Playing By Ear, A Life’s Lesson Learned
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime.[1][2][3][4] Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals.[5][6]
——–Wikipedia
My first piano lessons came as the result of the casual visits to the home of an aunt on my father’s side.
She taught me the scales and I learned to play the C scale before I began taking formal lessons at the home of Miss McLaughlin, an elderly white lady who taught my brother and I how to read music and imparted the musical work ethic of practice, practice, practice, and, you guessed it, more practice…
As I approached adolescence, I developed an interest and an ear for being able to play what I heard, which was much more attractive and intriguing to me than the repetitive drills of practicing Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms….
We were supposed to read the sheet music and memorize it in preparation for the periodic recitals that were an element of the formal course of instruction.
My ‘problem’ was that if/when I got to a passage in a piece that I couldn’t quite remember from the sheet music, I would improvise my way through it based on remembering what I heard while practicing…
Needless to say, my capacity to read music began to atrophy as I delved further into the musical world of playing by ear and improvising…
I have often said that I didn’t really begin to learn how to play the piano until I stopped taking lessons and started to listen….
You may already know who my favorite pianist is. Erroll Garner couldn’t read a note of music yet he wrote ‘Misty’, one of the most well-known and recorded songs of all time…
In as much as this is Black History Month, I could make a list of the black jazz and R&B pianists I listened to intently through the years as I developed what meager skill and style I have…
I’ll never be able to play as well as I’d like to, but I’m told that I play much better than I think I do…
At the very least, I’m consoled by the fact that I play well enough to have earned back the money my mom spent on piano lessons…
SO:
Here are A Few White Guys I Learned From
ENJOY!!!
Dave Brubeck,
Take 5, 1959
Bill Evans,
My Foolish Heart, 1961
George Shearing,
I’ll Be Around, 1950
Vince Guaraldi,
Cast Your Fate to the Wind, 1962
Andre Previn;
Just In Time, 1961
Keith Jarrett
Danny Boy, 2016
Chick Corea
Overjoyed, 2020
One great lesson that learning to play the piano by ear has taught me:
When you learn to listen, you can’t stop learning…
That goes for much more than music…
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02/23/2023 @ 8:23 pm
Bill Evans was a contemporary and friend ( came over to play ) of a trombonist I thought of as a 2nd father.
I had formal classic and jazz playing but ended up favoring the gut bucket styles I learned from bouncing a stylus on old records. I ended up meeting and playing with many olf the old cats known as seminal Delta players.
We may grate on each other at times, but I appreciate the “know yourself” character of this post.
02/23/2023 @ 9:03 pm
Art,
Knowing one’s own limitations should be an overarching moral imperative for all who would teach for a living…
02/24/2023 @ 11:27 am
Wonderful rendering Ron! Perhaps there’s a radio chair in your future…? Sky is the limit (Born in the USA, no?) {…} No doubt you are an executive musician … free day all round & around & I’ll be around. As the story goes: a generation lost in mace….hey what’s that sound?!
02/24/2023 @ 1:08 pm
“…What’s that sound?
Everybody, look what’s going down!”
Buffalo Springfield,
For What It’s Worth
1966
02/24/2023 @ 12:05 pm
Hi Ron, I found myself nodding in agreement and recognition about the learning process in music (and life, of course). The examples you include here all wonderful.
We had a piano in the house from the time I was born, and by the time I could sit by myself on the bench I was picking out by ear the nursery rhyme tunes I knew. My mother began to teach me to read music before I could read words. I didn’t start formal lessons until I was about 8, but that continued straight through until well after I graduated from high school. I had teachers who gave me a very solid education in classical and popular music, music theory, technique, and how to read and use a ‘fake book’ effectively. If I heard something I liked on the radio or record, I could easily figure out what the underlying chords were and come up with a complete result. A bit later I took a year of jazz lessons from an old timer on Long Island, but I was never good at pure improvising. No amount of gentle and patient encouragement on his part could get me to just let go and do it. No self confidence was the big block I couldn’t move. These days I still have a couple of keyboards and my BLP and I are still performing together with our drummer. Everything we do is “by ear” for me. I do invent my own leads but they are pretty darn simple and I do them almost the same way each time. I have even learned to be the bass player with my left hand. That is fun! The BLP does about 80 gigs a year but these days I choose to be part of only about a half dozen or so. I’d rather be painting or making clay stuff, and he has another band he plays with too. So it all works out okay. I do still love learning new tunes, though. Got a couple in the works for the coming summer gigs.
02/24/2023 @ 1:18 pm
” I was never good at pure improvising. No amount of gentle and patient encouragement on his part could get me to just let go and do it. No self confidence was the big block I couldn’t move. These days I still have a couple of keyboards and my BLP and I are still performing together with our drummer. Everything we do is “by ear” for me.”
Rose, if/when you’re playing by ear you’re already, and always, ‘improvising’.
02/24/2023 @ 6:21 pm
I don’t know if I agree about that. I do a lot of playing by ear, I’ve always found it easier than playing by page even though I have a good education in playing by page, but in playing by ear I’m trying to duplicate something. When I improvise I’m not, I’m composing in real time, though sometimes I don’t do it well and rely on my fingers more than melodic thought.
I’m doing it in rock which is different from doing it in jazz. The chords tend to be simpler.
I also find I sometimes prefer fills to solos. Both are improvised.
thanks for the links. I’ll go through them. I’ve seen Brubeck, Jarrett and Corea. Oddly, I didn’t know Jarrett was White.
02/25/2023 @ 9:27 am
“…in playing by ear I’m trying to duplicate something…”
Kosh,
When we’re trying to duplicate something and don’t get it exactly right we instinctively and reflexively improvise so as not to appear to fumble and stumble our way through…
“When I improvise I’m not, I’m composing in real time, though sometimes I don’t do it well and rely on my fingers more than melodic thought….”
My best improvisation comes as fillers, bridges, and segues…
What people get from me is the illusion that they heard me duplicate a song in which the melody is so familiar to them that they subconsciously fill in the melodic gaps on their own…..
Your fingers can’t do any more than your subconscious composer guides them to do….
02/25/2023 @ 9:42 am
Composition: a piece of music embodied in written form or the process by which composers create such pieces.
Improvisation: the creation of a musical work, or the final form of a musical work, as it is being performed.
Kosh;
The difference between composition and improvisation is whether you’re writing your music or performing it…
02/25/2023 @ 9:35 pm
If you’re performing your own music you’ve already written that’s not improvisation. It’s not performance that makes the difference, it’s primarily note choice.
There is an element of improvisation involved in duplicating music by ear because one determines how one meets harmonic requirements, like how many octaves we play certain notes in. However, duplication may have an improvisatory element but it’s still more duplication than creation. If you make the argument that interpretation is creation then most classical musicians are involved in creation even when they’re reading note for note.
I agree about fillers, bridges, segues. I think I do better work at fills than at leads, and both are definitely improvisatory.
02/26/2023 @ 1:23 am
“It’s not performance that makes the difference, it’s primarily note choice.”
When you are performing music that you’ve committed to paper, you’re not improvising even if the written composition was developed through improvisation…
The difference is the note choice that is expressed in writing…
02/26/2023 @ 9:27 am
Guitar player here…pianos are acoustically the same as hollow body guitars, but I still can’t play them. I’m a mediocre guitar player, but built a couple good ones. There’s definitely something about playing a guitar that you can remember as planks of highly figured hardwood.
Coming up through the chute, when my friends were rocking to Purple Haze, my Hendrix faves were Hey Joe, Little Red Rooster, and Killing Floor. I’d not yet heard of Howlin’ Wolf, then I did, and everything made sense. My little fourteen year old self, long braids and tie dye t shirt, ran home to listen to blues on a green plastic record player, lying on my bedroom floor, a speaker beside each ear. Later on, my mother told me that was when she knew she’d lost me, and it was.
Your selection of muses is sterling. Do you have videos of you playing? It would be fun to see (and hear) you!
Fun side story about Hendrix. A student made a portrait of him, and during the review, told the class and me all about him. I nodded, and commented oh really, and that’s amazing, and you don’t say. Heh. Kids these days 🙂
02/26/2023 @ 9:42 am
Returning because I feel a little guilty about dissing the yoots.
Have a listen to this young whippersnapper play Hey Joe:
02/26/2023 @ 9:49 am
“Do you have videos of you playing? It would be fun to see (and hear) you!”
Suzanne;
Just for you:
Caught on tape while doing late night warm up and rehearsal for next day performance some time ago:
https://atlanticcityweekly.com/food_and_drink/pianst-ron-powell-plays-at-capriccio-sunday-brunch/article_124b2802-c980-54b1-ac48-5ff387874684.html
02/26/2023 @ 11:24 am
That was wonderful! You’re really good!
You’re also able to play while simultaneously conversing with a chatty humming question-asker. I’m guessing that takes special skill.
My sister and I used play Heart and Soul on my grandmother’s old piano, and I never knew what it sounded like when someone good played it
Thanks for a nice little concert on a Sunday morning!