My son has just taken grade 3 piano. Although he's pretty bright and naturally quite musical, it's been a hard schlep for 12 months just grinding away at three pieces and the scales and so forth.

I'm giving him a break from exams for a little while.

It has become apparent that he is playing by ear and not reading the notes and I feel this will be a barrier to progress. Certainly it doesn't help sight reading!

Sometimes he comes across a note he doesn't recognise and has to stop and count down by line and space until he gets it - a bit like having to go through the alphabet before you recognise letter 's'! Once he knows what a chord or phrase should be, he just memorises it, so he doesn't have a feel for where he's going in the music and the flow of the melody up and down the stave.

If I ask him, when he gets stuck, where he is on the page, he often doesn't know.

Is there a recognised method for discouraging this way of learning to improve note recognition? Suggestions?

Thanks

I don't think he is playing by "ear" as you call it. He's memorised the piece and playing mostly, if not fully, the correct notes in the more or less correct tempo and time signature. If he's been practising the exam pieces for 12 months he should by now know them backwards and is probably fed up with the same old pieces. Get him to play some other music, anything really except, of course , much more difficult music that he will struggle with.

The best way IMHO is to memorise a piece and then play it, just as concert pianists and most performers do. You can even adopt this method, if your confident enough, in the Graded exams of the ABRSM. I did just that for one of my grade 8 pieces.

Hi

I think it helps to take a different approach to pieces which will be practised for performance, than to a piece of sight reading. I also tend to memorise a piece very quickly, and have also been guilty in the past of "filling in" from ear, notes which fitted the melody but weren't neccessarily on the sheet music! All of these skills (playing by ear/memorising) are useful in the right situation, but to improve sight reading I've found the only way is to be constantly playing different pieces of music (at a managable standard of course). Take a short piece, look through it etc... play to the end without stopping. Afterwards go back and see where you had difficulty and identify the problems. Run through any tricky bits again, then play the whole thing again - hopefully better this time! After that I tend to move on to a new piece of music. The more you play, the more rhythmic and melodic patterns crop up which you have seen in previous pieces - you always remember more than you think!

Practising the same pieces for months on end won't help sight reading, so it's something that needs to be worked at separately. Improving at sight reading means learning new pieces for performance get easier, and less time is spent working through the notes.

I used to be a terrible sight reader, but it's surprising how quickly you can improve and my confidence is much better too! Like roger - I played my gr. 8 pieces form memory, but I also got top marks for the sight reading test (for the first time ever...)

Good luck!

I think that different people tend to learn in different ways, it sounds as though your son is at the "intuitive, play by ear" end of the spectrum. He'll probably find that as the music he wants to play gets more difficult he'll have to develop the sightreading skills. It might slow down his progress for a while as he catches up on that skill but I'm sure he'll get there and the way he's developing his ear skills can only be a good thing.

I'm at the opposite end of the spectrum and learnt clarinet in a very technical/visual kind of way - I was always a good sight-reader but my aural skills were poor. Now that I'm learning jazz I've had to do a lot of catching up in that area. I've spent the last year consciously trying to "get rid of the dots", learning tunes and chord progressions then getting rid of the music, learning tunes by ear from the outset, transcribing solos, transposing tunes I've learnt into differrent keys etc. Not surprisingly this has really helped to develop my improvising skills. More surprisingly, I've recently gone back to doing a little sight-reading, partly in preparation for some courses I'm doing over the summer, and not only had my sight reading not got rusty, if anything it's better - especially with the timing / feel and keeping a pulse going. I'm not entirely sure why that should be but can only guess it's got something to do with concentrating more on what I'm hearing and less on what I'm seeing.

I think that a good all round musician needs both good ear skills and (in Western classical music at least) good sight-reading skills. I suppose it's inevitable that the rate of development of these skills will differ, and that this will vary amongst individuals.

I disagree, seeing how long he took to learn the pieces and scales. It shouldn't take longer than 3-4 months, or in my opinion, the student is not ready to take that exam yet. Spending so long on one thing may be detrimental to him in the long run anyway, as he possibly got bored and frustrated while missing out on playing other repertoire. Just a few thoughts...

About the playing by ear thing - I shouldn't worry about it, it is a good sign. I have been told that I play by ear and this works well for me. It makes it easy for me to memorise pieces. You could try flashcards to improve his recognition of the notes as it's also important to be able to note-read accuarately. But let's face it, most people aren't that good at sightreading anyway, so it'll probably be difficult to improve this without a lot of practice.

You could try doing "reading practice" with him - find or borrow books of easier pieces maybe around the grade 1 level, or easier, pieces which can be learned very quickly and just used as reading practice. Hopefully if they are the right level, he should be able to read them and then move on to the next, before he's had the chance to 'memorize' or play by ear.......And give him a fun grade 3 level piece aswell so that he doesn't get discouraged playing easier pieces - stress it really is just for reading practice, which will help his playing and learning in the long run.....

I'm teaching a boy who was self taught and has a good memory for pieces.
He had previously learnt by rote and note reading was totally new to him when he began lessons.
He understood that it would mean starting simply but, once he had begun to understand how notation works and started to develop better fingering habits we worked on two different levels.
There was the 'easy' stuff that he had to read and slightly more challenging things which he learned partly by rote but with encouragement to refer to the written copy to help his memory.
I've always praised his ability to memorise while encouraraging him to read the notes. The mix works well.
His note reading is coming along very well now.

When my students are doing exam pieces I always give them short pieces as well, usually a bit under the grade that they are on, in order to refresh their sight reading. It also takes the pressure off as well.

Aluisa.

Thank you for all your useful suggestions. When I said he is bright and naturally musical, the bit I forgot to add was that he is also a bit lazy, hence 12 months to learn the pieces and scales. It was a bit like an athlete spending an hour trying to get over a hurdle, knocking it down and then saying "well, I've done my hour now." Like it was profitable! I had to instill goals to avoid him spending 20 fruitless minutes a day and then turning the TV on. None of this will be new to teachers, of course.

He's recovered from the exam now and is merrily noodling away at 'take five' and 'don't cry for me Argentina'.

I'll take your advice on board, guys. Some years ago I did indeed make a nice set of flashcards which we took everywhere and practised! May get them out again and also vary the repertoire.

Best wishes!

I think some people are naturally inclined one way or the other - as in towards sightreading or 'by ear'. I have an uncanny ability for sightreading on both flute and piano (in fact I just sightread Le Merle Noir by Messiaen on flute pretty much perfectly - i know that sounds up my own botty but i actually suprised my self!!!) BUT I cannot improvise or play tunes by ear (unless they are very simple!!!). another member of my family is just like me, but another sibling is the complete opposite - cant sightread for tuppence yet is very creative and can improvise and play by ear etc. Weird!

I agree that the student has undoubtably memorised his exam pieces (as did I all those years ago), which is not a bad thing. He could now perform these pieces before an audience with complete confidence.
While I agree that playing by ear can hinder sight reading, I firmly believe that playing by ear should be focussed on and enhanced. When any of my students star playing by ear, it opens up a whole new angle of teaching and learning. If they are playing by ear, I counterbalnce the issue with regular sight reading.