When students can play by ear, so many musical doors open up! It gives them freedom to play songs from other people just by hearing melodies in their heads, and equally important, it allows them to take the songs they have created in their heads and actualize them on an instrument.

Today we’ll talk about what’s really happening when we play by ear, which is that we’re actually just listening and creating meaning out of the melody. We’ll talk about a step-by-step process we can use to play by ear. We’ll back up in case we need to brush up on some prerequisite experiences. And we’ll dive into a few logistics that will help things go a little more smoothly.

00:00 - Introduction

01:25 - When I was learning to play by ear

05:20 - Making Sense by Ear (How to Listen)

Dowling, W. J. (1986). Context effects on melody recognition: Scale-step versus interval representations. Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 3(3), 281–296.

Rogers, M. R. (1983). Beyond intervals: The teaching of tonal hearing. Indiana Theory Review, 6(3), 18–34.

08:40 - Listening Experiences

10:22 - Physical

13:36 - Aural

18:10 - Visual

25:31 - First Instrumental Experiences

26:27 - Barred Instrument Exploration

29:43 - Logistics

30:54 - Everyone has a Job

Episode 34: Strategies for Sharing Instruments

32:13 - Practice Sharing

35:09 - Managing Noise

36:55 - Getting Started: Just One Phrase

Find the full show notes at https://victoriaboler.com/elemental-conversations 

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