Selecting music by ear: genius or skill? Reflection

It is no secret that many children study at music school without connecting their future profession with music. As they say, just for yourself, for general development.

But here’s what’s interesting. When communicating with graduates of music schools, you can often encounter a paradoxical phenomenon: the guys can read notes from sight freely, play complex classical works expressively, and at the same time find it completely difficult to choose an accompaniment even for “Murka”.

What’s the matter? Is it really true that selecting music by ear is the preserve of the elite, and in order to entertain a group of friends with modern melodies played to order, you need to have brilliant musical abilities?

Subtract and multiply, do not offend kids

What they don’t teach children in music school: how to build quintessential chords from all degrees in all keys, and sing vocalises in the choir, and appreciate Italian opera, and play arpeggios on the black keys at such a speed that your eyes can’t keep up with your fingers.

It all just comes down to one thing: you need to learn music. Disassemble the work note by note, maintain the exact duration and tempo, and accurately convey the author’s idea.

But they don’t teach you how to create music. Translating the harmony of sounds in your head onto notes too. And sorting popular melodies into completely understandable chords is somehow also not considered a worthy academic pursuit.

So one gets the feeling that in order to strum the same Murka, you need to have almost the talent of a young Mozart – if this is such an impossible task even for people capable of performing the Moonlight Sonata and Ride of the Valkyries.

You can’t just become a musician, but if you really want to, you can

There is one more interesting observation. Most of the self-taught people take the selection of music extremely easily – people to whom no one at one time explained that this requires not only a musical education, but also talent from above. And so, without knowing it, they easily select the necessary quintessex chords and, most likely, will be extremely surprised to hear that what they play can be called such a lofty word. And they may even ask you not to fill their brains with all sorts of indigestible terminology. Where do such terms come from – read the article “Chord Structure and Their Names”.

As a rule, all selection experts have one thing in common: the desire to play what they want.

Everything requires skill, hardening, training.

Undoubtedly, to develop the skill of selecting music by ear, knowledge from the field of solfeggio will not be superfluous. Only applied knowledge: about keys, types of chords, stable and unstable steps, parallel major-minor scales, etc. – and how all this is implemented in different musical genres.

But the easiest way to become Mozart in the world of selection is one: listen and play, play and listen. Put into the work of your fingers what your ears hear. In general, do everything that was not taught at school.

And if your ears are hearing and your fingers are familiar with a musical instrument, the development of the skill will not take long. And your friends will thank you more than once for a warm evening with your favorite songs. And you most likely already know how to impress them with Beethoven.