Although many musicians intuitively learn to play their instrument by ear and it’s fundamental to really being able to jam with other musicians, I found a real lack of people who were able to explain how to do it in a simple way I could understand. So this video is just meant as a self experiment. I wanted to see if I could share how I’ve been figuring out how to do it, as I’m learning to do it - so I can remember how I did it. I’m not sure if everyone can learn this way but I know a majority of people do have the ability to learn to play an instrument by ear. I give a few examples of my playing a few months in to give a gauge on how it’s working out for me. Please excuse my poorly treated flute that is badly in need of repair and has no low C or C#. PLEASE GO OUT AND BUY THE ALBUMS OF THE ARTISTS IN THE VIDEO. THEY ARE AWESOME. I hope they don’t mind me using their songs in my examples. ----------- Jumping into the steps I use to pick up my flute and start playing along with any song that takes my fancy.
1. I find the root note. This is essentially just the note that sounds just kind of okay if you drone it continuously through the whole song. If you’re a real beginner, just start practicing finding this root note and making cool sounds on that one note along with the song. Find the rhythm of the song with that one note and find where it fits in the song. Start to just pepper the song with that root note when the song sounds like it’s going to come back to it.
2. At some point, your mind will get bored with only playing this root note. It will say - damnit man, you know what the next note is going to be - just play it, instead of droning the root note.
3. Allow your fingers to start adding one or two more notes to your repertoire. If the note you play doesn’t sound right, move up the scale and find a note that does fit. Just keep peppering those 2 or 3 notes into the song now. Learn how they fit.
4. Start to notice the interval between the sounds. Does it sound like it is jumping up 1 note, 3 notes, or jumping up 5 notes next. Try to play the interval correctly. If you hit close to the correct note, but it sounds a bit off, run your fingers up the notes quickly and see if you can intuitively identify the interval and fit it into the song as a creative flourish.
5. Then you just keep adding notes until you have identified the correct notes that make up a full octave, and therefor the key of the song. You don’t need to remember the name of the key. Just remember the root note and the sharps and flats you identified as you fleshed out the octave while playing along by ear. There be a few accidental notes in some songs, for example, the song usually plays in a key that has an f# but you find there are a few sections in the song where they slip in an F natural instead. I find that as you develop your ability to concentrate on hearing nuances in melody, you start to just know when these are about to come about. But I still just use the method of flourishing around the notes a little until I hit on the right one if I’m unprepared. --------------
This is a very new channel and I love to hear that others are enthusiastic about my research or performing similar experiments themselves. Please like, subscribe and comment!
INTRO MUSIC CREDIT Intro music cut from La Fin des Haricots by Tintamere. Used under the Attribution-ShareAlike License - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ - Thanks for the track!
