How to Identify Notes By Ear on The Piano

Hi, I'm Robert Estrin, you're watching LivingPianos.com. Did you ever want to be able to know what notes you're hearing and you wonder how do some people play by ear? Well, today you're going to learn how to identify notes by ear, right in this lesson for you. And there's a very simple technique that once you embrace this, things will click for you and you'll be able to figure out what you're hearing. Now, for example, if I were to play this for you and you might wonder what are those notes? Well, maybe if I play them one at a time.

And does that help? And you might still wonder how can you possibly tell what notes those are? Well, if I told you that this is middle C, that could help because, you know, there are two different types of hearing and one is called perfect pitch and the other one is called relative pitch. Very, very few people have perfect pitch. Perfect pitch, for those who have perfect pitch and leave it here in the comments, you can just hear the notes and you know what it is without even thinking about it. But they say that only one in 10,000 people is born with perfect pitch and yes, it is something you are born with. Certain amount of environment can help, but it's not something that you can really learn to a certain extent. You can develop a certain amount of pitch memory, but I'm talking about somebody they hear a lawnmower outside and without even thinking they know it's an F sharp, they could just because it's almost like the rest of us see colors. That's what perfect pitch is like. Very handy, but not necessarily as useful as you think. But relative pitch is great because once you're a one note and you know this is C, you should be able to figure out the next notes. More than that, with relative pitch, with relative ear, you understand the structure of the music, which is far more valuable than just knowing the name of the note. The function is really what it's about, isn't it? So once again, getting to those two notes, suppose you thought of the notes between the notes as follows.

And there you can hear the perfect fifth because you hear the notes between the notes. And the way to train yourself to do this is by singing. You sing the notes and it enables you to identify the scale degrees between them. Now it's not always that simple. For example, if I did something like this, now that might be a little bit difficult to ascertain.

Even if I told you this note is B, I figured out what that one is. And if you tried to play a major scale, it wouldn't work very well at all.

But the interval was, so how would you figure something like this out? Well, sometimes the way to figure out the notes between the notes is realize that you might not be starting on the tonic, that is the first scale degree. And in the case of this one, that is a much more conducive way of figuring out the top note rather than playing a B major scale because that doesn't even make harmonic sense. But when you go, then you can hear it. I'm gonna give you one more and just to see if you can start identifying this, you can even stop this YouTube video and see if you can figure this next one out for yourself, alright? So what have we got here? I'm gonna do, and once again I'm gonna let you know that bottom note is C to keep it easy.

And if you just sing through the scale and sing the notes and say the letters of each note in the scale and see if you can figure out the notes between the notes and see how many of you got this one.

And this is the way to figure out what you're hearing. Listen for the notes between the notes. You can do the same thing with chords. If you have a major chord for example and you hear this, you might not know what the notes are until once again you break it down.

The notes between the notes, think diatonically all the notes in the scale and you can figure out almost anything this way. Just spend the time with it. Take tunes you know by ear intimately. It can be nursery rhymes, it can be anything. And then try to think the notes between the notes and see how far you get with this. And I guarantee if you spend just 10 minutes with this a day, it will change the way you hear music permanently and you'll continue to grow how much you can play by ear and how much you can know what notes you're hearing.

I hope this is helpful for you again. I'm Robert Estrin, this is LivingPianos.com. Thanks everybody for joining me.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/how-to-identify-notes-by-ear/

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