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The "better" musician is the one who can more effectively communicate musical ideas, and it matters not one whit whether those ideas are written down or made up on the spot. I would expect any musician to understand that.


Marcus Roberts was classically trained and learned to read fluently using Braille scores, including the Gershwin.


Good idea.

Well, that's what this thread is really about. Excluding which approach is 'better' and focusing on communication, I ask the question "what is being communicated?"

In the case of the note reading musician, we have, in most cases, someone recreating the music of another. In the case of the improvising musician, we have music created in the moment ... an entirely different process. Where one is speaking the language, the other is recreating it.

I never ask "is it better?" I simply extol the virtue of a communication that comes directly from the heart and mind of the performer. Further, this approach is usually pushed in the background with many teachers giving students the note reading curriculum without teaching them the 'grammar' of music - simple theory or diatonic harmony.

If this is taught, it comes at a later stage. All I'm saying is I think that's a 'backwards' approach.

One thing that I think has to be kept in mind is that if you insist on the EITHER/OR notion of reading or playing by ear (as this conversation seems to be doing), if one learns to read music and is consistent and dedicated and pursues a long term study of music, they will basically - after a certain point - be able to play by ear. It will just happen naturally.

When you read music you are reproducing the notation you see in sound, so - in turn, you will eventually reach a point in which you are familiar with the basic laws of music and harmony and how to execute them at the piano: Which intervals sound like what, where your fingers need to go to get a minor sound vs. major vs. diminished, the differentiation between chromatic and diatonic steps...etc etc. Even if you don't study much theory, you will develop this ability unconciously. In this sense, learning to read music IS a type of learning to play by ear.

I know this because I was taught - as most are taught in America - just to read music at the beginning and nothing else. A few years later I was able to play by ear and improvise well, not because I have some incredible genius, but it was just the result of all those years of seeing music on a page and having it instantly in my ear.

I can't comment on what it's like to only play by ear since I have never experienced it, but I know for sure that even if I had the ear of Mozart and no idea how to read, I would not have been able to play Rachmaninoff and Wagner

This thread is beginning to compare apples and oranges. Classical and jazz/pop - while both still music - exist in worlds too far apart to be excelled at by the same techniques.

Even in a classical-only world I agree with the fundamental premise of the topic - that having reading as your starting point is a backwards approach! The first thing for a beginner to address is how their body and the piano can interact. The focus on reading for beginners means that students in the first years are not encouraged to perform easy-to-play actions at the piano but rather easy-to-read actions, and this is to the detriment of their engagement with the instrument. It is the tail wagging the dog.

All this can be agreed to without having to compare jazz musicians with classical musicians, without discussing the (indisputable) value of improvisation.

Disclaimer: to say 'most piano teachers' implies a global judgment - maybe most piano teachers in some parts of the world have it backwards, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that most piano teachers in the world have it backwards..... I simply don't know enough about the piano teaching cultures of every piano teaching nation...

Thank you. Good post.

Oh? Is there a judge somewhere? A jury? Are you opposing councel?

Have I stumbled into a law forum by mistake?

I'm ducking the cut-and-thrust to set a cat amongst the pigeons.

Sensibly (to meet mathematical precision) the keyboard stave should look like this ... a repeating 6-line stave with equal space for all 12 basic notes ... the format finds a place for
all the previously alphabetically homeless black notes ... sharps and flats thereby disappear.

I agree with your approach. With my particular group of students I've found greater fluency if beginners don't have to read what they play most of the time. They learn a musical language by it's sound. Sight reading comes later. But we do start with writing straight away. Would this inhibit the listening and creativity do you think?

But I wouldn't be able to teach the chords that Ed and others suggest because most of my beginners are too little to play more than a note in each hand. Simple diatanic harmony with a melody would probably be too much.

What do you do with 6 to 8 year olds Ed or Wiz or others? Do you start them on a simple bass line in LH with improvised melody in RH?

You can hear it now my students make up stuff and bring it to lessons (usually not written down). Also enjoy doing free improv with beginners (but not all of them).

My beginning students always create music as part of their assignment. Music Pathways calls it "You, the Composer." I still use it even if I'm not using MP. Sometimes I'll give the a title to start with, sometimes a concept and sometimes no direction at all. They don't write these things down. That would be too limiting.

If they enjoy this kind of thing, I continue it through their study. If not, I don't force it on them.

I don't really teach kids but what I might try is triads in the left hand and simple melody in the right. For example, start with two chords - C Maj. and F Maj. (you can even teach inversions here) and a specific rhythm pattern for these chords. Then have them improvise using a few tones from the C Major scale. Have the improv begin and end with the C note.

Developing a set of limitations to set creativity free while focusing attention on learning a little about harmony should work as well with children as it does with adults. Not really young kids of course.

There's a tendency to believe that improvisation can only be accomplished through a series of chords in one hand (not particularly improvised) with a melody in the other hand (which is where the bulk of the 'improvisation' is believed to reside). Further, students are shown ways to plays chords to create greater interest in the not-so-improvised aspect of the improvisation, and this is rather systematically taught to students as the building blocks of their improvising.

There are many other ways to use students natural curiosity and desire to explore to connect with the piano, and these don't involve restricting the student to diatonic harmony. Limits do stimulate creativity, but limiting the creativity of students to chords I-IV-V and their minor counterparts is not the most creative/imaginative kind of limit.

But it comes down to the purpose of the improvising as well. There's a lot that can be accomplished through improvisation to benefit technique/connection with the instrument, expressiveness/communication (as compared to expressing *oneself*), and the experience of new rhythms.... to name a few.....

After some more thought I've realised that I know exactly the style of improv/composition that my students produce. Their compositions are always related to learnt material, and sometimes it's so close to the original you have a little smile at the fact that they are convinced the piece is entirely from their own head. I agree with them

What I find interesting is that sometimes I'l get a transfer student who has learnt only the unsurprising C major material of a method book, and been exposed to nothing else. IMO their compositions are astoundingly boring!! They have absorbed the "truth" that the only way to create is to place hand in C major position and play quarter and half notes...

In contrast; if you present the piano as a marvelous huge and loud music making machine, and give no limitations, young students create something that could be used as a film score without much editing. They use huge range of dynamics, they build up sound then allow silence and space, they revel in dissonance then resolve it with one of their few consonant discoveries. Here I am describing say a 7 year old with less than 10 lessons.

After 10 lessons or so I do seem to let the business of learning Everything Important overwhelm opportunities for this sort of exploration. I'll tie a piece of string around my finger this week



You are right, young kids can't play a 2 note chord, let alone a 3, and as I said above the wellspring of creativity in kids (under 10 or so) should not IMO be inhibited by conservative forms such as Cmajor simple tunes, or diatonic harmony LH with tuneful RH.

In teens where there has already been so much exposure to pop music, it probably isn't inhibiting their creativity to follow the kinds of improv you suggested above. They've already been inhibited by culture, and this could be a stepping stone towards something more original, and I DO think it would be a very relaxing way for teens and adults to enjoy the piano. I could certainly do more of this too! Anything that gets them to spend time at the piano is great for their development.

The way I usually start kids improvising is to ask them to tell me a story - and then I ask them to put music to that story. Music that suits the 'happy' parts - music to suit the 'scary' parts - and music to suit the 'sad' parts. Then I get them to explain to me what's happening... why they are expressing... or they get me to guess what's happening.



That's exactly how it sounds... they aren't limited by rules or what they've 'learned'... what they are doing is telling a story in their own way. I LOVE hearing what they come up with - particularly when the 6 and 7 year olds try to act out the story as well as play the music

I'd actually like to hear that myself. Anyway to do that? Video or audio with permission of course.

Chick Corea, the great jazz pianist wrote an article called "The myth of improvisation"

Basically he said that we draw from a pool of musical "vocab" as you will, scales and chords we learned, and arrange it in new ways.

This is the article: http://www.thegearpage.net/board/showthread.php?t=701735


True improv, like playing random notes and clusters with no regard at all for any music theory will more often than not sound bad, i mean REALLY bad.

I just finished a lesson with one of my younger high school students today. I showed him a simply major 7th chord and told him to play whatever notes he wanted in the right hand while playing the chord in the left.


Having limitations is actually better than telling them to play whatever they want. Usually they will be completely lost.


Another good way is to teach the pentatonic major and minor scales, and use only notes from that scale. You'd be amazed how many rock and theme song melodies are derived solely from those scales.

Chick Corea's comments are very interesting.

Ah yes, but the idea that the musical vocab we have is ONLY scales and chords (pitch materials that are almost always diatonic) underestimates our musical vocab....

Last I checked there were only 12 notes we could choose from and they are arranged in certain ways which form scales and chords.

If you are talking about non-quantitative factors like dynamics, rhythm, timbre, touch, etc... then of course those are part of musical vocab but in a different category.


You forget that people can very easily create scales of their own. There are Asian and Middle Eastern scales that differ from our major/minor diatonic. There's whole tone scales, diminished. Anything you can think of from those 12 notes.

My approach is similar to these, and part of establishing the concepts of high/low, loud/soft, fast/slow. I also relate it to basic concepts of notation early on - pitch being represented vertically, for example - and get them to "notate" their pieces in a graphic way (not quite like yours, btb ). It's part of the whole playing/creating/reading experience, and my approach developed out of what I had done for many years in classroom teaching. (In fact I wrote my honours thesis on the subject many many years ago!)