Hi everyone


So I have this 7 year old girl who started piano lessons with me about 3 months ago now, we are almost at the end of the mypiano book (1 page to go) and i've been supplementing her lessons with my own arrangements of popular songs/nursey rhymes, as well as working through a few pieces of a book with came with her keyboard.

She is very interested and very enthusiastic, she has a 45 min lessons most weeks and concerntrates very well. Her note reading is good for her age and experience and her mum says that she is on her keyboard quite often! She often comes to me saying that 'i have learnt this piece off by heart, would you like to listen?' and 8/10 its all correct! I am very pleased with her progress, but up until yesterday I thought it was just solid hard work and a very keen little girl!

But yesterday she comes to me and her mum says that she has been learning this piece, and she knows it off by heart. It was just under a minute, in normal first C position, two hands (although not at the same time), and she learnt it by ear listening to the demo play it on her keyboard! I asked her mum if there is a digital screen on the keyboard where she perhaps copied the positions etc. but no it was purely by ear! I was absolutely gobsmacked that a 7 year old could achieve something like this, and that she has the interest to pursue learning a piece by ear at this early stage. It wasn't even a well known piece, just something obscure.

I've been teaching for 3 years now and I haven't come across a student like this and I want to nurture the talent of this very keen young girl as she has a lot of potential. However, im not quite sure how to approach learning by ear, its something that I have worked at on my own without a teacher and eventually got better at it, but how exactly can I teach these aural skills? especially to someone so young?


Any advice would be appreciated



Edit: Could a mod move this to the teachers forum please, my mistake!

Hey There,

Great to hear you have a pupil with that ability!

I teach several people who have the ability to play by ear, and because I teach a lot of Jazz it is a very useful skill to have when they wish to improvise etc.

I think it's talent in it's purest form when you have a pupil that young who can listen to a melody and pick it up by ear. And should be equally encouraged alongside learning notation.

I find in the early stages of developing this skill it can be useful to play them short melodies of 2 or 4 bars to start with (ABRSM do a book called Quick Studies for the Jazz exams) telling them which the starting note is and then seeing how much they can pick up. You may notice they will also develop this naturally themselves over time, which will go hand in hand with the technique they are learning from you. I remember sitting and learning the latest pop song purely by ear whilst having piano lessons at a young age!

Another fun thing you can do is call and respose, you play them a melody in a certain hand position and they have to either alter it slightly or create one of their own.

It's a skill that is there whether the pupil likes it or not and they will always have tendencies to play from ear becuase it comes so easily to them, you just have to make sure along the way they continue to learn the other aspects that go with it!

I notice you posted this a while ago but as I have some experience in this area I thought I'd shout back