Learn your favorite songs by ear.

The voice sits closest to your brain; the instrument is the furthest thing from it. So your voice has to be the translator — you sing what you hear, and the instrument copies your voice. Going straight from ear to instrument is the slow, frustrating way most people get stuck doing.

This is also where the piano earns its place: it's the one instrument where you can play every note at once, so it becomes your truth-teller for checking pitches, finding keys, and hearing chords.

We slow "Yesterday" down and build it three notes at a time. Find the starting note, sing the phrase, check it against the piano, then check it against the track. Sing along even if you're not a singer — that's how it goes into your ear and stays.

The melody always comes first, even when your real goal is the chords. By the end of the lesson you own the whole first verse — not half-humming it, actually knowing it.

Ironically, the first step to the chords is the melody. Once you have it, you play all its notes at once on the piano to find the key center, then narrow down your options and sing the roots against the record until they lock in. Singing roots is harder than melody — your ear doesn't reach for them — but it's checkable.

As Ray Brown put it, "melody and bass is all you need; everything else is just filling." So we listen for where the bass moves, because movement is what tells you the chords are changing.

You don't identify intervals by naming them — you identify them by how they make you feel, then react with your body. The major third is happy, the minor third is sad. The minor second is the "oh no" from Jaws; the major second is just "meh." The perfect fourth is the triumphant "Here Comes the Bride"; the fifth is simply perfect. The minor sixth is mysterious; the major sixth is hopeful.

Practicing intervals won't let you name notes inside a melody in real time — that's not the point. It builds the sense of where a line is going, and that's what makes your ear faster.

Three chord types, three feelings: major is happy, minor is sad, and dominant is the one pulling you somewhere — "move me." Then we stack the extensions level by level — the 7, 9, 11, and 13, plus the altered tensions on dominant chords — by singing each one against the chord and checking it on the piano.

Extensions aren't a jazz-only thing; they're the sauce in pop synth parts and classical lines too. We finish back on "Yesterday," using them to jazz it up — proof that once you can hear it, you can play it.