Joe,

I'm a keyboard player and early on in life (18-30 years old), I was a keyboard salesman. At one of the places I worked, a shopping centre, I used to spend much of the day playing songs. It was at this job that I learnt to play by ear. And you're right. It takes practice.

What I found was that once I had mastered one song by ear, each successive song got easier. This job really changed my life and my approach to music!

To make life playing in a shopping a bit more interesting, some days can be pretty long, I used to challenge myself to play in different keys. I found the melodies easy to transpose in my head because I had a good understanding of scales and once I'd learnt to trust my ear, going from note to note in different keys was fairly straightforward.

To transpose chords, initially I began by using scales. As time progressed, though, I found that thinking of chords as I, IV, V made life much much easier. In Nashville notation this would be 1, 4, 5. Doing this, I managed to comfortably play any song that I learnt by ear in keys up to 4 sharps and 4 flats. While I'm not good enough to play a song after hearing it one time only, once I've heard a song a few times and I can hum along with it, I can then usually play it. I found lyrics also helped me remember the melody.

So, at the end of the day, my ability to play by ear came from the following...

1. Learning scales as it makes playing melodic intervals in different keys easier.

2. Learning chords as I (tonic), IV (subdominant), V(dominant), II (supertonic), III (mediant), VI (submediant), VII (subtonic)

3. Learning to identify the nature/texture of a chord sound... for example: the major sound, the minor sound, the seventh sound, the diminished sound, the augmented sound. These are the ones that form the basis of 99% of chords. Once the nature of a chord is identified, it's then only necessary to put a pitch to it.

4. Learning the lyrics.

For me, playing by ear is more about "playing by theory" with confidence in my ear's ability to identify what I'm hearing.

Regards,
Noel

MY SONGS...
Audiophile BIAB 2024