Book overview
Have you ever wanted to play the melody of any song without sheet music? Or perhaps you'd like to accompany yourself on guitar or piano with the correct chord progressions. You had music lessons for years but still can't do this. Do you wish you could play by ear?
This book is for you, concentrating on ear training so that you will instantly know the next melody note and the underlying chord. Carefully chosen songs take you from simple intervals to big leaps and from 3 chord songs to major sevenths, minor sevenths, diminished and augmented chords.
Spend a year with this book, playing more than a hundred songs and achieve your dream.
During my many years as a teacher I recognised the importance of starting with something simple and attainable before introducing more complicated ideas. As I was writing this book, I spent so much time, first of all, choosing songs that were well known, spanning sixty or more years. The main problem was finding songs that were very easy in terms of intervals and chords and then progressing gradually without over complicating things. In this book the idea is to attempt most of the tunes in order, repeating and consolidating the skills so that the intervals and chords become ingrained in the musician's mind. The student cannot move on until he or she has fully grasped the ear training ideas.
I taught myself to play guitar and piano, beginning in the 1960's and luckily at first the pop songs of the day were quite easy to play. Having a reel-to-reel tape recorder, I could record the television and radio and then set about learning how to reproduce those wonderful songs. As the pop groups improved, the complexity of the songs increased. This is what you will find in my book. Treat it as a project. It may take a year or even two but you will have so much fun on the journey.
This book is for you, concentrating on ear training so that you will instantly know the next melody note and the underlying chord. Carefully chosen songs take you from simple intervals to big leaps and from 3 chord songs to major sevenths, minor sevenths, diminished and augmented chords.
Spend a year with this book, playing more than a hundred songs and achieve your dream.
During my many years as a teacher I recognised the importance of starting with something simple and attainable before introducing more complicated ideas. As I was writing this book, I spent so much time, first of all, choosing songs that were well known, spanning sixty or more years. The main problem was finding songs that were very easy in terms of intervals and chords and then progressing gradually without over complicating things. In this book the idea is to attempt most of the tunes in order, repeating and consolidating the skills so that the intervals and chords become ingrained in the musician's mind. The student cannot move on until he or she has fully grasped the ear training ideas.
I taught myself to play guitar and piano, beginning in the 1960's and luckily at first the pop songs of the day were quite easy to play. Having a reel-to-reel tape recorder, I could record the television and radio and then set about learning how to reproduce those wonderful songs. As the pop groups improved, the complexity of the songs increased. This is what you will find in my book. Treat it as a project. It may take a year or even two but you will have so much fun on the journey.
