Learning to play a piano can an interesting yet exciting hobby. Though learning a piano is like a dream for many people, there are many methods by which you can easily learn to play a piano. You can join the classes where can guide you about piano playing. Today, there are numerous online courses available on internet which can be a great source to learn piano. For the people, who have commitment, patience and money, CD courses are great alternatives. There are some sites which can help you to learn the piano in your own style. In addition to these, there are some basic methods of learning piano by the ear that you can use to optimize your skills.

Playing the piano by ear is a method where the pianist first learns to reproduce a song by listening to it and attempts to copy what has been listened by him/her. This pattern of "listen-and-play" is repeated until the pianist satisfactorily reproduces the song from his memory. When you learn to play piano, you should be able to hear pitch and gage the quality of chords. In other words, you should be able to distinguish the difference between minor and major chords, diminished and dominant etc. The only problem in such kind of learning is that some people do not have an ear capable of making out such differences.

Some basic methods of learning piano by the ear include using tonal memory, using fingers and ears and using melody contour, chord progressions and chord structure. Tonal memory is used to recall the music that you have learnt. Fingers and ears are used to reproduce what you have recalled. You can use the melody contour (the shape of the tune), chord progressions (the path chords take moving through a song) and chord structure (formation of chords on keyboard to match the tune). You can mentally practice recalling a specific tune. You may sit at the piano for several hours and pick out chords, tunes and rhythms through trial and error. The basic key of learning a piano by the ear is how to learn how to construct chords.

If you adopt some basic methods of learning piano by the ear, you should be able to hear not only the dominant seventh chords but also the melody derived from the blues scale, the re-harmonization of the chord structure and the rhythm that comes from the structured meter and all without understanding the words. You should first learn about how chords and scales are made and then use this information to formulate the melody and structure. Your ear can obviously support this process. However, the chords and scales can develop the building blocks of true musical understanding.  For learning a piano by the ear, you need to develop some skills and you should be obviously a better listener.

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