I’m Alan, and welcome to my piano blog.
In this and future blogs to come, I’m going to share my wonderful experiences of playing the piano by hearing, by imparting useful tips I’ve observed and learned along the way.
I’m a self-taught performing pianist who does not read conventional music, but instead learned to play the piano and new songs entirely by hearing, and writing this music in my own alphabetical notation.
I do not possess formal music qualifications, and have opted never to - rather than ‘can’t’ - learn to read conventional music.
However, I would argue that, against an absence of years of music theory, I have gathered first-hand ‘knowledge-by-observation and playing, from having learned well over a thousand songs by hearing. This is what I’m hoping to impart in my blogs.
Once upon a time….
I had my music-related tantrum when, at around the tender age of 6 in the now far-away island of my birthplace, Singapore, I slammed the piano cover shut once and for all (or I had thought), when my mum tried in vain to given me formal piano lessons by having a teacher make me memorize those confusing squiggly notes, and play ‘Michael Row Your Boat’ just a few hundred times (OK, I exaggerate… but the song still rings in my adult head).
I had my next musical encounter as a hippie-wannabe during my early teenage years (when Fleetwood Mac was a British blues band), I was strumming basic chords on the guitar but didn’t get very far, after it sadly dawned on me that I simply didn’t have an acceptable voice to sing in accompaniment. I did catch the emotionally-wrenching blues rhythm though….
Then one day a few years later, I stumbled upon a music shop, and there was this older guy making great sounds like a one-man band. I was instantly hooked on discovering the spinet organ - an electronic version of the church organ, with its own bass pedals you play with the left foot, a selection of authentic-sounding instruments, and a groovy (the predecessor of cool) choice of drum/rhythm beats.
After some pestering, my mum (who still recalled well my dramatic ‘dumping-of-the-piano’ incident) got me a basic model, and the organ demonstrator became my teacher (…Where in the world are you now, Ken ? )
Ken, a professional pianist and organist who himself could hardly read music, taught me the organ for about 6 months, based pretty much on observation and the scribbling of alphabets as notes… and then I basically figured out things from there. I discovered later that he could hardly himself read conventional notes, but was somehow able to teach those students who preferred to read, but who could never fool him due to his powerful hearing and experience.
The great thing about Ken (that’s not him in the picture) was that he was a generous and ‘fun’ mentor. Tuition fees were never an object. He often took me and a bunch of his other young students to the piano lounge at the hotel where he performed, and nudged each one of us to show off our limited playing skills and overcome our performance nerves.
A few key lessons from my ‘hearing’ teacher Ken are still implanted in my mind:
- learn to play all genres of music, as long the melodies are nice and organ/piano-friendly’;
- pay attention to the different individual rhythm patterns (viz.. drum beats like bossa nova, cha cha), asif you were playing with an imaginary drummer in a band or orchestra;
- keep listening to all sorts of music and observing closely how other better pianists and musicians perform, and learn from their techniques.
As I progressed on my organ playing skills and played stints at restaurants, I began developing a very practical and proven system of learning any song I chose. I have learned well over a thousand songs this way.
It was during my college years that, in the absence of an organ, I lifted the cover of a piano again, and toyed with trying to apply my organ techniques to the piano. You can imagine the stiffness! My left hand just did not know what to do. My left leg desired to step on a bass pedal but there was of course nothing of the sort on the piano. But I persisted over the years, hearing closely to music played by pianists, and I began to figure out how I could adapt my organ knowledge of playing the bass and rhythm patterns into playing the left hand on the piano (Playing the right hand was not a problem).
Meantime, the electronic organ became a virtually extinct instrument, and I became ever more determined to master the piano by myself, and kept playing it with my wide repertoire of songs that I had written for the organ.
Perhaps that’s where my leapfrogging of musical notation originated: because I had a background in writing my music simply in alphabets and playing alternative instruments like the guitar and piano, I inadvertently bypassed the years of drudgery of learning to read those note symbols, as necessitated by conventional piano training. At the end of day, it still worked out, and I’m playing the piano but not reading music sheets - only my own alpha notes. No big disadvantage here.
One day, I plucked up the cheek to advertise my services as a wedding and event pianist; after, all, I used to play the organ publicly, so what’s the big deal? I’ve been gigging as a pianist since, and here I am now, trying to share my playing knowledge.
But it is indeed, a wonderful skill and goes like that… I hear a song I like, I go to YouTube and search for the video, download and convert into an MP3, and then learn the entire song in under an hour on my cheap Casio keyboard , and replay it on the piano.
Just like that. I can learn up to 6-7 new songs on a good night.
It’s not so much about talent, but knowing how to do it. And I’d like to share this with you in my future blogs.
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