Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner You prefer to be a gifted sight-reader or have a gifted ear?

Gifts appear very early in life and magical aliens have yet to be discovered. I just hope perseverance pays off.

Ear ever since I have learnt how to make full use of this ability of mine it's made a huge difference to the speed which I learn at+ when I know exactly what tone I want I can just sit down and produce it.

However it has taken years for me to discover this on my own. even my teachers couldn't really help me in this expect

Is a gifted ear just one that can recognize intervals and chord progressions , or one that is able to determine tone color and impeccable phrasing?

I feel like my ear is superb when it comes to tone coloring , voicing chords and creating distinctive textures within orchestral type pieces , but if you played a simple progression I wouldn't be able to play it back.

My sight reading is very good too , and it's extremely fun to be able to open up any piece of music and begin playing it relatively well unless it is something like Feux Follets or some of the more advanced romantic , russian music.

I don't think one could choose - A great pianist has both. If you can't read well you will learn slower and those guys (and ladies) absorb music like a sponge absorbs water.

I don't have either at this point, given the choice I'd take ear.

The same like a cook, if he or she does not have a talent to taste (figure out) the ingredients of a dish, s/he will have hard time to copy something new, and most likely will need recipe book all the time, because it is hard to remember all kinds of ingredients for so many dishes. However,people who have tongue that can figure out the ingredient do not need to memorize every single ingredients needed to cook a certain dish. As long as s/he remember the taste, s/he will be able to easily figure out the ingredients that is needed.

The ones who cannot figure out the ingredients, however, can still cook very well, as long as they follow the recipe perfectly and diligently. Exactly the same like playing piano. One does not need to have good hearing to be able to play well. Good hearing here means the ability to recognize notes. I know many people cannot recognize ANY note, but have the talent to play well...(good techniques, good feeling, etc).

I think it is very tiring for OP to learn all those difficult pieces with poor hearing ability.

I'm fortunate enough to pretty much have it all, as far as raw gifts. My sight-reading ability is the basis for about $20,000 worth of work a year for me, and as a choral accompanist I often read seven staves at once. I have perfect pitch and tested out of 4th-year aural skills class in college. I can memorize a short piece in a half-hour and it'll stick. I don't play by ear much, but the first time I heard "Clocks," I sat down and played the whole piece after one listening in front of my dad who introduced it to me.

But, I'd give it all away if I could just have enough discipline to practice regularly. That's the most important thing, and it really holds me back.

My teacher said I was the best sight-reader he's ever had but I cannot pick out even simple tunes by ear. Why, God?

@jeffreyjones: That really puts my talent in perspective!

I am actually a good sight-reader. I can also play by ear, but mainly melodies (one voice), so rather pieces for the flute for example. I think it must be very difficult (if possible at all) to play for example Bach by ear (because of the polyphony).

Laziness can be changed....not having good hearing is not something one can just acquire.

Huh? What is something one can not just acquire? You're saying you can't acquire not having good hearing?

How can you "acquire" something and "not have" it? You can't acquire bad hearing?

I'm so confused ...

OK, let's cross out the double negatives. So "not having good hearing is not something one can just acquire".
Therefore, it becomes "having good hearing is something one can just acquire". That makes sense now, doesn't it.
Or not...

Some people have both.......... The good news is, you can aquire better sight reading skills. Ear, not so much... (although that can be trained to become better, but some people will never learn)

i have a pretty good ear (perfect pitch and all that good stuff), but i can't sight read worth crap. i think we will always want whichever one we don't have.

But perhaps not enough to actually work at it?

I think what happens is that people (naturally enough) cruise along with what they find easier, and tell themselves they'll never be any good at the other, when in fact I'm convinced that both sight-reading and playing by ear can be improved significantly in almost everyone with practice.

I used to go to festivals and watch musicians play in bands, many different styles, all playing music because they could. "Oh I would love to play with musicians, make music with friends, play anything at all".... but alas, I couldn't, because I didn't play any instrument and it's too late once you're grown up. I mean how could I start an instrument and actually gain proficiency. So tapped a few drums now and then, danced along to the wonderful music.

Somehow I knew that I loved music as much as these people, but my childhood gave me some very clumsy and long forgotten piano skills and an unattractive voice (but in-tune!), nothing that lasted. I was wistful but knew it was something I couldn't change.

Then one day, along came a large and warty Frog...

Actually, what I really meant to say was that currawong is right: Work helps, and hard work for a long time helps a lot.

I agree 100%, but many people are delusional. They think that hearing can easily be trained as easy as training sight playing. Good sight playing skill is easy to acquired.

Sight-reading can be trained up to the max of your brain speed and muscle coordination that one has.

Hearing is the same. Some people just cannot "recall" the sound that they heard. For example if you press A, one can easily imitate the sound, but they just cannot register that sound in their brain, so that in the future if they are given the same frequency, they cannot tell what that frequency is, because that the A frequency does not reside in their brain. We can only recognize something we have in our database (brain).

However relative note hearing is very trainable.

I believe that everyone can eventually learn to sight read music, although some learn faster than others. But not everyone can play well by ear, so best to have the ear gift if you have to choose. But the downside is that once you can play well by ear there is a tendency to neglect sight reading, and then you lose it. Happened to me for forty years and now I cant play the classics and desperately want to.
The flipside though is that if you want to play popular music like standards, you really have to play by ear to sound good because sheet music is nearly always such a basic version that I would never consider it more than a starting point.
Mike

And that is all you need to develop your ear and playing by ear. You don't need absolute pitch.

Depends on what you mean by 'playing by ear.' No need to remember any notes. All that's required is the basic recognition and understanding of simple diatonic harmony.