Jyrki Tenni-Playing by ear and practical piano skills

It is said that classical music is "eye music", and jazz music is "ear music". That is true, when classical music is played only from sheet music and when jazz music is played only by ear. For practical piano skills, it is useful to be able to utilise both skills.

Reading music can be dangerous. At least with an instrument, that allows you to play without listening. The piano is such instrument: you can produce tones just by pressing the keys without listening at all (which is not the case in for example violin; there just are no tones without carefully listening your playing). So, if you read music and just press the keys after these directions - is that music? It can sound like that, but the player is not necessarily listening what she/he is playing. In that sense, it is not music.

To ensure that one really is listening own playing, it is useful to play melodies by ear. In the beginning, this can be frustrating if one has played difficult songs from sheet music. A good starting point is this: children songs, Christmas carols, famous folk songs or other melodies that you have heard a lot. Sit at the piano, start from any note and let your ear lead you. Once you have tried a song, try it again. Perhaps starting from another key. Soon your fingers and ear are co-operating. You will find the melodies sooner and play them quicker. This needs time and practising, so go now and play something by ear.

A tonal melody is using the tones of a key. A key has a lot of chords, but they can be arranged by their function. For example, in C major the tone c is obviously the "home". That is also called the tonic, or first scale degree (marked with a Roman numeral I). When we want to travel as far as possible inside the given key, we find the biggest tension on the fifth scale degree, the dominant (V). Quite a many short melodies can be harmonized with these two chords, the tonic and the dominant. Just listen the melody, define the key and find the I and the V. When playing a piano, you can do this on your left hand by playing just the roots (in C major C and G in the bass).

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This article is written by Jyrki Tenni.Find more information at:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UcoqjLNvaH2e-qbf2DO2GbWA