Learn How to Play Piano by Ear

1. Introduction: Hello, My name is ArtneGoson and I am a musician from Iceland. I have been recording, writing, producing, and performing music now for many years. My musical education is that I've studied classical piano since I was a child until I was about 20-years-old. After that, I studied jazz piano and at the same time, I learned musical composition at the Icelandic Academy of the Arts. But the main education and the most useful one that I have is that I've been playing in bands since I was about 12-years-old. On the way, I've picked up some very useful skills that I would like to share with you today. Throughout my musical education, I was never taught how to play music by ear. But once you become a grown up and you get into the real world, playing by ear is one of the most useful skills that you will have in your toolbox. So let's say that you need to learn a song for next band rehearsal and you can't find it. So what are you going to do? Just quit the band? No, you're going to learn it by ear, or maybe there's even 20 songs that you need to learn before the next band rehearsal. You're not going to waste all of your preparation time finding sheet music online. It's just a waste of time. This is a much faster and much more sufficient way to learn music. What will we do in these episodes? We will pick a song and we are going to analyze it and dissect it, meaning we will First off, learn the form of the song. Meaning, what is the chorus, what is the verse, and so forth. After that, we will learn the chord progression of the song. Then we learn the melody. After that, we will learn how to perform and play the song together. Melody and chords at the same time. But before we do that, we need to touch up on your music theory. In the next episode, we are going to go through the basics of music theory because music theory is just like breakfast, really important. 2. Music Theory Basics: Scales and Why They Actually Matter: Welcome to the second episode Music Theory, the basic. Why music theory? A lot of people hate music theory. I definitely used to be one of those people because when I was studying classical piano as a kid, I didn't really understand why. I didn't really have any correlation with what I was doing on my instrument. You just had to show up to these classes once a week and learn this super boring theory that didn't make any sense. It was like learning grammar to an alien language, for some reason, this was supposed to be music. Because when you are studying classical piano, most of the time the teacher, most of them all the time, the teacher brings you a sheet of music in the form of a paper, it's in a book or it's a photocopy or whatnot. Plants it in front of you and asks you to repeat it over and over again. In classical music, you learn how to read music, which is also very good skill to have. But it's a little bit like learning how to say a poem in language you don't know Chinese or something. I don't know maybe you know Chinese, but I don't it's like learning how to recite a poem and you can do it greatly. But you don't have the slightest idea what you just said. They it's a little bit like the grammar of music. Sure. You can learn music without ever learning any theory. You learn how to speak without ever learning grammar. Your parents are not teaching you grammar when you're an infant. You just pick it up with your ears. But theory, as does grammar, helps you to speak I don't know, more fluently, more correctly, you don't make as many mistakes. It helps you to be more efficient and prolific in making your choices because theory a little bit limits your choices. Theory is the grammar of music. First off, we need to talk about what are the main building blocks of music? How is music put together? First we have rhythm. Rhythm is really important. Western music is usually counted in four or four, four, you count one, two, three, four. Makes sense. Listen to any song and try to count to four over and over again. There are songs in three, four and some odd times seven, eight, and what not. But let's just stick with 44. It's simple. We have rhythm, then we have pits and we have style. I would say these are kind of the main ones. If you have any other thoughts, just send me an email. But pits is very important. Pits is basically the notes because each note has a pitch. So, I mean, you can play all of the pits. Sansor Avant Garde. I don't know. Maybe maybe someone likes this. Maybe you're into Arnold Shunberg. I don't know. But okay, pits What is Pits pitch is the melody and the chords. The chords is basically like a a cycle of course that repeats itself over and over again. When you listen to maybe smells like the spirit. When he plays like T and then tendent and then tenant. This is the chord progression of that song. It goes over and over again. Now, you have maybe an idea what the chord progression is if you didn't have it already. So it's important to understand scales and keys. We'll start off with the first scale. I mean, what is a scale? Scale is any row of notes. Of course, you can make your own scale. You can make a scale that goes, let's say, like this. Kind of sounds like something that already exists. Okay, let's make something more weird. This could be your scale, and you can play a song in this scale. It's like limiting your choices. You're not playing all of the notes. Because if you're playing all of the notes, it sounds atonal. Um, so in most Western music, we play with the major and the minor scale. But we like to keep it simple to begin with. So we're going to stick with major scale. I will do another episode later where we touch on the minor scale. It's a little bit more complicated, not a lot, but okay. So let's start with the first major scale. Let's start with see because it's my favorite, and it's the easiest one because it doesn't have any black notes. It just goes like this. So it's seven notes. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. And then it just repeats itself. So this is C major. Now you have it. Congratulations. My work here is done. Bye bye. Joe. There's a lot more. There's a lot more. Okay. Look at this. I go from C to D, and there's one note in between. We call this a whole step. Every time there's a note in between, we call this a whole step. Then there's another whole step, and then from E up to F, it's a half step. Whole step, whole step, half step. Then we continue whole step, whole step. Always one note in between. And from A to B, whole step again. The basic major scale as in 98% of pop music that we hear in the radio is built of this pattern or these intervals of notes. This is a key. C, this is the key of C. Start off with just practicing this. Get familiar with it, play patterns. Improvise in it. Just learn it, get it into your muscle memory. But now you understand that every major scale is put together by two whole steps, one half sp, and two and three whole steps. Sorry, I'll repeat this two whole steps, one half stp, three whole steps. So you can move this around because let's say you're playing with a singer and you're playing a song just like And the singers like, Oh, this is so high. Like, I can't sing it and it's such a high key. Then you have to play it in a different key. So that's what a key is. So how do you learn this? How do you move this around? How did I know that this would sound the same in this different key? I know it because I learned my scales. So let's take C and move it up a fifth. I have to real quick just move it here in this program to a G. The notes are going to be correct on your screen. So G C, excuse me, C to G. So we have it again. Hole step, full step, half step, whole step, whole step, and then holetap. And here we have the first black note, F sharp. So do the same thing. Learn this one. Play the patterns. Um, I mean, don't worry about courts yet. We'll get into that. So learn, C. Oh, learn Gee. What's wrong with my brain? Learn, Gi. And then we continue if you use these patterns, you can figure out the major scale from any note. I'm going to just close my eyes and just point at the note. So, this is not B flat. I know it's going to be a whole step to the next one. That means that it's a note in between. I'm not going to play like this, I'm playing this one. Then another holetep there's a note in between, two hostepsHltep, holtep, then half step. And then hole step, hostep, H step because three hole steps. Two hole steps, half step, then one. Limit. One, two, three, one, two, one, one, two, three. So now you understand the system of how it works, the major scale. What are the intervals? What is the distance between the nodes. But there's another system that is really helpful to help you to learn and understand the scales, and that is the cycle of fifths. That means that you go, since we're going to start in C, again, wait, let me put it back to C. C is the one with no crosses or flat. Crosses is when you have F, that becomes F. That's a cross, I guess, at least in my language. I don't know what they call it in English. But, we start to see. Then we go up a fifth. We don't count like this. We count would be chromatic. We are counting here chromatically. But we are counting within the scale, so one, two, three, four, five, we have G, and that would then we're going to play in the key of G, then we have the first let me put it back to G sharpiG here. Then we have the first one, first cross. And then we go up from there one, two, three, four, five, and this would be D. Change this again to D here. So D, the same thing. Hole step, hole step, half step, hold step, hold step, H step. So we have we add another sharpie another sharp note. So this is the key of D and do the same, learn that play patterns. Get comfortable with it. And then we continue. We go one, two, three, four, five, and what is that? That is A. That is the key of A. And then we already have F sharp and C sharp, so we're keeping them. We never take them away. We always add. And then But notice this, I'm playing A to A, and the note that I'm adding is always half sap from the root. This is A, and then we call one, two, three, up to five, and then we are in the key of E. And then we can add this one. Sorry. This is the E. From E, we go to B. D, D here this. Basically, it's C, C, A, B, F sharp, C sharp, G sharp, T sharp, A sharp, E sharp, which is just F and then back to C. This is a cycle of fifths. But do not worry. I know this is already started to sound really complicated if you haven't learned this already. Just learn the first two, three ones. Don't think about this yet. Just start with C. I'm going to put the correct key here. I'll have to change this. Okay. Learn C, learn, G, D and A. That's it. Now you know the sharps. But then there are the flats. That's the other family, the neighboring family and the other house. Then you go a fifth down. So why are we learning this? Like, why am I talking about these keys? Because basically you cannot play and C all the time. You have to play in different keys. Like, there are different because maybe you're playing Let's say that you show up to a jam session. I mean, if you know what the jam session is, it's like musicians that get together, and they're improvising a song. Maybe they're playing a song they all know. They're playing a jazz song. And you sit down and you're like, what are you playing? And someone comes to you and say, we are in the key of F. And you're like, key of F, I only know C, what am I supposed to do. You have to be prepared and learn your keys so you know which notes you are going to play and which notes you're going to pick. Because okay, think of each key as a language. Let's say that C is English. You know which word you're going to say, it's your native tongue or whatnot. It's not my native tongue as you can obviously hear. But, C, you're very fluent in C. Then maybe you're going to play something in A, for example. A is like Spanish. There are some notes that are the same because there are some overlapping words between languages, but then there are some words that you cannot say at all. Let's say I have here the C, and in A, you have C sharp, so you cannot play C. It sounds weird. It's the same with language. You know you're speaking English, you know you're speaking Spanish or Danish or whatever, Russian and you know which word you're speaking. So it's the same with music. You're playing in this key. Of course, if you get very fluent and confident, you can steal notes from other keys. I mean, when I'm speaking Icelandic, my mother tongue, I often use English words or Danish words or whatever. From other languages that I know. Of course, we steal works. You can also steal notes from here and there, but don't do it yet. Just learn the basics. So it's important. You know in which key you're playing. Yeah, this is the cycle of fifths. We were going to do the flat. C, and we count down five, one, two, three, four, five, we have F. I will also put up some extra material that you can download. F. So we have hole step, hosep, half step, H step, hotepHstep. This is B flat. This is the key of F one, two, three, Ah, sorry. And also the same thing. To patterns, improvising it. Just play some antom Just some bullshit. Whatever. So you know that you're playing this key. Okay. So after that, we count all down five, two, three, four, five, we get to the key of B flat, which is like this. Same, one octave here. Same rule. But notice this, we're always adding the nodes where we're going next because you can count five down or you can count four. You're counting one, two, three, four, and that is the node that you're adding. B flat, you cannot play it like this, for instance. Then it's a different mode. Holes, hot, half sap, step, step, step, and then it repeats. Same thing. I can the cycle is C F, B flat, E flat, A flat, E flat, G flat. But don't worry about this, learn the first three ones. C, then go to F, and then go to B flat, then E flat, just do this. If you know few keys, let's say you know six to eight keys, you're pretty solid, you're pretty golden. You do not have to know all 12 keys. Know half. I don't know, you don't have to know all the vocabulary of any language that you speak, learn the daily stuff. You're not talking about science or some complicated topics. It's all these keys that have a lot of crosses, a lot of flats, it's complicated. Let's keep it simple. Otherwise it becomes overwhelming when it's overwhelming, it's easier to quit and we don't want to quit, not yet. Learn the key of C G, D A with the sharps, the sharpies. Then you have C F P flat, E flat. Learn this. Okay. I think this is it for now, and I think it's just time for us to start with the first song. No, wait, wait. Sorry, I'm not going to start with the first song. There is another thing I want to talk about. That's going to be the next episode when we start to talk about chords. Thank you. 3. What Are Chords and Why They’re Easier Than You Think: So let's move on to the next step. Now you are starting to feel quite comfortable with your major scales. You know a few of them. Let's say you've been practicing for the past week. I don't know, five, six, seven different scales. What's next? I would say cords. Cords are quite important, but what is Cords really? Cords is any three notes or more played simultaneously or in some pattern such as arpechios or other things. Why three notes? In my opinion, if it's just two notes, it's just an interval. I mean, of course, you can play a song. I mean, it's kind of like chords, but let's stick with three notes. You can also create your own chords. Maybe let's start with that. Let's just put your hand down somewhere random. You can even close your eyes and just I mean, it sounds like already an existing chord, but let's imagine you don't know anything about any chords. So you can kind of just, like, shone out on the piano and just try to play something It's very meditative to do this. Just relax. Don't think about anything what you're doing, and just keep the flow. It doesn't even have to sound good. You're just getting your hands comfortable with playing, basically, because, I mean, this is not this is not normal for you. Like, the hands are not built to play the piano. And if you haven't been doing it since you were a kid, it's quite alien to start to play the piano. So I don't know. You can even just roll your hands over the piano. I mean, I don't even know which chords I was playing. It's just something. But maybe after that, let's start to learn some actual chords. We have the C major scale. You know this one. And in Western music, we mostly use what we call triad chords. And what is a triad chord, it means you'd count from the root up til the third. This is a triad, this would be a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth, a sixth, a seventh. Triad a third. You stack 3 knots up on each other. You do one, two, three, you have C and E, and then you count three up from E, one, two, three, which is G. Now here you have your first triad chord. This is C major. Okay. Congratulations. You played your first. C major chord. Maybe it's not your first, but let's just say it. Just humor me on this. The next note in the scale is We do the same thing. One, two, three, it's T E, F, and then three up from F, F, G A. This is a D minor this would be the second chord in the key of C. Let's continue. E, one, two, three, G, G one, two, three, B. And this is E minor. So let's just try this. With one hand. C, D, E minor. Go back. C, D minor. And then E. Play them back and forth. Then maybe you can add your left hand. Play just the root note. But luckily we have more chords than just these three in the key of C. Will continue. One, two, three, four. Next, we have F. Remember, we only have white nodes in the key of C. So one, two, three, four, we play F. We do the same thing. One, two, three, we have A, one, two, three, we have C. F major. This is what we call the fourth seat or the fourth place. And this is a major chord. The first one, a major chord, fourth, also a major chord. Okay. Get used to this. Put this one down. Next one, the fifth, fifth chart, one, two, three, four, five, G, G, one, two, three, B, one, two, three, D. G major. Next one, A 123, C, E, A minor. The last chart and the seventh chord is P T F. And why is it that this is called a diminished cord. So why is it a diminished cord? It's because it has a small fifth. If it would have a regular fifth, we would play this note here. But we don't have this note in. But don't think too much about this cord. We don't use it that much. We mostly use this. If you know these chords, you can play a lot of songs. So how do we practice this? Let's just start with playing this chord in the root position. Root position, meaning that C, the root note of the chord is always on the bottom, played by the thumb. I mean, you can don't play like this. This is how guitarists play piano. But this is how pianists play piano. So you play C. T E F, G, A and B diminished. Let's do this one more time. C major. D minor because it has a minor third. E minor F major. G major. A minor, P diminish. So make your own patterns. For instance, for example, let's just only play the major chords. We play C, F and G. These are the three major chords in a C major scale. F nor C F and C. Fun, isn't it? It's already starting to sound like music. We have three major chords and three minor chords. Let's add a minor chord. So which one do you add first. Let's add the sixth one, which was a minor. One, two, three, four, five, six. Okay. C major, A minor, F major, G major. Just make up your own songs or try to sing some melodies over there, sir. It's all. We're doing this to get this into your muscle memory. Another pattern. Let's add maybe the second. So we're doing C major with the left hand. For now, we're just playing a root. Sounds a little bit like Mc girl. What else? Play patterns. Play I'm going to do it slower. Mm hmm. Play another pattern, jump up a fourth. Come up with your own, have fun with it. This is the reason why we're doing this. That's the reason why we're doing it because we're having fun. I am having fun. I hope you are having fun. So what do we do next? I'm thinking that maybe the next thing we do is to learn how to play the same chords in different positions. As I said, this is always a root position because the root is on the bottom of the cord. So it's really good to be able to roll them around so you don't have to make big jumps. Be making big jumps, it slows you down. So playing here, C, and then I'm going to just move the root up on octave. So this is the first position. Root position, first position, and then this one goes up on octave, second position. And then again, you can play it around like this over the whole keyboard. And then you will start to recognize and visualize much faster the chord. You don't have to always play it from the same place, and you will be much faster in finding it. Play it in arpegios Sorry. Do the same with all the other cords. So I'm playing the D minors, the root posision, the first position, the second position, the root position. So E minor F major G major. A minor. B diminished. And then back to C. Practice this because when you're playing and you don't want to make these jumps, let's say, I'm playing C in the root position. And then I'm going to F. Instead of making all this jump, you want to be more you want to move to the shortest way. You want to move the shortest way to play. You play it like here. What is this? This is F in the second position. This is G, and the right hand is playing the first position. So just now your short ways to the next cord. So now you have all the chords in C. That's it. If there are different cords, you are borrowing them from another key. What's next? Let's move on and let's learn more keys. What did we do yesterday or in the last class? We were doing the scales. Let's move on to G major, because that was the first scale that we have a sharp notes. A black notes. We have F sharp. That means that we do not play this because it doesn't exist in this scale. So yeah we have G major. We do basically the same thing. Bear with me. All right. Start playing G. We already know this code because it was in C. So the first chord is G major. G one, two, three, P, one, two, three, T. A, A, 123, 23 A, A minor. And then No, remember, we have this one. So this is the third chord. This is pink minor, pin T F sharp. And then the fourth cord was and is C major, CTG. The fifth ord T F sharp A. And then E, this is the sixth one, the E minor. And then, last one, the seventh chord is F sharp diminished, and then we are back home. And exactly the same as we did before. We start to play patterns, play them one after each other, play them one after another. You can play them at both hands. So it's the same principle as in the C. First chord. Major, fourth chord is a major chord. Major. Fourth is a major, fifth is a major. Second chord is a minor. Remember, we are in the key of G now. We're not in C anymore. A minor. The third one is a minor, and the sixth is the minor. So if you play only the minors, Well, we play only the Matures. Do the patterns. Come up with your own finger exercises. The main goal here is just to learn and get comfortable with the chords in each key. Let's do one more. We'll do in the key of F. I need to turn the computer here to F here is F. So who remembers F? I do. Like this. F F the learn to scale. So we have here B flat. Let's start again. F major Second quart, minor chord, G minor. Third char, a minor chord. A minor. B flat, the fourth chord. The fourth one is always major, sorry. Then C, C major D minor, and then 80 minutes diminished, and F to a pattern, And again, here, I'm only playing all the chords in root position. Learn also the other positions. Sorry. All right. So how many scales did you learn? You learned six scales. So do this for all of the scales. I will also put material online that you can download so you can figure out the cords and all of these. But it's always the same principle. First, Major, second, minor, third, minor, fourth, major, fifth major, six, minor seventh, the minutes. Why am I talking about this? I'm talking about this because if you start to think about chords as seats or positions within a key, it will be much faster for you to learn a song by ear. You will stop thinking about them by their names. You will think about you will start to listen to a song. And once you figure out the key, which key is the song in, then you can start to recognize the patterns. Where is the bass moving? Where are the chords moving? What is a chord progression? Like, I mean, all songs, I'm not going to say all songs, but a vast majority of songs are based on chord progressions. Cord progression is, for instance, like when you listen to smells like ten spirit and the guitarcsT then, then the d and then the meal. Like this is a core progression. Also, most core progressions, they start on the first chord and they also end on the first chord. What you need to do is to fill the caps of what is happening in between and your choices are one, two, three, four, five. Let's say five chords, you have to figure out that's the options, what is happening. So once we will start to do a song, learn a song, we will put this into action and you will see how this works and why this makes sense. So, it makes sense? I hope so. So practice, play around with it, play the chords in the left hand, improvise a melody. Just anything. 4. The Form (Song Structure): So this is a little recap of music theory. And it's a little bit difficult to explain music theory in 20 minutes. But if you have any questions, please feel free to send us a message, and we can make more videos, explain more things into detail. But this will start to make a bit more sense now when we start to put these things into practice. We created here a little bit imaginary scenario. Let's say that I am going to a wedding tomorrow and someone asks me, Hey, A, my cousin is a singer and she wants to sing this song in the ceremony. And this is very last minute because the wedding is tomorrow they sent me an audiophile of the song, and I have to learn the song, and I have never even met this girl who is going to perform it. I don't even know which keys he wants to sing. First off, I just need to learn this song. What is the first step I do? What's the first thing I do? Of course, I open the file. I have it here on my iPad. And then I pull up a document on Google Sheets or anything. You can also just have a piece of paper. It doesn't really matter. Just anything you can write on. My handwriting is really bad, so I prefer to use a computer. First off, we just write here on the top of the document, the title of the song Tears No wit. Tears of Joy. The song is by an artist called it smaller Wiki ox So, let's just start to listen. Mm. Yeah. So first step. What is the first part of the song? I would call this an intro. Intro is usually the part of the song. It's usually instrumental. I mean, there are vocals there, but she's not saying any word. Like, so this is what she starts to sing, like what she starts to play before the worse starts. And the worst is when she starts to sing the words of the song. Bam. Like this. Okay. So the intro, she plays it twice. And why do I say that? Because she plays the chord cycle two times. Again, first chord, second chord, third chord. Yeah. First chord, second chord, third chord. Same chords. Played twice. So I do intro times two. Okay. Let's continue. And then she plays the verse. I will write verse here. How do I know it's the worst? I mean, I don't really. Could be the chorus, but most likely it's the worst. What comes up next. Boy, bad. By bad for me. But I don't care enough to make you my enemy. Boy did good. Leave me then and there. 'cause I'm better with what you call a swing. What you take. Okay. This is verse. Let's just call it verse A to begin with, or Verse one. You notice that I was counting with my fingers because I'm counting in my head when she repeats the cycle of the chords. Let's do it again. O again. First c. By, boy, I buy from me. But I don't First car? Enough to make you my enemy. Again, first c. You did good leaving me then and then 'cause I'm better without what you call a sweet. Way. So here is some new information. So let's say verse one times four because she plays the chorus, the verse. Sorry, she plays it four times. She plays the chord progression four times over. So the next thing is to check what comes next. Is it more verse or is it a pre chorus? Will you take a look, Cab. You only see what you want to see. Mm. Somebody who came over. Don't tell me. Sorry. I Baby. You got it. You'd make aisinRnynight. Okay, I guess that's when she starts to sing, I think what did she say? I'm messing you every night. You'd make amassing, hey. I'm calling this a chorus. So this is a precurse here. It's different from the worse. It starts off quite similar, but there are some changes in the chorus. So let's count. How many cycles are the pre chorus. So okay. Well you take a look, A. You only see what you want to see. Somebody give over. Don't tell me. Sorry. I don't Hey. Baby, got it. A me. Same. Pre chorus four cycles. Each cycle is 4 bars. Um let's call it just pre. You need to change the language here. Pre chorus. And then after that, we have Baby go you make missing you he every night. Every night. You think I'm sad Aloe Aweso but don't take cred B. Spread. Baby all I cry. There's a joy. Poem. Okay, this is the chorus. We're getting the gist of the song. Also Chorus, she also plays the cycle four times. This is very typical to play the cycles in even numbers like this. So what do we have? We're already getting the twist of the song. We have an intro played two times. The verses four times, precorus we play the cycle four times. There are some small changes in the pre chorus. We'll talk about that later and then the chorus is also four times and what happens right after the chorus? Let's see. Does. Baby, all I cry. Theresa joy. And then. Boy, must think. Verse again. You must think, I hug verse two. Boy, must think. Boy, must think, come hug thought I was shunning a spell, looking back, I was cursed you left me a drown and sail away on your ship but. But I don't give a damn. Water brig Four. What you take? This is verse two played also four times, just like in the previous time. And what does he do? S goes into that. What you take? Look, Gaby, you only see what you want to see. Somebody. This is the pre chorus again. Don't tell me, sorry. I By. Baby. You think I missing it. And then it. It's the same.This just repeating the song. So it's just basically playing the song twice over. So there's a precurse again. Then there is the word, the chorus. I didn't count it yet. Let's call this pre chorus two, let's maybe call it like a no, sororuss two, pickers two. Then let's listen to the chorus. Let's count the last chorus. Baby got You think I'm missing you every night. Every night. You think I'm sing aloe Aweso Set But don't take cred for the spreads. This baby I'm cred Tis a jar. Yeah. Per car. To. So, wait, it was chorus two times. Now, four times again. The second chorus. Um, second chorus, A four times. And then there was a small outthrowO a tail, which is two times, I think. But, um, let's count it again. Was it Oh, B. Baby got the one. You think I'm missing you every night. Chorus. You up but don't take for spread baby cry. To. Okay. This is for chorus, four times. And then there's Otrow. My To AtroT times Otro. So we have the form of the song. Now, we just need to fill the gaps. So we're going to do that in the next episode. Thank you. 5. Figuring Out the Chord Progression of a Song: So welcome to part two. We will continue learning the song Tears of Joy by Vicki ox. We have now gotten down in the form of the song. We have it here written in front of us, so now we need to fill the calves. So what is the next step? Let's figure out in which key is the song. Let's play it again. No, I have no idea which ki is. So I just need to match the note. So I play. Yeah. Okay. How did I do that? Why do I know we have A, C sharp and D. How did I know that this note sound the same? Okay. It sounds the same to me. If you can't do this, there are some exercises that can help you do this. First of all, just play a note on your piano. You have to match the sounds. I'm just going to blindly pick a note and I have to sing it out. Does it sound the same to you? You can do this few times. Uh Or you can sing a note, and search for it. Or And then, like, do this every day, like for ten, 20 minutes. Ohh. I find it. Sounds the same. You see here when it's not the same. I'm seeing this. Doesn't sound right. This is what you need to do and train your ear to do and your mind. When you're listening, you follow the root note. I'm not trying to play all the chords yet. I have A. I have C sharp, and then I have D. Most likely, this song is in A major. So, like if I play A major over the song. Boy. Sounds good. Boy. If I'm gonna play F over the song, it's not gonna sound good. Sounds off. Sounds wrong. Play A? Boil boy. By from me. But I enough to make my enemy. Oh, okay. We have established that we are in the key of A and we start with A. As I talked about in the previous episode about the music theory, this is the first chord. So it is definitely A major. What I do, I go to my sheet here and I'll do I make these 2 bars. I make a topple line because I'm repeating this bar. It's a major. I make a cap. So it's one, two, three, four. On three, she plays a different chord. And it's I have A, she goes to the third note in A major. Third, then the fourth note. The third note, remember, we always said first chord was major. Second chord is minor, third chord is also minor. So probably she's playing a minor chord there. Let's check it. No, she's not. Did you hear that? She's playing a major. My guess was that she was playing a minor, but I was wrong. She's playing third meters. She's borrowing this from another key. Like we would borrow a word from another language. And then she's playing and then So we have A. We're starting with A. This is the Ops chord. And then we have C Sharp. She's sharp. Then we make a bar and then she plays T four counts. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. Then this cycle is finished. One, two, three, four. That's our intro. She plays it two times. Let's play along with it. By buy, boy, buy for me. Divorce. But I don't can make him my enemy. He's playing the same chords. Boy, go me then the 'cause I'm better with. What you call well? So we stop here. And we do the same thing. So we know it's the same chords. We can just copy this copy, and we'll paste it down here. We know the chorus. Not the choruse. We don't know the chorus yet. We know the intro, we know the verse. Let's just go to the pre chorus. So. Same? Gabby. You only see what chose. Okay, what was that? There was a different quarter. Well, you take, Lobby. You only see what chose. Huh? So the the at, wait. So she goes from A, like just in the verses and then T. And then she goes down to I heard Beaty. You see what you. Somebody Cam De Mm hmm. No, this is a bit different. She adds a quart here. So we'll do it like this. We'll copy because it starts the same. The pre chorus is again, A, C, D, and then we go to B minor because B minor is the second chord in A. And she plays the B minor on three. One, two, A, one, two, three, C, major, and then T. And then B minor on three. But did you notice one thing here that starts with two, three, four, one, two, three, four, once. Three, four, one, two, three, four. It doesn't repeat, it's exactly the same. So we need to change this a little bit. So we copy this. And move it down and play it here is the same. I send them right after each other and then I'll move this one up. That indicates for me that the B minor comes on the fourth. This is usually how I do it. This is the simplest form for me to do it because maybe I'm not playing the melody of the song tomorrow. I'm just playing these chords in this imaginary wedding that no one actually invited me to. Let's check it again. What do you take three, four. Baby. Alright. She plays a different chord there. You think, it's the same. So okay. We can just write it like this. So it doesn't have any confusion. She plays this twice. But there's a little bit overcomplicated I'm doing this one. I think it's okay. We can fix it later if we don't like it or we can just write it out like this. But we want it all to be in I like this better because the less space it takes on a paper, the better. You always want to save space and it needs to be efficient. We started playing normal cycle once. The second cycle is a bit different and then the two normal cycles come again. Let's just move on to the chorus. Got it all you make coming you have night. You think I'm sorry. The chorus is playing exactly the same chords as in the intro and in the verse. This is very common. Often songs that just repeat the same chords over and over again. The slight changes as it is in this pre chorus. So she plays this four times, let's let's play with her, the chorus. You think I'm listing every night. Every night. You think I'm sorry Wait S playing the same chords. Oh you think I'm missing you have every night. Every night. You think I'm siding Aloe Awesome but don't take g body spread. Baby all cry. Tis join. Boy, I must think. Boy, I must think. Worse again. Sunday Same chorus. Looking back. I was cursed. You left me to drown and sail away on a ship but I don't give a damn water under the bridge. Pre chorus. We take a gabby. You butter see what you want to see. Somebody 24. Don't children four Baby, good, or you think I'm listening you So the pre chorus, again, it's exactly the same as it was the first time. So I'm just gonna copy this whole thing down here, and just replace it here. And this is pre chorus two. And then chorus, my wildest guess, it's the same. Baby, good, I missing you every night. Every night. You think I'm saying Aloe Awesome but don't take cred for the spread. Spaby all cry Teja. Yes. Yeah. Same chords. A, C Sharp major. And then the altro let's say, does it continue playing the same chord? T jaw. Yes. Peak. Test. Same. Same courts. Montiful. I mean, Basically, we are ready now. We are ready now to go to this wedding. We just need to print out this paper, we show up because maybe you don't even have time to practice with this imaginary singer that you're meeting tomorrow. Let's play it one more time. The whole song with Vicki Box. I'm going to look at the sheet. Often it's good to underline the parts. So you see it faster. It's easier to visualize it. Just give me a sack. Bear with me. How are you? Okay. Let's play this song. It starts from the top. Yeah. By you are bad for me. But I don't care enough to make you my enemy. By that go leave me then the 'cause I'm be with out what you call a swear. Well, you take a look of it. You only see yours. Somebody Don't tell me Sorr I don't baby. Wait, there's something different here. Ah. Clever, clever, clever Vicky Watts. Did you list Did you hear this? She's playing a minor like at the Minis chords. H. Good that you noticed this. There's a what's the best way to do it? I'll just put an O ient's enough for me to understand. It's supposed to be a little bit higher, but it's enough for me to understand that this is how I mark the chord. There are different ways to mark chords. Usually, if it's just a letter, large letter is a major chord that means. Either I put N to indicate that it's a minor chord, or I sometimes put this sign a minus sign. That also means that it's a minor. But I just put minor and O means that it's a 10 minutes chord. So so let's play from the Well, take a look. You're gonna see what you want to see. Somebody come. Don't tell me. Sorry. I don't want you play Bibi you think missing you every night every night. You think I'm sad A. But don't take credit for this breds. Baby all I'm cred Tisa Joe. Mm hmm. Boy must think. By must think. I'm hung. But I shall now spell looking back, I was co left me to drown and sail away on a ship. Hey. But I don't give a damn what the bridge Well, take a look at me. You want to see what you want to see. Somebody. Don't tell me sorry. By You think I'm missing you night night. You think I'm sad. Awesome but don't take rey red ice. Baby I cry Ts. Yeah. Ah. So now we know the song. At least we have the form, we have the chords. This is enough to play with someone. You hear that I'm not playing the piano exactly like the pianist in the recording is doing it. He's sometimes adding some small notes here and there, but you can add your own because no one remembers exactly how it goes, if you're playing it with someone. Sometimes added some notes here and there. Sorry, there was a major card. Like, it's decorative things. It's optional. You can also just play it like this. Just practice it, play it over a few times. Take any song that you wish to learn and try this method. Figure out what is the key in which key are you playing. Soon as you know that, your guesses are much less. I mean, you just figure out much faster which chords you need to play. Let's move on to the next bit where we learn the melody of the song. Thank you so much. 6. How to Hear and Play the Melody: Welcome back. Now we have covered the form of the song and the chord progression of the song. The next step is to learn the melody of the song. I mean, if you're playing with a vocalist, you don't necessarily have to know the melody. It's always good to know the melody, but maybe you want to put the song into your own repertoire. Maybe you want to play it in a party or just for a friend or whatever. It's always good to know the melody. Let's dive into learning the melody. We're still playing in the key of A. That's no different. And you know the key of A. There are two. Now, there are three sharp notes in A. So we have nothing to wait for. Let's dive into it. Let's listen to the intro. Mm. So yeah. So you have to sing it back. What's happening? Ah, yeah. So ta, ta, so I have to find the note on the keyboard. Ah, huh. This sounds the same. And she's going down. So we know there's this is in the key of C, the key of A, excuse me. Ahh. Mm Yeah. Exactly. Okay, continue. Oi back. Ti but M. But I don't care enough to make you my enemy. Same here. By you up back. By you ab me. So, boy. By you up back. Boy abet me First phrase in the verse. By you back. By you aback me. And then she saying, Dada, dann, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. Enough to make you my enemy. Make you my enemy. You are bad boy back me. But I don't care enough to make you my enemy. But I don't care enough to make you my enemy. But I don't get enough make you my enemy. Let's continue. Oh, dad good. Leave me then and there. She jumps up a little bit there. So she's repeating what what she's doing in the first time. But she's doing some slight changes. So we start here. Do you a back boy back for me. I don't make you my enemy. And then done and done and then done and another. Listen. Boy, I did good. Leave me there there Lama What you call a swear. So the same. This is how the melody in the verse goes. Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da B, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da We have the verse. We have the intro, we have the verse. Fun, isn't it? So, how many more parts do we need to learn to know the melody of the song? We have intro, we have verse, so now it's time for the pre chorus. We take a look, Amy. You only see what you want to say. Data AhOftn I just need to figure out what is a first note. Data. Here, data we take a look at it. Somebody can move on. And then somebody can move on somebody. Somebody can move on D So it's like you're being a parrot. You're just mimicking what you hear. And since I know I'm in A, I am not using. I'm not trying to figure, like, so it's like It's like it sounds wrong. It's wrong. It's a right rhythm, but Let's move on. Don't tell me. Sorry. So don't tell me. I don't want you. Then some kind of iron B. Baby. Wait, sorry. Don't tell me. Sorry. Don't Okay. Alright. Bebe O. I I'm not a fan of these R&B legs. It's hard to hear them. Beep, it. And then Beepy going all wrong. Beep, cry Okay. Baby. It's a small tale here that to that. Baby. So we have the verse, we have intro. We have verse, we have pre chorus. And then let's get the last part because we only have four parts in the song. There's intro verse, pre chorus, chorus. And then it just repeats. You make missing you every night. Every night. You think I messing. You think I'm missing every night. Ah, here, you you think sing every night. You memstennEvery night. You n no. Eso. But don't take, cred. Spay on, cry. Let's start part. It's different. Don't take credit. Spay on, cry Okay, we have intro. We have verse, we have pre chorus. We have chorus. Let's play throughout this whole thing. By you see. Somebody Tito Bebi, look at it. You think I'm missing. We take a look at it you only see. Somebody Camel tit baby You think I'm missing And that's chorus. You think I'm listing yn Every night. You think dots So that's it. Like this is how you learn the song. I'm not going to write down the melody because that takes too much time. You can do that yourself. But when you learn the melody like this, by ear, it stays with you. It goes into your system. So I think now in the next part, because we have the melody more or less down. I don't know it 100%, but I know it enough, so I can play around with it. So in the next part, we're going to put together the chords and the melody. See you there. Thank you. 7. From Practice to Performance: Playing the Full Song: So welcome to the last part of this tutorial lesson episode, whatever you want to call it. So that's when we start to put together all of these three things form, chord, and the melody. Let's listen again. Yeah. So and. Doesn't sound so good so deep when you're playing so deep here. Like, it's not good to play. Try it. Kinda too low on the piano. So let's play it here. So you're playing the chords in the left one, left hand. Melody in the right one. This is the intro. Boy, ba, boy, bat for me. But I don't care enough to make you my enemy. Okay, this is one cycle here. By back. So we can either there are two things that we can do. We can either kind of split the cord between the hands. So we're playing here, maybe in the left hand, just the root and the fifth. And then we have the upper part of the chord here. We're playing A in the first position because the melody is here at the top. And then S play it like this. Well, we can play it like that. We play just a chords here on the left. The same. I mean, it's a choice. It's a choice of styles. Mm hmm. Or Boy, I did good. Leave me then and there goes on bed with what you call a swear. Let's play the whole verse. Okay. Well you take a look, Abby. You only see what you want to see. Somebody can move on. So So same chords, right? You have the C, the melody notes, the C, the C sharp. So A? Again. Mm hm. And then Don't tell me, sorry. I know. Bept it. You and me. Here's the plays 10 minutes. A, C Sharp, T, B, and then A. Sorry. D and then be the minist and then we go into the chorus. You'd think I'm missing you every night. Same? Well, that's it. That's the whole song. So should we try to play it over by ourselves? Let's see what happens. Let's play the song. A Then I know the song more or less. I didn't like nail it, but the next step is to practice it, like to practice it over and over again. Once again, first time I ever hear the song, and you listen to the song a few times you get down the form, you get down the chords, you learn the melody and what's the next part to practice. How do you practice a song like this? There are many ways. First off, I would start always with a part that is the most difficult one. Let's say you're having hard times with the chords in the chorus. So you start to practice the chorus and repeat it over and over again. You can take a matronome and you can find an application on your phone and just install it, set it up, play it slowly. Don't try to play the song in the temple that it is. Start just very slowly. Hey, I did a mistake here. I also do mistakes. It's okay. We're all humans. And then when you then you do it over and over and over a little bit faster, you can always, like, add a bar. Maybe you just start with the first phrase. Just play this first phrase over again. With the same part. And don't try to play the whole song. Like every time you want to practice the song, don't just run through the song, especially if there's a part where you make mistakes. Play that part over and over and over again. Play it in small segments like so many students they always they're just trying to play the song, just run through the song. But that's not how we practice. Then you're just playing, then you often skip over the part when you're doing mistakes again and again. I mean, but now you have it. Now you have how to learn a song by ear. I hope this was helpful and useful. We will do definitely more of these RTOs and please leave a comment. If there's anything you feel like we could do better or we could dive better into some things. But remember, first, form, second, figure out the key. Third, figure out the chords. Fourth, learn the melody and last, put it all together and practice and start slowly. Don't get overwhelmed, but yeah, try this at home. Thank you so much. Goodbye.