Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Is playing by ear important

Then, yes it is important. But, not so important to change anything you are doing right now.

Sheet music and sight-reading provides a fully comprehensive aspect of playing piano and when you can do it well it covers a lot of ground. Your ear is developing naturally, even though you are not specifically trying to train your ear. For example, your ear tells you when you are wrong and need to correct something and when you look up at the score it will verify that.

Well rounded means you can do everything well and the best players indeed do. But all in good time.

Who here is using his/her teacher as a crutch, and not listening?

Or are you imagining (or making up) things - yet again?

It is interesting reading all these posts in this thread. As a long time guitar player, the opposite discussion comes up a lot - do I really need to learn to read music? Prior to the wide publication of TAB and sheet music for guitar outside the classical segment (1970s and before) for pop music guitar parts, most of us relied on our ear to learn the tunes off of recordings. In the days of big band, where musicians playing popular music of their day were trained and could read, guitarists read charts. Today, the most common question you will see in guitar (non-classical) forums when discussing a tune folks enjoy, is "can I get TAB for that"?


The popular stereotype of the guitar player is that s/he is musically illiterate. There are many areas in which this is not true, such as studio musicians and classical guitarists, but in the pop music world of performers (especially rock and country and their derivatives), this is often the case. Also consider that many of the guitar players in these areas are largely self-taught, which is often a case of "the blind leading the blind", since the "teacher" does not yet know the terrain and is also the student, so both are learning at the same time. That is much like taking a tour of the Amazon jungle without a guide, and having never been there before but maybe having a detailed map (books, DVDs …).

I learned to read music while growing up because I played violin and trumpet prior to picking up the guitar, so it seemed natural to me to teach myself to read the entire treble clef too, and then with piano, adding the bass clef.

To me, it seems that both the ability to hear music and the ability to read music are equally important, and it always seems odd to me when either skill would be emphasized to the exclusion of the other. When it comes down to it, music is a HEARING art, unlike painting or writing, for both performer and listener, so why wouldn't the ability to really hear music not be important?

Tony

True -- and if you listen to music, and pay attention to what you hear while you're playing, that highly developed ear also just happens naturally. It all comes along together.

If you mean that the score doesn't say everything about what the pianist should do that is correct. But that doesn't mean "no one can play from sheet music", a statement I find preposterous.

Oh, anyone can look at a note and play it. It's just not music. It is sound. Not too different from banging on any device. Maybe it works with Jingle Bells, just barely.

What a silly response. Are you talking about one note(who said anything about that?)? Are you worried about how well someone plays? It's irrelevant to whether one can play from sheet music.

Oy veh, this again -- But it's a favorite of mine.

Sheet music -- notation in general -- is a wonderfully useful thing. It can contain a whole lot of what you need to know to play a piece, thereby greatly lightening the load on your brain. But it's not perfect and not complete.

A computer running MuseScore or other notation processing software can demonstrate very clearly the limitations of notation. It can play back precisely to the microsecond what the notation says.

Sheet music is the composer’s method of conveying a musical idea to the performer who must complete the process. Without the score, there is no way Beethoven can communicate to us today his ideas. To say no one can play from sheet music is, to quote a famous contributor, “preposterous”.

Richrf,

I think I understand your initial statement, but it does not apply to every person or every situation.

Listening to music obviously infuses one with the lexicon of music. This is the same as learning to speak. We hear sounds as babies, we imitate the sounds, and we eventually ascribe meaning to those sounds, whether it is words or it is music.

The ability, however, to transcribe written symbology into the same meaning as those sounds, is a different set of neural connections entirely. We do have to learn to interpret the symbols, whether words or music; and a good reader can, at first sight, read a script and bring tears to your eyes with the emotional intensity of the words - that intensity coming from the pulse, inflexion, accents, dynamic variations, and tone - all the same words used to describe a brilliant sight reader of music.

Written music is the portal to the soul of the composer.

Maybe this statement would cause less offense if it was worded like this: "No one can play well from sheet music without having had the ability to hear music". Those deaf from birth can't even talk without revealing their handicap; it isn't clear to me how they would be able to play music well. Hearing, at the beginning of life, seems to be of key importance.

I think this is very dismissive of many talented deaf musicians. With acoustic instruments many deaf musicians learn to "hear" (feel) music through vibrations. If you've ever played instruments such as violin it's very easy to see how this can be the case.

Just because they can't experience, and express music in the same way that hearing people can. It does not mean they cannot accurately interpret music through other senses.

Playing by ear, improvisation, and playing from sheet are all equally valuable in music. Sheets in any form are the only thing we have to communicate musical ideas between people in any kind of efficient manner.

To suggest that somebody who only plays from sheet is a "glorified typist" or less of a musician than somebody who improvises is simply wrong.

Would an actor be any less of an actor if they only acted from scripts and didn't do any improv?
What about an actor that could remember their lines, but couldn't read?

Many people learn instruments just to perform, to suggest they are "glorified typists" simply because they don't have the desire to create their own music is quite offensive to somebody who is on their own musical journey.

Playing by ear gives you the ability to customize anything and perform it the way you want it to sound. It gives you the ability to create your own musical piece (on the fly) as well as improvise and existing score at will. It is an invaluable musical skill in which your creativity is unlimited.

Someone who can both sight-read and play by ear has an enormous advantage as they can use the written score as a guide and play off that while having the ability to fill in or take the piece anywhere they want it to go. You can even wander off for a bit and then bring the piece back home again.

I like the idea of using a 'Fake Book' as it is sort of playing by ear with training wheels on. You are given a very basic melody line to follow while you can make up anything along the way. It's a good place to start for beginners anyway. That's what I did and gradually over time ended up winging the whole piece on my own.

I would devote half my time to playing by ear so that you will be able to do both.

Sight-reading is a great skill, but a proficient play by ear performer may not need the score to begin with.

I guess I am rather dismissive of deaf musicians (at least deaf piano players) - but possibly only because I have never encountered one (or heard of one). But please bear in mind that I specifically talk about those deaf from birth; Beethoven provides an excellent example of a formidable musician who was deaf. My point being that he was not deaf from birth.

It may be that instruments that give strong vibrational feedback, like violins, are playable to a high level of excellence by those deaf from birth (I can think of no examples though), but surely a piano does not yield enough feedback for that to happen.

I suppose you have not heard of Evelyn Glennie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU3V6zNER4g

Though it is true that she started being able to hear but became profoundly deaf in her teens.
https://www.encyclopedia.com/people...ular-and-jazz-biographies/evelyn-glennie

Hello mr_super-hunky, long time no correspond. How are the llamas?

Agree, with most of your post, but some of it not entirely. Weirdly, I find myself defending lead sheets one day and sheet music the next. Though I agree that leads are likely a better platform for developing your ear, they don't provide the finer details that are some times going to also be required. For example, you would need to be an exceptional ear player to duplicate some complicated classical works. Plus, I have never seen a classical work that is even scored this way. For those that are not into classical, then you can still do well without being a great grand staff reader, or even rely entirely on your ear, I agree. Even with leads though, some riffs may be scored in the bass clef, so it should not be ignored entirely. Otherwise, the accompaniment is a blank canvas and where many, or any options exist. Is it really improv. though if you play the accompaniment basically the same each time? I don't think of it as such but some may. If it isn't though, I do agree that you would have a head start towards improv. The melody line should be exact to the original, so any straying in this regard would certainly be improv. Well, if you play it differently each time it sure is, but if it is the same each time it is rehearsed improv. at best. Again though, I don't know if everyone makes this distinction, or just me.

By and large I really think we would all be better off if we learned both and stop slamming one or the other. I know you are not, but it happens and I was guilty of it myself, but hopefully no more. Both systems can add tremendous value and will make for understanding the same thing in different ways, which I can not believe would ever be a bad thing.

I never suggested that people who use music or don't create their own music are glorified typists.

Improvisation when learning an instrument need not be about creating your own music per se, but activating musical knowledge, just like conversation classes are not about creating new literature in a foreign language, or improv classes in acting school aren't about becoming the next Robin Williams. Anything that requires the student to "fill in the gaps" develops the same skills, such as continuo playing, or using lead sheets. Advanced sight reading also requires filling in the gaps to some extent.

Great teachers will have their own way to develop their students. Whether the student chooses to use sheet music or not is irrelevant.

Johnstaf this is the quote from your post. Quite dismissive of anyone learning music by reading, don’t you think? improvisation, by the standard definition, does not mean activating your musical knowledge to learn a score


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I think of lead sheets as improv, or at least it has the same benefits. Even if you do it the same every time, you've developed your musicianship while you were creating the accompaniment. I suppose it was improv the first time you did it!

It's a shame so many musicians diss one reading technique or the other. I only play classical, but I love the idea of lead sheets. They would be so beneficial for students.