Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum I Teach Total Beginners to Play by Ear

I teach Happy Birthday by ear as soon as students learn the I, IV, and V7 chords. Jingle Bells work well, too. Not a big fan of Twinkle Twinkle.

However, this occurs when students get into the 3A book of the method book series, which takes anywhere from 9 months to five years, depending on the work ethic and aptitude of the student.

I guess I'm in the camp that advocates reading first, and hearing later.

This would be performing a piece by ear.


This would be practicing/learning a piece by ear.
The more experienced someone is, the faster they will get the right sound (just like the more experienced someone is at reading, the faster they will learn a new piece by reading.)

You would not believe the number of teachers who cannot do this! Including at the university level!!!

I believe you, but..........I'm intrigued by why this should be so.

I can do it, and my skill level is so far below the rest of you it's not even on the scale.

Because they do not see it as a priority?

It's kind of like improve and transposition. Skills which must be practiced to be mastered, and unfortunately, working on these skills subtract from the time available for learning advanced playing technique. Which, as you say, is a matter of priorities.

That has been my experience precisely!

I've had the great misfortune of getting transfer students who were taught to play by ear and ENCOURAGED to play by ear at the expense of reading notes. They've been told what wonderful ears they have and that they should play EVERYTHING (even scales!) by ear.

The result: Horrible fingering! Horrible sight reading! Horrible musicianship! These poor kids stare at their hands the entire time, as if the keys will jump up and switch places once their eyes go look at the score. They resist reading anything, and they ALWAYS ask me to play the piece first as a demonstration.

They have a different set of values. You are assigning value to "social music" (perhaps even considering it something fundamental?), but there are some who don't share that value.

I was years out of music college and into a professional career before *anyone ever* asked me to play happy birthday. The first time it happened I was actually kind of shocked by the question. Maybe even hints of offended were going on. You want me to.... what... like the loud, clappy people at the restaurant? Oh. Not that happy birthday. The old one. Ok. Yeah. I can do that. Um.... let's see what key puts it in a good singing range.

Anyway, I'm happy to play that sort of thing now whenever people ask, and I do place value on that part of music. Making music in that way (by ear) is pleasing, and I do teach it, btw.

In my younger years, if I told people I could play the piano, the first thing they'd ask for is some common pop tune known to 95% of the population, but totally unknown in the classical world. It was a bit embarrassing, to say the least, so it behooves most musicians to know at least a few "social" tunes. Unless you have very thick skin!

I just decided to curtail any social life.

Why should 'social tunes' be the latest ephemeral rubbish?

I always say that I only play classical music (which is not quite true - I do play pop, but only when jamming with friends), and then treat them to something short and sweet like Mozart's Rondo alla turca, or Chopin's 'Minute' Waltz - I've never had anyone who didn't like them, not even children or teenagers. Obviously, I wouldn't bore them by playing The Art of Fugue .

However, I do have a thick skin - if I didn't, I wouldn't be a classical pianist now......

Kudos.

But this is perhaps not as obvious to everybody.

Yes, but at a party, can you whip off Happy Birthday in a jazzy style?

I remember a time when I was 8 or maybe 9. I was in music theory class, really really bored, I hated music, I was there against my will. We were doing a music dictation, the worse thing in the world. The teacher was playing the notes and suddenly I started to listen like I never listened before. And it was like the C was unique, completely different from the B for example. Each of them with its own individuality. So it was G and E and so on. The only way I can explain it is beforehand I was hearing in black and white, and suddenly I could hear in Technicolor.

Since that day I can play a song right after hearing it. And it is great, but only if I want to show up with friends and I don’t usually want to. Then after that day all my classmates hated me, lol. And the worst is that I can hear every single note, which I hear in Spanish: Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Si.

Imagine every time you want to listen to a Beethoven sonata, you have this kind of mental rubbish going on all the time. All the time, even if the music is very fast. Even if you don’t want to listen to them. I don’t know if it’s a gift or a curse, but in my experience it didn’t really help learning piano itself. It’s not even that useful for improvisation because it interferes with the relative pitch, the more important one. It’s useful for doing transcriptions, which I do sometimes. So I suppose it could be a good skill if you want to be a composer and write easily the music you imagine in your head.

These are the reasons why I go for sight reading. If there is a good skill for helping musical development, that is the one. And that brings others skills in the way. But the skill of recognizing notes doesn’t bring anything but the ability itself. So now, I’m trying to unlearn it so I can develop more useful and musical skills.

I don't play jazz, but I can do Happy Birthday in the style of Bach, Brahms or Boulez (or Mozart, Mendelssohn or Messiaen ).

Jazzing up tunes isn't usual in most circles in the UK, unlike USA - once, I experimented by playing Silent Night with jazz-inflected harmonies at a Christmas party, which raised some disapproving eyebrows. They much preferred Max Reger's arrangement.

That's really droll!