The course › Unit 10: Play, improvise, create
Lesson 59 of 72 · Finding a melody on the keyboard, without sheet music
You know dozens of melodies by heart, without any sheet music. Playing by ear means finding them on the keyboard. It’s a skill you can learn, just like reading. To find a tune, ask yourself these questions, note after note:
Why this way: The educator Edwin Gordon called it audiation: hearing music in your head, the way you think in words. For Kodály, singing is the best training for the ear. Both are trained just like this: listen, sing inside, then play.
Tip: In this lesson, the computer plays the melodies up high, above the keyboard on screen: no key lights up. Play them back lower, in the middle of the keyboard: your ear does the searching.
First listen to the reference C, then the start of a tune you know. Play its first note on the keyboard: compare it to the C. Is it the same note? Higher? Lower?
Bits of melodies you know. The first note lights up: find the rest by ear. After a mistake, the right key lights up.
A new game: the computer plays the beginning of a tune you know, then stops. Your turn to play what comes next, from memory and by ear.
Sing the rest in your head. Start from the last note you heard, then ask yourself for each note: higher, lower, or the same? A step or a leap? And remember: most of these tunes end on C, the home note.
Did you know?: In 1770, at 14, Mozart heard Allegri’s Miserere in the Sistine Chapel, a work no one was allowed to copy… According to his father’s letters, he wrote it out from memory after hearing it.
Listen to the beginning, then play what comes next. Nothing lights up at first: after a mistake, the right key lights up.
The last challenge: no help at all. The first note lights up, and that’s it. Whole phrases, and even a melody you’ve never heard! Sing it in your head before you play. You can listen again as many times as you like.