Learn Piano By Ear

Have you always wanted to learn to play the piano by ear? Well, now you can! Playing the piano by ear is easy and fun! My students have been learning to play the piano by ear for over 17 years. In fact, one student is 65 years old and is having the time of her life learning songs from her youth! Other students are children as young as 9 years old (although some children begin as early as five years old).

To learn piano by ear, one must first learn about the piano as an instrument. Different from reading notes, the student is required to have some knowledge of the instrument so he/she can learn piano. In my lessons, I follow some easy basic steps to learn piano by ear.

1. First, I teach students the names of the white and black notes on the piano. This involves learning what a 1/2 step and a whole step is so that the student can name the black notes as either a sharp or flat. Sharping (#) a note requires the student to raise a note 1/2 step and flatting (b) a note requires the student to lower the note 1/2 step.

2. After learning the names of the white and black notes, my students then learn the C scale. The C scale begins on middle C and continues "up" playing each white note until you reach the next "C" note. That consists of eight white notes in consecutive order. (CDEFGABC). The scale can also be numbered as 12345671.
That means that the letters and numbers should coorelate as:
C D E F G A B C
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1

3. Students then learn how to make the C chord by learning the rule for making a chord. To make the C chord, the students learns to play the numbers 1-3-5 together in order to play the C chord.

4. Steps 2 and 3 are repeated for the scale and chords for F and G.

5. Finally, the student is ready to begin learning how to pick out the melody to a simple song. This is a very important step and is the most exciting step, because the student is learning how to predict the next note when learning a melody.