I was speaking with a dear friend who envied me my music and
said she would like to take up music herself, but was far too busy for such a
commitment and would probably die before anything substantial came of it
anyway. Well, at first all of that sounded
sensible enough, but then I remembered that not all music or musical
instruments are deadly difficult, and some are rather intuitively easy as a
matter of fact. Yes, I suspect the
Musician’s Community tries to encourage the idea amongst the General Public
that playing good music is akin to magic, and that it requires prolific natural
talent, and is as hard to learn as Chinese Trigonometry, and so therefore
Musicians as themselves need to be worshipped as Gods, or at least given a
livable wage. But, thankfully, the Truth
regarding the intrinsic difficulty of Music, in many cases, is not quite so
severe.
But first let me wonder aloud whether everyone is cut out
for music, and I am not so much thinking here of ‘talent’, per se, as of
‘inclination’, that is somebody may wish to involve themselves in Music because
they think that Musicians and Musical People are held in high regard, or that
Music is somehow necessary to show themselves as ‘well-rounded. The problem here is that when they actually
begin to apply themselves, well, their Minds and Bodies simply won’t cooperate,
that while the Mind is willing, the Flesh just will never get up enough raw
enthusiasm to put on a good Show. So, I
guess people considering the jump into Music should ask themselves something
like the following questions:
Do you really like music?
Do you have favorite songs? Do
you sing in the shower? Do you dance to
music when nobody is looking? Do you
dance when people are looking, that is, do you dance at parties or Clubs when
there is a band? On dates, if you are a
woman, are you persuasive enough to get your cavaliers to get up and dance with
you? If you are a man, and on a date, do
you ask her to dance the first time she glances over to the dance floor, or do
insist she beg and plead in order to have a little fun?
Did you answer Yes, Yes, Yes in the affirmative about your
appreciation for music on this day to day level of things? Well, then, you pass, and you should pick up an instrument right
away.
Or did you answer with more NO NO NO’s then you would care
to admit? Perhaps you kind of like
music but have never listened closely enough to compile a list of favorites – and
the music was always played so low or so much in the background that it simply
wasn’t strong enough to shock you into starting to sing along, or makes you
break suddenly break out into dance. And
you admit to yourself that whenever you have put on some Music, that it was not
really as a primary entertainment but more as a background mood-enhancing kind
of thing.
Well, then, does all that mean that Music is not for you and
that you should give it up before really ever starting? Well, maybe not. It’s certainly not
encouraging, but if you think you might actually like Music, given the right exposure,
then the next step is relatively easy… find out what you really like. Do Web Searches for people’s favorite songs….
Search all the genres – Rock, Pop, Show, Country. Start listening and find some favorite
songs. Really. Songs that you like to sing along with and
dance around to. That is the
hurdle. Just liking a song. Wanting to put on the CD. If you can actually WANT TO play a particular
song… when you walk in through the door at the end of a tough day, if playing
your most recent favorite song is all you can think about, or, well, a high
priority, then you should learn how to play music. But if your search for some Good Songs that
you like goes too far on and on without your being able to find anything that
really stirs you, then, well, I’m afraid it would all be too painful and
tedious to pick up music, and you should look to do something that you would
more naturally enjoy.
Anyway, so now at this point we can assume that you actually
like music and you should go forward with it.
So now what? Well, depending on
your instrument of choice, if you decide to learn to play ‘By Ear’, then it can
be a relatively easy and enjoyable process, with results appearing well before
you would ordinarily expect.
Now, the easiest, most ‘intuitive’ instrument would be the
synthesizer Keyboard, using the Transpose
Key or function to drop the song keys into the Instrument’s Key of C, that is,
so all of the notes of the song will only be all of those nice big white keys
all in a perfect continuous row. The big
advantage to the keyboard, in addition to its intuitive easiness, is that in
not much time you could be using all ten fingers at a time to play rapid fire
melody or pounding chords, or, best of all, a mix of them both. Strings and horns could never give you that
much, well, fire power.
But the String instruments can be a lot of fun. Let’s talk about the violin family
first. Violins are fretless… no
intimidating little bumpy demarcations on the neck to make you think that you
have to know where to put your fingers.
How, you may ask, do you even
begin to learn how to play ‘by ear’.
Well, I would suggest that you start on just one of the strings … the 2nd
most high string next to the skinniest string is probably the best place to
begin, and then you put on your Favorite CD and start playing along on just
that one string. I used to put olive oil
on the string so I could more easily slide into the right notes. At first it is hard and will give you a
headache. The first night you will get
15 or 20 minutes before you tire.
Fine. The next night and the next
night, you will go longer.
Oh, there is the matter of Playing by Ear Theory, in regards
to what you expect yourself to be playing.
Perhaps you think you should be exactly overlapping the notes being played in the Song, or
exactly matching the singers voice.
Well, yes and no. Firstly, no
song is so fixed a thing, written in granite, that a certain level of variation
could not be admitted, along as it seemed to fit the song, in tone and
tempo. So when you first start, you may
find that you can only pick out a few notes along a fairly easy time structure
that seems to ‘fit’ along with your dazzling favorite song, but guess what?...
If you do indeed KNOW, because it sounds right,
that these few notes work in your relatively easy time signature, then
as far as you are concerned, YOU ARE PLAYING MUSIC. After that, it only gets better.
But maybe we should discuss this more, going deeper into
theory. Playing by Ear utilizes the
Right Side of the Brain, the Intuitive Side, the same side that does our
walking for us or allows us to balance a book on our heads with not too much
practice. You don’t have to think about
Walking, or think about balancing that book… you just do it, and it seems like
a kind of process that sort of does itself.
Yes, the Left Side of the Brain, the Analytical Part, can stand by the
way and shout out instructions and advice – “Keep Straight! Shoulders back! Quit your smirking”, but even
with all that noise by the way side, still, the Right Side of the Brain is
doing all the heavy carrying and lifting.
Yes, at first, with a new instrument, the Left Side of the
Brain is crucially important. Turning on
and setting up the keyboard. Tuning the
Violin. The Right Side of the Brain has
to sit on the Bench and wait before it will be called in to the Game and be
finally allowed to play.
Oh! And it is SO
important that you DO finally let the Right Side, the Intuitive side begin to
play. Yes, at the very very beginning
you might have to let the Left Brain tell you where and how to put your
fingers… for instance, on violin and guitar, you should press the strings down
to the neck using what is very close to the tip of your fingers, and you will
need to consciously do this at first.
But as soon as you can you need to just let yourself go and stop
planning ahead. Think about something
else and let your mind wander. Without
getting in its way, let the Right Side of your Brain find the part it wants to
play.
This may be difficult to do with an instrument. Almost the Entire Music Culture is
fastidiously Left Brain oriented, not ever allowing you to simply ‘play around’
but from the very start dictates every move and every finger placement. Yes, in a week or two, you can play a Song,
but only like some automated robot. But
that is what everybody expects! To just
start trying with no Structure, well, that is what seems strange. But it is essential, that is, if you want to
REALLY play music, and not just be a programmed music robot.
But, really, I am afraid that many people would not
understand the idea of playing by ear.
That when told to start playing, they would simply freeze up and not
know what to do. So maybe, if it seems
like that for you, then let’s start with something easier to understand, where
you will get the ‘feel’ for what I am talking about. Start with Dancing. Yes, just put on your favorite CD and start
dancing along, moving with the music.
Because dancing is so much like walking, in the sphere of the Right Side
of the Brain, it will begin happening sooner.
And keep going. The Music should
give you the strength to go on for a full practice… the beat of the music
should just carry you along. That is why
Armies once made such use of Drum and Pfife, as the rhythm of the beat lifted
the soldiers into a March that otherwise would have been degenerated into a
fatigued sauntering and stagger.
Oh, and you should always practice MORE than an hour. I know that the Common Wisdom says that
practice should be an hour, but, honestly, from personal experience I know that
only toward THE MAGIC NINETY MINUTES does the Right Side of the Brain really
take over control and begin to TRY NEW THINGS ALL BY ITSELF. For instance, you decide to practice dancing
to see what I am talking about. For the
first 15 minutes you are bit awkward, but after that you loosen up and are
flowing fairly well with the music. You feel you are getting better and better,
but after about an hour you begin to wonder why you are dragging it on and on,
and so you begin to get bored and your attention begins to wonder. You are still dancing, but your head is
thinking about dinner, or the politics and Work, WHEN ALL OF A SUDDEN IN A
MENTAL FLASH THAT TAKES JUST A TENTH OF A SECOND, you realize that THE PERFECT
MOVE for the next bar of music coming up would be to stretch your arms out to
the side, whip into a turn, come down hard on your right foot, prance forward,
jump, turn, and spin. And then you find
yourself doing exactly that! That is the
Ninety Minute Magic at work. No, it was
not Left Brain, because, how to explain, you really didn’t think of it, and
although it can be explained linearly, that is not how the Idea occurred – it
is really just KNOWING in a Flash what you are about to do. It is that EYE THE TIGER thing. All you have to do is feel it once… to see
it happen once, and you know what I am talking about, and you will know how
Playing By Ear really works. But you
need those ninety minute practices.
Oh, what if you decide to practice Dancing and an
Instrument, or two instruments. Do you
have to dedicate 90 minutes to each one…. That would be 3 hours
practices!? Well, no. I’ve found that one 90 minute stint will get
you INTO THE ZONE, and you kind of stay there when you pick up the next
instrument. Well, you will have to do a
bit of a warmup, but it all catches up quickly and you will be playing at your
highest level in practically no time on the momentum of that 90 minutes already
put into practicing something else.
Oh, remember, I was not kidding about how it seems like your
mind is wandering and you can no longer seem to concentrate. People think that means they should STOP
practice, but just the opposite is true.
That means that the Left Side of the Brain is finally letting go of its
strangle hold over your Practice. Things
are only about to get Good at that point.
But this is typically when all Traditional Music Practitioners usually
quit and call it a night, thinking that the Left Brain is their only
asset. If only they would keep going,
maybe they too would find that they Right Side of the Brain would have a Ninety
Minute Miracle for them too.
Okay, now that we have some of that Play be Ear theory out
of the way, let us get back to some suggestions on how one can start out
playing Strings. Remember where I left
you, with just playing on one string at a time, well, maybe even before the
first night is out, natural curiosity will lead you to the other strings. Let me briefly talk about the interval tuning
between each string, and how that makes the strings intuitively easy to
play. First, just from tuning the violin
– ( oh, get an electric tuner that lights up with the Letter of the Note… on
the Chromatic Scale. Pitch Pipes, while
for purists, are deadly difficult to use) – you will know that there are 7
Semi-Tones between each string. So,
that means that when you play seven semi-tones down on your Practice String,
well, you could keep going further down the neck on that same string to get
higher and higher notes, or you could simply just jump across to the next
highest string. Likewise, when you are
already playing some really high notes on your Practice String and suddenly
want a lower note, you could go all the way back up on your Practice String, or
you could simply sneak over to the next fatter string over for that low
note. This all happens automatically –
the Magic Ninety Minute Insights and Flashes.
Whether you can understand it well enough to explain it with your Left
Side Brain, may still be left to question, but to the Right Side of your Brain,
it is Intuitively kind of obvious, and you will simply ‘catch on’. Oh, for instance, when I first started
practicing on guitar, I found that my hand, all by itself, developed and ‘trick’,
that whenever I wanted to play the Same Note three times in a row, my hand
would shoot up toward the top of the skinniest string, and hit the target Note
there, then my hand would jump about halfway down the neck of the next lower
string, and hit the SAME NOTE there, and then finally drop down toward the
bottom of the neck and hit THAT SAME NOTE on the third string over. All without consciously practicing it… I just
found one time when I pulled my mind back from wandering, that I was doing
it. It definitely showed that the hand
itself was serious about knowing how each string stood in relation to the next,
and that at a certain point it stops being 4 or 6 strings, but becomes One Big
String, only set in highly predictable staggers.
Oh, in case you were wondering, Guitars are the same as
Violins except the spacing between strings is 5 Semi-tones instead of 7
semi-tones. Oh, traditional tuning for
the Guitar brings the toning up on the second from the last skinny string to 4 semitones
away from the next fattest string…this arrangement makes most chording easier
for the guitarists, and other turning options are also utilized. But I myself
tune my guitars for 5 semi-tone spacing all across, so that it remains
“intuitively easy and highly predictable” , and a lot of Lead Guitarists do the
same as I and probably for that same reason – It guarantees that anything you can
do between any two strings, you can do between any two other, that is you can
start a scaled progression and just keep it going across all of the strings,
without having to think of what you are doing . Oh, and Basses – really, just big guitars with longer fatter strings –
they are great, because they are all tuned to a solid 5 semi-tones between
strings, unless of course a special tuning is used to make a chord reach for a
particular song. But I have always just
kept the standard tuning and have never felt handicapped by it.
Oh, I had mentioned earlier that the most easy and intuitive
instrument is Transposable Keyboard, that is, a keyboard where you can
‘transpose’ the highness or lowness of the keys on the keyboard so that the Key
you want to play in drops into just the White Keys – all in one easy intuitive
row. But, there is one fairly big
drawback there for the fledgling musician – you have to know what Key the song
is in… and about one in every twelve songs has a Key ‘Bridge’ where the song
comes up in Key by semi-tone or two or
three. Now, with Strings, it simply does not matter
what Key the song is in… you will automatically learn to play in the right Key,
as anything else would sound so bad you simply would not want to play that way…
it is like balancing a Book on your Head – you simply KNOW the point of it is
to NOT DROP THE BOOK, whereas in Music, you simply know o stay in Key. Yes, it’s kind of like magic. Now, the only reason it is a problem on
keyboards is that there are two separate rows of keys on a keyboard – the
Whites and the Blacks and the design prevents you from being able to simply
slide into the right note as you can with Strings (and, regarding this, you may
have to slide only once or maybe twice to hit the right note on a string, but then
your fingers learn how to land it exactly the next time). So, it
is extremely helpful on the Keyboard to know what key you are in, and, yes, it
is a huge complication for which I apologize.
So, once we admit we have a problem here and decide that we
need to know what Key a song is in, well, the easiest way is to get a set of
harmonicas, diatonic scale harmonicas to be exact. There are 12 Keys and so you need twelve
harmonicas. Oh, don’t believe anybody
who says some of the Keys are never played.
They are… every single one though some Keys a lot more often than others
I will grant. But the way it is is that
Singers or Musicians will insist on finding a Key that allows them to sing or
play both the highest note and the lowest note of a song that may have a very
broad range, and so if need be they will insist that the band do the song in Ab
or Db or F# , that is, whatever Key will let them fit both the Highest and the
Lowest Notes they need to contend with…
so you do need all twelve harmonics.
Diatonic Scale Harmonicas go for about $40 a piece. Oh, and it helps that Harmonicas are very intuitive
instruments, held back by only one factor, that the notes are different
depending on whether you blow through them or draw your breath through. But none of your notes will EVER be off
key. Getting the songs just right will
take some time, but for now we are just concerned with using these Harmonicas
as a kind of Pitch Pipe for Key. What I
usually do is set the Keyboard to the Key of C, that is, where a piano would
naturally be, and while I play the song on the CD player, I hunt around the
Keyboard, striking both Whites and Blacks and when I am sure a certain note
fits, then I write it down. The Key Note
itself should sound very very ‘good’ in the song, as the notes 5 above it and 5
below it will also sound pretty good.
Each Key only has 7 notes. So,
with 12 White and Black Keys, you only need to find 7, and not even that many
to begin to guess what Key the song is in.
You can use the Harmonicas to prove out your guesses.
Oh, what are the Keys?
The First Key and the model for all of the others is the Key of C. On a piano keyboard, it is all the White Keys
– C, D, E, F, G, A, B. Now, while there
are 7 White Keys in a Chromatic Scale, there are only 5 Black Keys – lets
simplify by just naming them as Sharps; there is C#, D#, F#, G# and A#. Notice that there is no E# or B#. On the Keyboard you can see this as two White
Keys being together without a Black Key being in between.
So, the entire Chromatic Scale, the full twelve notes would
be as follows:
C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, B.
The way to figure out how to Transpose, or even what each
Key is, note per note, well, the easiest way I have found is to make two Rings
of the Chromatic Scale… they are already on line… see, this is one from
Wikipedia:
You make one Circle small enough so that it can fit exactly
into the center of the larger circle and you thumb tack it into the wall, dead
center so that the smaller circle can spin inside the larger circle. To know what notes comprise another Key,
simply line up that Key Note with the Key of C, and then write down only the
Notes that correspond to the Whole Notes of C.
For instance, the key of E. You
line up the small wheel E exactly underneath the big wheel C, then go around,
skipping the Sharps and Flats in C because the Key of C has no sharps or flats.
So for the Key of E we would have the following:
E under C
F# under D
G# under E
A under F
B under G
C# under A
D# under B
So the Notes in the Key of E are E, F#, G#, A, B, C#, D#.
To Transpose a Keyboard so that E is played on all the White
Keys, just count from C to your Key Note, or count down from C, whichever is
closer. The Key of E, since E is 4
slots up from C, would be Transposable with a +4, or counting down from C,
-8. The Key of A transposes to -3. The Key of G transposes at -5. The Key of F is either +5 or -6.
In my Music Studio, I have a homemade diagram on the wall,
of the 12 Keys, all in the form of little Piano Keyboards. If you think you know the Right Key, then,
without transposing it, you can simply hammer out the Key notes, white and
black, and if they all sound good, and the Key Note sounds particularly strong,
being used especially toward the end of each musical phrase, then that is
probably your key. But prove it in with
a Harmonica if you can. With a little
practice on harmonica, if you got the right key, then everything should sound
PERFECT, but any little discrepancy… something sounding a bit off, is a sign
that you are close but not quite spot on, as some keys are different by only a
note and the Key Note may be a magical 5
semi-tone (note slots) away from the Key you accidentally chose, which sound
awfully close to being right. For instance,
the Key of G is the same as the Key of C, except it has an F# instead of an F,
and the G is 5 down from C and so sounds very very good with C. But you will soon hear it when it is not just
right.
Oh, my explanation above brings me to a painful passage,
that I have to tell you that Music Theory seems so confusing at times. For instance, although there are twelve notes
in a chromatic scale, there are only 7 “steps”, or 7 “tones”, but what makes
this silly to me, is that, for instance, while E is right next to F and it is
one Step, there is a key between C and D, but it is also just one “step” . So you have to remember to call them
semi-tones, or notes. Or when talking of
guitars to say “frets”… but the term Step is too fluid and relative and tied up
in theory. But for our uses we only have
to know enough about music theory to not confuse Real Musicians when we have to
talk to them.
Now, WHAT YOU MOST NEED TO KNOW ABOUT PLAYING BY EAR is that
you are playing music almost immediately, that is, the IDEA of the music you
want to play, begins to happen almost immediately. No, you aren’t playing perfect songs. But what you want to happen begins to happen
rather quickly. Even when just doing the
One String method of practice on your first few days with Violin… well, as you
find yourself catching the right notes, It FEELS rewarding. It feels to you like you are actually playing
music. And honestly you are. Now, after over 30 years of playing by ear,
of course I am objectively much better than when I first started, but the
feeling of just “playing” has never changed. The first time you find the right
note in the dark feels just as good as anything you will ever do later, and the
sense of Wonder never goes away. It is
as Good as listening to fine music, but so much more at another and higher
level because you are in there and part of the Song. Oh, and this reminds me. The way songs are written and produced in our
Capitalist Society. Yes, great care is
taken to make songs ‘Good’, but no one spends years working on and perfecting
these songs and their production and final presentation. But what about the Guys like me that Practice
them for year after year after year. Well,
guess what. Along comes one of those
Magic Ninety Minutes when suddenly you get the Flash Idea for a Part, a Riff,
that fits perfectly and sounds great, but was not part of the original song’s
production. Yes, you can rise up to the
Level of the Song itself… not just copying and trying to imitate what you hear
but actually Breath new Life into the Song and its performance.
Or maybe we should just learn the songs by rote – learn to
read music to show us the notes to the song, and where we should our fingers. Yes, by doing that, we could learn
individual songs faster and even better.
But what PLAYING BY EAR does is
that we LEARN EVERY SONG THERE IS OR EVER WILL BE ALL AT ONCE. Yes, the traditional player will learn one
song faster, or even a hundred songs faster.
But they will always be at a loss when it comes to just picking up their
instrument and playing along with a new fresh tune. If practice long enough playing by ear and
are asked if you know any particular song, you can honestly say, like those old
vaudeville musicians, “No, but if you hum me a few bars I’ll catch on”.
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