Victoria,

Here is your song request:

Two Words

The Prayer

Alan

In this blog, I will discuss probably a mundane subject,  but yet an essential part of ‘learning by hearing’…

Remember, learning by hearing does not mean not having to read notes. It means that as you learn to hear and decipher the notes of a song, you also need a way of writing those notes down so that you don’t forget them, or have a need to revisit the song again. It’s just obvious that as you progressively become better at learning songs by hearing, your repertoire of songs will increase, and it would be a matter of time before you realize that you cannot possibly memorize all your music or play them infallibly without referring to some form of notation, i.e., sight read.

You should therefore put some effort early in the stage to do this if you’re serious about learning and playing the piano.

If you already read and write conventional music, you may want to skip this blog, as it’s aimed at readers who don’t already know how to read notes; but if you would like to consider an alternative way of writing notes, do read on….

While it all started with my teacher making me ‘shortcut the system’ and write notes in the form of alphabets, I have since those early years written in better indicators to my notes, to make my interpretation of the song more accurate.  Watch the video…

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It’s like anything else - after you start on something, you get used to it and then you find ways of improving your system. For me now, I just can’t imagine myself learning those squiggly notes in conventional music (picture)…. let alone paying for it.

Moreover, in my performing experience, I only encountered, at most, two instances where I absolutely needed to know how to read conventional music, or else miss the gig.   This was well outweighed by the many other instances where I was able to quickly learn songs by hearing, where the music sheet was not easily available.

In a wedding gig, an advantage I have is being to tell a bride I’d happily learn 1-2 any special requests she may have for her ceremony, if she’d just sent me the Mp3’s, and provided that I hear  those songs to be ‘piano friendly’. I’d eagerly expand my new songs repertoire this way through hearing. And you see the amazement and fascination of many, whenever they perchance get to glimpse at the way I write my notes (picture below) !

So, I’m in a situation where I’m happy to perform as a solo pianist, and if some singer/instrumentalist wanted my accompaniment, I’d just say: “Give me ½ -1 hour to learn the song; otherwise, find another pianist“. No big deal; and no offence to my pride. Not being able to read conventional music has never been a stumbling block for me.

Unless you’re planning to play the piano in an orchestra or in a situation  (E.g. musical) where reading conventional music is absolutely necessary (and you have the dedication to the long theoretical route), it really doesn’t matter what ways you choose to write your music notes.

For instance, you could be writing it in ‘Do Re Mi…’, numerically as ‘1-2-3…’, in Chinese or Greek characters, or in whatever language or symbols you choose. That’s why there are different languages in the world to communicate the same thing; and music should be no different.

Basically, as long as you can understand your own notation system, it works well to translate what you hear in a song, and you it makes you enjoy music learning more - that’s all that matters.

No one else needs to understand your notes but you . They only need to appreciate the quality of the music that you put out when you read and play these notes/symbols to them.

At worse, if writing your own notes doesn’t work out for you, you can revert back to learning conventional music notes, perhaps through a teacher or the internet, where there is already an abundance of free tutorials.

For any song I wish to learn , I spend about 30-60 minutes to write the notes including cords. This is a very worthwhile effort, considering that there are many songs you can’t obtain music sheets for. You also derive a lot of personal satisfaction from learning the song directly by hearing.

In another blog, I will discuss how I actually write my alphabetical notes.

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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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Having learned well over a thousand songs by hearing, I can say with confidence that most contemporary songs are structured with the following sequential elements -

INTRO - An introduction to a song is provided by an instrument, orchestra, or even sung by a singer. It often duplicates a part of the main melody, but could also have its own unique tune.

MELODY 1 - The main melody of the song , which usually ends with an ‘unresolved’ phrasing in order to lead you on to the next melody section

MELODY 2 - This second part melody – usually with a little more emphasis - is typically a repeat of Melody 1, but its last few notes will typically bring the melody section (1 and 2) to a close.

CHORUS - This part sounds is totally different and deviates from the main melody. It’s almost like the singer wants to ‘explain’ or ‘elaborate’ on what was said (sung) in Melodies 1 and 2.

MELODY 2 - This is just to bring back and remind the listener of the main tune again, and then it’s over next to someone else for a different voice/sound or improvisation (usually based on the same chords flowing in the melody).

SOLO or ADLIB - This part offers a variation from the above tunes, so that the song doesn’t sound ‘stale’ by this point, which could be the case if you do just another repeat of what’s already been heard. The solo here could duplicate the melody, or be some totally-different tune from what’s heard so far. It could be sung by a different singer/chours, or else performed by an instrumentalist or orchestra.

REPEAT CHORUS – The chorus is typically repeated again after the foregoing improvisation part.

REPEAT MELODY 2 – At this point nearing the end, the familiar Melody 2 is heard again, as a final reminder of song’s main tune.

ENDING – To finally end a song, the composer typically repeats the last part of Melody 2, does another Adlib, or repeats the Intro. The song could end with a concluding note, or just fade out.

It’s good to know about song structure because:

- it helps with knowing what to expect and how to conveniently break down/ categorize and write the song while you’re learning it

- it’s easier to read the notes when they’re in the above logical sections

- it helps with composing, because you ‘re aware what a typical song should at least have and you’d need to offer. Of course you can get extraordinarily creative and not follow these conventions, if you think your song will work out successfully.

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Transposing is the converting of one or more notes or chords from one key into another - lower or higher in pitch - using a constant interval of note spacing.

For instance, a key of the original song may be in Ab, but - for any of the possible reasons given below -  you may want to change it to say, the key of F. This would therefore mean transposing all of the melody notes and chords to F.

The reasons for transposing keys include:

- when accompanying a singer on the piano, he or she may feel more comfortable with singing in a different key from the one you had learned the song in, so you may need to transpose the notes of the song for this purpose;

- when learning a song by hearing, the piece may be in one of the more difficult keys (like Db, F#, B or even Ab), where you will encounter and likely stumble on a lot of black notes. This tends to make playing uncomfortable and more error-prone… especially if you are not well-seasoned in playing in all keys. In this case, it’s better to transpose the song to an easier key;

- a song that you’re playing could be made more interesting if say, midway through it, you are able to change its key one semitone higher, or even to another key. This is done usually by a quick variation in chord and melody, to ‘lead in’ to the new key (In another blog, I’ll talk about charging keys while playing).

Automatic Method

The simplest way to transpose a key while is if your electronic (E.g., a Casio CTK series) or digital piano has a transposer. You adjust its switch or button to automatically transpose/convert the tones to a higher or lower key, or by the number of what they call in music theory, semi-tones (see picture).

It would save a lot of time, instead of having to ‘manually’ (using a chord chart) transpose each and every note after you learn a song on a difficult key and want to transpose it to an easier key.

While you’re playing a song - you use this built-in transposer to - almost always - only move one key higher ; otherwise, it gets too cumbersome to try to adjust to another further-away key while you’re also trying to focus on your playing.

While you’re learning a song - Use the built-in transposer to change  your keyboard tons to an easier or preferred play-back key first and then match that to the key of original song… so there’s no need to do any further transposing.  This happens even before you even start learning the full song. Refer to my blog titled “How I learn a song”.

Manual Method

The other way to transpose a song is more time-consuming, but nonetheless important to know. It is when you already have the notes for a song that’s in one key, and you need to manually convert them to another key.

A good example of needing to manually transpose is when for instance, you don’t have a keyboard with a transposer .

This means you therefore have to write the notes in the original key of the song, as you hear them.  Later, if you need to transpose these notes, you will need to use manual transposition.  Here’s how to do it…

The Napkin Way

I like to refer to this method of transposing ‘the napkin way’, because if you’re in a hurry or in a fit of desperation, you just need to grab any piece of available paper - even a napkin - to make your transposition!

Now, we know there are 12 possible notes in an octave, viz. C Db D Eb E F F# G Ab A Bb B…. Therefore correspondingly, there are only 12 possible keys.

The simplest and quickest way transpose music notes is to sketch out a 2-row table as follows - one row starting with the root key (say, B) you’re transposing FROM, and the second row starting with the root key (say, F) that you wish to transpose the notes TO:

From:

B

C

Db

D

Eb

E

F

F#

G

Ab

A

Bb

To:

F

F#

G

Ab

A

Bb

B

C

Db

D

Eb

E

(No particular reason why I labeled F sharp as F# and not Gb – I’ve just always done so! )

For each key, you then write in the next notes (including the black ones) sequentially, until the last note (i.e., the one before it becomes the root again).

Now you’re ready to re-write or transpose your song that’s in B key to one that’s in F key…. For example, if your song in B key starts with the following notes ….

F# Ab B E Eb ….

Then, looking at the chart, your transposed notes would be the corresponding notes in the lower ‘F Key’ row, viz. -

C D F Bb A .…

The same applies when you’re converting bass, chords and chord notes, whether you wrote them alphabetically, or in conventional music notes.  You can of course, sketch this out in 2 columns instead of rows.

The Full Chart

If you prefer, it’s also easy enough to draw up an entire transposition chart, starting with the most common C root.

As shown below, notice how the same alphabet note lines up diagonally, left-downwards, as exemplified with the shaded Ab’s? So, if it’s  easier, you can also sketch out the chart  just writing in the corresponding notes this diagonal way.

You can transpose horizontally or vertically with the two affected rows or columns, respectively.

Root Key

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

The above methods apply to piano just as it does other instruments like the guitar. If you read about transposition in Wikipedia, there are two types: chromatic and scalar. The above refers to chromatic – I don’t think I need to know what scalar is.

You may see fancy transposition charts for sale in the music stores or online, but really, all you really need is…. a napkin.
As a last word on Transposition, occasionally in feedback to my videos on YouTube, a listener would comment that I’m playing the wrong key.  Some musicians get such a hang up  when that happens! I just tell  them there’s absolutely nothing wrong with transposing the key of an original song, as singers do that all the time! One listener was even so upset that I had transposed Steve Wonder’s ‘Lately’ from B to C (one lousy semi-tone!) and insisted that such a masterpiece should not have been tampered with.  Geez, ease up man!

The main thing is  - unless you’re  playing at the ‘Professional Musicians Convention’ or something similar, I would swear that 99.7% of a typical hearing audience (E.g. at a gig event) wouldn’t have a clue what key you’re playing a song on.  As long as what they hear is a nicely-arranged and performed piece, and more importantly YOU were comfortable learning and playing it, those are all that  really matter.   So transpose freely.

Let me be so bold as to make a recommendation about transposition.   The first row are the tougher keys to play on.  Assuming that you find a key on the first row to be difficult.  You would then transpose it to the key adjacent to it, ie. indicated as the key on the next row.

I consider D and Eb   (as well A and Bb) to be about the same difficulty/ease to play,  which is two pairs are shown in the table:

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Found a few useful tips in this blog or site? …. Like to leave some tips for the piano teacher ?

Greatly appreciated!

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