Vallenato Music

Playing piano by ear removes the necessity to drag your music sheets with you wherever you may go to play. It opens the door to be able to make beautiful music as simply as humming a tune. Perhaps you have always desired to play the piano but have never been able to master reading music. If any of that appeals to you then it could make sense for you to learn to play piano by ear.

Many musical professionals weren’t blessed with having piano instructors come to teach them the basics, many of them didn’t spend hours wading through musical manuals. Instead they learnt to follow the tone of a piece of music and to play along accordingly.

Before starting to play piano by ear you will need to assemble the required equipment. First and foremost you will need access to a piano or a keyboard. Ensure that your chosen instrument is in tune and stretch your fingers ready to begin.

The piano is made up of 88 keys out of which pour 12 distinct notes. These notes are known as letters of the alphabet, from A to G. After you hit a G-note on the piano the next note will be another A; this will be repeated until you reach the end of the piano. As for the blank keys on the piano; these will play a flat or a sharp note.

As you start to learn to play piano by ear you will realize the importance of the C-note, often referred to as the ‘Home Key’. This key is found easily by looking for the white key on the piano that is directly before two black keys. The middle-C can generally be found at the very center of your instrument.

In order to play a basic C chord first locate this middle-C and place your thumb on it. Start counting the keys to the right of where your thumb is located, including all white and all black keys, until you have counted to five.
At this point place your middle finger on the key as this will be the second note in what will be your C chord. To find the last note of the chord continue your count until you reach eight (don’t start again, continue from where you got to before, the number five) and place your pinkie on the key that you reach. Press down on each key together and you have just played your first C chord.

You’ll need to familiarize yourself with that chord sequence in order to learn how to play piano by ear. You can create a chord starting with any note using that one, five, eight counting pattern so long as you always remember to count the black keys as well. If you want to make a sharp chord to vary your music simply place your thumb on a sharp key to start with and you’ll see that your other fingers will end up in the right place to create a beautiful tone.

Spend time to practice a range of different chords and through counting and listening attentively to the sounds produced you’ll be starting to learn piano by ear. You’ll learn that if you drop chord number five it will produce chord number four; a minor chord. As an example having played a C chord dropping your fingers one key to the left will create the haunting C minor chord instead.

Through listening closely you’ll soon recognize the differences in the different sounds, the slight differences in tune will become noticeable to you as you start to master piano by ear.

Practice makes perfect and without it you won’t be able to distinguish those many different notes. Don’t limit yourself to practicing with chords at the center of your piano, experiment up and down the piano. Also try not to focus too much on using just your right hand and just a few fingers; experiment, get your left hand into the play and before you know it you’ll be well on your way to playing the piano by ear.

Copyright Lauren Paltrow