playing melodies by ear

[CC_PDX]

I've played by ear my whole life since essentially toddlerhood. About the only things I use written music for are classical repertoire and Irish trad. My take is that knowing the theory can certainly help intellectualize / categorize, but it is not all that useful "in the moment" when playing on the fly. I left classical for jazz in my teens...maybe just in time to free me from the tyranny of the score? I know a lot of people who go way down the rabbit hole of theory and analysis but who couldn't improvise their way out of a paper bag, let alone play something without seeing a score first. At some point, it is like being a whiz at diagramming sentence structures of a foreign language but not being able to carry on a simple conversation. If asked, I can analyze the theory after the fact as an academic exercise or for someone's benefit, but I find it way more intuitive and direct to hear it ---> play it.

To me, what is more important than a ton of theory is hearing the general contours of melodies and having a well-honed recognition of note intervals (and of course being able to mirror those intervals on your instrument). The harmonic underpinnings can give it more structure and help with memorization if you understand what is going on.

I can usually improvise on or accurately recreate almost any popular music I've heard before. This is because anytime I'm hearing music, I am subconsciously practicing along with it in my head. When I play by ear, I am simply playing along to a replica that I hear in my head--I've never done the singing thing, but it is likely similar in approach.

 

[TomBR]

I think he's probably right for a conductor, or for a soloist tackling a complicated piece. And perhaps by "learn a tune" he means to deliberately exclude sight-reading (or he comes from a tradition where people never play with the music in front of them.)

But there are at least two alternatives that come to my mind. The first is that once one gets sufficiently good at sight-reading, one needn't "learn" a piece at all, even to perform it, provided the piece sticks to well-trodden territory. This is sort of like being a newscaster reading a teleprompter. When I played violin in a very good amateur symphony, for a 'real' concert we had at least 4 rehearsals and some weeks to practice-- but for our annual night of Strauss waltzes we got given the music the night before and didn't even play all through all of it at our one rehearsal.) There are professional outfits, especially for recording sound tracks rather than live performances, that play almost everything on about 0.5 rehearsals.

The second is that you don't necessarily have to imagine the sound. You could approach it more like learning the steps of a line dance, just memorizing a series of motions without thinking too much about what it's going to sound like. I don't think I actually know anyone who approaches music in quite that way, at least not all the time. Perhaps people who ring church bells in sequence approach the ropes that way. Writing music with the help of a computer is sometimes like that, if the software is sufficiently bad.

Hi Siegmund
Replying to your interesting post.
Tom Anderson would have been talking about playing folk fiddle tunes without music. The Shetland tradition also includes playing from music, Tom founded the big fiddle band "Da Forty Fiddlers," but as you say, when playing from music you don't need to "know" it before or after - you play what you see with the fluency with which most of us read. That's not the same as "knowing the tune."
If someone "learned" a tune as a series of steps, like you say, would they recognise it when they hear someone else playing it? Otherwise I wouldn't call it knowing the tune.
Cheers
Tom

 

[Danthekeyboardist]

The great Shetland traditional (folk) fiddle player, teacher, and composer Tom Anderson said "you should never learn a tune you don't know!"
This was a joke with a serious side. What he meant was that to be able to play (reproduce) a tune you needed to be able to "sing" it or imagine the tune in your mind before you try to play it on an instrument.
To me that makes sense. I don't actually see how you could learn a tune without that?

do you really need to be able to sing a tune in order to play by ear? If so, how good of a singer do you need to be for that?
to me this sounds stupid. Many people who can sing a tune don't really know how to play it on an instrument. Also, most people who sing focus on "muscle memory" and not that much on "ear". This is how it works for most people who take singing lessons.

 

[dan]

do you really need to be able to sing a tune in order to play by ear? If so, how good of a singer do you need to be for that?
to me this sounds stupid. Many people who can sing a tune don't really know how to play it on an instrument. Also, most people who sing focus on "muscle memory" and not that much on "ear". This is how it works for most people who take singing lessons.

I can play by ear because I rely on listening more than muscle memory—whether singing or playing an instrument. Listening is also a helpful skill for learning on a forum—you have asked the same question twice without appearing to have read the responses! ?

 

[dan]

why wouldn't a person who can play by ear be able to help a student play by ear even if it wasn't a part of their education

Let's try it! Maybe a demonstration will be helpful. If not, it will illustrate the difference between a music teacher and "a person who can play by ear," which is the extent of my qualifications!

Here's how I learn a tune, by listening, singing, and playing one phrase at a time.


And here's a demonstration of the difference between playing by ear, sight reading, and muscle memory. Usually, I think we are cross training our ears, eyes, and fingers; here I've tried to isolate those skills.


Experienced ear-players, I'd love to see a similar demonstration of your process!

 

[TomBR]

do you really need to be able to sing a tune in order to play by ear? If so, how good of a singer do you need to be for that?
to me this sounds stupid. Many people who can sing a tune don't really know how to play it on an instrument. Also, most people who sing focus on "muscle memory" and not that much on "ear". This is how it works for most people who take singing lessons.

OK - let's take a really well known tune, "Happy Birthday to you," "Auld Lang Syne" or "Silent Night" - can you imagine or "hear" the tune in your mind, or sub-vocalise it or even sing it out loud? That's what I mean by knowing a tune. Alternatively do you think a succession of keyboard notes or intervals that when played will reproduce the tune?

 

[Dingo40]

TomBR
I hear the melody in my head.
When I attempt a previously unknown melody of which I've no internalised "playback", I need to work at it until it gels into a "gestalt "* of a tune. This usually happens by the time I've learnt it off by heart.
When I can already hum / whistle / imagine the tune , but not play it, this prior knowledge helps with learning the playing as I already have an image or gestalt which aids with the flow.?
Muscle memory comes into it when acquiring speed and fluency and playing without thinking : the final polish not the beginning of acquisition ?
An acquaintance who learned piano from an early age is able to play tunes new to him straight from the sheet music, depending on difficulty, often at the correct speed. He reads music as I might read printed literature.?
*Gestalt
noun
PSYCHOLOGY

1. an organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts.

 

[Danthekeyboardist]

OK - let's take a really well known tune, "Happy Birthday to you," "Auld Lang Syne" or "Silent Night" - can you imagine or "hear" the tune in your mind, or sub-vocalise it or even sing it out loud? That's what I mean by knowing a tune. Alternatively do you think a succession of keyboard notes or intervals that when played will reproduce the tune?

I think "singing" is a problematic term.
To me it refers to something else than what other people refer to.
"singing" to me is a lot about learning how to sing a tune well.

 

[Danthekeyboardist]

I can play by ear because I rely on listening more than muscle memory—whether singing or playing an instrument. Listening is also a helpful skill for learning on a forum—you have asked the same question twice without appearing to have read the responses! ?

I think you missunderstand me. You say that you rely on listening more than muscle memory. Good. But I was told by my singing teacher that a lot of teachers focus on "muscle memory" when teaching singing. You did not listen to me. People are said to focus a lot on how it feels rather than how it sounds. I mean, even singers have difficulties with listening and "ear".

 

[Danthekeyboardist]

Let's try it! Maybe a demonstration will be helpful. If not, it will illustrate the difference between a music teacher and "a person who can play by ear," which is the extent of my qualifications!

Here's how I learn a tune, by listening, singing, and playing one phrase at a time.


And here's a demonstration of the difference between playing by ear, sight reading, and muscle memory. Usually, I think we are cross training our ears, eyes, and fingers; here I've tried to isolate those skills.


Experienced ear-players, I'd love to see a similar demonstration of your process!

You seem to have an ability to hear a melody and sing it back. I don't really have that.

 

[dan]

You seem to have an ability to hear a melody and sing it back. I don't really have that.

Interesting. Can you copy one note at a time? Ear training apps could help you. Can you sing along to familiar songs on the radio? I do this all the time. The core skills for playing by ear have to do with listening, pattern recognition, and memory, and apply to every instrument I play. The reason to practice these skills with the voice is because it an instrument I always have with me and can practice while doing other things—driving, showering, chores.

 

[Ffingers]

I think "singing" is a problematic term.
To me it refers to something else than what other people refer to.
"singing" to me is a lot about learning how to sing a tune well.

Perhaps that's a part of your difficulty - perfectionism.
Singing, loudly, quietly, just humming and/or running a melody through your mind are all varieties of 'singing'.
"Perfect" is often the death of joy, especially where near enough is genuinely good enough.

 

[donn]

I would take the singing teacher's story about muscle memory with a grain of salt. I mean, not saying it was wrong, but must have been a misunderstanding. The important thing anyway is what you will do, which presumably runs more along the lines of how the general population handles music. If singing has too big a load of expectations? Hum, or whistle or something. Everyone has this faculty, to hear music and perform it by ear, and it's a good thing for a musician to develop.

A couple times recently I've stopped to listen to my head, as it were, to see what's playing in there. Random stuff, it seems. I practice weekly with a little band that plays marches, and I think that's the general character of the music - somewhat like melodies that the basses would get occasionally in a march, but not any actual piece, just random noodling, though now that I had that thought, W P Chambers' Chicago Tribune came on. Which is OK, anything but "seasonal"!

 

[donn]

Anecdote that just popped into my head while I was playing my accordion and thinking about theory and playing:

I wasn't a music major, but (ca. 36 years ago) I took a jazz improvisation class in the Music Dept., taught by a rather illustrious figure who had among other things played extensively with Dave Brubeck, whom he met at Mills College in California, where Darius Milhaud was teaching at the time. Well, according this story, Brubeck had no idea about music theory, but he could play anything on the piano. If you put a bunch of keys down for a G7flat13th or whatever, he couldn't say G7flat13, but he could tell you where that chord happens in some piece, like 6th bar of "All the Things You Are" or something. (I assume most of that was filled in during the course of his studies there.) So the moral of the story is - do you use theory when you're playing by ear? Not if you're Dave Brubeck.

The course was fun, and not super demanding. Some of the music majors were very solid improvisers, others not so much, and the professor didn't push the theory past what the kids could comfortably absorb. The main instructional thing I (sort of) remember was a series of scales he had us do a lot, with different intervals - like, augmented and diminished were in there - for familiarity. When I say that, and maybe when we do the scales, that's theory, but if so the point is to be able to transfer the theory into some form that it could be of some use.

What made me think about theory was, I decided to play O Sole Mio, in A, and the next to last line goes from A major to D minor. So, minor on the IV tone of the scale ... or maybe it was the VI of another scale? Oh well, who cares, it's rather dramatic anyway.

 

[Siegmund]

This continues to be a fascinating thread, getting a peek into other people's minds and seeing how differently we approach the same music sometimes.

OK - let's take a really well known tune, "Happy Birthday to you," "Auld Lang Syne" or "Silent Night" - can you imagine or "hear" the tune in your mind, or sub-vocalise it or even sing it out loud?

No. If I try to "hear in my mind" any of those tunes or hundreds of others, I will "hear" something like the badly-out-of-tune sound I would make if I actually tried to hum or sing it.
What I can do, for those tunes, is tell immediately if it was right or wrong when I hear it played/sung. For most pieces, this is a yes/no thing: if you play a wrong note I can tell you which note is wrong but not tell you how to fix it. (Likewise I know the version I imagine in my head is wrong but don't know what the right one is. And if I try to 'pick it out by ear' - I know when I play a wrong note, but all I can do is start over again with a different note and a different note again until I find one that passes muster.)

In the relatively rare case that I can actually say "that should have been a fourth not a third" or "that should have been an E not an F", it'll be because it's a piece I have memorized in the past, and I am doing something closer to calling up a picture of the sheet music in my head and following along with it as I listen to you, than comparing how the song sounds in my mind's ear to how it sounds when you play it.

I do have a moderately good ability to look at a piece of sheet music and hear how it is supposed to sound.
Sight-reading with an actual page is sort of like me listening to you play while imagining the sheet music in my head. I can look at the music, try to play it, and if the sound I make doesn't correspond with what's on the page I will know it, and try again to put my finger in the right place. When I have the printed page, I can "rewind" instantly and try again. When I only have a recording, I have to rewind the !@#$ recording again, try again, get it wrong again, repeat again - it can take an hour to get eight bars off a recording when it would take a couple minutes off a printed page.

That's what I mean by knowing a tune. Alternatively do you think a succession of keyboard notes or intervals that when played will reproduce the tune?

That is at least somewhat closer, for me.

Interesting. Can you copy one note at a time? Ear training apps could help you.

With a pen and paper, yes (though I may be off by a note and fix it later when I try to play it. When I did the inevitable exercises in 'taking melodic dictation' in music theory, we were generally given the first and the last note and filled in what went in between -- which often meant working from both ends to get the intervals right and meeting in the middle.) Copy on my instrument, or by singing? No. I've got one chance in twelve of pressing the right button on the first try.

Can you sing along to familiar songs on the radio?

No, and am tempted to fling people out of moving cars if they do it in my presence. (I don't know if that would be different if someone sang along flawlessly: I've not had that happen. The very few professional singers I've been near a radio with have not been sing-alongers. The people I hear singing along can't sing any better than I can, but either like to pretend they do, or just don't care how it sounds and get caught up in the moment. Which is fine, if it gives them pleasure in the shower, but not fine if it annoys the people around them who'd like to hear what is on the radio.)

Perhaps that's a part of your difficulty - perfectionism.
Singing, loudly, quietly, just humming and/or running a melody through your mind are all varieties of 'singing'.
"Perfect" is often the death of joy, especially where near enough is genuinely good enough.

Hm. There certainly are people who enjoy doing things whether they are good at them or not. Good for them. I don't happen to be one of them -- I am nowhere near perfect, but I aim to be and I want to at least be close before I let anyone listen to me play. I mostly-gave-up violin because my left hand wasn't steady enough to play in tune well.

One of the hazards of music is that it isn't very forgiving. Just one tiny little button off on the accordion? Well, darn, that nice arpeggio came out as F#-A-F instead of F#-A-D because you reached one button too far. Or you accompanied that arpeggio with a lovely G major chord in the left hand instead of D. (Or on the violin, got something two-thirds of the way between F and F#.)

Playing in the back of the second violins in an orchestra, as opposed to being a soloist, we learned a whole catalog of devious tricks for when bad stuff happened. Play only the first note of each bar exactly in time, rather than try to play all the notes and be late. Play one of the two pitches in a doublestop rather than attempt both and miss. Play an octave lower if you aren't sure you are going to hit the high note right. There were very specific kinds of non-perfection that you can get away with and not ruin the effect.

In my case, as a listener, I will happily take computer-generated music over sloppily played live music. Or I will turn off the CD player in the car when I can only hear the loud parts but not the quiet parts over the engine noise, preferring to wait until I can hear the intact piece over hearing fragments of it.

 

[dan]

This continues to be a fascinating thread, getting a peek into other people's minds and seeing how differently we approach the same music sometimes.

I agree!

If I try to "hear in my mind" any of those tunes or hundreds of others, I will "hear" something like the badly-out-of-tune sound I would make if I actually tried to hum or sing it.

I initially was surprised at this, imagining the mind's ear like a mini tape-recorder that needs multiple passes to make a permanent recording but that plays back with reasonably good fidelity. But no, we're dealing with memory...

I am currently listening to Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" in my head. A familiar song, but I haven't listened to it in at least a year. My memory is enough like the recording to fool me--I can clearly hear the tone of the guitar and the rasp of Kurt Cobain's voice, but I can't understand most of the lyrics--it's all mumbled. Looking up the lyrics online, I realize even that even my memory of the first line is wrong. It's "load up on guns" not "bring on long guns." If I listen again in my head a few times while looking at the lyrics, I can overwrite my memory with a version that's a little clearer, but the diction can't be too precise and the tone can't be too different or I catch myself--wrong! My memory of the bass and drums are indistinct, if I try to bring them into focus it seems that I'm really overlaying an imagined bass line to see if it matches up with the gestalt. I realize this is happening because now I'm imagining a double-time oompah version that makes me go "wrong!" Okay, now I'm listening to the actual recording, and I realize I've forgotten the intro, the drums are much louder than I remembered, but the starting note and bass line I had in my mind are about right.

The mind's ear is a strange place!

 

[Siegmund]

Until I wrote that last post, I had never really pondered how my music-memory works. There is a lot of pattern matching of course, some conscious some unconscious.

I realized shortly after I pushed the Post button that my ability to recognize music appears to work sort of like the way a computer checks passwords. It's really easy and fast to compare an (encrypted) password with the (encrypted) list of recognized passwords, without decrypting either one, using things called hash tables. Actually decrypting the password is (by design) very hard, at least for anyone who doesn't know how it was encrypted. The information is all there but not in a readable or usable form. The computer is deliberately programmed so it can't just tell you what your password was, if you've forgotten it.

I would love to know whether, with appropriate ear training, I would suddenly be able to retrieve the pitches and intervals of all those stored pieces, since the information seems to be there, just not in a way I know how to retrieve now. I suspect it's more likely that I've stored only certain salient features of a bunch of different songs, not stored every note, and I don't know which features they are!

 

[Ffingers]

I'm originally from a regional Welsh village where singing, group and solo, was a part of normal behaviour.
Yes we all know about the fame of Welsh male voice choirs, but it has to be remembered that there was also a whole raft of musical traditions that the Wesley Brothers and other fundamentalist evangelical preachers tried to, and almost succeeded in, eliminating as "...works of Satan and his followers."
Musicality was born into us across a wide range of forms and styles but for us, in the less affluent reaches of the land, it flowered mainly in the voices of ordinary folk.
In the Churches, Chapels, Pubs and Festivals where only a handful of instrumental musicians were to be found, the elemental sounds of human voices gathered in mutual enjoyment of harmonious sounds.
Apart from a few, and mostly those who had formal instrumental education, hardly anyone was musically literate, gaining instead their abilities from a kind of osmosis from the activities of the community around them; - the farmer singing while delivering the milk; the postman whistling his way along the roads; the farmworkers harmonising to well known hymns and folk songs as they laboured; the 'bus driver humming tunes as he wended his way aroung the narrow lanes; the mechanic cursing to famiiar melodies as he stripped a thread and his knuckles simultaneously: etc.
Almost all learned by ear or occasionally by reference to tonic sol-fa.
Most usually musical theory was learned only by those wishing to advance to professional performance.
"...And oft, when on my couch I lie in vacant or in pensive mood they flash upon that inward <s>eye</s> ear..." ( Sorry Mr Wordsworth )

 

[jozz]

I would love to know whether, with appropriate ear training, I would suddenly be able to retrieve the pitches and intervals of all those stored pieces, since the information seems to be there, just not in a way I know how to retrieve now. I suspect it's more likely that I've stored only certain salient features of a bunch of different songs, not stored every note, and I don't know which features they are!

You can test yourself:
Try listening to a song/melody and then transcribing it. Preferably digitally, so you can hear back what you transcribe.

I can easily manage 30 minutes on two bars, and still not get it exactly right as on the recording....

Still I can easily sing/hum/whistle it back to you... so what's up with that??

So there's two different worlds inside the brain for sure

 

[Danthekeyboardist]

Interesting. Can you copy one note at a time? Ear training apps could help you. Can you sing along to familiar songs on the radio? I do this all the time. The core skills for playing by ear have to do with listening, pattern recognition, and memory, and apply to every instrument I play. The reason to practice these skills with the voice is because it an instrument I always have with me and can practice while doing other things—driving, showering, chores.

I can sing along to some tunes. But what you are forgetting is: they might be perming it in a bad key for your voice.
I hate it when people think that people generally are very good singers who can sing tunes easily. I often sing wrong notes and I think most untrained singers do.
Why do some people think all people are good singers?

I sometimes sing better alone than if I sing along to a song.

I takes time for me to learn songs. I have to practice. Singers need to practice. Not even singing Jingle bells is that easy without any practice. I have been jelous of the people who could sing tunes in one key and end up in the exact same key. I have been really frustrated.