Monday, February 16, 2009

Music by ear

Many of my fellow musicians (especially keyboardists and pianists) read and play sheet music. A skill that I don't have. I admire people who can just look at the notes and play pieces they never heard before. I mean, I'm familiar of the concept of sheet music, and I'd be able to decipher notes if I have enough time, but reading AND playing in realtime? Never!
To this day it's a mystery to me how pianists can read the melody, the accompaniment and the rhythm from sheet music and actually play it.

I've always been a "music by ear" kind of person. Simply put, I'd listen to a tune, process it in my head and play it. This has advantages and disadvantages, but so far it has worked out OK for me :)

I also use the movable do concept when I listen to music. Whatever key is used in a song, the root note is defined as the "do". In my case, I go further and define the "do" as the "C" of the C-major scale (that way I don't have to worry about flats and sharps). So, whenever I hear a tune, I transpose it in my head to C-Major and go from there (hence the title of this blog).

These days synthesizers have convenient transpose or key-shift functions that simply shift the pitch of the keys. So if I have to play something in E-major, I'd shift the keys 4 semitones upwards. As a result, I'd be playing in C-major, but the audible output would be in E-major.
This confuses the hell out of people with absolute pitch. Pressing the C key and hearing E is apparently very uncomfortable. Fortunately I only have a relative pitch (hence the URL of this blog), so I don't have this problem :)

All in all I guess I have a rather unusual way of approaching music when I play the keyboards. I sometimes feel I'm some kind of rare exception because all piano or keyboard players I met so far (no fail) would rather read sheet music than copying music by ear. Not that I feel left out or anything ;) but it would be interesting to know how many people out there have a similar standpoint.

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