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How common is it to play by ear?
There are rare people in the world born with “perfect pitch,” and for them hearing and understanding sounds just works automatically. But those people are rare. For most of us, playing by ear just takes time and practice. It comes organically, through familiarizing yourself with how your instrument sounds.
Is playing by ear normal?
Actually, almost anyone can play by ear, except maybe if you’re tone deaf. Playing by ear requires good relative pitch, which is almost entirely a learned ability. However, it takes a good amount of time and effort in order to play an instrument by ear.
How long does it take to play by ear?
It can take anywhere from 6 months to 3 years to develop relative pitch. The wide difference in time depends on what relative pitch skills you want to learn and how often you practice ear training.
Can anyone play a song by ear?
To learn a melody by ear, you don’t need any theoretical knowledge. After all, you really just need to match a pitch you hear to a fret on your guitar neck. Of course, knowing theory can make playing by ear easier at some point, but you definitely don’t need it to get started.
What does it mean to “play it by ear”?
When you say you want to “play it by ear” it’s essentially telling others that you want to be stress free and more laid back in your approach. This phrase can also be good for being flexible or putting things off if you just can’t deal with them at the moment. It’s good to be flexible, and sometimes that’s just your style.
Should you learn to play piano by ear?
That atrophies your musical ear, which is crucial for achieving most would-be piano- or guitar-players’ goal: to effortlessly, by ear, play popular songs to entertain themselves, friends, and family. Learning to play by ear is the opposite: No sheet music, it’s all ears, and far less stressful.
Why is it so hard to learn to play a musical instrument?
The problem is that traditional instruction requires to you laboriously read thousands of squiggles on sheets of paper and reproduce them on a musical instrument with 100\% accuracy. Even more stressful, if you want to be able to play without eyes trained on sheet music, you must memorize 100\% of those notes.