just by thinking about speaking, he wouldn't get very far.

So, whether you feel certain that you know a melody or not, sing it.

A major scale pattern

Another skill you'll want to have and almost ought to have: playing at least one major scale pattern.

You don't absolutely need to know a major scale pattern to play by ear, but it's a *big* help. Learning (at least one) major scale pattern is kind of like the employees at a food store organizing the food: you know, you can find the canned peaches together with the canned pineapple chunks in one aisle, and the eggs are in a separate aisle with the cheese.

If the employees at the food store suddenly stopped organizing the food this way, and started putting one carton of eggs with the pasta and another carton of eggs at the other end of the store, you, the food buyer, would have a tough time buying your food. You *could* find all the food you need, but it would take much longer and you'd get pretty impatient and upset also.

That's why we have major scale patterns for music: to keep our fingers from having to "think" every time our inner ears told them to play a note. When you organize the major scale into a pattern on the fretboard, your fingers can automatically go to the right note.

Piano: no pattern needed

When you play a tune by ear on the piano, and that tune is in C major without drifting off into other keys, you don't need to learn *any* patterns: all you have to do is hit the white keys. If this isn't the best-kept secret in making music, I don't know what is. And I sure wish that all guitar teachers would take students who've never made music before, and show 'em how to pick out a melody on a simple keyboard *first*, before they even lay a finger on the frets or even think the word "theory," or even crack open a music book.

I want to prove to you how easy it is to play a tune by ear on piano. We're now going to play a simple Christmas melody, which I've arranged to stay within one octave, and within C major. That means you only have to work with seven different notes. These notes occur only on the piano's white keys, which means you can ignore the black keys. (To be totally honest, we'll be using a total of eight white keys: the note C occurs in two different octaves in this melody.)

Here's the melody:

http://www.MaximumMusician.com/PairFiles/NOEL.MID

Obviously, we're going to need a piano to do this exercise. Don't worry: if you don't have a synthesizer, organ, or piano, you can use a simulated piano. There's one online here:

http://www.pianoworld.com/fun/javapiano/javapiano.htm

Or, if you have a Windows operating system, you can download the Maximum Musician virtual piano. It's free. Download that here:

http://www.MaximumMusician.com/PairFiles/PlayByEarPiano.zip

This little app should work fine on most systems. If it doesn't, let me know by sending email here. Make sure you put something in the Subject of the email like "Virtual piano trouble." In any case, you can use the virtual online piano at the URL mentioned above.

Once you have the piano in front of you, it's time to play by ear. Start by listening to the song several times, and singing along with it.

Now that you've listened to the tune a couple of times, let's begin finding its notes on the piano. Remember we only have to play with the white keys, and there are only eight different white keys we'll make use of. In fact, I'll show you the specific piano key for the first note of the melody. Here's an illustration that shows you the starting note.

Now that you have the first note, find the next one. How to do it? Sing the melody again to yourself. Sing slowly. Ask, "is this next note higher or lower than the previous note?" If it's higher, you'll try out a white piano key that's somewhere to the right of the last note you played. If the note sounds lower, that key will be located somewhere to the left of the last note you played. The more text you read about how to do this, the more confusing this truly simple process will seem. If I were sitting next to you showing you how to do this, you'd get it in a second. As Gloria Estefan once observed in that beautiful tune, "The words get in the way."

So, I'm going to shut up, and let you figure out the tune.

Click here to go to the next lesson in this series.

Copyright 2002. Darrin Koltow. All rights reserved.

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