How to Teach Yourself to Play Piano by Ear

While most trained musicians learn the skill of reading printed music as part of their education, many successful amateur and even professional piano players have built a career around the instrument playing only by ear. Playing by ear is also a good choice for those who play recreationally and want their experience with the instrument to be based purely in sound and tactile experience. Learning to play the piano by ear is a process of exploration and trail and error, but your efforts will be enhanced by starting with a few clear, progressive goals.

Things You'll Need

• Recordings of favorite music

Instructions

1. Spend some time in free play with the keyboard. Listen to the sound relationships between the different keys and get to know them, as well as the feel of the instrument. Use this time to enjoy exploring the piano without worrying about getting anything "right" or "wrong," but make observations about what you're hearing in whatever ways are meaningful to you and try to remember as much as you can about what you've noticed. Play around with notes that sound good together, as well as notes that make up parts of melodies when played separately.

2. Pick out some tunes you know by heart. Once you're starting to feel some familiarity with the piano, start figuring out how to play simple, one-line melodies note-by-note. This will be a process of trial and error where you will often have to do a lot of testing to find the next note in the sequence. Start with basic nursery-rhyme tunes to make things easier; choose songs that only use a few notes, such as "Three Blind Mice" or "Mary Had A Little Lamb." Move into more complex songs. The more you practice, the more you'll start to have an instinctual feel for how to play melodies that you know and the process of picking them out will become easier.

3. Add some simple harmonies to tunes. Once you feel comfortable playing a few melodies, try out some simple harmonies. Start by just playing two notes at a time, adding a note to harmonize parts of your melodies.

4. Refine your ability to play harmony. Add more notes to your harmonies. Remember that there's no limit to this process; harmony can include as many notes as you like.

5. Start trying to listen to and reproduce your favorite music. Try to play around and see if you can get the harmonies to sound similar to the original. If this is hard, start by listening to and playing along with some ballads or other slow pieces of music where you have lots of time to listen to each chord before it moves to the next.

Tips & Warnings

• Hand position is important even without sheet music. Relax your arms from the shoulders down, keep good sitting posture, and curl your hands so the thumbs will reach the keyboard. Use all 10 fingers when you play.

References

• "Play Piano By Ear" by Simon Schott; 2002