If you ever wonder how some people can listen to some songs and almost immediately and magically
know how to play it on the piano. You've clicked on the right video. I'm going to teach
you my method of "Playing By Ear". And I'm also going to give you 3 homework tunes to work on,
so that even after this video you can work on that skill in your own time. The main skill that you
want to develop well when you want to play by ear is something called "RELATIVE PITCH". Now let's
talk about relative pitch for a second. This note is a C. C [Music] Now that I've played C for you,
are you able to whether you want to sort of picture it in your head or sing it out,
what does D sound like? If I give you a... What's the next note sound like?
So C was... Now if you pitched D at ... D Now if that was the pitch that you thought
of or you sang it out then, you are correct. Now that we have C and D...
[Music] if I ask you to sing out what E is are you able to do that? So again I'm
gonna give you C. I'm gonna give you D. What does E sound like? So the correct
pitch for E is... So you had C, you had D, and another step up would be... E
I think you see where I'm going with this. I'm giving you some notes and I'm getting
you to use these notes sort of as anchor points, or relative or reference points
to try to in your head pitch or hear what the next note sounds like. We're going to
skip F now. Let's jump to G. If I give you C, you also already know D is the sound. E.
E is a sound. Let's skip F. What if I ask you to jump to G? What does G sound like?
What does G sound like? Some of you can do this pretty easily. Some of you just sort of need to
think a little bit. I recommend beginners, just as I practiced this when I was younger, to sort
of sing up the scale. So... And if I need G, all I need to do is sort of step all the way up to G...
So the correct answer for G is...
So this skill that you're working on right now, where you're using each note as a reference point
for the next note. This is called relative pitch. Another similar way to think about
it is also in terms of "INTERVALS'. So the interval of, let's say a C to an E,
this is an interval of a third. An interval of a C to a G, that's an interval of fifth. 5 steps.
Now that we have some idea of how to use relative pitch and intervals, let's try to apply that to
a real song. In today's video I've picked a very popular nursery rhyme that you probably
know. It's called "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." Let's say that the starting note is C.
You know. We know the song is Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.
So first step is we remove the lyrics and we just think about the pitches.
I can tell immediately that the first two notes. They're the same pitches,
aren't they? So, we figured out that part. What's the next part?
Now I've been doing this for a while. So I kind of immediately know what the next
note is but for many beginners it might be helpful to sort of count up the steps. You
know that the next note you need is... Why don't we count it up step by step? We know
that the note we have is... and the next pitch we need is... so we can try to sort of sing it up.
So that's a total of 5 steps. And if it was 5 steps, the next note naturally would be a G.
Let's keep going. So, so far we have...
The next one is... I don't know if you can hear that,
but the note is going another step higher rather than lower...
... You can hear from ... this now, this note is now coming downwards.
So playing by ear is all about listening out for how much each note goes up or down,
whether it steps or skips. So give it a try! You might want to pause the video now and maybe go
to the piano and try to figure out what the rest of the notes are. So far you have...
Let's see if we can figure out the rest. Now the correct answers are C C G G A A G, coming down to
F F E E D D C G G F F E E D. Same thing G F F E E D and then what happens here is a bit of a repeat
of the start. If you listen to this... [Music] So roughly speaking, this is the skill of figuring
out the melody that is usually played by the right hand. This is the distinctive and singable part of
the song. Basic steps are: listen out for if the note is going higher or lower, and then try to
use your relative pitch, and to maybe even sing up and down the steps to count how much of a jump or
how much of a step it is. After you've figured out the right hand it's now time to go to the
left hand which traditionally would normally play the accompaniment. Or let's just say the sort of
background or support or the chords that accompany the right hand. Let's say on a scale of 1 to 10
(one being easiest and 10 being hardest) I would say figuring out what the right hand melody notes
are by ear would be, let's say, a difficulty of between 3 to 4. I wouldn't say it's a 1
or 2 because it does take some time to kind of experiment and try to see which notes you need to
play. But I also wouldn't say it's like a 7 or 8 because it is relatively doable especially if you
keep practicing this skill every day. Now the left hand part, this one is going to be a little bit
harder. On the same scale I would rate the left hand as having a difficulty of about 7 to 8. The
left hand chords or accompaniment that you need to play will be harder than the right hand because it
will assume some basic music theory knowledge on your part. Without going too in depth into
it in the world and the key of C major we have a total of 7 chords. And the 7 chords are these...
So we have chord 1, chord 2, chord 3, chord 4, chord 5, chord 6, chord 7, and back to chord 1.
You can also call them C Major, D Minor, E minor, F Major, G Major, A minor, and B diminished. So
chords 1, 4 and 5, 1 and then chord 4 and chord 5, these are the major chords within the C Major
scales. And chords 2, 3 and 6, these are the minor chords. If you can hear, they kind of
have a darker quality. They're not as happy and then number 7, which is used quite rarely, this is
the diminished chord. Just for our simple Twinkle Twinkle Little Star exercise today, we're going to
use only chords 1, 4 and 5. Or they're also called C major, F major, and G major. In most songs,
the first chord will be chord 1. So we already know that Twinkle, Twinkle starts like this...
So if I just play the chord 1, let's say just in crotch beat it will sound like this...
Starting to sound pretty good. So within a song, chords need to change. We can't
just have one C Major chord for the entire song. It would be really,
really boring. Listen to option 1 and option 2 and tell me which one sounds better...[Music]
and now option 2...
I'm hoping that you picked option 2 because option two is technically
the more harmonically correct answer. So you could hear that in option 1..
This part here where when the right hand went to A and the left hand still stayed on the C
Major chord, sounded just a little bit off. Sounded like you could probably change it to,
to make it sound a little bit more appealing. What
I tried to do today is to go to the F chord or you can call it the chord 4.
And back to 1. So you might like to try this, so you have your right hand melody. And you
want to try to match chords that go along well with the right hand melody. So how do
you pick chords? How do you pick chords that match well with the right hand melody? A good
tip I have for you is to select chords that have the same notes as the right hand melody
at a specific point. So for example, how did I pick F there? So we have here so...
We knew at this point I needed another chord right. And the note I have was A,
so then I think about oh what chords in the C Major diatonic scale chords did I have the
notes A? There are a total of 3 options. Okay, there was the D Minor. D Minor has D-F-A so
that's one option. Another option is F-A-C. Okay this is chord 4. Or another option is...
This one has A2 A-C-E, which is chord 6. So let's try all of them okay? If I do to D minor first...
Okay, let's try option 2.
Let's try the last one.
So just based on my ear and my experience, I concluded that chord 4 was the best fit for
that scenario. Chord 4 and back to 1. So in conclusion, this is the skill you need. You
need to use relative pitch to figure out what the melody is mostly played by the right hand.
And then you will also need some chord or knowledge and experience to try and figure
out what chords match best with the right hand melody. Over time, once you get really good at
recognizing the spaces and steps between notes, you get to play much harder things without even
needing to read sheet music. So for example, let's say we're in the key of C Major. And
let's say I want to play. let's say the Star Wars main theme. So maybe something like...
So you could see here... We did that interval as well. And Twinkle Twinkle Little Star - C G
C D E F G. Because I practice playing by ear with Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and a whole
bunch of other songs, I'm sort of, so aware and it's also imprinted in my head this gap of...
that's a 5th. I can also go. oh wait. in the Star Wars main theme... that's also the same interval.
So as you play by ear more and more, and you develop this skill more and more. Your brain
starts to see all these different patterns and you realize that a lot of these interval
stuff that you do are all transferable to to the next song. I've given you the starting steps for
Twinkle Twinkle. Why don't you go ahead and try to finish the rest of the song for both
hands - right hand and also the left hand. Now here are 3 other nursery rhymes that I
want you to work on as well. I've given you the starting notes. See if you can figure them out,
too. Please let me know in the comments how you went with Twinkle Twinkle
or any of these three other nursery rhymes. Don't forget to SUBSCRIBE to the channel
for more free piano tips and tutorials. and I'll catch you in the next tutorial.