Memorizing a piece of music is different from learning it. Musicians who rely on written music, and then memorize it, have taken only a first step toward learning it.
Learning a piece of music involves making it your own, not just remembering the notes.
As I understand it, research shows that playing music involves many areas of the whole brain, whereas reading music focuses on the visual and language centers. When we learn a piece of music we give it a much broader dimension than we can when we read it.
Reading music is essential for tapping into the vast repertoire of music available to us. But learning by ear is a skill and a strategy that quickly gives a musician a direct relationship to the music.
Incorporating teaching by ear into your methods, even if only a little here and there, can add confidence, musicality, and dimension to a student’s playing.
As one who teaches mostly by ear, I often run across people who feel fearful of learning by ear, or frustrated by it. Some feel that learning by ear is a level they’ll never reach. But everyone can do it, and everyone can benefit from it.
We speak in phrases, and we hear music in this way as well. Building a phrase of music by ear is not hard to do. A student can learn any notes at any tempo, as long as the number of notes is manageable. Bite-sized bits are easily digested.
Try teaching a phrase, one on one, face to face with a student. With patience, repetition, and focus on a small phrase, it’s amazing what a student can pick up–first, maybe the notes, but then also nuances of expression, attitude, intention. Bowing, breath, fingering, posture. In short, musicality. Right from the moment of learning the phrase. And that moment of learning can open up new windows on how to play the next phrase, and the next.
What lead you to teach mostly by ear? I ask because I find it interesting and also the fact that that is how I started learning music, but moved to the "traditional" learning/teaching later on. I understand the significance of "knowing" or "owning" a piece, but wouldn't it be a little more effective when coupled with traditional methods? I can see how the combined technique helps a student master baroque music: the printed music does not denote the styles of interpretation and ornamentation that was ingrained at the time of Bach and friends. Sometimes, learning a piece solely by ear "sets" that performance in the student as "the way to play the piece". Perhaps I've gone off track with this. If so, then I apologize.
by Alfred Lopez — Mon Sep 24, 2007 @ 3:34 pm
Visual and conceptual memories are both very important for a musician to be able to memorize a piece of music and to command the performance of that piece. Without seeing the notes on a page, a musician can gain only a limited amount of knowledge about the piece. He can hear it and interpret it to his liking, but the actual structure of the piece and how the composer imagined it will be lost to him. Also, being able to visualize the notes on a page allows the brain to remember the shape and sequence of the notes. This contributes to the memorization process. A musician must also have good conceptual memory to be able to memorize a piece. He must really be aware of what he is memorizing in order to retain the music. This includes musical text, phrasing, notes, harmony, etc. While the musician can hear some of these aspects when learning by ear, some are not as obvious and must be seen in print in order to grasp them.
Because the brain uses many different tools in the memorization process, I believe that it hinders a musician to learn a piece by ear only. The ability to play or sing by ear is a great talent, but the ability to read, interpret, and understand written texts and music is essential to any good musical training.
by MJLW — Tue Sep 25, 2007 @ 12:58 am
Some teachers go too far the other way, including some Suzuki teachers, in allowing students to get away with minimal reading skills. This too is not healthy musically.
While I think a lot can be gained by seeing printed music, I don't at all agree that printed music must be seen in order to be thoroughly grasped structurally, harmonically, or in any other way, nor do I think most people need to visualize written notes to play music. But this varies widely from person to person, and it is essential for teachers, especially, to appreciate this in order to be effective in working with a variety of students.
Those who learn a piece (whether by ear or through reading) to perform without sheet music have moved on to knowing the piece by ear, regardless of how they learned it. The best soloists, who play without sheet music, know their music thoroughly. I think visualizing notes at that stage only distances a musician from making the music their own, like an actor visualizing the words of a play on paper, instead of saying them naturally as the character would. A great soloist playing Beethoven's violin concerto may play what's written but it comes from the heart, the ear, the soul, and visualizing written notes would primarily be a crutch to lean on in trouble spots.
by Ed Pearlman — Wed Sep 26, 2007 @ 10:19 am
Very well said. I do agree with your observations on solely reading music in order to fully grasp it. I read the music then buy a recording of it (or many) in order to "grasp the possibilities" especially if the music is of unfamiliar territory (as a flutist, I hardly play any Liszt, for example). I also agree that muscle memory is a big part of playing music "efficiently", but not necessarily "effectively". I have a habit of actually visually my sheet music as I play "by ear" only to show me *what's* next to play and not *how* to play. I leave that up to ears and fingers to interpret the music based on the current situation, instrument complement (in the case of, say, a transcription), etc. I do, however, need to train my brain to play exclusively from my auditory memory. This is a very difficult task for me.
Thank you both (previous two posts) for your insights.
by Alfred Lopez — Wed Sep 26, 2007 @ 12:47 pm