Comments on: Does a Piano Player Need to Read Music?

By: lup

lup — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 21:46:09 +0000

My 9 year old son can “play by ear” amazingly!! He can play anyting from pop, rag time to classical. He knows the ENTIRE “Fur Elise” song by Bethoven and learned it in a day. He can hear a song on the radio or youtube and go to the piano and with in 3 minutes, he has it. It takes about a day to perfect it! I STILL THINK HE NEED TO LEARN TO READ! Why limit yourself??

By: keith lupton

keith lupton — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 13:37:31 +0000

Hi everyone.I am currently doing my cert-ed.Ihad to write a biography and part of it was a story about being taught guitar.
I had to play a classical piece but,could not read the music fast enough.So i learned it by heart.I played the piece called,Adante.I think at my next class and it was perfect.But the teacher said i was,nt reading the music.I argued that i was but,she said i must read the music.I just wanted to play guitar.After that i gradually lost intrest and stopped playing.
I often wonder, “what if she hadn,t made me read music”,
Could i have achieved more in life.

Has she changed my future!
Keep playing any way you can,

And enjoy it.

Regards Keith.

By: chrisepic

chrisepic — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 19:13:25 +0000

Hey Conrad,

Are you on the Randi forum?? Do you know Slingblade??

Thats my mom…

Anywhoo… Good luck in your music…

By: chrisepic

chrisepic — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 18:59:59 +0000

Anthony,

Here’s the deal buddy… you replied to askland’s response with “yeah, but I’m no ordinary ear play” my response to that is

no 16 year old is going to think they’re you’re ordinary “ear play” I was one of those 16 year olds…

You asked for advice and Conrad gave you advice and I think he’s right on the money…and this is coming from your not-so-ordinary ear play, hehe… but I’m not 16 anymore, I’m 28 and to this day I wished my parents would have pushed me a lot harder to take lessons, because no matter how old you get, when you start lessons, you start at the basics and it sucks because while you’re used to playing full-fledged songs, you are stuck having to do scales…

If you play by ear, you have an edge that most traditional pianists would kill for, you have the ability to improvise, and you also have the ability to regurgitate all the music you take into your ears back on to the keyboard and come up with stuff all your own… but it will take you much much longer to get to a skill level on your own, without lessons and training, that pianists who take lessons receive very early on as a result of their training.

Lessons and training give you exposure to different kinds of music and train your brain and hands to play different ways, and you end up building a skill level much sooner than just doing it on your own and letting time train you… it took me 22 years to get to this point on my own, without lessons…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnnkcWjzB4I

But I could have gotten there when I was your age if I put the kind of time and practice into it that trained pianists are forced to do…

As a matter of fact, I really didn’t get away from that A minor and C major melancholy pentatonic crap until I was about 22 years old…

Then I also started playing with a contemporary christian worship band and because I was exposed to playing so many different kinds of music in different keys, I finally gained a comfort level with playing in other keys besides C and A minor…

So do yourself a favor, when the rubber meets the road, you will find yourself disappointed by the lack of flexibility broad scope of music that your by ear playing brings you as a result of a lack of training….

I will probably never take lessons, I’m 28 and don’t have time anymore. But I have dedicated myself to playing often, and coming up with my own music instead of playing OPM, other people’s music…

Take conrad’s advice and wisdom. Balance is good. You’re young enough, you can afford the time to put into lessons… otherwise, you’ll be 28 and still playing weddings and banquets and trying even harder to get into the music business because you didn’t develop the work ethic that comes along with lessons, training, and regid practice regiments.

Chris Lawrence
Original Contemporary Piano
Chris Epic Music, LLC

By: askland

askland — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 03:39:28 +0000

Hi Anthony,
Thanks for the video clip – I added it into the original post. It sounds very good, keep at it. I have no changes to my original reply.

By: Anthony

Anthony — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 01:58:07 +0000

That does help but I am not really your ordinary ear play. If you don’t believe me go to http://www.youtube.com/nick110889 . Of course some videos I did goof off in but ONLY because my camera was dying. In the mario theme if I could play the whole song without the camera dying I would. I can only make the video go soo long. Trust me though I am not the ordinary player you may think I am. I know you probably have heard the saying ” yeah everyone says that there good” but I know I am good. I do know notes I just don’t like them thats all. The only time I use notes is at school. I don’t use them at home or anything unless its for marching band. Please watch my video(s) if you have time and see what I mean. Just so you know as I said before in short time as it was I was unable to make the music musical and breathtaking. The music doesn’t breathe as it should because of the time I have left to finish the song. I will try and give you a tricky song to listen to that is musical if you’d like. Please e-mail me at *email retracted* and tell me what you think, or at youtube. Thank you for the advice and sorry if my paragraph seems harsh and obnoxious.

By: Racheal

Racheal — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 02:19:42 +0000

good answer!