"Ear Training" Playing piano by ear

[jvckgrey]

Hey everyone i've been playing piano sheet music for 3 years but i want to expand my knowledge and learn to play piano "by ear". If anyone know the proper way to start ear training or any good tutorial practice series PLEASE let me know. Thanks!

[adodd81802]

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[jvckgrey]

I want to learn this so I can play pieces without sheet music. I want to wire my brain to hear music and learn chords plus notes through hearing and sound.

[dcstudio]

Could I ask why you would like to learn this and what part of knowledge you think it would expand?

now addod... don't knock it till you try it..      are you knocking it? not sure

my younger sister, at one time, was someone who was all about the score... had to have it always or her ability to play her trombone evaporated.  On the first day of grad school at her ivy league university... her performance professor proclaimed to her...

"Now it's time to learn to play by ear."

[adodd81802]

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[michael_c]

Ha! Oh DC. No I was certainly not knocking it. I've always assumed it was either a "talent" that someone was born with or something that was gained over years of experience, not something that you would aim for specifically, especially after only 3 years of playing.

Many pianists start by playing by ear, only learning to read music later. I maintain that this is the best way to go about it. Do we learn to read before we can talk?

[adodd81802]

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[indianajo]

Could I ask why you would like to learn this and what part of knowledge you think it would expand?

The pop arrangements one buys at the store are ****.  It has always been this way, I have a lot of **** arrangements from the 40's and 50's.  
Real transcriptions of what artists actually played, cost $80 (20 years ago) and up.  
For those of you that think music stopped when Rachmanoff died, you have no clue.  There are still talented musicians out there but few write for solo piano.  You can make so much more money with a couple of guys on guitar and a bass player.  Doesn't mean I'm going to play guitar - wire strings make my skin bleed.  I'm not referring to Lady Gaga either.  My favorite bands these days from oldest to newest, Arcade Fire, Gnarles Barkeley, White Denim, TV on the Radio.  Actual melodies are being created, actual stories are being told to music.  Not all baby boomers got stuck on the Beatles and the Eagles either, however much satellite and mega-corporation  radio pounds those into our brains. 
I'm learning to play by ear starting in my sixties.  My piano teacher refused to teach me how when I was 12.  I wanted to play "riders in the sky".  She couldn't imagine me wanting to play "that old chestnut by moldy old Vaugh Monroe".  So why did it get a two minute airing in top movie "Blues Brothers 2000"?
  First learn chord structure.  I did that age 12.  Then train the ear to hear the different ones. I've been doing that the last few years - many are required to do this now in UK music programs and the pop music programs at US colleges like Belmont (Nashville).
After you can hear the chords by number with any key as the root, try to pick out melodies over them.  Play along with the record.  I'm enough into it, my hands are starting to feel melodies as I listen to the radio.  The more tries you make, the more accurate you get at picking out intervals from the root.  Practice makes perfect, as some Gregorian chanter said.  
You don't have to be born that way to acquire this talent.  I envy those that were, but few of those can play Moussorgski"s P@anE as I can do.  Listen to the mess Keith Emerson made of it.  I'm trying to play both ways, Why watch TV or travel to the beach or take recreational drugs? Music is so much focused and more rewarding, and costs almost nothing to practice.  Do it yourself, nobody else can please your psyche  as you can. 

[dcstudio]

The pop arrangements one buys at the store are ****.  It has always been this way, I have a lot of **** arrangements from the 40's and 50's.   

yes they all suck... every one of them..  they are all written for people with minimal skills
 they suck now and they sucked 80 years ago too...lol.  they worse now because they have to try to arrange songs that are sampled and electric.. those arrangements are hilarious...hip hop and rap don't translate well...  Then some eager student will see it and buy it not knowing any better.. then they wonder why it doesn't sound like the recording...