I have a piano student mid-late 20s who now only wants to learn from you tube and he wants me to look at songs that he emails me and then help him to learn them by ear, e.g. Beatles, Phil Collins etc. I feel this is a different method of teaching altogether and takes a lot of time.

He was doing very well and only started a year ago and is now at grade 1-2 but is not so keen now in reading music. Has anyone any suggestions or come across this before? Thanks

For me I would be saying "It's been great....but goodbye"! I'm afraid I really couldn't cope with "You Tube" pedagogy!!

Well-rounded musicians can play by ear. No need to discourage him or write him off. You can explain that you don't have the time to look at everything he sends on YouTube, but that you can teach him to play by ear by good aural training:

recognition of basic intervals, up and down in melodies and sounded together in chords.
recognition of basic triads, major, minor, diminished, augmented, in root position and inverted,
recognise common harmonic progressions
recognise modulation to dominant, subdominant, and relative major and minor
identify compound/simple time, and from that the time signature

There is no reason why you couldn't use just one or two of his favourite songs as learning/practice material

apply this knowledge at the keyboard by

playing back a melody after only a few hearings (some solfege training might help too)
playing common sequences of chords in 4 part harmony
harmonizing melody lines and base lines

Then he'll be able to play by ear and work out for himself whatever he wants from You Tube

I have always been a slave to the written music, and taught as such. But lately I`ve been teaching a pupil of mine to improvise, and she`s really enjoying it!

If your pupil wants to play by ear, I`d say `ok, as long as we also carry on with written music part of the time`. So how about spending time in the lesson on playing by ear?

To be honest a rounded musician should have many skills, and playing by ear is a very useful one indeed!

Isn't it just? There is nothing worse than being a slave to the score ALL of the time!

All very good suggestions re developing aural skills and the ability to play by ear. However I can't help but agree that for me, this would be the end of the line. I would not feel comfortable teaching someone to play in this way, because I do so little of it myself.

I had a student like this who learned from Youtube, and picked some things up rather well. I felt somewhat redundant, as he too disliked reading and was unwilling to learn from me. I ended up passing him on to a jazz teacher who was much more suited to his needs.

The trouble with that method is they can only play things they already know. It's like learning to read a book you already know - but there's so much more out there. I couldn't teach someone who wanted to learn in this way. It wouldn't really be teaching. I'd find myself trying to get the score for whatever we were supposed to be looking at. While it's great to be flexible about approach the tail must not wag the dog, and someone who's grade 1 - 2 perhaps doesn't what's best for them?

Really it shouldn't be too difficult. But YOU shouldn't be the one working out the songs, HE should. All he has to learn are the chords of each key. Then he has to be able to work out what key a piece is in from listening to it. Then he has to know common chord progressions, be able to play them and be able to recognise them.

After this you can work out hundreds of songs. The recognisable melody or 'fiddly' bits only need a little bit of working out once you know the key and the chord progression the song uses.

He needs a good knowledge in scales, keys, chords and chord progressions.

Once you know this you can with a little practice work out any pop song - only it won't be exactly the same as what is played. But if he gets to the point where he needs to play it exactly then he should be getting the sheet music.

If I was you, I would be teaching him all the triads within in each key (at least the tonic the dominant and the subdominant) and then getting him to use those chords to play common chord progressions (one bass note, with the right hand playing the chord). Then help him transpose those chord progressions to other keys. Eventually he'll be able to work out the songs himself, which is surely better than asking you to do it for him?

But doesn't that pre-suppose that everyone learns for the same reason, and that only our reasons and methods are the 'right' ones? If an adult student only ever wanted to learn the piano because he's always wanted to play Chopin's whatever or the theme from the so and so movie, why enforce our agenda on him? If he wants to be taken through the standard exams whilst learning this way then that's different, he's going to come a cropper there, but even examinations are now branching out. Trinity Guildhall you can do up to grade 5 without sight-reading (obviously you need to find someone who can play you the score or buy a CD of it) if you can offer the other tests, and the RSAMD now does exams in traditional folk music, so if you take the fiddle exam you can choose between sight-reading from score or playing back by ear - a more familiar and useful skill for a fiddler over a violinist. Some musicians benefit more from being able to listen to a few bars of an ensemble playing and pick up the appropriate key, rhythm and structure to be able to jump in and improvise their part. The teacher is still imparting the technical skills, posture, accurate expression, use of pedals, choice of fingering, etc.

Through in a mix of improvisation, aural work for a while, alongside his favourites, then introduce theory as a separte subject after a while, and show it as an enabler to deal with scores.#

There's nothing wrong with what this student wants to do, and best of luck to him, but if his teacher ie the OP is not comfortable or familiar with this method, then they should not feel obliged to go along with it, any more than the student should be forced to learn to read music. It sounds like time for a friendly and supportive parting of the ways.

Would you mind, please, saying how you go about teaching improv? If this is off topic perhaps you could PM me? Many thanks.

not necessarily. that would be the case if they simply learnt by rote, but if they were taught to learn for themselves by ear, they're no more restricted in what they can play than people who play from sheet music. (sure, they can't pick up some music and play it, but then people bound to sheet music can't listen to something and play it.)

Why not? There are certain styles of music eg. Pop and jazz that involve a lot of free and improvisatory playing and often look awkard when notated. If you feel that you are able to, I would say definitely teach this pupil. They should work out the songs themselves so that you're not having to spend time doing this, but there is still a lot that you can do in the lessons, such as making sure that this pupil's technique, posture, etc. are all good, and working on interpretation.

I encourage lots of my pupils to play by ear, but I will only give them the starting chords, I let them work out the rest themselves. We often don't use much notation. What I find useful is printing out the lyrics of the song double spaced, then writing the chords above the words in the right place for them. This way, I give them the LH chord, but let them work out all of the RH melody. It works pretty well!

i hope you still charge

Playing/learning by ear is valid, just not as useful in the long-run.

If a student is a serious dedicated musician wanting a future career in music, then music theory must be learned.

If the student is learning for his or her own pleasure then learning and playing by ear is a perfectly valid means of enjoying music performance.

I agree that the onus should be on the student to work out songs from Youtube. The teacher's job is to facilitate this by giving him/her the means to do this for themselves. Though sometimes finding the time to become aquainted with musics you would not otherwise bother with can be good personal development and rewarding for the teacher.