Playing piano by ear is the ability to play a piece of music (or, eventually, learn an instrument) by simply listening to it repeatedly. The majority of self-taught musicians began their education this way; they picked up their instrument and began playing an easy melody from a well-known song, slowly picking out the notes as they went along. And even after these musicians master their instruments or a particular song, playing by ear still plays a large role.

Many pop and rock bands don’t play or write their songs based on sheet music, they figure the songs out by playing by ear. It’s even common among non-musicians. Ever sit down a piano and mindlessly pick out the tune to “Mary Had a Little Lamb”? What about grabbing a guitar and suddenly finding yourself playing the opening licks to “Smoke on the Water”? That’s playing by ear. You’re able to play part of the song just because you’ve heard it so often.

Playing by ear is a valuable technique for many musicians; learning songs based solely on hearing them is a great way to understand song and chord structure. In fact, a great number of rock and pop musicians learned to play their instruments this way. Instead of picking up a book or taking lessons, they concentrated on figuring out the notes and rhythms to a song until it was mastered. Then they moved on to another song. And another. Gradually, they learned their instrument just by playing by ear — and in the process learned how to effectively structure a song in that particular genre.

Playing by ear is also beneficial in helping a musician develop his or her own style; sure, they’ll at first mimic the style of the song they’re imitating, but the amalgamation of the music that they’re playing by ear will help them create something distinctive, something indicative of them only.

Though classical musicians are generally educated based on tons of music theory and sight reading, some methods rely on playing by ear. The Suzuki method of musical training, for instance, claims that learning music is the same as learning a language; it’s acquired by years of hearing it, eventually coupled with formal training. Just like we pick up our language by listening to our parents and subsequently attending school, we can learn music by playing by ear and later taking formal lessons.

So can the average person ever hope to play their piano by ear? Maybe not to the degree that some extremely talented musicians do, but anyone can learn enough about the basics of playing by ear if they learn the following skills:

1.Being able to hear a tune and have a general sense of the contour of the melody — when the tune moves higher or lower as the song progresses.

2.Learning to chart that melody contour either on paper or in their memory.

3.Learning to match the melody to appropriate chords.

Playing by ear is really a combination of of three factors:

1. Using your tonal memory to recall music you have heard:

2. Using your ears and fingers to help you reproduce what you recall;

3. Using “melody contour” (the “shape” of the tune), “chord structure” (how to form the chords on the keyboard to match the tune), and “chord progressions” (the path chords take as they move through a song).

Obviously, the first 2 steps you can take more or less by yourself — you can mentally rehearse recalling a particular tune; you can sit at the piano for hours and through trial and error pick out tunes, chords, and rhythms. But the real key to playing by ear is learning how to chart the shape of a tune, learn how to construct chords, and then determine the likelihood of chord progressions — in other words, which chord comes next.

When you get an understanding of step three, you will be in a MUCH better position to understand and profit from steps one and two!

Click here: Is It Really Possible To Play The Piano By Ear?

Improvisation (also known as improvising) is the act of making something up as you go along — an act with which we all have a little experience. Remember playing House or Doctor as a child, letting the game go wherever your mind would take you? That was improvisation. No rules, no boundaries, just the limitless potential of your imagination.

Similarly, musical improvisation is the act of “writing” (creating it as you play) a song while performing it, a technique found most often in jazz and bluegrass (but can be traced back to renowned classical improvisers like Handel and Bach). Of course, it’s a little more complicated than an imaginative children’s game. Though improvisation is a highly creative and flexible technique, it requires great skill on the part of the musician. A musician involved in an improvisation must have a detailed knowledge of chord structure and complicated scales and modes. The musician must also have an intuitive ability to structure a song on the fly; great improvisation thrives on its ability to sound not improvised but rather wholly composed. That illusion, the ability of a song to seem anything but spontaneously made up, is part of improvisation’s allure.

There are two basic forms of improvisation: structured improvisation and free improvisation. Structured improvisation, though a contradiction in terms, is the most common of the two. In this form, musicians will use a pre-determined series of chord changes, usually held down by the rhythm section, as the song’s base. The lead instrument in the improvisation (sometimes also pre-determined) then have the freedom to create new melodies and harmonies from these pre-determined chords. The flexibility of this improvisation form is dependent on the flexibility of the chord changes, and the musicians involved must be able to play exactly what they hear in their heads, as some complicated changes may not allow for large deviations.

If we were to improvise on a song such as “Billy Boy”, for example, we would follow the chord progressions of the song, but make up a different melody for it. Some musicians choose to stay fairly close to the melody by using neighboring tones and half-step slides and so on; other musicians feel free to completely abandon the traditional melody and make up a new melody entirely.

In addition to songs, many musicians in the jazz and rhythm & blues tradition improvise endlessly on the 12-bar blues, which has a chord progression using only the I, IV and V chords (also known as the “primary chords” of a given key) of whatever key the musicians are playing in. For example, if a jazz group was playing in the key of Bb, the improvisations would be based on the I, IV and V chords in the key of Bb: namely Bb, Eb, and F.

Of course musicians also add extra notes to chords such as the 7th — especially in the blues — and sometimes also change the harmony somewhat from time to time. But the recurring theme always reverts to the I - IV - V formula.

Free improvisation, on the other hand, is far more like a game of House or Doctor — it has no rules. Instead of focusing on harmony or melody, free improvisation focuses on the feeling and texture of the music and the way the instruments complement each other. This form tends to be far more experimental and rarely adheres to one style or genre or music — it is, quite simply, what it is.