As a mentor for the Harp for Healing Certification Program, I am given most of the guitar students (most who sign up are harp students) to mentor. I have noticed more and more that guitar students are less likely to be able to read music notation and more likely to play by ear. The reverse seems to be the case for harpists, depending on their background. This isn’t universal of course – some guitarists have a classical guitar background, so can read treble clef just fine, and others are fairly fluent in guitar tablature. And with harpists, there are a number who learn tunes by ear instead of by written notation.
It got me musing about my own experiences with the various
instruments I play. I started as a 4-year-old copying my brother’s piano
lessons by ear until my mom (his piano teacher) put a stop to it by giving me
my very own set of books and lessons and making my brother’s pieces off-limits
to me. She never told me I wasn’t allowed to play by ear. It wasn’t even a
thing. It was probably treated like “she’s only pretending.” But I would
treat reading music as more of a reminder of how things should or will sound.
Later I chose violin for my orchestra instrument and started
lessons with a private teacher. It was all about reading the notes. Or was it? Violin
is an instrument you can’t play without using your ear. In order to play in
tune, your finger needs to adjust – there is no fret to keep you honest… My
mother used to tell people that my violin teacher said that I was never a true beginner
and that I was able to get a good tone and good intonation from the start. I don’t believe I
was always a hundred percent in tune, but now that I’ve had a variety of violin
students, I do realize that there is a long period of time before they can really make a difference between a C and a C#...
Onward to picking up guitar: at first it was just placing my
fingers in a pattern and strumming a chord. Next learning to fingerpick -- again just patterns, not music notation. But when I started guitar lessons,
having already learned to read music with piano and violin, I zoomed through
the Alfred’s Guitar book in two months (most of my beginning students take closer
to a year) and was playing some cool classical pieces (including an arrangement
of Classical Gas by Mason Williams) within a year. So, yes, I was reading music, but also figuring out the chords and picking patterns by ear from recordings of songs I wanted to play and sing.
People often tell me that I’m talented to be able to play all
these things, but what it comes down to is making use of the ear, whether
reading music notation or not. It’s not an either/or for me, it’s an integrated
“both.” So, with each new instrument I learn, there’s a period of “Where are the
notes?” followed by a “How to I make it sound like it should?” followed by the
enjoyment of playing music on the new instrument. Reading music made for the instrument? just to remind me of how the tune goes. Both skills are worth developing!
I like to encourage my students to not simply follow
directions or “connect the dots” of music notation, but to listen for quality, and
to express their feelings about the music. Hmmm… I have more to say about expressing
feelings, but will save that for another blog…
I’d be interested to know how many people find they can learn
a new tune best if they hear it first, or if they see the written notation
first. If you’d like to respond, please do! This is not an official survey but
I think it will be interesting to know these things:
- What was your first instrument?
- When did you learn to read music? (or did you?)
- What instruments have you learned to play?
- How do you best learn to play a tune?
- Hear it over and over
- Hear it first then read the music
- Read the music first, then hear a version of it
- Read the music and count out the rhythm
This is not a competition between the “by ear” and the “paper trained” – just a look at what has worked well for you!
By the way, if you'd like to know more about the Harp for Healing Certification program, here is the website: https://www.harpforhealing.com/
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