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If you had to choose between being able to sight-read almost anything but cannot play anything properly by ear, or being able to play almost anything by ear but can't sight-read anything properly, which would you choose?
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If having a "gifted ear" entails having absolute pitch, then I'd take that option.
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I would rather be a gifted sight reader, mostly because sight reading has been one of my weaknesses since beginning the piano.
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Develop both. There's no real reason why most people can't become equally proficient at both.
But just for the sake of your "what if" premise, I'd take the reading, because that would allow you access to any music that was written down, whereas by ear you would only have access to music you had actually heard. But it's only a hypothetical, because I value both.
Du holde Kunst...
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Ear. Who likes reading? not me
music to me is kind of like putting together pieces of a puzzle i call it the paino because its where i put all my pain
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Develop both. There's no real reason why most people can't become equally proficient at both. Not me. I don't think I'll ever be able to play properly by ear, so I'm just stuck with choosing to develop the first of the two skills. I just hope that I won't be missing out much. If someone requests "Hey can you play for me ...", then I'll just have to say "Sorry, can't play be ear. But give me the score, and I will." Oh well.
Last edited by MathTeacher; 02/10/11 10:19 PM.
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I wonder if it's possible to be a great sight-reader and not have an ear for sounding things out. Theoretically, perhaps, but I wonder if this ever really happens.
To be a great sight-reader, you have to develop strong links between how things look on the page, how they feel under your fingers, and how they're going to sound. I think all three components are necessary, not just the first two. If so, great sight-readers understand the correlation between how things feel and how they sound, which is a big piece of playing by ear....
-Jason
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I wonder if it's possible to be a great sight-reader and not have an ear for sounding things out. Theoretically, perhaps, but I wonder if this ever really happens. Well the extreme case is computers. They can play anything at any tempo if you give them the score. But currently they cannot covert any MP3 music to midi file adequately. They cannot even sense where the beats are.
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Develop both. There's no real reason why most people can't become equally proficient at both. Not me. I don't think I'll ever be able to play properly by ear, so I'm just stuck with choosing to develop the first of the two skills. I just hope that I won't be missing out much. If someone requests "Hey can you play for me ...", then I'll just have to say "Sorry, can't play be ear. But give me the score, and I will." Oh well. You may have to work at it - I didn't mean it would just happen automatically.
Du holde Kunst...
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Well the extreme case is computers. They can play anything at any tempo if you give them the score. But currently they cannot covert any MP3 music to midi file adequately. They cannot even sense where the beats are.
But computers can convert an MP3 to sound waves... not to mention that if you were to shove a hand written score into your computer's cd drive you wouldn't get very far! Regarding the topic of the thread, I would have to say ear. With a good enough ear, I could simultaneously play several recorded pieces through headphones at any speed and hear every possible combination of musical possibility while remembering the pieces after the first listen a la one of my musical superheroes, Derek Paravicini, but better of course.
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Well, I would like to think I have a gifted ear and need to work on my sightreading more. I don't know which skill is easier to develop, but I think it's possible that in the future both will be at a high level.
I don't have absolute pitch, but I have VERY good relative pitch, and I have very good interval recognition and a very harmonically driven mind, so I believe that is actually more helpful than relying SOLELY on absolute pitch. Many people with absolute pitch may also have good interval recognition, but I actually know a couple people who don't, so I'm curious if all of these various aspects are separate things you have to work on, or if they're connected with each other somehow, and how closely they are connected.
So my answer: gifted ear. Sight reading can always improve, but I don't know if ear training improves as fast as sight reading. (Maybe it does?)
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If I had nothing at all and was just about to embark on learning music, I would go for gifted ear. As an adult i imagine that developing a good ear (as an adult) is more difficult. Then I'd practise my reading for a few years and become brilliant at that too Especially because (as Jason suggests) my good ear will help me to achieve a higher level of sight reading. And that's basically what happened 1. You have to do a LOT of varied reading 2. You have to do it in a way that it's enjoyable (or you'll have trouble with number 1.)
Composers manufacture a product that is universally deemed superfluous—at least until their music enters public consciousness, at which point people begin to say that they could not live without it. Alex Ross.
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Ear of course. No contest.
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I don't understand the premise; why should it have to be one or the other?
BruceD - - - - - Estonia 190
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People with great ears are usually also great sight-readers; it goes with being able to "hear" where your fingers should go.
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I don't understand the premise; why should it have to be one or the other? Because that's the premise...
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People with great ears are usually also great sight-readers; it goes with being able to "hear" where your fingers should go. I think I disagree. (If by "people with great ears" you mean people who can play well by ear.) I think the converse is true: great sight-readers are mostly pretty good by ear too, as I tried to argue above. But you could play really well by ear without even knowing how to read music. -J
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Since I am primarily interested in playing notated music, the choice for me would have to be sight-reading. Just earlier this evening I was reading through some stuff, some of it for the first time (Tishchenko's Shostakovitch-on-LSD 4th sonata). It was a lot of fun, and I am very grateful that I can do it.
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Prefer ear, since the thing that will make you a better musician is your ability to listen to yourself.
Though I agree, why all these threads where we have to choose one or the other? I mean, it's not like we're forced to choose between our eyes and ears with the threat of death or something otherwise, right?
Working on: Chopin - Nocturne op. 48 no.1 Debussy - Images Book II
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Very strange question... How can one play music without a gifted ear?
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Piano
by Gino2 - 04/17/24 02:34 PM
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