Play'in by ear

[henrymouni]

What's the difference between an Oboe and an onion?
Nobody cries when you slice up an oboe!

Just kidding, son of Barry!


Henry.

jon, surely you know that "An oboe is an ill woodwind that nobody blows good."

Tom

Good one, Tom! 

Hey, wait a minute...I should lodge a complaint...my son o-blows real good!

BTW, when we play a duet, there are times when he blows and I SUCK!
 

Barry

[landztranz]

What's the difference between an Oboe and an onion?
Nobody cries when you slice up an oboe!

Just kidding, son of Barry!


Henry.

Something tells me one could tell the same joke about an onion and a tin sandwich.
 

Barry

[henrymouni]

You could Barry but the 'meisters would not think that was funny!!


Henry.

What's the difference between an Oboe and an onion?
Nobody cries when you slice up an oboe!

Just kidding, son of Barry!


Henry.

Something tells me one could tell the same joke about an onion and a tin sandwich.
 

Barry

[Ed Jacobson]

1. Gershwin enjoyed Adler's playing of his music, at least publicly.

2. It's hard to imagine a harmonica player who requires sheet music in front of them to be able to play. I have met one person who plays the piano who does. I don't know how I came to ask her if she only played with sheet music in front of her. I will never forget the vague look of sadness on her face when she said yes.

My mother used to read a piece of music, then set it aside and play it. She told me she heard it when she read it, and having heard it, could play it.

IF playing by ear is making the music you hear in your head come out of your instrument, regardless of how it got there, would not most players play by ear?

[landztranz]

As far as I know, friends, Larry Adler was asked to learn how to read music, and that's why he did so at that stage in his life (when he was already a household word ). OTOH, I've never seen him play (in YouTube clips) with sheet music in front of him, FWIW.

Now I have a question for all you ear-players (of whom I am one, although I do know how to read music somewhat...):

How important is it for you to know what key you're ear-playin' in? I once read that, when asked by an interviewer about his inability to read music, Toots replied, "I always know what I'm playing," or something to that effect. I assume he meant the key of the song.

So, when you guys & gals play by ear, do you think about the key of the song? I often want to know what key a song is in before (or during or after) I try it on my harp, but maybe it's just "psychological"? OTOH, I'm starting to recognize which keys are harder to play in, for what that's worth...

Looking forward to your comments.
Barry

[Grizzly]

Since all keys have unique patterns (a case could be made for the similarity—on harmonica—between C and C#), it helps me to know what key I'm faking along with. Even after memorizing a piece that I've read from sheet music, it helps to know the key; but because I've played it so many times, compared to faking it, knowing the key is less essential. Mostly, I think intervals; then I have to know which sharps and flats to play.

Faking it: I hear a tune I know, but have never played on harmonica, and I play along. Knowing the key, for me, is essential.

Tom

[henrymouni]

The excellent Jim Watkins can play every key by ear.
He puts it down to playing his scales on a regular basis.
He has been playing for 50 years, and that must help also!
I believe playing your scales fixes the different key patterns in your brain.





Henry.

[ali su]

I have pretty perfect pitch (I think...) so I thought I could brave through all my playing just from ear alone. But I realize it's pretty darn impossible. If you play classical, there's no way you can memorize whole lengths of music just from aural memory. Only Mozart did that (the legend goes he went home after listening to Handel's Messiah as a small kid and wrote out the whole thing, all instruments included. Sadly, we are not Mozart). Then comes jazz... I initially thought I could improvise everything by feel and hearing, but again it's difficult. Especially if you play pieces with very difficult chromatic changes, there's no way you're going to be able to play the whole thing through by ear. By able to read the chords ahead helps to anticipate what's coming, so you can use a combination of both your brain and your ear.

The more I think about it, the more I think it has to do with aural memory. If I listen to a solo, I normally can't remember the exact notes past four or five bars, especially if he starts to speed up. I'm sure there are people here who *can* though...

[landztranz]

Tom, it's good to know that I'm on the right track by ascertaining the key (almost) every time I fake a song. I guess eventually I'll just know what key I'm playing in, automatic-like...? Another good reason for knowing the key is that, when your guitarist starts to play a song and kindly asks you if it's a good key for you, you can tell him what key(s) would be better . I obviously have a guitarist who is precisely that kind of kind soul (and, thankfully, knows how to play songs in just about every key - as the Dire Straits say, "he knows all the chords...").

Barry
P.S. More comments always welcome; I learn something just about every day from you great people!
 

[A.J.Fedor]

The excellent Jim Watkins can play every key by ear.
He puts it down to playing his scales on a regular basis.
He has been playing for 50 years, and that must help also!
I believe playing your scales fixes the different key patterns in your brain.
Henry.

Yeah I've been playing over fifty years too, but for the most part, all in tonic keys (six 270s) It's only for the last two and a half years that I've been moving towards using just a C for practice, and I can see amazing stuff happening. For almost a year I made it a point to play at least 20 minutes almost every day with whatever I heard on the radio (http://www.wkhr.org) with a C Chrometta and was amazed with the results. I can see where, for someone, who actually has time, an ounce or two of actual discipline, and and 60 to 90 minutes a day to invest in his/her craft, could do astounding things growthwise.

I can pretty much play anything an any key by ear; just ain't good enough to do it all in public yet but I'm betting I'll get there in due time!)  Strangely, I've learned scales as a byproduct of playing "foreign" keys.

PS  I too dig that Jim Watkins!

[Lawrence C]

Quite awhile back we discussed "ear playing" and playing by reading the notes.  I don't recall the names, if any, of the pro chromatic players who play or played by ear.  Are, or were there, any? 

Stevie Wonder most certainly plays by ear.

I see discussion about perfect pitch and aural memory, but I don't think it is that complicated.  PP has nothing to do with playing back music unless you are singing a capella.  Aural memory-- I think everyone who can hear has it or you would not remember what someone just said to you.  I think playing by ear has to do with :  1) memorizing how the song sounds (ie can you hum, whistle or sing it accurately?) and 2) fine motor skill muscle memory, and as individuals we develop ability at different rates. 

I presume everyone who is reading this who can play the Star Spangled Banner (or your own country's national anthem) by ear.  If you can do it, then you play by ear.  If you cannot play other songs by ear, then you probably have not tried to or you simply did not memorize the tune.     

[Grizzly]

"Aural memory-- I think everyone who can hear has it or you would not remember what someone just said to you."

I have that problem sometimes.

There is such a thing as Braille music notation; but in a quick scan of the Wikipedia article on it, I didn't find anything that indicated that blind people like Stevie could read and play at the same time.

Tom

[Jim]

Here is an example of a well known jazz standard that is quite difficult to "fake". The descending, often chromatic, lines offer a challenge to musicians. I think with this one, if one were on a gig -- and an "ear" player, one would be glad to know at least the Key everyone else was playing in! Had he never heard it before, do you think Stevie Wonder might want to listen to this a couple of times before tackling it?
Jim

Dee Dee Bridgewater "Midnight Sun". (Visuals are quite stunning, too.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OF0othfEUZU

[HallelujahAL]

I can play by ear but I find it less painful if I put the harmonica in my mouth - get a better sound that way as well!
 

[jonkip]

Here is an example of a well jazz standard that is quite difficult to "fake". The descending, often chromatic, lines offer a challenge to musicians. I think with this one, if one were on a gig -- and an "ear" player, one would be glad to know at least the Key everyone else was playing in! Had he never heard it before, do you think Stevie Wonder might want to listen to this a couple of times before tackling it?
Jim

Dee Dee Bridgewater "Midnight Sun". (Visuals are quite stunning, too.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OF0othfEUZU

yeah, that's a great arrangement... it's helpful to me to  consider not "what key is it in", but "what key is it in at a certain point?" . Knowing that it's based in Ab won't really help you as much as in a lot of other tunes.

It goes thru the same chords in a bunch of  keys... three, I think....

I haven't heard that one for decades, thanks for pointing it out...

I think the cool sound is the #11... aside from that it's going down in whole steps going thru the keys of Ab, Gb and  E
each time repeating the same pattern.... so perhaps once one knows that, the tune can be tamed a bit.

Really nice arrangement.... that must have been back when people hired actual musicians...

what a concept

[landztranz]

I can play by ear but I find it less painful if I put the harmonica in my mouth - get a better sound that way as well!
 

Thanks, Al. Even though I didn't say people could make jokes about this deadly serious topic  , I needed a good laugh.

Barry
 

P.S. By the way, if you screw up a piece you play by ear, is it aural sex?

[Arthur]

I once read that, when asked by an interviewer about his inability to read music, Toots replied, "I always know what I'm playing," or something to that effect. I assume he meant the key of the song.

I found the interview where that's from:

Well not as fast as the guys that go to the conservatory but I know every note that I play, and I know to what chord it belongs. And if I have something, for instance for a movie score, if you know.. its the feeling I project that the producers are after. And if they know... the harmonica is so easy you can hold a phone with one hand and play the harmonica with the other hand so we rehearse on the phone sometimes with people like John Williams I've done that, and (??name) and if its really intricate to read then they can send me the music a couple of days before.

I don't take that to mean he can't read music -- only that he doesn't read as fast as "the guys that go to the conservatory".

[landztranz]

Maybe I'm mistaken, but I was under the impression that he doesn't read music or play from music. I think I've read that somewhere but it wouldn't be the first time I've been wrong - just ask my wife

Barry

[Jim]

To venture outside of the harp field, if I may.
A perfect example of what you're talking about (ear playing), is my favorite subject, Bix Beiderbecke. He not only played incredible cornet, but he composed and mostly taught himself piano as well.
His parents sent him to a piano teacher who became exasperated at young Bix's reluctance to learn to read. Bix would ask the teacher to play the piece for him to give him an idea of how it should sound. Next lesson, he would play it back, note for note, with "improvements". The teacher got wise to his reading skills when he inserted wrong notes in the lesson. Bix would include these notes when he returned the following week.
He also flunked his first try at getting a union card when he was older, because of his poor reading skills. He got booted out of the Jean Goldkette Orchestra once for the same reason.
Some biographers say he was just lazy in that regard (learning to read music); others have suggested obsessive compulsive disorder as a possible cause.
This is not to suggest any of the above applies to Toots.

BTW There is a fictionalized version of Bix's life that really captures the spirit of the '20s during the prohibition years: "1929" by Frederick Turner ISBN 1-58243-309-7 (pbk yr 2003). A really fine book which I highly recommend.

Jim

[reeds64]

QUESTION "IF playing by ear is making the music you hear in your head come out of your instrument, regardless of how it got there, would not most players play by ear?"


ANSWER
Examples of why reading music is good for me:

I've got the complete vocal score with piano accompaniment for the Broadway show, "Guys and Dolls". I can have a great time flipping through that book, playing vocal lines, and ripping parts out of the piano parts. The piano introductions have variations  that are not in the vocal lines.

I just bought a newly released piano version of 13 pieces by Piazzolla. Besides being a good road map through music I've heard before, there is music I've never heard before.

I've got two thick, heavy, rat-whacking volumes of ALL of Kurt Weill's stage music that was published in his lifetime. There is just a slight, small smidgen of a chance of finding something I never heard before in those two volumes.

The radio today played Samuel Barber's "Knoxville, Summer of 1915". I've heard it before, but do you think I know the music well enough to whistle the thing. Of course not. I'm going to go over to the library of a music school (two of them here in Houston, though I would trade this whole city for the library of the Eastman School of Music), or buy the printed music somewhere.

[smojoe]

I have heard Mr. Watkins. There are several tunes in Ebm that he plays in Dm. In fact, I have heard him do a number of tunes not in their original keys. He DOES play PYANO, so there must be some reason for his switching keys. I think that the one tune (don't recall the name right now...maybe take-5?), is god awful in Ebm and easy in Dm. But that may not be the reason?

smo-joe.......... I don ha to cho ju any steenkin badges 

[Ed Jacobson]

Reeds,

I intended the question to be explicit. Do you hear what you read before you play it, and which do you play? It's the kind of question someone who never read music, someone much like myself, would ask. I'd still like to know.

[Grizzly]

Ed: Yes, yes, yes! Without hearing the music beforehand in your mind's ear, you can suss out what's going on in a musical score, but it's very labor intensive. Imagine the beginning reader (words) trying to sound out all the syllables in a story. Comprehension goes out the window. That may be where a music reader needs to start, instrument in hand. But comprehension comes with being able to hear in the mind's ear—to audiate—the sounds from the sheet music even before you play.

One road to this end is to get a book of scales and exercises; a flute or violin book would do, and play these simple lines over and over while studying where the notes are on the staff. With the exercises, you'll start to see patterns emerge. When you see something similar in a tune, your mind will already know what it's supposed to sound like. You'll also need to know the names of the notes on the staff.

The other key (no pun intended) is to know where all the notes are on your harmonica, and be able to name them, in relation to the names of the notes on the staff. I'm a very good reader on flute (after more than a half century) and on voice (practically forever); still learning on harmonica (six years and counting). It won't take 50 years; I've been doing this for a long time.

Persevere. Progress may be incremental, but progress there will be.

Tom

[Gnarly He Man]

In addition to pitch, there is rhythm notation--information that is found in staff notation to relate timing, and which is missing from much tablature.
G

[thebaron]

Here is an example of a well known jazz standard that is quite difficult to "fake". The descending, often chromatic, lines offer a challenge to musicians. I think with this one, if one were on a gig -- and an "ear" player, one would be glad to know at least the Key everyone else was playing in! Had he never heard it before, do you think Stevie Wonder might want to listen to this a couple of times before tackling it?
Jim

Dee Dee Bridgewater "Midnight Sun". (Visuals are quite stunning, too.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OF0othfEUZU

I play by ear and as an interesting challenge, I tried "Midnight Sun", a song I did not know. I picked it up in a couple of playing. No trouble. Playing it on a harmonica was a different story!!!. I had to resort to a keyboard which was easy. It has shown up my inadequacies in playing a chromatic scale, so that is something to work on.

[Gnarly He Man]

One of the advantages of the MOLT tunings, chromatic passages much easier.
G

[reeds64]

To Ed Jacobson:

You asked 
"I intended the question to be explicit. Do you hear what you read before you play it, and which do you play? It's the kind of question someone who never read music, someone much like myself, would ask. I'd still like to know."

My answer:
There are some people who say they can mentally hear music in its entirty by looking at sheet music. I am not one of those people.   Let's talk about a single line of melody that a harmonica might play, not a duet or all the notes that are written for piano.   I can easily tell what the rhythm is, that's easy. If the music is slow and simply, like some basic church hymns, I might be able to sing it by figuring it out as I go, but that is work for me. The pitches do not automatically appear in my ear.   I can get a vague idea of the sound of the sequence of the pitches just by looking at the printed notes, but I can not get the music to flow in my head.  What Grizzly wrote is true.

I have, however, gotten VERY GOOD at sight reading. As I play through music I haven't seen before, I frequently can play with decent style and expression.   

I have been bamboozled by styles of music I have not been familiar with. The first time I played through all those pieces by Kurt Weill, I wrote unhappy comments (in pencil) at the top of almost every piece of music. I had to listen to recordings of other people playing his music before I understood the style, could play it better and enjoy it.

Now right there is the opening for a comment in favor of people who play by ear: They more readily play with good style and feeling because they listen more as they are playing, than most of us who read notes off the page. Ear players generally have us beat there.

[landztranz]

Now right there is the opening for a comment in favor of people who play by ear: They more readily play with good style and feeling because they listen more as they are playing, than most of us who read notes off the page. Ear players generally have us beat there.

Very interesting comment, Reeds. I've never thought about it in that way. Do others agree with that assessment?

Barry

[Grizzly]

I agree, at least in part. Ear players pick things up more quickly because they have to in order to keep up. It becomes second nature after awhile. As for as expression and feeling go, I'd say that it's not so dependent on whether a person plays by ear, as to experience and talent—musicianship, in a word.

Ed, sightreading, which you're good at without audiating the tune beforehand, may rely on your experience with familiar patterns and licks. You can anticipate what something will sound like, because you've been there before. It's the unfamiliar genre that will throw you.

There are some who can look at a printed score and "hear" all the voices and parts. I'm not that good. Single melody lines, however, are a snap. I'm getting a little better at hearing chords, but not much. A full orchestra score? fageddaboudit.

BTW, I read, but I can also play by ear. Reading, however, makes me lazy; I'm not as quick to pick things up as a non-reader.

Tom

[landztranz]

There are some who can look at a printed score and "hear" all the voices and parts.
Tom

My son (the oboist) can do that. It's amazin'!

Barry (the proud papa)