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I'm trying to address a particular weak spot. I never had the problem of "trying to not watch my hands". I played from the sheet or from sound. I studied theory sort of "theoretically". Where I'm weak is seeing a chord played on the piano, and recognizing what it is. Not simple things like major and minor triads and sevenths in root position - but when you start having inversions, and 4-note chords in inversions. I can create them like "I want to play G7/D" and then play it - but not necessarily recognize it if it's played by someone else. I'm not that "keyboard aware".

So what might help is some kind of interactive keyboard that plays chords at random, for me to recognize. I don't need to learn what chords are; I've got that part. But seeing them on the piano and recognizing - if that makes sense.

Playing mostly by ear (okay, completely by ear:-) I tend to be a "hand watcher", when watching other pianists/players play. Also, a lot of my playing is "eye-hand coordination". So, there is a visual aspect to seeing what is happening on the keyboard. I also use a lot of "hand shapes" in my playing, which would likely be the same if playing the written score, if the notes being played were the same.

Therefore, recognizing what is being play visually, is important to an extent. There are electronic keyboards (and not real expensive) that will play recorded tunes/pieces and the keys will light up as it is played. The hard part is watching it fast enough to recognize the key combo.

I made a comment on another piano forum recently regarding note association, and I stated that only certain notes "go with" certain keys/chords (notes within that particular key scale). Another person chimed in and unleased a boat load of sophisticated jargon that was way above my head and basically said that all notes "go with" all keys/chords. Well, where I'm from, that is not the case. All/every note on the keyboard might "go with" every key/chord being played, but it may not sound very good, or be extremely unpleasant or dissonant. Example, play the root D major chord and then play the Bb note; I don't think Bb "goes with" the D chord, but I may be all wrong.

Since I play by ear, I can easily recognize a disharmonic union or key combination. Some notes do not "go with" every key/chord.

Getting back to your question, if you can recognize the root chord visually, you can decipher the chord variation visually, if it is not played too fast.

Hope this helps!

Rick

Thanks for the response, Rick. Well, for "deciphering", I've been able to to do that for a long time. There's a spate of things that I can do and hear - I'm going after holes where things are missing. What I'm imagining is some kind of app, some on-line thing maybe, where a chord is played - or piano keys light up - to practise recognizing from that end.

It was interesting to read how you experience things. I've enjoyed your playing and singing for a long time.

Thanks, keystring! I'm glad you've enjoyed my playing and singing, although it is rather simplistic! I enjoy it too!

Not sure this will help, but I joined a group on Facebook called "Piano Challenges". The host/teacher/creator is Jonny May, a highly advanced pianist and online piano teacher, who is one of the best pianist/piano players I've ever heard. A lot Jonny May's training videos include exactly the kind of visual keyboard aid you mention, where the keys he is playing are highlighted in the video, along with his hands as he plays. So, you see two keyboards, the one he is playing and the one above it where the notes played are highlighted.

I know there are lots of online piano teachers who do this, but I do like Jonny May and his style of teaching. He teaches most genres of piano music, including some Classical. You might Google Jonny May and check out some of his training videos and see what you think.

All the best!

Rick

Yamaha makes an iPhone app called "Chord Tracker" that can supposedly analyze a song file and break down the chords, but I have never used it to know how accurate it is.

I started doing https://playpianofluently.com/ and I find that (among many other things) it teaches exactly what you ask, but not in the way you are asking. The keyboard becomes like your own fingers. If I touch your index and ring fingers of your left hand, there is no way that you get confused and think I touched the thumb and pinky of your right hand, no? This is what I'm developing and I'm really impressed on how well it works (after several decades of much more painful, intense and unsuccessful attempts with a gazillion of other approaches)

However it's quite a radical way, in the style of "everything you know is wrong". Most people would be very uneasy doing it..... so I doubt you will have success with it, unless you are already on the verge of giving up piano (like I was), which from the rest of your post sounds like you aren't. Hence why do I mention it? Because some other lurkers may be interested, like I was when someone else mentioned it.

The last poster said just about everything that apply to me.

I started off as a poor reader and relied on listening and a good memory (specifically muscle memory) to learn my pieces. Now my reading improved I'm still about 50-50 relying on both listening and reading at the same time to get the correct notes.

There is an advantage to having a good ear. If you hear something that is wrong, you'd change a few notes to get it to sound right. Recently saw a video online from a piano teacher saying that we should be reading new pieces to get good at reading. Agree on that point. At the same time wrote back saying there should be more emphasis on ear training. Having good listening skill would help people to play more expressively than someone who can sight-read well but the playing is rather mechanical. A while ago I watched videos posted by a young student in Taiwan. He would record a lot of recent released Pop tunes (up to 3/wk) by finding the sheet music. His reading is very good but after a while his playing gets rather boring. The pieces he uploaded sounded mechanical like he was reading the first time with no regard for phrasing or dynamic changes.

Some people have the ability to read a score (no playing) and visualize the composition in his head. Other people can hear a song on the radio and play the melody with a few LH chords thrown in by ear.

I got a bit bogged down in stuff so sorry for the lateness in the response.


I looked up Johnny May and saw some videos by him on YT. Indeed the names of individual notes flash on so I see what you mean.


I found a YT demo. This goes the opposite direction of what I'm looking for. You put in music that you can hear, like a recording from somewhere, and it displays the names of chords. I want, when I see piano keys played, to recognize the chord being played.

I had a look at that one. I can see what he's doing, and what you brought up might be useful for a lot of people. I don't think it goes to the particular thing I'm looking for, however.


I'm afraid I got lost on that one. I'm a strong reader. My ear is good for melodic lines more than for chords. I'm trying to bridge a gap of being able to see chords visually on the piano. I've got it in theory. I've got it in notation. I can often extrapolate what a chord should be due to musical context. But I don't visually recognize a chord well on the piano.

Here is one example: Ebm/Gb. All black keys. I can easily "see" that as an F# chord. I'll hear the minor quality and know that is not right. I spent some time the last two weeks specifically recognizing and playing chords in inversions and really seen them. The work I've done with teachers in the past has been remote. One thing that worries me is that if a teacher demonstrates a chord or series, I can't recognize what I'm seeing very well. It happened to me once unexpectedly and I was shocked at how lost I was. So was the teacher. Other people seem to recognize chords visually on the piano. That is the one thing I barely have.

You're describing an ear-training app:

. . . It plays a chord;

. . . You respond "Major 9"

. . . It gives you a cheer or a raspberry -- and asks: "Same chord again?"
. . . . to give you a second chance.

I don't know if something like that exists, but I bet it does. Probably costs $5 for an Android phone.

EDIT -- Googling "chord recognition training app" gives some promising hits.

This can be quite hard to do at the best of times though. Especially if watching skilled players that could be playing in complex fashion. Bass line often helps give some of it away, but of course not always a dead give away. I think it has to become at least as much of a hearing thing as it is just a visual thing. My dad could do this great and get chords to almost anything immediately. But it was all by ear. I can't do that.

Not to say we can't do it with just visual, but I think this would make much harder. We saw how nuts things can get with chords when we deciphered them from the Moonlight. It would be hard to recognize stuff at any similar complexity on the fly.



I doubt they do it as easily as you may think. It's not an easy thing for the most of us. In root position is easy, but any series of notes could be lots of things, I can never tell what they are. I wouldn't get too worried about it. Just take the time to look at the notes, figure out what it is (if you really care) , write it down and move along to the next one. We took hours on a single chord in the Moonlight didn't we? Doesn't mean we won't still be able to play it at tempo.

Thanks for that. I may have been chasing something that I think that exists, but doesn't exist nearly to as great a degree as I thought it did. I've not been able to identify with people who struggle to not watch their hands, because seeing my hands didn't tell me much of anything. I've seen tutorials where the teacher shows the chords via hands, and everyone seems to relate to that. I felt like a colourblind person watching a symposium on the subtleties of painting blue skies and green grass.

I wasn't part of the Moonlight thing - should look it up. Was it the slow movement? If so, I worked on it last year.

Another element to this (chords) is the "classical" vs. non-classical world. I had Solfege first, and with it you automatically get the degrees, so when I finally got formal theory, the I ii iii IV V thing was automatic. It's 90% triads, and mostly either major or minor chords. I'll know where a chord is going due to the degree, and if the music is in A major, and it jumps to E7 and back to A, I don't hear the E7 as an E7. I just hear the "to the 5th, to the Tonic" and the major or minor quality. 7 chords only came in during V7's. i didn't much learn to recognize E as E.

The first visual things were indeed an aid. There are major chords which are white-black-white; others that are the reverse of that. There the fact of the P4 in an inversion, and the note above the P4 is to root of a chord: two notes an M2 apart often show a 7th of some kind, so that if you have FG, the top note may be the root, and it could be a G7. I've been working with these things at the keyboard, playing with them. It seemed to have sped up my recognition. I thought another step might be to recognized what someone else is playing. Maybe that's not a thing.

At this time I think what you are asking for is something that would need to be created manually by whoever is creating the tutorials, like how Johnny May does it, or how like it works with Synthesia which can take a MIDI file of a song and generate a visual guide: