This blog presents my own method of writing notes using alphabets, and is intended for students who have given up on learning conventional music notes, or are open to considering an alternative notation method for their music.

To me, ‘ABC’ alphabets are to be the most logical alternative to writing those tiny squiggly, ‘dotted poles’ in conventional music.   After all, when going through a keyboard, don’t musicians refer to the keys as alphabets C, Db, D, Eb… etc. ? When first identifying the dotted notes on the treble clef, don’t they try to make them easier to recognize, by telling you to remember ‘F-A-C-E’, and ‘Every good boy does fine’ for the intervening E-G-B-D-F spaces? Even the chords are often referred to ‘A Flat’, ‘F sharp’, ‘C major’, etc.  So, to me it makes sense to write the talk.

The difference is, I write all my notes and chords in alphabets in the blank line spaces of an exercise book, instead of using music staves with treble and bass clefs.

It is not my purpose here to explain basic piano knowledge instead - you can Google all that introductory knowledge.  Instead,  I would have to assume that you are already familiar with what octaves are, the names of all the 12 notes in an octave; the concept of different keys; high vs. low notes; the names and positions of a few basic piano chords like C, F, G, Am, Dm, and C7, as well as other basic stuff.

For all intents and purposes, I’m going to only refer to my notes as:

C Db D Eb E F F# G Ab A Bb B

I ignore all the alternative note references, E.g., of C#, D# E# , Fb, etc. (I use F#, only because it’s been a habit to do so!).  We don’t need get too theoretical about why one is called this and not that. There are tons of music theory on the net, and you can Google all that to find ‘the truth’… I’m after simplicity when writing my own alpha notes to capture what I hear in a song, and what’s worked very well for me.

With that said, here again is what happens when I notate…   As I hear a small part of the melody on the music player, I hum this back and play the notes on the keyboard to match my humming. As I do this, I write the matching notes onto my notebook. I listen to the next few notes, write them down, and so on, until I then have written the notes for the full melody of the song. I then start the song on the music player again and this time hear the bass notes to help figure out the chords, and also write both chords and any unique non-root basses.

How I notate

When I write my notes (see a sample notation sheet of mine), I am in effect trying to capture the following information about a song, so that I can replay it accurately. When you write your own notes, you can of course vary anything to suit your own convenience and understanding….

• At the top space of the notebook page, I’d of course state the song title. I might also indicate the key the song is being played with, and perhaps the beat or tempo;

• song structure – These are just sections into which the notes fall, E.g., Intro, Melody 1, Melody 2, Chorus, Adlib, Ending (see my blog on ‘Song Structure’)

• I write the entire melody, including counter-melodies, using the following cues. Where applicable, I’ll illustrate how these cues look by using a  hypothetical tune featuring the notes G, C, D, E, G, B, and C:

- Insert symbols or short words to tell me which critical notes are the higher or lower ones (If unsure, I would of course re-listen to the song):

Here,  the < means the lower G that is one octave from the middle G. The > means the higher C that is one octaves to the right from the middle C. If I use >> or >>> , that just means these notes are 2 or 3 octaves higher.

-  If some parts of the melody need to have 2-3 notes (instead of one) played together like a chord, I’d write the these notes and circle them together:

Here, the circled notes indicate that I have to hold them at the same time with my right fingers while playing the melody, because this part would sound better if played with double notes.   With the circled E and C notes, I hold the E note that’s to the left (lower scale) of the C note; and same goes for the F-D and G-E pairs.

-  Inserting the wavy-looking ‘ ~ ‘ symbol   to tell me if I should play a particular note/notes with a ‘slur’ or jazzy touch. (Note:  The ~ character is actually called a ‘tilde’, and represents a mathematical approximation… but I‘m just borrowing it to mean ‘jazz this up’!)

The purpose here is to play the particular note/s to sound more like the way it’s being sung (E.g., to mimic Mariah Carey’s melismatic style, or Floyd Cramer’s ‘country touch’) - i.e., not just straight or plain depressing of the piano key:

The tildes here tell me to play the D and E notes,and then C as well, with a ‘jazz touch (I will talk about how to do this in a separate blog about touch).

- Putting an exclamation mark in front of a note to mean playing it in a short emphatic burst (staccato);

This says to play B and C (as shown with exclamation marks) with emphasis (i.e., heavier, short  touch).

- Write in any counter-melodies in parentheses (see my blog on ‘Counter Melodies’). This is when a singer sings a phrase of melody, then the orchestra or even an accompanying vocalist may then play or sing some extra notes as ‘filler’ or accompaniment, before the next phrase. They are very important to my playing, as including them tends to enrich a song, especially when played on the piano.

These notes in brackets are ‘counter melodies, played quickly in the higher notes  - E.g. a second singer/instrument sings or plays  C-D-E in response to the main singer’s ‘G C D E’ phrase

• Writing in the chords (see my blog about ‘Chords), and bass note inversions, i.e., basses other than those being the roots of the chord:

I write the chords in red ink. Here, the chord of D Minor has to be played when the note of G is pressed, and the chord of C is played when the note is at G. The G above C is the bass inversion.   It tells me that although I would normally depress the C bass note with my small left finger (holding the chord as C, E and G) since this is a C chord…., in this particular case I have to instead depress the G bass (i.e. the 3^rd inversion of the C chord… which is pressed as G, C and E).   It’s because the song has been arranged this way, and  based on what I heard on the MP3.

Music books often write such an inversion as “G/C”, but I prefer to put the G bass above the C chord to avoid confusion.

• Other moving basses:

Here, I’m telling myself that after depressing the G chord (with its G root bass), it would sound nice to include the 3 extra basses of G, A and B  just before I depress the C chord.   I will discuss more bass variations in a separate blog.

• I also use other short words to indicate how certain parts are to be played in the song :

- Change Key To : This is for if a part of the song changes key;

- N.C : No chord here, just play the melody;

- Arp:  Arpeggio this chord. In other words, there’s no need to write out a whole string of the notes making up the chord… I just need to play a straight arpeggio on this chord. If you know different ways of ‘arp-ing’ it, just label your arps with different slogans ;

- Slower: Slow down, E.g., this part is coming to an end;

- Softer, louder: To indicate the volume to play  certain notes;

- Sev. or Several: When a note is to be played several times like a tremble, rather than writing the same note that many times;

- Adlib: This is the part where you improvise and do your own solo impromptu. You could of course write the notes of how you want to do this; Usually, a piano player just ‘jazzes up’ the melody;

- Change key to X : This alerts me that I’m about to change to a different key (as happens with some songs). You may of course choose not to do this (perhaps due to difficulty), and just continue playing the rest of the song on the same key that you had started;

- Double - I may want to make a short string of melody notes sound richer (like strings in an orchestra) if I ‘double-up’ on each of these individual notes, i.e., by playing the 2 same notes together – one of them a higher note, and the other the same note one octave lower. This is like playing the circled notes (see above section on playing notes together), but using the same notes in two adjacent pitches.  I just call this ‘double’; but you can call it bundle, wrap, combine, or whatever you like.

• Timing of the notes. Unlike the beats indicated by the dotted notes in conventional music, the timing I use in my hearing method is based on estimation, and re-hearing of the song to ‘get it right’. As cues, I use dashes/hyphens to string a number of notes when these are to be played faster than the others.

Examples:

(i) G -C-D E C   :  These dashes tell me to play notes G, C and C faster than I would E and C;

(ii) G C, D E C   :  This tells me that there’s a short rest after playing notes G and C, before playing D;

(iii) G . C . D E C  : The dot after G and C tell me these are short notes, played short (and quicker) than D E and C. they are used arbitrarily;

(iv) G C …… D E C  :  This string of dots tell me that there’s a slightly longer pause after playing G and C.

Watch this video on how I write my notes…

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Summary

The above are examples of the more common things I’ve heard in the course of a song, where I’ve needed to write down certain cues to tell me how to play them in my alphabetical notes.

You may have doubts about some of these, but just bear these in mind – (i) they’ve work well for me for years; and (ii) even if you don’t like them, perhaps they could trigger  your own  ideas of how to write your own conventions that would work for you.

There’s nothing like trying it out yourself….  listen to a song and write down part of its melody and chords in alphabets.   Then ASK YOURSELF – “How can I next write in my own cues to tell myself how to play these 3 notes faster, this part sound like the original singer’s expression, take a short break here….” etc. If you can make a start to figuring these elements out – perhaps using some of my methods above as a guide - you are on the way to writing your own notes.

Importantly, when learning by hearing, you should re-listen to the original song 2-3 times to get your playing hints and timing as accurately as possible. While this sounds quite haphazard and arbitrary, I can say quite confidently that you should get better at doing it over time, through hearing more and more songs.

When reading conventional music sheets, I suspect that very often the typical piano student hardly  references what he reads against hearing the original song, because he/she simply has not been trained to listen as closely (as being taught in this tutorial).

Instead, there is a great reliance on the published music notes as ‘the truth’. This is not necessarily so, because if you compare the published notes to hearing the original song, very often you will find they are not as accurate as one assumes them to be.

It’s a powerful feeling to being able to develop and trust your own hearing and capturing/notating as much critical elements of a song, and then replaying it as faithfully as possible. When you are able to do that, you can then improvise on the song as creatively as you like, because you know that underlying that improvised version is the original basis that you have yourself closely analyzed.

Finally, as long as the way you write your notes serves to enable you play back a song nicely, that’s a very gratifying accomplishment indeed.

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