Ask HN: What does it feel like to master playing an instrument by ear?

There are lectures from one of Yale's Music Theory classes on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9LXrs9vCXK56qtyK4qcq...

There's a Kindle version of the textbook on Amazon.

Think about how you learned a spoken language and when you were able to spend time articulating ideas instead of thinking about words and grammar for it. That's kinda how mastering a music instrument is like.

Basically the first few years of anything (music or not) seems to be about correct articulation/grammar/vocabulary, and beyond that it's about the quality of expression.

(former classically trained concert violinist of 10+ years, hobbyist latin dancer of 10+ years - swapped a musical instrument for a physical one as an optimization to go along with long periods of desk work)

For me, it suddenly clicked after a decade or so. The same thing happened with improvisation and keeping excellent time. I felt like I was always struggling until one day whatever I heard in my head came out my fingers.

It's just that the process is very gradual and takes a long time. I suppose the 10k hour rule applies here.

That's a really interesting question.

My experience is in playing Clarinet since I was about 10 years old, professionally for a year or two and more sporadically over the last 10 years. (I'm 50ish)

I can play clarinet (even now) without any difficulty, can (re)play music I've heard a couple of times (memory is getting worse as I get older) and sight read music fairly easily as long as it's not too fast or complex.

For the last 20 or so years, I've had access to a piano, and have attempted to teach myself how to play two handed. I can play melodies by ear, and add some simple chord accompaniment but have not a hope of reading two handed music to play.

Most other instruments, as long as I can master the technique for producing a decent sound and get my hands around the fingering, I can also play fairly successfully by ear. So I can pick up a guitar and pluck out a melody, pick up my daughters violin (groan) and squeak out someting that you can recognise. My technique sucks and I'm prob not doing it correctly. I can also do a pretty decent job of singing anything I hear.

My experience leads me to suspect that playing by ear is, like singing something you have heard, the natural way of making music. The only difference is that you need to have physical mastery of the sound making process, hence my difficulty with two handed playing piano as I've no experience with making music with each had playing something different.

First, you have to practice listening to music. You have to focus on everything: melody, rhythm, harmony, instrumentation, and dynamics. You also need to study those things so you know exactly what you're listening to. Practice scales, arpegios, and chord progressions and you'll start to recognize them. If you hear a song in a key that you can't even play in, it doesn't matter how good your musical memory is.

I started playing piano as an adult and can read music and play by ear. I worked as a dueling piano player for a few years wherr listening to your partner and figuring out what they're playing is a part of the job. I also write music down in various forms. Chords and lyrics, guitar tabs, and sheet music.

Everything helps, but you have to practice playing by ear as well. Just put a song on a loop and play along until you get it right.