: How can I play the melody of any song by ear on the keyboard? I have seen many musicians who don't know what sheet music is, but they play very well. How can someone learn to do this on the piano?

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Sheet music is not music. It's a way of communicating music, that allows another player to reproduce that music. It's not perfect; there are lots of details that are not explicitly written on a piece of sheet music, that are needed to play the music well.

There are other forms of musical communication - a chord chart, for example. It contains some information about the piece (lyrics, key, chords, possibly time signature and tempo). It misses things like the melody, specific chord voicings and riffs. The musician is expected to figure that out themselves, usually from a recording.

It's not difficult (conceptually) to take that a step further, and get rid of the paper altogether. Now we're using a different means of communication - sound recordings. So, to get to your question, how does a musician play back a recording without any written aids?

Let's take a simple example: Mary had a Little Lamb. Assuming that's a well-known song in your culture, sit at a piano and pick out the melody. If you've seen the sheet music already, choose a different key. It might take some trial and error, but I bet you can do it. You've just played a melody with no sheet music.

So how did you do it (assuming it worked)? You're familiar with the melody, right? So your ears know what it should sound like. You then have to translate what you hear into the right finger movements to make that sound. You train that skill in the same way as you train any other skill. Practice.

I can think of a few ways to practice this skill. The most obvious one would be doing it a lot. Play along to recordings, without any sheet music. See if you can pick out the key and the melody. When you're feeling brave, use your left hand to throw in some bass notes. If you can hear the difference between wrong and right notes, you're ready to give it a go. Soon, you'll find that you can predict what the next note is, because you can hear it. You don't need the sheet music to tell you what to play.

So, in summary, sheet music is not a musical necessity. You can play without it, but to do that, you need to practice that skill. People who can do it effortlessly are usually just those who have practiced a lot.

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A lot of them will play in one key only - often C, with all the white keys, but sometimes F#, with all the black keys. They know where the notes are, and how they follow each other. It usually takes years of working at it, probably as many as if they learned the other way.

For you, you need to know which notes fit into which keys, be very good at listening, know all the chords, not necessarily by name, and have good memory.