Juz wondering how do you play juz by chords and stuff. A couple of my friends already amaze me with their ability to juz listen to a new song and play it on the piano.

I was juz taught to sight read, and I'm horrible at it.

This post has been edited by Wing: May 29 2006, 10:00 PM

I have been playing guitar for well over 10 years now. I never went to class, just play by ear. It was easy for me because i had the interest. But, im not the singalong kinda guy, i play almost everything but jazz, but recently, going back to indie rock.

Well tell me more. I'm interested yet I can't play like them.

Wow, u joined last year yet this is your 1st post???

woooo...
i also interested in learning this kind of technique
listen and play
cool

It took practise and more time on ur musical instrument to master listen and play...

not forgetting also to know all the basic chords

I dread my piano exams because of this ear-test thing. They'll play these chords and you gotta say what they are. I suck at it.

Of course I'm not expecting over night results. Juz wanna know the skill sets and if any special tools involved. Like, is a chord book required?

And what to do? Some simple guide would be good?

This post has been edited by Wing: May 29 2006, 09:53 PM

I totally am bad when it comes to listening by ear... I self-learned the guitar by reading tabs. So when it comes to riffs, shreds, etc, i'm fine... but i don't even know the basic chords, let alone listening by ear... lol

Chord book? Just play all the chords until you remember them.

You'll get better answers at the Musicians' forum.

I remember I watch a video about a kid.. about 6 years old.. donno how to read yet...

some one play piano beside him for > 1 minute.. by just listening.. he copy 100% back what what he heard... that is a fast song and he play just like a pro... by just hearing n remembering it...

You saw that on Oprah?

practise with some techniques.
there are quite a number of resources to help you do these, to play by ear.

though i must say, that i took it rather the painstaking way...but once i've got it, it was a walk in the park....hehehe

Well, I would say that these aural skills can be improved - of course if you have perfect pitch to begin with it can make things much easier AT FIRST. Perfect pitch by no means will get you anywhere - it can just make your start easier.

Work by building up your relative pitching.

I'd start by learning intervals - so, get someone to play back 2 notes and figure out the interval between them (eg, C-F is a perfect 4th, E-C minor 6th, etc etc). I think this is probably the best way to get started...

After that, you can move on to chords - you should be able to differentiate between major/minor by the intervals between the notes, etc.

Another thing - sing in a choir or do sightsinging! Even though this is not playing by ear, it will train you to sing different intervals between notes. This will help your relative pitching a lot.

Well there're lots of other things.
Yamaha in fact concentrates a lot the ear - aural skills. Although I think they lack in the 'sight' area.

Really? Aural skills and singing to develope aural skills?

yea at university i simply took a music appreciation subject to fill up credits
and one of the first things the subject taught was relative pitch.
lecturer would play the root note, then play a little melody.
we had to transcribe that to notes with the correct timing etc.

and yea, we also had to sing out a notation given.

 FuncEarTrainer.zip ( 1.43mb ) Number of downloads: 46843

Here. I found this freeware and I helping to distribute it.

So, once, I master this, and the chords, what's next? I know I'm getting ahead of myself here because obviously it takes some time to train this aural skill.

How long does it take? I hope not forever for dummies like me.

perfect pitch teaches you to hear the color of the notes.. that David Burge dude invented it (i think) and sell it.. he claims once you've master perfect pitch then you can play songs you've just heard a minute ago.. too good to be true? www.perfect pitch.com

P2P

perfect pitch is different from relative pitch which is taught at music schools.. if you master both you'll be unstoppable

cheers..

perfect pitch is something which you are born with - and if nurtured at a young age you retain it, else you lose it over time. Or so the saying goes.

Perfect pitch wasn't "invented" or anything.. and so far I have not heard of being able to 'teach' perfect pitch. It is possible to build up pitching skills to the point of being able to estimate pitches (by remembering the pitch of another note) - but that's not perfect pitch. And perfect pitch has absolutely nothing to do with playing songs you heard a minute ago - it *can* help the process of recognizing the notes - but it's not going to help you play it back.

Perfect pitch is the ability of the mind of 'labelling' different frequencies, so that when you hear a particular frequency your brain recognizes it- and then you can label that frequency.

When you hear a note being played - you will know what note it is.

Anyway, perfect pitch is not always a good thing - people with perfect pitch tend to lack in relative pitching because they rely too much on perfect pitch - and also can be hard to play transposing instruments...

EDIT : gone through that site - I might do some further research on that - it looks interesting.

This post has been edited by hoongern: May 30 2006, 07:07 PM

im really curious what that guy came up with