Playing by Ear?

Subject: RE: Playing by Ear?
From: GUEST,van Gogh
Date: 09 Nov 11 - 10:36 AM

It`s highly disriminating.

Lend an ear, anyone?

Subject: RE: Playing by Ear?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 09 Nov 11 - 10:31 AM

Does anyone know what this playing by ear really is?

I do it. It's a biofeedback thing, where you look at the pattern of keys on the piano (for example) and start sounding things out. Your eye sees the keys, your ears hear the sound, and when you've played the tune, your brain says "That's right." It's similar to how the new kids in a school band learn to time by looking at their music while hearing the older kids play it right.

It's also similar to how children learn to read in school. We look - hear; look - hear; and pretty soon we're doing it.

The more you do it, the better you get. I find it is far easier to sound out something that goes up and down the scale than to do it with a song with a lot of big hops.

However, it's also good to learn to read music. There are always songs which prove hard to sound out, and someday a strange and unexpected chord calls to us. Then it's good to read the music and see what to play.

Is it an inherited ability? Probably. But I think doing it regularly is more important.

Subject: RE: Playing by Ear?
From: Will Fly
Date: 09 Nov 11 - 07:32 AM

Get the decimal point correct, fly - £0.99p

Subject: RE: Playing by Ear?
From: Will Fly
Date: 09 Nov 11 - 07:30 AM

Nothing wrong with playing by ear - I also started with chord diagrams and my ears, over 45 years ago. It served me well. As I played more, I realised that, no matter how good my ear was - and it pretty good - I needed something more if I wanted to get right into music. I'd started getting into music hall songs, ragtime, early jazz and stuff from the 1920s and 1930s, and wanted to dissect these things thoroughly. So I started buying sheet music and learning the dots - and found it incredibly useful for this type of music.

I still enjoy winging it at sessions and informal music gatherings - good training for the ear that it is - but I'm very glad that I can go to the SheetMusicDirect site (for example) and get 5 pages of a professional score for £.099p. I can print this out, analyse it, adapt it for my guitar style, play it, write out my arrangement in a professional manner - and enjoy the learning experience by doing all this.

Subject: RE: Playing by Ear?
From: Spongebrother
Date: 09 Nov 11 - 07:17 AM

Its real music you play Tigger: any notation is only an artificial way of preserving what is real.

Subject: Playing by Ear?
From: Tigger the Tiger
Date: 09 Nov 11 - 07:05 AM

I realize now that I made a huge mistake by not learning to read music. I began picking out songs on a piano when I was four;my parents started young on lessons,but I could not understand why I needed to read music. I learned to play guitar when someone drew diagrams of chords. I learned the rest by watching.Does anyone know what this playing by ear really is,why people have it?Is it inherited?