The human ear really is a marvellous organ - you can train it just like any other muscle in the human body. Also, the more you train it, the stronger and more efficient it gets, just like all your other muscles.

It’s much like training a dog - you continue to give the dog the same order over and over again, until it recognises the sound and knows what it must do. Similarly, if you hear the same piece of music over and over again, you will recognise it. This is why playing the piano by ear comes so naturally to some people - when they hear a certain chord or selection of notes, they can immediately identify how those notes were played and the position of those notes on the keyboard.

If you got a (very patient) friend to sit at your piano for two days straight and play nothing but major thirds (for example C and E or F and A, etc), your ear would be trained for the sound. Then, the next time you are walking down the street and you hear a car horn, I bet you would immediately identify that sound as a major third (this is because the vast majority of car horns are “factory-tuned” to a major third).

You’ll be amazed at how often you’ll recognise sounds as they occur in everyday life all around you. Imagine if you walking down the street and were able to identify that train whistle as producing a tritone portamento descending! And not just train whistles – car horns and even tannoy announcements will sound completely different when your ear is trained to recognise those sounds.

First of all - you have to listen to the sounds. It can be difficult to find a friend who doesn’t mind playing the same chords over and over again whilst you listen, so the best solution to this that we have found is get hold of a tape recorder, and record the music. If you can find a recorder with a numerical counter on it, all the better, as you are then able to rewind to any specific spot you like.

A reasonable place for you to start is with melodic intervals such as skips of a major third or a perfect sixth. This is where most piano teachers start, so it’s a reasonable place for you to begin as well. Another good place to start is with chord progressions - they can often be a bit more engaging than the relatively simple melodic intervals, and a bit more fun to play.

Training your ear to recognize specific sounds and thus transferring them onto the piano is a time-honored tradition that has served many people well in the past. It can be done, and it can be done relatively simply. There’s no reason that you cannot do it yourself - learning to play the piano could not be simpler!

Copyright 2008 Lauren Paltrow