In the previous post, we talked about Step One of learning a tune by ear. This involves the process of internalizing a tune.

Step Two: Being able to accurately sing the song. By this I mean of course being to sing along when the song is palying, but also when the music stops, you must be able to replicate the melody exactly. Do not try playing it on the piano just yet!

When you sing, try to hear the difference in the music notes. Is it going up or down? Do this to start with. What you’re actually doing here is learning to hear the intervals in a song. Instead of just “guessing” what notes you hear, if you know intervals, you can identify them directly on the piano. A good tool to learn intervals is a program called EarMaster. It’s only about $60, and it’s helped me a a lot. Now I hear intervals I didn’t know were there. Before, I was the kind of person who couldn’t even tell if music went up or down.

So, after you’re singing the melody, and you hear the intervals there, it’s time to go to the piano for Step Three. Hum the first note of the melody. Double check that with the recording that you’re still the same notes, and hum the melody. On the piano, put your finger on middle C, and go up chromatically (half-steps). Listen intently until you get the perfect match harmonically. It will hit you like a ton of bricks. You’ll hear maybe one or two notes that “kinda sound like the note”, but keeping going through all 12 notes, until you’re satisfied. Then, play along with the recording to see if it sounds in key. If not, repeat the process until it sounds right for you. Don’t check online just yet on sheet music or Youtube tutorials.

Once you’re in key work out the rest of the melody. Sing it out, thinking of the intervals. Once you really know your intervals this process takes a minute. If not, it’s a matter of guessing, which is ok for now. But as you guess, just remember to think about what intervals you are playing.

Again, play along with the recording, make sure it’s all good. I’ve seen several times where myself or other people, make the mistake of doing the intervals right, but it’s a half-step to high or low. The recording is king here. Oh, and a side note, you don’t have to press play on iTunes every 5 seconds. This is a supertedious process. I reccomend a program called Transcribe!. This will allow you to loop a specific melody or part of the song, slow it down, ultimately allowing you to more efficiently learn the song you want.

So now that we’ve got the melody, all we have to do is get the harmony, aka the chords! In my article about the importance of chords, we discuss how it is foundational to have an excellent command on your chords. Most pop, rap, rock and stuff on the radio is based around 3 or 4 simple triad chords. For jazz and RnB, you must know all your seventh chords (major, minor, half-diminished, etc.) I love playing all of these styles, but I do know that some are harder than others. I’ll be writing an article about sevenths chords in the next post.

So anyways, Step Four involves, before getting the chords, to hear the bass. You gotta be all about that bass here, folks. You need a decent set of speakers. In my case I’ve got a $15 pair of Logitech Z140 that do the trick. You want to hear the bass notes.

A trick I like to employ first is Finding the Key of a Song. Listen to the song and hum. You’ll hear the chords change, but one chord will feel like it’s the “home” of the song. By the “home” we mean, where it feels like it’s okay to not move anymore, it feels centered. Typically this chord will be 1) the first chord of the song 2) the first chord of the chorus 3) the last chord of the song. Try all of these, hum them, then go to the piano and try to find the bass note that corresponds. In Transcribe! you can remove treble and listen to bass, which make this easier.

So let’s say you’re trying to find the key of Pink’s “Just Like a Pill”. You listen to the first chord of the song, the first of the chorus, and you hum it. You think it’s A. Go to the piano and play the A. Sounds great. Step Five, brings us into finding the chords of the bass notes. Here, you have to know all your major scales, because each corresponding note of the scale represents 1 chord in the key. Aka in the key of A, there are major, minor, and diminshed triads for each degree of the scale (which warrants a different post in itself):

A major B minor C# minor D major E major F# minor G# diminshed (typically this will be made into a minor chord in most songs if used)

PianoTruth Trick/Note: A last resort for confirming and doublechekcing the key of a song, is to go up and down chromatically, playing major triads in a song throughout the song. You’ll find one that sounds “right” throughout. That’s the song key. (And correspondingly, a minor triad, if it’s a minor song).

So here you are, you only have 7 options now! You can guess it out, you can listen to the bass note movements, using the above tricks, or you can think about the Circle of Fifths. Typically in pop, chords such as the 1, 4, and 5 are the most common chords used, you if you try those 3 chances are you’ve got most of the song already.

Step Five merely involves playing the melody and chords together, with and without the recording until you have it under your fingers. And voila! You now know a tune!

So, to summarize:

Steps:

Internalize Sing and Hear Play the Melody Find the Key and Chords Play the Song

This is a really beautiful process, because you’ve internalized a song, you’ve used your knowledge of chords, and you’re now able to translate something you know and love to a beautiful instrument. For me it was magic the first time I did this successfully.

A couple notes on this process: I’ve been trying to do this for a while, and I’ve noticed it’s something that comes with practice. You must be patient, for you will make tons of mistakes. But fear not, with ever mistake you are coming closer to your goals of being able to play music you love by ear.

What you could do next, and maybe you’ve heard this before, is to play the song in other keys. This will hugely help your technique and mastery of the keyboard. For example, if a melody starts of scale degree 4 of a key, and you know your scales, it’s all just numbers, nothing else. It can be transposed to a new key in seconds, all that remains is your technical ability.

So anyways, I hope this serves a rough, guide. This is the process I use, maybe it’s different for some people. Give it a try and let me know what you think. At the end of a day, a song=melody + chords. It’s simple once you have the foundation. Good luck.

Don’t give up, this is a skill to practice daily, it should be the only way you learn a song from now on. Your memory will be able to retain this internalized music much more efficiently than reading notes off a page.

See you in the next post.