I do not play guitar by ear. I play because I managed to mechanically learn the chords and beat them into song structures. I learned from this book:
For years, I’ve wondered whether a similar solution was available for Piano, because I’d love a chart that showed me chords and chord shapes so I could usefully teach myself something about piano without having to worry about music reading. I took piano and voice lessons for three years when I was a kid, so I’ve got some understanding of basic music reading / theory on piano. But I hate that crap.
So I was pretty stoked to come across The Virtual Piano last night. It’s not intended to turn your keyboard into a full-featured piano. Instead it uses the keyboard numbers 1-7 to trigger chords on the piano, highlighting them as it does so. You change the key using your mouse button. The mouse can also be used to hit individual notes on the keyboard.
It’s not the most amazing music tool on the Web, but it’s explicitly designed to be “an excellent tool for singers, songwriters, and anyone who wants to learn to play the piano without learning to read music." Hey, that’s me!
Lazy and mrshl never went together UNTIL NOW!
Still, I might send this along to my singer slash sucky piano player friend..
That’s funny, I have that very guitar book, but only ended up learning by ear. I couldn’t tell you any of the chord names other than open E, A, D, G. On the other hand, I can play piano from notation (though not very well anymore).
I will, again, recommend the best guitar book i’ve found – The Advancing Guitarist. I can’t recommend this book enough, especially for those who like me learned by memorizing chord shapes. The first 2 pages of this book, should somewhat free you up from those constraints. First instruction – play with one finger on one string, see how much you can do with that.