Why can't I play the melody after hearing a song...

[kantsuiex]

My friend sings the pop song and want me to play the song after hearing the melody...
I cannot do so...............I am upset by that...Are that ability inborn?

[Petter]

My friend sings the pop song and want me to play the song after hearing the melody...
I cannot do so...............I am upset by that...Are that ability inborn?

It´s not inborn. Practice it. Start with intervalls. It´s easier for some, harder for others.

[pelajarpiano]

You can train your self for this ability. Maybe for u it's harder, but if you really want to can do that, you must start by playing many score. Your ability to predict the melody will increase.

[Bob]

Ditto.

[nyonyo]

We know, for sure, that you do not have perfect pitch. Therefore, you need to go different route which is relative DO or C. However, the first thing  that you have to assess how bad is your hearing ability. How to assess your hearing ability?

1. Position your Left Hand pointer on middle C.
2. Close your eyes, press middle C, and then with your Right Hand pointer, you press any white key radomly. If you can tell the key that you press without looking, you are not that bad. But if you cannot, you are bad. But it does not mean that you can improve your relative hearing ability.

How to improve?

Again press C, and then press for example E. You need to sing both notes (sing C and then E). Do this for at least 10 times, then do the same thing for C and G. After that, press C again, and then without pressing E, you should try to sing E. If you cannot do it, it means your brain has not register the E. So you need to practice C and E again, until finally you can sing E or any other note without thinking. Basically, you are kind of memorizing the interval. Do this for all notes, and then you start with D and with all notes , etc, etc, etc. Finally, your hearing will get better. But do not expect miracle that fast. Because you are basically close to tone deaf. But if you practice hard (I mean really hard), your hearing will be better.

People who have good hearing do not need to do this kind of thing. They ,naturally, will be able to hear notes after learning to play the piano a month or two. Most peopple, however, do not have good hearing. So you are not the only one. Hearing is only useful in the situation where you need to accompany someone without practice, and also in the memorization process. People who have good hearing can memorize faster, because as long as they could memorize the melody (just the sound, they do not need to remember note by note), they will be able to play back what in their brain.

If you do not need to do alot of public jamming etc, you are actually do not need to have good hearing. Trying to improve hearing ability is a hard work. Therefore, if you do not really need to do so, you'd better of forgetting this.

Hope this will help.

[kantsuiex]

Thank you very very very much! You all are very kind and patient. .
I don't know why... sometimes I have absolute pitch.. ( I close my eyes... and I randomly press a key( only for white key) (i cannot do so for black key).... and I recognize what it is.........but I cannot recognize the flat/sharp..
But when I consider the relative stuff, my brain mixes  up the relative and aboslute..

Also , i always mix up the C/G

I memorise pieces fast... but i think it is memorized by muscle memory..
And how to rectify this bad behaviour?
I also memorise the melody,, but i know it only helps me a liitle...

[slobone]

Flats and sharps are easy, just feel the key with your fingers. If it's skinny and raised up, it's a flat or a sharp 

[syncope]

I'd do it differently. If you don't have perfect pitch then develop relative pitch, and thats not by learning by heart what E is or G but by understanding scales and the functions of the notes in the scales.

How I learned it, is first learning to sing a scales (which is harder then you'd think, because before you know it you end up a little too high or too low). So press C, then sing c, and then without piano sing the scale. If singing scales gets easy, sings triads (major/minor). That's really important and then makes singing the 3rd and 5th easy (just think of the triad).
This is also good because singing the song well is step one to translating it to the piano haha.

Now sing the song, analyse which note is the 1? (=the key) maybe the last note of the song ends on 1? Then find that note on the piano. There you have the key your song is in.

Then start from the beginning. Sing the first note, and sing in a scale upwards (or downward) to the 1. Say the song is C, and the first note is G, then you'll sing in a scale upwards... G - A - B - C and realize, C! that's 1. so we're four steps under 1 is the 5th, so first note is G.

The trick is singing every note upwards to 1. Though easy shortcuts are of course if you hear a scale, play a scale, if you hear a triad, play a triad. Any other note sing upwards to 1. In no time you have the song on the piano.

No need for perfect pitch (: And it is kind of fun.

[nyonyo]

No need for perfect pitch (: And it is kind of fun.

The correct statement, one should not even try to achieve perfect pitch if one does not even able to do relative pitch recognition.

Why do many people want to have good hearing? I do not see the reason to have good hearing, unless one is in the industry of accompanying or public performance that really need to perform a lot of improvisation. If your purpose of playing piano is just to play for yourself, nobody will ask you to name notes etc.

Note recognition is totally different from timbre ability. Some people have good note recognition abiltiy, but cannot discern good tone from bad tone. One is frequecy ability and the other one is the shape of the sinus that make the color of the tone different even though same note (same frequency).

[pianogeek_cz]

Err... allow me...
The uber-correct statement is, trying to achieve perfect pitch is a waste of time. You either have it, or not; the ability is shaped during roughly the first three years of childhood. If you don't have perfect pitch by the time you're six, the best you can do is recognize notes by muscle memory when singing them (you do not necessarily -know- you have perfect pitch at the time you're six, but people who do have PP - at least those I know, and according to a magisterial thesis I've read on PP - have already had it by early childhood).

Good analytical hearing, of course, is a skill that can - and, for various reasons, should - be practiced and cultivated. It makes our musical jobs a LOT easier (you pretty much can't do mental practice without at least some ability to hear the score without playing it). When you can hear three-voice fugues at sight, you know you're getting the hang of it. (Two voices I think I can track decently well - at least within the limits of tonality. Three voices? Aaaargh... I'm -not- looking forward to Intonation/hearing analysis lessons, although I badly need them.)

[slobone]

How did we get onto perfect pitch again? Such a strange topic for a piano forum! And it has nothing to do with learning to play melodies by ear.

The only way to do that, if it doesn't come naturally, is practice, practice, practice. Put on your Ipod and sit at the keyboard. Listen to the first phrase, pause the ipod, then try to duplicate it on the piano. Rewind, repeat.

Alternatively find the sheet music for the song somewhere and follow along while you're listening. Play from the music a few times, then see if you can do it without the music.

Me, I have the opposite problem. I took so much theory at an early age, and had to harmonize so many melodies, that it took me decades to get to the point where I didn't compulsively harmonize every commercial jingle I heard on TV in my head...

[nyonyo]

The only way to do that, if it doesn't come naturally, is practice, practice, practice. Put on your Ipod and sit at the keyboard. Listen to the first phrase, pause the ipod, then try to duplicate it on the piano. Rewind, repeat.

How the brain works to recognize notes played on any instrument.

The process is like this, we hear the frequency, label that frequency, for example 440 is A., After that our brain will register that frequency and the name which will be used when we hear the same frequency later. Unfortunately, most people do not have the ability to retain this memory in their brain, as a result when that person hear the same frequency, he or she will not be able to recall what is the name attached to that frequency, because this person cannot tell whether it is a 440Hz or not. But for those people with good hearing abilty, they will hear the 440Hz right away, and pull the name attaching to that frequency from their brain.

[slobone]

How the brain works to recognize notes played on any instrument.

The process is like this, we hear the frequency, label that frequency, for example 440 is A., After that our brain will register that frequency and the name which will be used when we hear the same frequency later. Unfortunately, most people do not have the ability to retain this memory in their brain, as a result when that person hear the same frequency, he or she will not be able to recall what is the name attached to that frequency, because this person cannot tell whether it is a 440Hz or not. But for those people with good hearing abilty, they will hear the 440Hz right away, and pull the name attaching to that frequency from their brain.

OK... but again, that has nothing to do with learning to play by ear, anymore than we read a book by "looking up" each of the 26 letters of the alphabet individually in our brain.

The mind has the ability to recognize large-scale patterns. I could sit down now and play you, say, Yesterday by the Beatles, without any clue as to whether I was doing it in the original key. Clearly a different mechanism is at work.

[nyonyo]

OK... but again, that has nothing to do with learning to play by ear, anymore than we read a book by "looking up" each of the 26 letters of the alphabet individually in our brain.

The mind has the ability to recognize large-scale patterns. I could sit down now and play you, say, Yesterday by the Beatles, without any clue as to whether I was doing it in the original key. Clearly a different mechanism is at work.

How about those people who cannot associate the shape of the letter with the name? I was so surprised when I came to the US to find there are people who cannot read. I thought how stupid those people. I have never known anybody in my life who cannot read. But now I understand that there are people who cannot remember that if the shape of the letter is circle, it is called O, etc. Hearing is the same, people can hear all the difference of the frequencies, but their brain just cannot register that this frequency is, say, A.

Normal people can associate the shape and the name. Recognizing letter shape is easier than recognizing frequecy. If the level of difficuty is the same, we will find many people who cannot read. Hearing is much more difficult and many people cannot do it well, that is why there are so many people who cannot recognize notes.

[casparma]

I'd do it differently. If you don't have perfect pitch then develop relative pitch, and thats not by learning by heart what E is or G but by understanding scales and the functions of the notes in the scales.

How I learned it, is first learning to sing a scales (which is harder then you'd think, because before you know it you end up a little too high or too low). So press C, then sing c, and then without piano sing the scale. If singing scales gets easy, sings triads (major/minor). That's really important and then makes singing the 3rd and 5th easy (just think of the triad).
This is also good because singing the song well is step one to translating it to the piano haha.

Now sing the song, analyse which note is the 1? (=the key) maybe the last note of the song ends on 1? Then find that note on the piano. There you have the key your song is in.

Then start from the beginning. Sing the first note, and sing in a scale upwards (or downward) to the 1. Say the song is C, and the first note is G, then you'll sing in a scale upwards... G - A - B - C and realize, C! that's 1. so we're four steps under 1 is the 5th, so first note is G.

The trick is singing every note upwards to 1. Though easy shortcuts are of course if you hear a scale, play a scale, if you hear a triad, play a triad. Any other note sing upwards to 1. In no time you have the song on the piano.

No need for perfect pitch (: And it is kind of fun.

Hi syncope,

I dont get you. What's the point of singing every note from the music up till the root note in the key?

[syncope]

Hi Casparma,
It's to figure out what note it is. You know how 1 sounds, if you climb upwards (singing) step by step untill you get to 1 you know how many steps under 1 it is. Say we sing My Body Lies Over The Ocean. Then when you sing the first note, go upwards step by step - My...my...my...my! and there we are on 1. So The first note of the song "My" is four notes under 1 is 5, so in C major that would be the G.
Then you have "Bo(dy)": Bo...Bo...Bo...Bo...Bo...Bo! Six steps under 1, is the 3rd, in C major: E. So thats how you figure out beginning of My Body Lies over the ocean is, G-E. Then you have a scale downwards, is easy, E-D-C (BoDy Lies) etc etc etc

You can also sing dównwards to 1 of course

Hope I'm being clear. It's a very fast method, probably faster than it seems here haha. But you get good at it.

[slobone]

My Body Lies Over the Ocean -- are we talking about astral projection here? 

[oscarr111111]

Its 'my bonnie lines over the ocean'.

[slobone]

Its 'my bonnie lines over the ocean'.

I think we're zeroing in on it...

[syncope]

Oh right, My bonnie lies over the ocean, haha!!
English is not my first language -- I must have sung that song by sound and always wrong as a child!

[slobone]

I've always found this very helpful:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNdH44_WaqY

[syncope]

 

[casparma]

Ha, thanks for the follow up explanation, syncope. 

[slobone]

Hehe -- sorry, I couldn't resist 

Actually there's a whole category of things like that, called "mondegreens". It's when you always thought the lyrics to a song are something else. Like the well-known hymn, "Gladly the Cross-eyed Bear".

When I was in kindergarten I thought the pledge of allegiance said something about "...and to the republic for witches' stands... one nation invisible...".

Incidentally, "My body lies over the ocean" gets 912 hits on Google. There's even a book with that title!

[db05]

Don't worry. You are definitely not alone. I can't do that either, after a year of so-called ear training.

Though hearing (perfect pitch) might be inborn, the playing part will have to be learned. For now, try to find sheet music.

[oscarr111111]

This topic again...

Theres no definitive evidence for or against ability to learn perfect pitch, I suspect personally that its possible to learn at any age, just more natural and easier to learn when young.

Regardless, perfect pitch is not an important skill in music whereas relevant pitch is vitally important and is unquestionably possible to learn.  The best way to learn it is by transcribing, get together a selection of your favourate songs and pieces of music and work out the melodic lines and harmony by ear, there are many guides to how to do this on the internet and theres a great program (they actually have a good guide on their site as well) called Transcribe! by Seventh String Software which can loop sections, slow down, pitch shift and EQ audio files, it has a few weeks free trial I think so you can use that to get going, that programs saved my arse a bunch of times when I had too many songs to learn for a gig and too little time.

I wouldn't waste time trying to learn perfect pitch until you've perfected every other aspect of music.. IE never.

[db05]

Hi Casparma,
It's to figure out what note it is. You know how 1 sounds, if you climb upwards (singing) step by step untill you get to 1 you know how many steps under 1 it is. Say we sing My Body Lies Over The Ocean. Then when you sing the first note, go upwards step by step - My...my...my...my! and there we are on 1. So The first note of the song "My" is four notes under 1 is 5, so in C major that would be the G.
Then you have "Bo(dy)": Bo...Bo...Bo...Bo...Bo...Bo! Six steps under 1, is the 3rd, in C major: E. So thats how you figure out beginning of My Body Lies over the ocean is, G-E. Then you have a scale downwards, is easy, E-D-C (BoDy Lies) etc etc etc

You can also sing dównwards to 1 of course

Hope I'm being clear. It's a very fast method, probably faster than it seems here haha. But you get good at it.

I don't get it. How can that method be fast? I can't even sing a scale. Of course, if you can sing a scale, finding notes will be a whole lot easier. So how do you learn to sing a scale correctly all the time??

[nyonyo]

This topic again...

Theres no definitive evidence for or against ability to learn perfect pitch, I suspect personally that its possible to learn at any age, just more natural and easier to learn when young.

Regardless, perfect pitch is not an important skill in music whereas relevant pitch is vitally important and is unquestionably possible to learn.  The best way to learn it is by transcribing, get together a selection of your favourate songs and pieces of music and work out the melodic lines and harmony by ear, there are many guides to how to do this on the internet and theres a great program (they actually have a good guide on their site as well) called Transcribe! by Seventh String Software which can loop sections, slow down, pitch shift and EQ audio files, it has a few weeks free trial I think so you can use that to get going, that programs saved my arse a bunch of times when I had too many songs to learn for a gig and too little time.

I wouldn't waste time trying to learn perfect pitch until you've perfected every other aspect of music.. IE never.

Which method have you tried and what is the outcome? Or were you born with good hearing ability. Please do share your finding?

To me don't do the transcription thing for those who do not have good hearing. Learn relative pitch by recognizing two notes at the time, after you really master this, you can start practicing to recognize 3 notes pressed sequentially for example A - D -E (ask other to play for you). After you master 3 notes go for 4, 5, 6, 7. You do not really need to learn transcription...Just sing a phrase in your mind, and practice to write the melody that you made up.

[oscarr111111]

Which method have you tried and what is the outcome? Or were you born with good hearing ability. Please do share your finding?

To me don't do the transcription thing for those who do not have good hearing. Learn relative pitch by recognizing two notes at the time, after you really master this, you can start practicing to recognize 3 notes pressed sequentially for example A - D -E (ask other to play for you). After you master 3 notes go for 4, 5, 6, 7. You do not really need to learn transcription...Just sing a phrase in your mind, and practice to write the melody that you made up.

I played music since I was young so my hearing was ok, I don't have perfect pitch, when I started transcribing my hearing ability skyrocketed.

Practicing relative pitch like you said is pointless, its worth putting a bit of time in to help recognize the intervals but just practicing isolated examples like that will teach you nothing applicable, you'll be able to identify them in the context of your exercises but will likely have a lot of trouble identifying them in music.  To get better at playing and hearing music, you have to practice playing and hearing music, lone technical exercises are pointless, its as simple as that.

[son wolsi]

No it's not inborn. Most people can eazily recreate the melodies in there mind, but when they sing it, alot of people don't realize that they're actually hitting the same pitch over and over, because there focusing to much on the rhythm.

[nyonyo]

I played music since I was young so my hearing was ok, I don't have perfect pitch, when I started transcribing my hearing ability skyrocketed.

Practicing relative pitch like you said is pointless, its worth putting a bit of time in to help recognize the intervals but just practicing isolated examples like that will teach you nothing applicable, you'll be able to identify them in the context of your exercises but will likely have a lot of trouble identifying them in music.  To get better at playing and hearing music, you have to practice playing and hearing music, lone technical exercises are pointless, its as simple as that.

I know many people who are not as fortunate as you are or me. I have perfect pitch and I can hear things easily without thinking. However, many people have bad hearing. They cannot even name two notes, for example if I pressed C and then I press A, they cannot even name the A eventhough I have told them that the first note is C. Therefore, I wonder why you think the exercise that I suggessted is pointless. If people cannot even name