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.
