Playing Music With No Music - Lesson 1

hi everybody its Karen and I'm back in on YouTube and decided I'm going to try and do something that has been requested for a long time so a lot of you have been emailing me and asking me you know I wish I lived where you are so I could take lessons from you and I would I wish I lived where all of you live because I love teaching but I'm going to go through my books and actually show you on the piano how to play all of the ideas and all the shortcuts that I have so we're going to start with Christmas um probably the most questions that I get asked is about how do you play with no music unfortunately I wasn't born with a gift of playing by ear so I had to learn it and over a lot of years I've talked to a lot of people who play by ear and try to pick their brains and figure out what they're doing while they're playing with no music so I've developed this really quick little method of playing songs by ear quickly and easily so what I'm going to do in this video is teach you how to play Christmas songs because obviously we've all some Christmas songs for most of our lives and we know all of the tunes so I think those are the easiest songs to learn to play by ear so let's get started and I'm going to show you in about 10 minutes how you can play almost all of the Christmas songs with three or four chords and do it very quickly okay you can't see me now so we're just going to think of you sitting at the piano and I'm talking to you from the side so you can notice that the keyboard and some of you already know this they're divided in two sets of two the Black Keys two Black Keys three Black Keys and so forth all the way up and down the keyboard if you find any group of two Black Keys the note to the left of any group of two Black Keys is C they're seeing and see and so forth so if you find C C in the in the music alphabet is like a is in our regular alphabet it's kind of the place where you always start so if this is seeing B G no H a B and then you're back to C so when people look at an 88 note keyboard you really don't have to learn 88 notes you really only need to learn the basic one through a 7 and then you have the Black Keys also so that means there's 12 tones and music from one tone directly to the next tone is called a half a tone and we joke in our class about two half done half a tones make a whole a tone so half a tone from one note to the next is a half step half step half step there's no black key between an E and an F so that's also a half step if you have a note in between two half steps make one whole step whole step to get a whole step from E you skip that note and play the black note above it see there's one note still up half step whole step whole step half step so understanding now that half steps are kind of the basis for how I'm going to teach you to find chords very quickly and later on in the series as we get move into this each week I'm going to talk to you about turning the chords around to make them easier to play but for today we're just going to use this number right here and I want you to put it in your head and remember it it's the number forty three four half steps and three half steps four half steps and three half steps so whatever note you start on is number one if I want to play a C chord my little finger on C and I count up and they don't count the C and I count up one two three four half steps and from that one I count up three more one two three that is a C chord now if you've had piano lessons before this would be called a triad tri meaning three if you want to play a G chord find G start with C a go cdefg put your little finger on G count up one two three four one two three that's a G chord now you can see that it's every other white note alright an F chord find c d e f one two three four one two three and you'll find that that's every other white note so in the key of C or the the key that we're going to learn to play by ear in you have three chords C chord F chord and G chord now in music theory class they'll teach you that in a scale that is chord number one which is C one two three corne number four which is F and 1 2 3 4 5 which is chord number G ok so you have C chord and if you lock your hand and move it up for that's F and if you move it up one more that's G alright so let's practice C chord lock your hand move it at 4 that's F and move it up one that's G ok so first things first that's what you're going to do at the keyboard when you're not at the keyboard you're going to learn this this is how you spell the chords to be a good play by ear musician you need to know the structure of the chords and the notes that are in the chords so a C chord is C e G a G chord is G B D and F chord is f a C now here's here's kind of a cool thing if you notice this every white note c d e f g a b and c is on this paper okay so if you start with an a there's 8 the f chord has an A there's B the G chord has a B the C is in two chords F or C the D is in a G chord the E is in a C chord the F is in an F chord and the G is in two chords G and C now your assignment this week is this I want you first to know how to spell these chords if I ask you what chord has a G in it you're going to tell me it will be a C or a G chord if I ask you what chord has an a note in it you'll you'll be able by next week to tell me that an F chord has an A in it so a b c d e f and g alright knowing that now i also want you to learn 43 the two chords the three chords that have the content that are that you're spelling C chord F chord and G chord all right now after you've practiced that all week now I'm going to show you how to apply it to some Christmas songs okay now we're going to talk about how to play some easy Christmas songs by ear play music with no music and how to play by ear is my little easy skinny little book that a lot of my students requested because they want to just sit down and play music without having to dig through their books all the time it's not very thick and because there's not a lot to it most of it is just practice so when I wrote this book I it using all of them little tricks that I've learned over the years and how I taught myself to play with no music I'm not the best at it but I have a lot of fun when I can just sit down and play songs that come to my head and sometimes it takes a little longer than others to pick them out but what I want to do now is talk about the Christmas because that's the easiest time of the year to learn to play by ear so what you need first is a Christmas book now we're not going to use the book probably but or you can just sit down and make a list of all your favorite Christmas songs but sometimes when I'm playing by ear I want to play but my brain has a moment of not remembering any titles so the best thing that hint that I can give you is to just open a Christmas book to the table of contents table of contents has not like this one has about all the Christmas songs in it this is a really great book it's called the big note piano best Christmas music by Howe Leonard and there's a lot of big note easy play books that you can get but it's going to be a lot more fun for you if you find that you don't need the book at all and later on in our series you'll be able to look at these songs and even if you don't know how they go you can look at the melody and you'll know what chords to play and what chords go with what notes so we'll get a little more advanced as we go all right so let's say I'm looking at this book and I want to play the song jingle bells so I'm going to put the book away now and I'm going to give you some very quick easy rules on how to play by ear and if you're taking notes this is very very simple if you choose to play by ear here are the rules you can play any song by ear but if you weren't born with a natural talent you can use the basic formula to work out any song remember you have to work as hard as you did when you learn to read notes take it slow and learn one song at a time the recipe is this short for playing by ear that's all you need first you're going to play a C chord with your left hand on the lower keyboard all right so the very first thing you're going to do always you're never going to try and find the melody first always play a C chord you want to take control and tell the instrument I want to play in the key of C and if you remember that's the Spanish key get it ha the key of that never mind so the key of C has three chords in it stay chord F chord and G chord now another hint that you're going to find is the C chord there's usually a pattern to how these chords work so C chord would be like the center chord one to the right is an F chord one back is C and one to the left is G and next week we'll talk about the circle and I have a DVD on how to use the circle but the pattern usually works like this C chord F chord C chord D chord in other words every other chord in basic airplane is the C C is called the dominant I mean the tonic G is called the dominant and F is called the sub-dominant or under the dominant okay so step number one play a C chord with your left hand and I have lower keyboard which was for the organ but it'll be just down below middle C the first note of the melody will be G C or E now you notice that that's the notes that are in the C chord but it's backwards most of the time the first note of the song will be the top note of the chord the next choice will be the middle note and your last choice is usually the name of the chord so keep that in mind when you're starting so I'm going to play this the chord first and it says after you find the first note now we have to find that first note so jingle bells I'm going to think of first the melody in my head what is how does jingle bells go now I can't sing so I'll try for you but jingle bells if I sing it it's jingle bells jingle bells now all those notes I can hear in my head are the same jingle up all the way so if I was directing or just showing which way the notes go I would go jingle bells jingle bells jingle all the way so when I find my first note that's how I'm going to think in my head which way are the notes going and how far those are called intervals so that's an interval of a second or a next to CTE is a skip one jingle okay that's a third one two three one dota 2 notes down C to F is a four one two three four two notes up two notes down C to G is a fifth seven great octave okay so I'm going to play the C chord and here's what my choices my first note will either be this one this one or this one see e orgy the rule says we're going to start with G so let's see if it's if you think that's the first note now if you can't tell try playing the next the next few notes doesn't work does it alright G is out let's try e ah that one sounded better okay let's try see just for fun doesn't work so now I know that E is my first note in the melody it says number three after you find the first note spend time picking out the melody so now I'm going to just forget about my left hand and it might take me even up to a few days to get my hands to figure out jingle bells so I'm going to start on E and I'm gonna think of the notes in my head and sometimes if you know the words say the words oh that note is wrong so most people that I've taught to play by ear when they hit the note wrong they just go oh my gosh I have to start over well don't start over just fix it that's called an embellishment now when you get to be a good ear player you'll notice that sometimes when you hit the wrong note it sounds kind of cool because you fixed it and it turns into something fancier than just plain a plain old melody so just relax in it and know that if you hit a note wrong here's my here's my advice you are never more than one note away from the right note so when I did that I knew I was too high so if I come down one it usually will fix it now here's another cool hint most songs follow patterns so if you listen to jingle bells you have usually eight bars of a theme now that theme is usually repeated same chords same melody with a little different tag on the end okay so think about that when you see a big piece of sheet music normally there's a lot of repetition in a song and you really don't need to learn all of the measures they usually repeat okay now we're going to learn how to put the chord with the melody alright it says go back to the beginning with the C chord and play the melody when the C chord sounds crummy change to G or F if you need to look at the melody note and determine which chord has that note in it alright now here's here's what I suggest to you play the chord but your hands are going to run together if on a piano if you start the melody right here because you're moving up with the chord so my suggestion to you when you're starting is to move your right hand up an octave and use that as your practice area until I teach you how to invert the chords and keep out of the way of the melody that's going to be the easiest solution for you alright so we're going to play the C chord and I know the first note is e now most people who are learning to play by ear tend to think they have to change chords a lot my suggestion to you is hold on to that chord until you can't stand it anymore so listen I'm going to play and I'm just going to keep repeating the C chord because on a piano it has a tendency to die away on an organ you can sustain it still sounds good now it doesn't sound good so if you look my finger is on an F note now which one of these chords has an F in it the F chord so that chord is going to be f now I'm going to hold it now it doesn't sound good anymore I'm back to that E which chord has ay in it the C chord and now I'm on a D G chord back to C now the record repeats itself again just like the first time F chord C chord C now if you notice what I told you at the beginning the court now once I learn how this worked I don't have to think about it anymore C chord went to F chord went to see gourd went to G chord C chord F chord C chord anymore that's all there is in that song and once you get in that pattern C f/c G one four one five that's the chord numbers almost all the easy Christmas songs follow that pattern now there's other chords obviously they can be in this song which we'll talk about later but for now when it's the most thrilling thing when you get to be an ear player for the first time when you literally can close up all your books and play so this this week I would like you to try maybe just two songs file at night and jingle bells so let's try silent night first thing play the chord first note is either going to be what G E or C listen well I already know that's the right one sounds perfect okay so now I'm going to take my hand off the left hand off and I'm going to play the melody now this one has some bigger jumps in it than jingle bells has so now I might miss some notes but listen to what happens when I miss them and fix them repeats now I got a big jump I made it that now repeats itself again missed it now I know I messed up but it's okay because when I'm playing and sometimes if some of my students joke they said well sometimes it sounds better when you mess up and fix it than when you did it right the first time so don't panic and don't start over just keep going all right so now we're going to play the C chord alright I'm going to come up here and I'm going to start an octave higher on the G it's a D in my melody which chord has the D in it the G chord where does the G chord usually go back to C I'm going to an a note now it's an F chord that goes back to see it repeats again f chord back to see G chord back to see now I have a C and I picked in that chord but it was wrong one thing cool about when you're playing hymns at Christmas if you hit the wrong chord you get it all min at the end this concludes this week's lesson if you do what I asked you and you follow these rules I'd like you to try to play these two songs this week and we'll continue next week I hope you enjoyed this lesson over the next six or seven weeks we're going to record one lesson each week and hopefully by Christmas you'll be able to sit down with your family and friends and play some of your favorite Christmas carols even the more advanced ones so I know for some of you this is very basic today but for others it's it's going to be just life-changing when it comes to playing your music I would have given anything years ago to know what I know now so enjoy the assignment and if you'd like you can go to our website Sacramento music group comm or music in Newcastle and there's no spaces in between the words and you can find our catalogue and we're going to be using the circle a lot I have a really great four layer circle that we use and we'll start with the basics and so you really have to understand the circle to know how the chords work with each other and I do it very easily it can get kind of complicated but we're not going to go there and maybe down the road we'll do more advanced classes on that um so again your assignment I need you to learn how to spell these three chords C F and G and learn how to play them with the number forty three four half steps and three half steps my play by ear music book is on the website if you'd like to have it all in print I'm going to try and do all of these lessons without PDFs to keep it simple and just very straightforward that's been kind of my forte and I I intend to continue to do that so have a great week and have some fun put your music books away and see what you can do without them

Channel: Karen Ramirez

Views: 994,431

Keywords: Piano (Musical Instrument), Learn To Play Piano, Play By Ear, Piano Teacher, Sacramento Music Group, Karen Ramirez

Id: HzKDkbY04R4

Length: 25min 54sec (1554 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 24 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/YOUREABOT]

Happy to see you still actively teaching us through YouTube. I also wish to live nearby you, but in the mean time, learning through your books/DVD plus YouTube will be all that I can expect. Thanks so much, blessings to you! Samuel T.