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Playing Piano By Ear

By: Kim Brockman Looked at from a very broad perspective, one can learn to play the piano in two ways – by reading music or “playing by ear.” There are professional musicians who can do both, but most have a preference. Some can’t do one or the other at all. Playing by ear takes a talent that can be seemingly “born” into some great musicians. Mozart, for example, was able to not only play, but compose great musical compositions without ever looking at a sheet of music. Most with this talent have worked very hard at it after learning through reading music.

Although there are exceptions, every great musician needs to know how to read music. With this necessary skill, a good musician has access to all the great music ever composed. In addition, he’ll know how to compose and preserve his own musical works. Those who play piano by reading music have tremendous hand-eye coordination. They learn through doing and are soon able to know what a piece sounds like just by seeing the music before they ever hear it. This helps when they learn to play by ear, as their mind will turn the sounds into their musical notations.

People learn both ways, and you can find teachers who will teach either way. Most teachers of beginners, however, will insist on teaching by reading music first. This is generally considered a necessary basic. This gives you the basics of note sights and sounds, fingering, pitches, keys and more before beginning to learn to play by ear. There are hundreds of thousands of musical works adapted for the beginner to make this process fun and give them the ability to learn to play by ear as they progress.

When learning by reading music, a student will generally spend a lot of time with scales and positions. Students who tend to skip over these steps as boring are doing themselves a great disservice. Not only do they help form good fingering habits, but they are also training your ear. They are the building blocks of chords, strains and progressions, which are necessary to understand before you can play by ear. Most of us can’t hear them the way Mozart did without a lot of practice!

Once you learn to read music, and you’ve practiced all your scales and positions regularly, you can pick up any piece of piano music and play it. Well, at least with a little practice! Played often enough, you can memorize it. If composing is your forte, reading music is a great big building block for writing it!

Yes, there are people who learn better the other way. They have the natural ability to sit down and play a song they’ve heard. They need a piano teacher who can hone this skill AND teach them to read music. Some of our greatest historical American jazz musicians learned this way.

If you’re opting for a career in music, you’ll be a well-rounded musician ready for anything if you can both read music and play by ear. Improvisation is the next skill, and you’ll be picking up and playing anything in no time.