Playing by ear

You know the feeling. A tune has been going round in your head since breakfast. You know it down to the last note, and you can't play it. There is no sheet music, and all the internet turned up was a recording. This chapter is about managing without the sheet music.

Musicians call what we are about to do playing by ear. From the outside it looks like a conjuring trick: someone listens and then plays. From the inside it is an investigation. A tune leaves clues: which note it starts on, where it goes, whether it steps or jumps, how it is spread out in time, where it comes to rest. You can check every clue on the keys, and none of them needs anything but an ear and a keyboard.

Below are four cases, each with one clue and a widget where you can get your hands on it. The fifth case is a well-known tune from start to finish: you work it out yourself and save it to the Notebook. You do everything with your hands. Press a key, listen, compare it with the tune in your memory. A mistake is a clue too: a wrong note tells you straight away whether the one you want is higher or lower.

Case one: the shape

We start with the roughest clue, the one anybody can hear. Run a finger or the mouse across the pad from left to right: a hill, a wave, a zigzag. The widget turns the line into a tune. The higher the point, the higher the note. The notes are labelled on the left, with C picked out.

Draw a hill and listen. Then draw a hill again, a little differently. The notes come out different, yet you recognise the tune as "the same hill". This is the tune's contour, its shape without exact measurements: up, up, down, the same. The line under the pad counts it for you: how many moves up, how many down, and which move is the biggest.

Now play with the settings. "Flip" turns the shape upside down: where it went up, it now goes down. The notes are almost the same, yet the tune is a different one, because the ear hears direction at once. "Pentatonic" keeps five notes out of seven (we met it in chapter 14). It has no semitones, so any line sounds gentle, like a folk tune. "All keys" brings in the black keys, and the same line turns cramped and uneasy.

The "Notes" slider decides how many points to take from the line. With three notes, all that is left of a hill is "up, then down". With sixteen you hear every bend. "2 octaves" stretches the pad: the same shape, but with bigger steps.

Now the reverse. A tune plays, and you pick its shape out of three. This is a detective's first skill: hearing the direction of every step. If you get muddled, follow the movement between the notes rather than the notes themselves. Is each new sound higher, lower or the same?

The decoys here are chosen with some malice: the mirror image, the same shape backwards, or a shape in which one step turns the wrong way. You can only tell them apart if you have heard every move, not just the overall impression.

What is left of a tune

Contour is a rough clue. How rough? Take five well-known tunes and remove one part at a time. The titles are hidden: listen first and try to recognise each one, then press "What is it?".

"Rhythm only" puts every note on the same pitch. This is the knocking experiment from chapter 0: without a hint, few people recognise anything. "No rhythm" keeps the right pitches but makes every note the same length. Most tunes survive this, although they sound like a barrel organ. "Contour only" keeps the rhythm and the direction of every step but picks the size of the steps at random. The tune comes out looking like itself the way a police photofit does: you recognise it if you are expecting it, but you can't play from a picture like that. Press "Another contour" and you get a different photofit with the same directions.

The detective's conclusion: contour and rhythm tell you which tune it is, but only the exact steps let you play it. So from here on we look for those: the first note, and from it each move up or down by a definite number of keys.

Look at the line under the picture as well: the widget counts the moves in each tune. The five tunes have 82 moves from note to note. Of those, 44 are steps to the next note of the scale, one or two semitones away. Another 28 repeat the same note. Only 10 are wider: 7 skips over one note (thirds) and 3 real leaps, all three of them fifths. In "Ode to Joy" all 29 moves are steps and repeats. Simple tunes are made to be easy to remember, and the next key along is the easiest thing to remember. That gives you a first guess when you work out a tune: if you don't know where it goes, try the same note or the one next to it.

A tune is played with the right rhythm and the right direction for every step, but the sizes of the steps are muddled up. What does someone who knows the tune hear?

Something that sounds like the familiar tune but isn't it The same tune in a different key A random string of notes with nothing in common

Rhythm and contour carry a lot: people often guess a tune from them, especially when they are expecting it. But it is not the same tune. The steps are different, and you can't play the original from this version. You would get the same tune in a different key if every step stayed as it was and only the first note moved.

Case two: the first note

Every case starts with the first note. Finding it turns "somewhere round here" into a particular key you can count the steps from.

The widget plays the opening of a well-known tune, starting on some note in octave 4, around middle C. Press keys and the widget answers "cold", "warm" or "hot", depending on how many semitones you are from the note you want. The keys you have tried light up in colour: the closer, the brighter. A note in another octave counts, because its name is the same.

How to find it faster. Play any note and compare it with the first note of the tune: is the one you want higher or lower? The ear answers that question with confidence, as you found out back in chapter 0. Then jump several keys at a time and close in, as in a higher-or-lower guessing game. Once you are warm, move to the neighbouring keys, black ones included. After five or six presses the note is usually found.

The "+ higher/lower" mode adds the direction to the temperature. Start with it on, then switch it off: you need to hear the direction yourself, by comparing the note you played with the one in your memory. The "Any key" mode lets the first note fall on black keys as well. That is fairer, since the song in your head doesn't know which keys on the keyboard are white.

Case three: steps and leaps

From the first note the tune goes somewhere. For every next sound there are three questions: which way, how far and for how long. You already know how to ask the first two. You hear the direction in the contour, and the size is an interval from chapter 13. When you play by ear you ask them quickly, note after note.

The best practice for this is the echo. A few notes play, and you play them back on the keys. Start with two: the first is marked on the keyboard, and you have to find the second.

Two notes make a single step. If you get it wrong, check the direction first: is the second note higher or lower than the first? Then the size: is it the next key of the scale, or further? In this exercise the notes come only from the white keys between C and G, so each note has few neighbours.

With three notes a new difficulty appears: memory. While you look for the second note, the third tries to slip away. It helps to run the tune through your head slowly, and every time you find the next note, to play the whole thing from the start. That is how musicians work out tunes too: not one note at a time with long pauses, but in short pieces, each time from the start of the piece.

A leap sounds like a jump: the sound doesn't move to the next rung but clears several at once. This is where the interval songbook from chapter 13 comes in. If a leap sounds like the start of "Twinkle, Twinkle" (C, C and up to G), it is a fifth, seven semitones, and you should look seven keys away rather than trying every key on the way.

Don't forget the simplest move of all, the repeat. It is easy to miss: the tune seems to be "standing still", and your hand reaches for the next key of its own accord. Yet the chorus of "Jingle Bells" begins with seven identical notes, and in the first seconds the rhythm of those repeats is all that makes it recognisable. If your memory says "the same note again", don't search: press the same key.

Case four: rhythm and home

We covered rhythm in chapters 6–9: long and short notes, the strong beat. When you play by ear it helps twice. First, it cuts the tune into pieces: a long note or a rest is a place to catch your breath and check what you have found. Second, it shows where the anchor notes are: on strong beats and long notes a tune usually puts the most stable notes of the scale.

The most stable of them is the tonic from chapter 14, the home of the key. A finished tune usually comes home: its last note sounds like a full stop. A piece from the middle often stops on another degree, and you can hear that too, like a comma. Compare the two halves of "Ode to Joy": the first stops on D and waits for more, the second settles on C and finishes.

That gives you a clue. When a note you have found sounds like a full stop, you have found the tonic, and with it the key: seven notes that very likely hold the whole tune. From then on the search is easier. Black keys rarely turn up in a tune in C major, and if you can't hear an "odd" note in your head, you needn't try them.

Minor tunes work the same way, only home is somewhere else. "Vo pole beryoza stoyala", the Russian folk song from chapter 14, is in A minor in the widget above: every phrase comes down and settles on A. Once you have found that note, you know the tune lies on the white keys from A, and you almost certainly won't need the black ones.

The exercise below trains this feeling for home. First a cadence plays, a few chords that set the key, and then a single note. Decide whether it is the tonic, the second degree or the fifth. The second sounds unstable and pulls down towards home. The fifth is steadier, but it too wants to say a little more.

You have worked out a tune, but its last note sounds unfinished, as if it were asking for more. What does that most likely mean?

You have worked out a piece that doesn't end on the tonic, and there is more to come You got the last note wrong The tune is in a minor key

Sounding unfinished is a property of the degree, not a mistake: on D in C major a tune sounds like a comma even when every note is right. That is how the first half of "Ode to Joy" ends. Minor has nothing to do with it: in a minor key the tonic sounds like a full stop as well.

The whole case

Now all the clues together. Choose a tune you know and work it out on the keys, note by note. The widget shows only how many notes it has. When you are stuck, buttons reveal the clues one at a time: the first note, the direction of each move, its size in semitones, the rhythm (it plays as knocks, and the note cards stretch to their lengths), the tonic. The fewer clues you need, the cleaner the solve.

A wrong note costs you nothing: the widget tells you whether the right one is higher or lower, exactly what your ear would tell you after comparing what you played with the tune in your memory. After three misses on one note, the right key lights up. The octave doesn't matter: a note counts by its name.

The "From another note" mode shifts the tune: the first note is different, all the steps are the same. That is fairer. You may remember where "Ode to Joy" starts from earlier chapters, but the steps you will have to hear. Solved cases get a tick.

Here is the order of work when the tune is only in your head and there is no widget to give you hints:

1. Run the first phrase through your memory, up to the first long note or rest.
2. Find the first note: compare, higher or lower, and close in.
3. For each next note, decide the direction, then try the same note and its neighbours. If it is a leap, think of the interval songbook.
4. Once you have found a note, play the phrase from the start. A wrong note jars at once.
5. When the phrase is done, find the tonic: the note on which the tune sounds finished. Now you know the key, and the other phrases will come faster.
6. Rhythm comes last: play the notes you have found in tempo and check which are long and which are short.

Longer echoes now: five notes with leaps, then four with no first note marked. You have to find it yourself, as in the case.

The echo has a home in the "Playing back" trainer: five levels, from two notes to tunes with no first-note hint. Five minutes a day there does more than any list of tips: you start to recognise the steps without trying key after key.

Dictation

Working out a tune is half the job. The other half is writing it down so you don't lose it. Listening to a tune and writing it down is called melodic dictation. At music school it is done in pencil on manuscript paper. Here you do it on the keys. You can listen as many times as you like. When you have played the tune to the end, it appears in notation.

You have heard these four openings several times in this chapter. The next dictation is more honest: random tunes, six notes within an octave. Your memory for songs won't help here, only the clues: the first note is marked, then come the direction and the size.

If it doesn't work after one hearing, that is normal. Experienced musicians take dictation in several passes: first the contour and the anchor notes, then the rest. The "Melodic dictation" trainer goes from five notes moving by step to folk tunes.

Now write down your own. The tune that was going round your head at the start of the chapter, or any you solved in "The whole case": play it into the case file note by note, set the note lengths and send it to the Notebook. The "To the case file" button under a closed case brings the tune you solved here.

The case file takes the pitches from the keys and the lengths from the buttons: that makes working out a tune easier than playing it in tempo straight away. Find the notes first, then click the cards and change their lengths until the notation under them matches the tune in your memory. "Rest" adds a rest. Notes saved to the Notebook go on the melody track and show up straight away in notation in "The Notebook now" below. If the Notebook already has a tune, the button asks whether to replace it.

Next

You now have a method. You break a tune from your head down into clues: you find the first note by "higher or lower", each move by its direction and size, starting with the next key along, the anchor by the tonic, and you check the rhythm last. You can play back two to five notes you have just heard, take down a melodic dictation and save what you have worked out to the Notebook.

The next wall is on the other side. You can work out other people's tunes, but how do you make up your own? A blank page is more daunting than any song in your head: you can press anything at all, and that is exactly why nothing comes. That is the subject of chapter 18, the first chapter about composing: motif, phrase, question and answer.

The Notebook now holds the tune you worked out, on the melody track and in notation. You can record it again from the keys or fix it in the piano roll. In chapter 18 the Notebook learns to build a tune out of motifs and phrases.