Maybe this will help here

Have fun

Bill

I play everything by ear which allows me to choose any key I want
to play the song in.One thing I can`t do is sight read a piece of
music that I`ve never seen and don`t know the song,I would need a
lot of time to sort it out.

Good find, Bill. Very informative.

Gary

I'm both.....formally trained but play by ear also. I've always had a pretty good ear, but lately using a friend's exercise has improved my ear 1,000%. And I wasn't doing the exercise to improve my ear. It just happened.

The exercise is simple as pie. Just make up a melody line and play it VERY slowly (VERY SLOWLY) one note at a time, but.......think "pitch"...where you want the next note to fall according to the melody you hear in your head. You're on a C note and you can hear in your mind the pitch of the next note. Do you think it would it be a 2nd, 3rd, a suspended 4th, an augmented 5th, dominant 7th, flatted 9th, etc. Take a few seconds and then go for it. Hit the note you think it is. It will probably be wrong, but your mind will hear that's it's "wrong." The next time you're in that situation, your mind will remember the "wrong" note and NOT go there again. Eventually you'll start hearing the "correct" interval and your fingers will automatically go to the right place. It's taken me about 3-4 months now of doing this religiously every day, but now I can recognize intervals clearly AND quickly. As in most endeavors, nothing happens for quite a while and then one day it ALL happens. One day your pitch recognition becomes industrial strength almost overnight if you keep at it regularly.

I actually started doing the exercise because I'm fascinated with how horn players from the classic band band era improvise so easily...how they just hear in their heads what they want to play, and.......they play it. So I started listening to what they were doing and I began improvising very slowly.....one note at a time to replicate what they were doing at fast speeds.

Most of you know already I've always been into "power of the mind" principles with many things in addition to music. There's two well-known books called "The Inner Game of Tennis" and "The Inner Game of Music." They both deal with "Power of the Mind" principles as applied to tennis and musicians. Also.....Maxwell Maltz states in his book "Psycho Cybernetics" the following, which is exactly the way it is: "You will never be great at ANYTHING (that includes music) until you believe in your mind that "you are GREAT." A person who wins millions in the lottery, is still not rich until he finally believes in his mind that he is rich. It took me many years to fully understand that and apply it to music!

While I always find your insights interesting, I have to wonder about the last statement in "Psycho Cybernetics". I have played with people that think they are great, but in reality, stink. Not only that, they never improve. I, on the other hand, think I am good, but not great. The difference is that I improve at something I am working at every day.

Thanks for the video link on playing by ear.

A modern days keyboard course learns the pupils many things..

There are excersises for :

- playing by ear
- reading music and playing as you read a new piece
- improvising
- memmorising your parts
- playing piano style, with left hand bass, or just 2 hands
- playing keyboard style with left hand chords
- improving skills trough playing etudes and other piano excersises
- playing in a band
- recording your own music, and playing on top of it
- creating styles, midi files and other backings
- using an arpeggiator
- reproducing the sound of acoustic instruments like guitar, woodwinds and brass on your keyboard
- playing keys and singing on top of that (even using VH )
- playing organ
- mixing music
- different kinds of dsp and how to use them.
- different kinds of synthesis

There are so many things a keyboardist meeds to know and do..
Both playing by ear as well as playing from sheetmusic belong to that..

There is allways something to improve..
There is no instrument as versatile as a keyboard..

Wow, A lot of superb information, and a big variance on what people are doing. A lot for me to digest and try...MANY THANKS and keep it coming as I think in some small way it could help others here too.....

Bachus, can you recommend a course that you described?? I have a few, but nothing that good. After a few years not having a keyboard, I am saving for a Genos.....so will be starting up again soon. I used to play organ, so chords I get.

Rikki, no keyboard right now, getting a Genos soon!....glad your doing well, yep, a lot of us still here.

I watch a lot of XSTV and see that at a lot of concerts with the big stars are using, what at first looks like sound monitors, out in front of them. When I look closer, I see that these are indeed teleprompters with the lyrics and chords scrolling by. I noticed that Steve Winwood had an iPad on his Hammond with lyrics that he would scroll thru.

Billy Joel and Brian Wilson both have what look like special monitors for viewing lyrics and arrangements.

I personally use an iPad Pro for viewing all my music and now only have to bring my iPad to gigs and jam sessions rather than a milk carton container filled with sheet music. I will never be stumped again. I find that having this safety net is worth the self criticism and guilt of feeling dependent of having sheet music to jog my memory.

I have seen major artists from Frank Sinatra to Billy Joel using monitors for their lyrics ...
I absolutely DO NOT understand the 'stigma' or 'guilt' associated with using music sheets, laptops, tablets, WHATEVER, for lyrics and/or chord progressions ...
More power to the 'purists' who state they never use anything but their memory for lyrics and chords but no one will ever convince me that haven't more than once changed a lyric line or chord progression because their mind went blank for a second ...
I use the Pro12 tablet instead of music sheets and have absolutely no problem with that ... I would rather have it in front of me when I need it than have to fumble through a lyric or chord progression
To each his own ...

Its not one course...
My piano/keyboard teacher uses a lot of different resources to archieve all of this...
The last few years i have been trying to concentrate on piano mostly...

You will not find this in a single printed course...