4 Steps to Learning How to Play Any Song on the Piano

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1. Determining the melody - Melodies are the actual tune to a song, some song are melodious and tend to be a bit flat but it sound good because it is sitting on a nice set of running chord. For beginner I would recommend starting with song that are melodious and get the tune of it, Play it on the piano in single tune, it means without the chords and bass lines. Melodies determine what chords will be played. If you can use your ear to figure out what notes are being played in the melody, you are 1/4 on your way to learning a song!

2.Harmonizing the melody - This part of it, is that you must have some understand of chords and how chords are form. In music and music theory a chord is three or more different notes that sound simultaneously. Once you have figured out the melody, it is time to harmonize it. This is simply choosing various chords to accompany the melody. There are several techniques and tricks to doing this. An example of a chord formation is always use the 1, 3 and 5 note of a scale for a major chord, example C chord is make up of C, E and G and a G chord is G, B and D.

3. Altering Chords - This is the best part! Now that you have strategically figured out the melody to a song and have harmonized it, altering your chords to produce certain sounds is the next step. If you were playing gospel music, you would alter your chords differently than if you were playing classical or country music.

4. Listening - After you have determined the melody, harmonized the melody, and altered some of your chords, there are various techniques you can use to make sure that your song sounds right. Personally I listen to the bass line and whether is from the bass guitar or from the piano this can help you more, the bass line does help you to determine the timing of the song too.

I personally learn all these theory from "The Secrets to Playing Piano By Ear" 300-pg Course by Jermaine Giggs and would strongly recommend this if you want to learn to play piano by ear. He has taught literally thousands of musicians how to play the piano by ear. This is very different from learning to read music score as what the classical pianist are trained.