Playing by ear versus reading sheet music? Which is more important and which is a better skill to
develop? Today I want to give you some of my thoughts from a piano teacher's perspective. I
see lots of learners usually gravitating towards one or the other. In this video, I want to lay
out some pros and cons of predominantly playing by ear. And some pros and cons of predominantly
playing reading sheet music. And then maybe you can watch this video and reflect on which side
you'll lean more towards. Before we even start, I want you to go to the comments and tell me which
you prefer - do you prefer to play by ear? Or read sheet music? And tell me why as well. I'm very
curious. It's also important for me to acknowledge at the start that you probably need both skills,
playing by ear and reading sheet music, to become a more complete and developed musician that
understands what they're playing. So let's jump into first the pros and cons of "Playing by Ear".
[Music]
Playing by ear is the ability to listen to a piece of music and just using your ears and oral skills
to be able to make out and figure out what the notes are without any need for written sheet
music. Playing by ear is a valued skill especially in the more modern genres such as Pop and Jazz or
Blues. From a piano teacher's perspective, here are some pros and cons you want to consider if you
predominantly play by ear. Let's start with some pros of playing by ear. So firstly, you're going
to be able to get in and start playing straight away without any kind of formal or academic
training. And this is a big plus for beginners that just kind of want to get started on the
piano. playing by ear is a great skill to develop. It develops good oral skills. So you learn things
like relative pitch. You learn things like orally distinguishing chord progressions. And long term,
it also encourages improvisation and kind of creative autonomous decisions in music. Sometimes
you might want to play a song and you can't find the sheet music anywhere. It might be a great
opportunity to use your ears to try to discern how to play it. And this is where I want to challenge
some of you. So, if you are someone that haven't really played by ear much in your life before,
why don't you go and try some nursery rhymes to discern by ear? You can click on this video
here where I talk about how to play by ear and I provide some easy nursery rhyme homework for you
to do. So click on here. I find that students who play by ear also helps them to eventually
play with bands and other musicians with much more ease. My students that play by ear, they
kind of have this, in a way, deeper connection with the music. And they understand how to just
join in with other musicians because they can discern and they can analyze what other people
are playing. And they know how to sort of fit into them. Let's talk about now some cons of playing
by ear. Playing by ear is harder to do with more complicated pieces. Accuracy can be challenging.
It can be hard to discern when you listen to a piece of piano music. What exact notes are being
played in there? And especially if they're long as well. Trying to play by ear a long and complicated
piece for me is kind of something like trying to memorize a long and complicated speech without any
sort of flashcards, without any Powerpoint kind of bullet points to reference to. You're sort
of doing it all just with your brain and ears, and can get a bit challenging. You may miss out on the
composer's exact intentions in the music things like maybe how fast or slow to play it. How loud
or soft to play it. Another con I see of students who play predominantly by ear is that they lack
this communication tool they need to talk to other musicians. Because all their musical ideas are
kind of within their fingers and brain and ears. And they can't write it out. Sometimes it's hard
for them to then sort of teach other people or tell other people what they want in their music.
So in the example, I played before [Music] This was "River Flows In You" by Yiruma. And it's one
of the more popular piano pieces out there now. Because Yiruma, as a composer, knows how to read
and write music, he can write the exact notes he wants on a piece of sheet music he can send it to
his publishers. His publishers can then broadcast and send it to the world. And now the entire world
is able to play this beautiful piece of music because Yiruma himself knows how to communicate
in the music language that is sheet music. So without this language tool, I think people
that play predominantly by ear will struggle to communicate their ideas to other musicians in the
long run. Another big con I see with students who predominantly lean to what's playing by
ear is they tend to develop inefficient or wrong playing habits. So let's say with Fur Elise...
If we just take that start here...
When you're able to learn and read from sheet music, on sheet music there are often
information such as articulations and dynamics and fingerings. And let's say with fingerings,
now the start of this, that's often going to be play with 5-4-5-4-5.
Because you need your other fingers to be reserved for the notes down here.
However, I've seen some students who only play by ear, tend to do really
weird fingerings when they play that song. For example, they might do something like...
Or, or let's say...
2-3-2-3 or 1-2-1-2-1 fingerings that I think as a piano teacher I kind of think; well that's very an
inefficient way to use your hands. Unfortunately, when you play by ear and you don't have a visual
guide for what to do, there's no reference to what's right or wrong. And so this can be
quite a big con for the long run. Let's now talk about some pros and cons of reading sheet music...
[Music]
Sheet music is a universally recognized language for all musicians to communicate their ideas with
each other. It provides a somewhat complete representation of what a piece of music should
sound like. It's a fundamental part of classical music and more formal academic music training.
When I started my piano journey, I actually used my ears a lot more than read. And over time,
I was brought up more to learn how to read sheet music. But there are definitely some
pros and some cons of predominantly learning and play music by learning sheet music. So let's get
into it. So let's start with some pros. As we alluded to before, it allows for the composer
to communicate his or her exact intentions and ideas for what they want the piece of music to
sound like. Things like the exact notes to play things, things like how loud or soft to play
things like how fast or slow to play. Learning how to read sheet music facilitates you to be able to
play much more complicated pieces for the long run. It also allows you to study and analyze the
theoretical and also the structural concepts in the music. I've learned so much about music theory
things like chords, things like forms, from being able to read sheet music. So, I recommend everyone
to try to develop this skill if this is not one of your strong areas. Let's now move on to some
cons of predominantly playing and learning music via sheet music. Firstly, the initial learning
curve for beginners can be tremendous. So this is something that is quite painful for piano
learners and also piano teachers especially at the start to learn this language and to learn
what it means and to learn what it does. It seems to be a huge friction point to just playing music,
to playing and creating music which is what learners often want to be able to play the songs
they love. To explain the purpose of reading sheet music to my students, I often use language as an
example. If you're able to understand everything that I'm saying in this video, it's likely that
you are somewhat fluent at least in English. And I sometimes pose to my students, 'Imagine not being
able to read or write in English'. Imagine being able to only speak and listen to English but when
you're at the train station and you're reading signs you don't quite know what words mean. You're
not able to read books so you're not able to process ideas from other people. You're not able
to do really a lot of things in life if you cannot read and write. I realize the power of reading and
writing when I first travel to countries where no English was spoken. So when I traveled to some
countries in Asia such as Thailand or Vietnam, my complete lack of understanding of what's happening
everywhere around me kind of shocked me into how important language actually is. So even though
the initial learning curve is hard, I recommend people to just stick to it. Just do a little bit,
a little bit it every day and eventually you'll be able to just have enough to be able to make
educated guesses about what some other things are. Which will then propel your learning even more.
And you can learn even more with less friction. A second con of over relying on reading sheet music
is that I find the students that do this, they tend to hamper their developments of their music
intuition and thinking they're really good at following the script. But when it comes
to thinking about what their own ideas are, what their interpretations are for the music they tend
to not know what to do. Because their whole lives, they've just been following the script
and they've never had to think for themselves. So it can limit flexibility and spontaneity if
you always following the sheet music very, very strictly. Another con of students I see that
over rely on reading sheet music rather than using their ears is that I find that they play with less
of an emotional engagement to the music. Because like I said before, because they're following a
script rather than really kind of feeling it in their heart and their soul and trying to express
this amazing story through sound. Remember that the best musicians often utilize both methods,
whether you lean towards playing by ear or lean towards reading sheet music. I want to challenge
you to develop the other skill that you tend not to do as much. I hoped this video has helped you.
Please let me know in the comments which side you prefer. And also let me know any other questions
you have about piano. My name is Jazer Lee, your online piano teacher. Make sure to SUBSCRIBE to
this channel for more free piano tips and tutorials. I'll catch you in the next one.