How important is ear training/sight singing?

[tac-tics]

I purchased a book on composition the other day which seemed to hold that good composers should be able to read and write music as fluidly as most people can read or write -- to be able to hear how a piece would sound just by reading the score and without the use of any instrument.

The book is fascinating, but I wanted to ask opinions here. How important is your ability to sight sing for piano? How well can you pick up a score of a composition you've never heard and "hear" it in your mind just by reading it?

Perhaps someone could provide me with extra insight on this subject as well as point me to good online resources or books.

[worker]

Your composition book has admirable goals and sets high standards.  Yet it's a well-known fact that Stravinsky said he never wrote one note away from the piano. Obviously, Beethoven differed.

Let's let great composers (and aspiring ones) write as they will, without setting some arbitrary standard as to how they should do it. 

[stevehopwood]

Sight singing is irrelevant to pianists. I would regard it as strange were I asked to do this during one of my recitals. 

The ability to read a new piano score and here the music in our head is useful - it gives us the opportunity to study a new piece away from the piano. We can construct musical ideas, study notation, even work out fingering without the distraction of actually playing the notes.

To be able to read a known piano score and here the music in our head is vital. Our best interpretive ideas can come from reading the score away from the piano.

When teaching advanced students, I often say, "Be quiet please for a few seconds. I need to think." They quickly learn that I am hearing the music in my mind and trying out an idea their playing has given me. If I think it works, I will then demonstrate on the piano what I have just been thinking.

What lies behind the ability to sight sing is what is important - being able to hear sounds internally. It is the pitching with our voice that is the irrelevant bit.

Steve 

[debussy symbolism]

Greetings.

Perhaps sigh singing is irrelevant to pianists to some degree, it still helps with the music and offers you more insight into the score. Being able to hear and sing different intervals, chords, cadences is very important.

[stevehopwood]

Ehup Debussy Symbolism 

Being able to hear and sing different intervals, chords, cadences is very important.

Why? Important to what?

Steve 

[debussy symbolism]

Ehup Debussy Symbolism 
Why? Important to what?

Steve 

Important to music. The more one feels the music the more one can understand it, perhaps not on technical, pianistic terms, but on musical and interpretational ones. It is also very important on the account of improvisation and composition. One will be able to internalize the sounds better and think faster when composing or improvising. Singing is very important to pianism in itself.

[stevehopwood]

Singing is very important to pianism in itself.

I disagree. I am a lousy singer, yet people say I am a more than passable pianist.

The ability to internalise sounds and the ability to reproduce them vocally are not necessarily the same thing.

Steve 

[debussy symbolism]

I disagree. I am a lousy singer, yet people say I am a more than passable pianist.

The ability to internalise sounds and the ability to reproduce them vocally are not necessarily the same thing.

Steve 

I guess that  that is true to a certain extent. I can clearly hear any interval and yet sometimes I can't sing them. I can perfectly imagine a perfect 6th or minor 6th yet can sing only with reference to the interval first, so I guess that that is true. I sing in school choir and can say that singing overall does help in interpretation however. Hope this helps.

[stevehopwood]

I sing in school choir and can say that singing overall does help in interpretation however.

I am with you there, DS, and will sometimes hum a passage to myself to help with phrasing ideas. Wouldn't inflict the resultant racket on anybody else, mind, but it helps me. 

That is not singing for its own sake, or because somebody thinks it is A Good Thing For Pianists To Be Able To Do; it is singing for a specific purpose - my purpose. This is not the same as saying that pianists must be able to sing or, worse, that they must be able to sight-sing.

Steve 

[tac-tics]

In using the word "sing," I do not believe the book means "sing well." The book's goal is the eventual ability to transcribe music aurally at or near real-time. It has some interesting ideas, but overall, I think the book is slim on exercises or resources for working towards its goals.

[Bob]

Very important.  Part of being a musican.

You can train your ears/mind as much as you for whatever area of listening ability you want.

It is very useful to be able to absorb more of the music.  You can look at the page and hear it in your mind.  If you are memorizing or learning the piece, you can look at the page and know that it is x-step of the scale and has a certain sound.  Or hearing chord function.

There is also being able to match the exact pitch of the tone -- whether you are sharp or flat.

The piano is really, really bad in terms of forcing your ears.  String players must listen for intonation while they play.  Pianist don't, so the skill doesn't necessarily develop.

A actual college class might be helpful.  I think if I did this myself, I would get very bogged down.

You can break ear training (tradiation) down into pitch and rhythm.  Pitch includes melody and chords.  You can dictate (listen and write down) or read (read and sing/perform).  Rhythm can be tapped out of course.  Playing on an instrument doesn't count though -- You have to generate the pitches out of your own mind without an instrument's help.

[tac-tics]

The piano is really, really bad in terms of forcing your ears.  String players must listen for intonation while they play.  Pianist don't, so the skill doesn't necessarily develop.

It's good to hear that about string instruments players. I just confirmed my first lesson with viola earlier today  I got to borrow one from a friend the last month at school and you never really realize how hard it is to find a perfectly tuned major second 

A actual college class might be helpful.  I think if I did this myself, I would get very bogged down.

I have never let my schooling get in the way of my education. I think the book I bought was a sort of "lightweight" college text (the price tag was only about $15). It had the book's chapters broken down by weeks in the appendix and looking at it, I thought to myself, this sort of thing takes a lifetime to perfect. No one is going to get good at this with only two semesters of teaching!

You can break ear training (tradiation) down into pitch and rhythm.  Pitch includes melody and chords.

Yes, the sight singing books I bought all had clapping exercises..... which I really wasn't looking for in a book. As a pianist (and also as a DDR player), I already have a good grip on rhythm and its notation. I managed to find a book yesterday, though, "Melodia" by S. W. Cole which seems more heavily focused on the pitch side early on, introducing rhythm later. I will try the exercises and see how I do.