playing by ear vs sight reading.

[maestoso]

i have discover that if i listen to a piece i am working on, as per changs advice it makes sense but when i follow it on the music the ornaments are to difficult to understand. now i know they hold no value as far as timing goes but is there a trick to identify them and there actual duration? or is it interpretive. this seems to be the hardest part of learning for me and sight reading away from the piano. anyone have this problem?

[zheer]

 You know you might like to read a book by Charles Rosen, " the hidden world of the pianist" am sad i know. Anyway in this book he makes a good point about playing by ear, he says that as pianists we forget to use our ear, unlike singers or violin players, it is true all we need to do is press the key and there you go a musical tone. He then talks about the importance of listining to ourselves  to be concious  concious of this process, one way of doing this is by recording ourselves and criticaly examine the music, he also warrns against depending too much on a mechanical device such as a tape recorder or camcorder.
  Not sur if i've moved away from the topic, but basically we pianists are a little lazy when it comes to listining, its the most important part of piano playing.

[maestoso]

i have always played by ear beit guitar singing or piano. it simplifies it for me when i listen to it. i have a strong ear and try to find the patterns engraved in the works. but piano music is a challenge to say the least.

[ksnmohan]

Hallo maestro,

Start with the Sheet music. Listen to the music over and over again and then play what your "music sense" tells you to do. Listen to CDs or watch DVD performances by the "greats" just to understand how each one is trying to interpret the same music.

How sure are you that the Sheet Music you have in front of you is "the exact original" the composer had written down? Over the years people have changed, added, subtracted, done almost everything possible to arrive at what  they thought was in the composer's mind.

In Horowitz's price winning recording (DVD available released by DG) of Mozart's Concert for Piano & Orchestra No 23, he is seen telling the Conductor (Carl Maria Guilini) that even though the piano score at one point shows D to be played,  he will be playing it as A (ofcourse, being 5ths he ensures not sounding discordant)  and the Orchestra need not change their playing at this particular point. Horowitz felt the A sounded more apt for Mozart's sensitivity.

So the sanctity of a Score can be slightly "pushed aside"  if your inner "soul" feels so. The Sheet Music  iofcourse iremains mportant as your guide line.

Another example is  the Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero, who plays - from Bach  to Chopin to Scriabin & Rachmaninov - but improvises a lot without sacrificing the classicsm in their music.

[leucippus]

How sure are you that the Sheet Music you have in front of you is "the exact original" the composer had written down? Over the years people have changed, added, subtracted, done almost everything possible to arrive at what  they thought was in the composer's mind.

I absolutely agree with this.  Moreover, I personally don't play the piano to necessarily replicate precisely what the composer had in mind.  I don't view music that way.  I view music as an art and each pianist as an artist.  So I'm prepared to give every pianists artistic license.  It's already if some places strive to replicate what they believe to be the "traditional interpretation".  But that's certainly not my goal as a pianist.

On the topic of playing by ear vs sight reading, I can't say that I do either.  I certainly can't sight-read at all by my understanding of what that means.  I also can't play by ear by my understanding of what that means.

What I do is use the sheet music to be sure that I'm playing the correct notes.  I use the timing on the sheet music as a guide only then I play what I feel.   I will listen to what other artists have done with the piece, but I seldom want to try to replicate any of them.  If I thought that playing the piano just meant to replicate someone else I wouldn’t even be interested in playing it at all.