14: Playing By Ear - The Musicality Book

We will begin Part III of the book with one of the most widely-desired and most rewarding applied skills of musicality: Playing By Ear.

If your Big Picture Vision featured you being able to play whatever songs you hear on the radio, being the campfire hero who can strum the chords to any song your friends and family call for, or if your Musical Core seems to lean heavily towards Jammer, then this chapter will be of particular interest.

Learning to play by ear isn’t only for those who already know they have their heart set on it though.

If I had to sum up the benefit of Playing By Ear in one word, it would be: “freedom”.

This isn’t about burning our music books, or swearing off chord charts, sheet music or tab forevermore. As always in musicality training, our goal isn’t to take away from any of what traditional music education teaches, but rather to add to it, enhance it, and go beyond it. So this chapter isn’t about taking the attitude that reading notation is bad, wrong, or “less than” playing by ear. There’s a reason that reading notation is included in our list of musicality skills in Chapter 1: Musicality. And in Chapter 17: Expression and Chapter 18: Performance we’ll dive deep into how much freedom and creativity can be brought to your music-making when playing from notation.

With that being said, anybody who’s ever seen the unbridled joy of a pet dog let off its leash in the park, suddenly free to go wherever they dream of, without being led there or restrained by instructions or limits, can appreciate the opportunity in freeing yourself from a dependence on written instructions for your music-making.

What’s more, as with many other musicality skills, the value of learning to play by ear has wide-reaching effect, far beyond just the time you may (or may not!) choose to spend in future doing the activity of Playing By Ear. We’ll discuss this more in the Conclusion to this chapter. For now, suffice to say that with a H4 approach to developing our musicality, everything we can do to further our Hearing, and connect it with Head, Hands and Heart, is a very good thing indeed.

If you’ve been through Part II of the book, you will already understand (and have hopefully have even experienced) the benefits of Ear Training, and the way the building blocks presented in those chapters can quickly enable you to play music by ear.

If you haven’t yet read Part II, fear not. Ear Training and the building blocks for pitch and rhythm are massive accelerators for learning to play by ear—but the method presented in this chapter is not strictly dependent on them. So you can safely read on and start experimenting and exploring directly. I would encourage you to circle back to Part II and invest some time in dedicated Ear Training in due course though :)

Overview

In this chapter we’ll begin by defining “playing by ear”, and introducing the idea that it exists as a continuous spectrum of abilities. We’ll discuss how an approach of “Trial and Improvement” can let you move steadily along that spectrum into greater and greater abilities to play music by ear.

We will introduce the Play-By-Ear Process we’ve developed at Musical U which can be applied to any piece of music in a step-by-step methodical way. We’ll then go through each of its three component parts—Listen, Engage, Express—in turn, explaining and illustrating the process of each.

Finally, we will share a number of ways you can practice Playing By Ear using this process, to gradually improve your skills up to any point you desire.

What is “Playing By Ear”?

Before we go any further, what exactly do we mean by “playing by ear”? Here’s a simple definition:

To “play by ear” means to hear some music, and then reproduce it on an instrument.

Note that:

We didn’t say “immediately” nor “perfectly”!
Nothing was said about the complexity or length of the music. And
The word “hear” is being used to also include remembering or imagining music, since those can be seen as “hearing it in your head”.

This definition may seem vague, particularly if up until now you’ve thought of Playing By Ear as a single (perhaps magical) skill. However that apparent vagueness actually captures what Playing By Ear truly is…

Side Note:

We’ve found that there can be some confusion between the terms “playing music by ear” and “playing music off by heart“.

If a musician has been learning a piece from sheet music and then performs it without that visual reference, we would refer to that as playing “off by heart” or “from memory”. They aren’t necessarily using any ability to recognise notes by ear—they are playing notes based on instructions they were previously given by the notation.

We use the term “playing by ear” to indicate that no notation has been used. The musician has relied purely on their inner skills (Head, Hearing and Heart, as we’ll explain in this chapter) to determine which notes to play (Hands).

Naturally there can be some overlap, for example if a musician has previously learned a piece from notation and then relies on their ears to fill in a few gaps in their memory—a notable benefit of developing play-by-ear skills, even if your primary focus is on learning from notation!

The Spectrum Of Playing By Ear

One of the biggest misconceptions in the world of music learning is that Playing By Ear is a single skill or ability. Along with the “missing step” discussed below, this is why so few musicians who dream of being able to play by ear ever make that dream a reality.

This is one of those things which I wish I could go back and tell my younger self. A clarification which could have saved me considerable self-doubt, frustration, and wasted energy. As with the other skills we are covering in Part III, there is a cultural assumption that “you’ve got it or you don’t”, when in fact there is no mysterious “gift” required, and everything breaks down into simple, learnable skills.

In fact, if you take just one thing away from this chapter, it should be this: Playing By Ear is not a single all-or-nothing ability. It is a skill, with a whole spectrum of abilities.

At one end of the spectrum would be “I can’t play anything at all by ear”, and at the other is “I can play any music I hear or remember, by ear, immediately, with no mistakes, at full speed.”

If you’ve gone through the exercises in Part II of this book, you’ve done some playing by ear already, proving to yourself that you can, fundamentally, do some form of “hearing a note, and then playing back that same note”.

And if not, let me ask you: if I clapped a short, simple rhythm, could you clap it back? For most musicians and even the earliest-stage music learners, the answer would be “sure, yes, I could do that.”

Well, what if instead I played a short musical phrase… but it featured only two different notes and you knew in advance which two notes they were. Could you echo back the short melody I played with those two notes? Again, the answer is probably “Sure, yes, I could do that.”

So we know you can play by ear to some degree. And although the constraints above might seem like “cheating”, they actually just represent a certain spot on that spectrum of Playing By Ear. Which means that now it’s just a matter of helping you move along that spectrum, expanding and refining your play-by-ear skills.

Right now, it might seem totally mysterious and even overwhelming to wonder how to get from one end of that spectrum to the other, but I have some great news for you. If you’ve been going through this book in sequence, you’re already equipped with a lot of powerful tools to ease and accelerate that journey.

In this chapter we’ll reveal the Play-By-Ear Process which transforms playing-by-ear into a simple, learnable skill with clear methodology you can follow. We’ll draw on tools from elsewhere in the book, including Mindset, Active Listening, Singing, Audiation, our Ear Training “building blocks”, and Improvisation. And we’ll provide a range of exercises you can use to start practicing the Play-By-Ear Process.

Before we introduce the process itself, there’s one other big idea to discuss. We touched on it in Chapter 2: Mindset but it has such vital importance to Playing By Ear, it’s worth unpacking now in more detail…

Trial And Improvement

I remember first hearing the phrase “Trial And Improvement” back in my school days, during a maths lesson. We were doing some problem-solving that involved gradually finding the right answer through trial and error. And the teacher made a big point of encouraging us to leave aside the idea of “trial and error”, and use the phrase “trial and improvement” instead. Why? Because it more accurately captured how we were gradually moving towards the right answer.

That has always stuck in my head, because we’re so indoctrinated to think “errors” are bad and something to feel ashamed of. Whereas “improvement” is something to be proud of and aspire to. Just changing that wording somehow really altered the emotional experience of doing those exercises, by clarifying that this wasn’t about random guesswork, but rather a process of moving successfully forwards to the answer.

It’s going to be the same for you with Playing By Ear.

Above we discussed how the skill of playing by ear isn’t all-or-nothing—it’s a spectrum of abilities (just like any musical skill).

At one end of the spectrum is someone who’s genuinely just guessing notes at random. Maybe they’re getting the rhythm right, but really have no hope of magically guessing the right note pitches.

At the other end of the spectrum there’s the almost-mythical “gifted” musician who just hears something, however complex, and can immediately play it at full speed with zero mistakes, maybe even throwing in a few embellishments or conjuring up a full arrangement on the fly.

Musicians tend to think they belong right at the “zero” end of the spectrum. And so it’s vitally important to understand that the way to learn to play by ear is not to instantly, magically jump to the other end of the spectrum. It’s to travel along that spectrum from one end to the other, step by step. Again, just like any musical skill.

So the way you’ll learn to play by ear is to start spending time practicing figuring things out by ear.

Through the Play-By-Ear Process, and optionally leveraging our Ear Training “building blocks” from Part II, we’re going to equip you with the process and tools which let you move much more quickly and accurately to the target “right answer”.

Here’s why “Trial And Improvement” is such a vital idea to keep in mind: none of it will work if you get stuck in nervousness or embarrassment over “getting it wrong”. Because making mistakes is part of the process. Figuring things out is a process of trying, testing, experimenting. It’s “trial and improvement” that will get you to the right answer.

So just like you will experience when exploring Expansive Creativity in Chapter 15: Improvisation, it is absolutely vital to put aside the traditional view that “mistakes are the enemy”.

We will be working on reducing mistakes, even eliminating them. But you cannot jump straight to the other end of the spectrum where you play things lightning-fast and ultra-accurate. The only way to get there is being willing to travel along the spectrum, step-by-step. And that means tolerating, even embracing, making mistakes along the way.

As you travel along the spectrum, you are always going to be pushing your comfort zone, and trying to play more and more challenging things by ear. You’re always going to need to tolerate mistakes, as part of learning and developing the skills.

But quite soon, you’ll find yourself looking back at music you once found incredibly challenging to “figure out by ear”—and realising that now, oh, it’s easy to go straight to the “right answer” for that one. And the further you go, the wider the range of music you find you can just instinctively play, straight off, no “mistakes” in sight.

So I encourage you to think not in terms of “making mistakes” or even “trial and error”… but “Trial and Improvement”.

Each time you practice with the exercises in this chapter, you are taking a concrete step forwards. And the Play-By-Ear Process and building blocks will accelerate those steps. All you need to do is show up, and keep taking steps forwards, and not let limiting beliefs around mistakes or errors hold you back.

Actually, there is one other thing you need to do. And that’s to pay attention.

Or to put it another way, “stay mindful”. If you’re familiar with the idea of deliberate practice introduced in Chapter 6: Superlearning, that can be really helpful here. Remember “Plan, Play, Reflect”. You don’t want to make the mistake of just doing the “Play” step! Or even just “Plan then Play”.

Including that “Reflect” step makes a massive difference to how effective all the “Play”ing is. It’s what allows “trial and error” to become “trial and improvement”

Without the “Reflect” step, you’re doomed to just “trial and error” with no guaranteed forward progress. But bring mindful attention to the task and reflect as you go, and your “errors” will become “improvement” and you can make steady, reliable forward progress along the spectrum, as far as your heart desires.