Q: Bill, i've been playing the piano for months, i listen to the songs i enjoy and i learn to play them by ear. I'm good at finding out the melody or the lead vocal's notes, but i'm having troubles identifying the chords and extra stuff other than the melody. what do you suggest me to do? i started to become familiar with the sounds of some of the chords i use a lot (A,Am, Em, F , Fm, Bb, C D G etc.) . Do i just listen and play more?
A: a good starting trick is to pause the music and then unpause-pause very quickly. this might not work on a streaming site like youtube, but it will would very well on an offline player. when i was a kid i used to do it with a CD player. if you just listen to that micro-second of the song, you can pick out 1 note at a time. write down all the chords to a song (in time, with bar lines, etc.)..... once you do this for about 30 or 40 songs, i think you will find that you don't have to search for the individual notes anymore. ... maybe not even pause it at all. After about 100 more songs, you probably won't even have to listen to the song, you will be able to do it from memory. after about 1000 songs, you will probably be able to hear someone singing the melody for a song you have never heard before, without hearing the chords, and figure out what the chords should be. after 10,000 songs, you should be able to play along with them on the first try, never having heard the song before, and have them think you already knew the song