It is important to listen and have a teacher help you. And slowly by listening, lots, to the music they will be learning, they begin to develop their ear. I have taught adults, who say they do not have an ear for music. Have you tried finding a teacher such as a Suzuki teacher or a teacher with the same type of philosopy? Welcome! This is a great forum, lots of nice people. So, do your search and your research and I hope you give it a go because I think it is the best way of learning to play by ear! There are a LOT of music theory teachers out there who cannot play a single tune by ear. Mike explains all of that and it makes perfect sense. They have no idea why it works and why those particular chords are used and why it sounds good. However, most folks who are familiar with that progression have merely memorized it. Everybody is familiar with the standard progession I-vi-ii-V. Unless you know why the Dm7 is there, then you've learned absolutely nothing other than the ability to play a song from a fake book. So you say cool! and start playing the song with that chord and it sounds good. So you sneak a peek at the fake book and see that it's a Dm7. Say that you're working on a song and you just can't figure out what chord should be used at a given point in the melody. You have to set aside the fake books for a while. Once you can play by ear, then all that previously learned information will come in very handy! Not forget the previous knowledge, just set it aside a while. You have to set aside all your previous knowledge while you learn to play by ear from the bottom up. Once one major key is mastered, then ALL of the other major keys will work exactly the same! The only difference will be some finger positions and the fact that some keys are more difficult for some songs than other keys. But I do know that it makes no sense to compound the complexity inherint in a single key by trying to learn other keys before you've mastered even one key. I have no idea how many different chords are required to have a mastery of the key of C. You have to stick with a single key until you have it mastered. If you can't play "Amazing Grace" or "The Red River Valley" by ear, then how can you possibly play complex jazz arrangements? You can't learn to play by ear by beating your head against a wall with "Ain't Misbehaving" or "Georgia", or "Misty". You have to be willing to stay with simple songs for a while. If you can do that, then you will, will, WILL learn to play by ear!Īddressing complaints of some previous students: You have to be able to follow instructions, communicate with the teacher, and stick with the basics long enough to completely understand how Mike's music theory works. Mike Anderson is a professional piano player who learned to play by ear when he was around 17 and over the last 30+ years has learned how to teach others to play by ear. Morrism35, if you do a search in this forum for pianomagic or piano magic, you'll find a lot of information on a program that I believe very strongly in. Every chord symbol, lick or melody line would have to be written out for me. I would love to play in a band and while the theory i know would help my ear would destroy all hope. Very few know how or even talk about developing there students ear. But all that does is make you a walking theory head. They want to dump all this theory down your throat. This is what kills me about play by ear courses and teachers. I get words right to songs but the same interval I just heard seconds ago I forget. Another problem I think I have is poor tonal memory. Vocal melodies are major stumbling blocks, it's something about the timbre or texture of the voice that throws me. 90% of the songs I want to play aren't in fake books. My favorite types of music are r&B and gospel. Now tell me to spell out any chord or scale within reason and I can name them all in any key.I've tried ear training software and while I've made improvement it doesn't translate to real music. For instance I still can't play happy birthday without a strugggle.I know way more theory than the average muscisian yet I struggle baddly with simple single finger melodies, chords forget about it. My teacher was a respected jazz teacher, who taught me a lot of theory and fake book playing. I've been playing off and on since the early 90's.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |