by Charity Hutchison

Created on: November 19, 2010   Last Updated: November 20, 2010

3 Steps to Learning to Play by Ear and Transpose in any Key…the easy way

It is important for a musician to learn how to play effectively in all keys in order to be able to match the vocalists better. It is also good to start learning how to play by ear. One of the simplest theories that I have learned  is what I call the Roman Numeral Formula. This will help you  to transpose and play in any key once you adequately put it to memory.

1. Make Sure you know your Major Scales

The first thing you need to do is make sure you know your major scales. This should have been one of the first things you learned, but if somehow you’ve forgotten or just never got around to learning it; its time to refresh your memory. An example I’m going to use is the C major scale. The C major scale is comprised of these notes consecutively: CDEFGABC.

2. Learn the Roman Numeral Formula

I    ii    III   IV   V   vi     viio

C   D   E     F     G    A     B

What? Where did that come from? Well there are seven notes in every scale and there are seven notes in the Roman numeral scale. The uppercase Roman numerals stand for the major chords and the lowercase Roman numerals stand for the minor chords in the key. Now to link this together, built off of the Major scale, the first chord in the Key of C is C major.  The second is D minor and so on.

I      C  Major

ii      D minor

iii     E minor

IV    F  Major

V      G Major

vi      A minor

vii    B diminished

3. Put it to work

Start learning these chords in every key and you will be well on your way to mastering the piano by ear. Usually a song will stay well within the bounds of these 7 chords. To break it down there are 3 major chords in each key , 3 minor, and of course the seventh or dim. You will start to recognize similar chords progressions used in different types of music. Learning to play by ear has a lot to do with knowing your music theory. There was a time when the thought of music theory made me wanna scream, but I soon learned I needed to do this to advance to the next level. A good book that everyone should use is Alfreds Music Theory. It also comes with lessons in Ear training after almost every lesson. So you learn the Music Theory part of it and how to apply it in the next lesson. It also comes with CDs of ear training exercises. This is the same book I used during Bible school under Lindel Anderson’s direction.

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