Identifying Notes

[bertiecorrie]

Hi All,

I'm wondering if there's a way of identifying piano notes from a song?

I'd really like to learn the piano from this track,

, yet I can't find any sheets or piano covers, etc. online.

Any tips?

Thanks! 

[dcstudio]

what is it exactly that you are asking?  to identify the notes of a song without a reference key is called "perfect pitch"  which you are kinda born with or not.  Identifying pitches with a reference note is called relative pitch--which I learned after 4 semesters of sight-singing and ear-training class.

haven't you ever sat down and picked something out by ear?  put the song on and sit at the piano and use the old "hit and miss" method until you figure it out.  Write down some note names if it helps..  I start by figuring out the melody--then the bass line-- and the chord progression falls right into place. 

do this enough and you will have far fewer misses--your ear will tell your fingers right where to go.

[indianajo]

Ear training, like everything else, practice makes perfect.
The first 40 years, if I tried to pick out something off the record or tape, 95% of the time I picked the wrong note. Very frustrating. Random choice would be 85% accurate, one out of twelve, I was worse than that.
Then I tried to teach myself guitar with some "Teach yourself guitar in 6 weeks" books or something.  This teaches one to play chords, and more importantly, to hear the chords and think of the names a lot.  Playing piano from the tab line on top of pop arrangements would do the same thing I'm sure, I just never did that.
 My classical piano teacher was useless at teaching pop music. I asked her for help one time, and she just said "you don't want to waste any time playing that old chestnut", which was a cop out IMHO, but I was not a rebel. Her idea of chord training was seeing the name and writing the chords out on the staff paper.  there wasn't any "ear training" for chords in her method.  
After the guitar experience (I'm no good, my fingers won't grow calluses, as my face won't wrinkle), I started hearing fourths, fifths, sixths, dim sevenths, in pop songs, and beginining to feel the chords in my hands.  Surprise, with all that, at least half the time now, when I go to the piano and try the chords, I pick the right chords.  And on top of that, I'm way better at picking out the melody now with some chord reference to refer my ear to.
It really helps if the piano is in tune with the record.  I decided,, since everything on record was a quarter tone off Gb major or Db major, that my piano tuner might be tuning my piano flat to save himself time.  Sure enough, when I took the guitar tuning fork to the piano, it was a quarter tone flat, even on the bass notes which typically don't sink over time. So I tune my piano myself now, every song on record is now in A or D or F  or C or G, not those weird keys.  
So pick up some old pop arrangement books full of songs you don't want to play.  these old piano bench relics are very cheap at Goodwill or Salvation Army resale, $1 each typically.  Download a chord chart and start playing the arrangements from the tabs and singing the melody instead of playing it.  Yeah, it is songs you don't want to hear, but the method is what is important.  After your brain knows some chords and you can sing to them, picking out the chords off recorded tracks of songs you DO want to play will be a lot easier.  Then the melody comes naturally to the trained ear.
Have fun with this.