recent phenomenon regarding playing by ear

[juelle]

In recent years, I have had a few new students (usually boys) who have learned, by rote,
some of the demo pieces on their electronic keyboards.  By the time they come for lessons,
they are totally dependent on rote learning and using their ear, (the ear I encourage!).
They also use You Tube tutorial videos and learn songs from friends.  Some play songs they
have heard on the radio or somewhere, entirely by ear. 

The crunch comes when they resist learning to read.  I have found that they easily
recognize patterns in music, whether melodic, harmonic, or rhythmic.  And they tend
to read whole phrases. But learning individual note names and finding their place in the music
seem to elude them for a long period of time. 

Part of the problem is that they get so much praise from their families and from kids at school because they can play such impressive pieces.  And taking them through sequenced learning materials is a failure from the start, so I have learned to avoid that. 

I'm not sure, though, that this is really a bad thing.  They are able to enjoy the full keyboard right away, rather than being timid learners.  They tend to compose a lot and remember what they have created.  And they really love learning about famous musicians and the music vocabulary.  I get much more feedback and dialogue with them. 

I guess the compensation is that they play the piano A LOT at home, and usually come to their lessons enthused, if not necessarily cooperative.  I usually let them do show and tell for the first 10 or 15 minutes, and then ask their cooperation with sight reading. 

What has been your experience with this type of learners?  Do you bang your head against the wall, like I do sometimes, wishing you could convince them that there's a much larger world of music out there, which they can access only by reading?

 

[lloyd_cdb]

Everyone learns differently.  In my non-music schooling, I personally had to read things and work through them to understand them.  Some people learn simply by listening to a lecture.  The same applies to music.  Clearly I'd encourage them to engage in both aspects of learning, but there is only so much you can do.  My recommendation would be for YOU to perform for THEM.  I've never had an electric keyboard, but I assume the demo pieces aren't incredibly complex.  However, since they are already interested in both the history and the theory, hearing complex pieces with thick texture may get them to understand the benefits of sight reading and just getting them out of their comfort zone.  You could even ask them to pick random pieces and you can sight read through it in front of them, to show them how quickly they can learn pieces if they can read.

[quantum]

One of my teachers at university encouraged rote learning, and had us actively practice it.  To many of the score-driven art music students this seemed somewhat counter intuitive.  But it did demonstrate that over-reliance on the score can inhibit and make us forget about our other senses.  He assigned several pieces to be learned by rote, purposefully not notated, and to be sung back in performance tests.

[hfmadopter]

I admire the ability if they can do it well ( most do not do it well incidentally). But whole groups of professional entertainers don't do their music a whole lot differently these days, especially rock and jazz musicians. They get together and start gigging. I know a guy who worked for Niel Young of Crosby Stills Nash and Young fame. He has told me that niel composes his work walking around his ranch in California strumming on the guitar and making up the words. Then he takes that to his recording studio to get a play back. The whole band gets together and they start hamonizing it. Nothing written yet. The guy is worth multi millions of dollars and each piece of music has that simple beginning.

However, no matter how good they are at this it's doubful they will get far with a complicated piano sonata. Maybe you need to assess where you are headed with the student, if classical music is a goal then they should learn to read IMO. The trick is not to undo what they have done but how to encorporate that into the new learning. You don't need to derail their ability they already possess. Part of that may be showing them in the written score what they have done. This is where a digital piano would be handy, have them play something they know and write to a score through MIdi. Then you can disect it with them. It will surely give them a deeper understanding of what they already play.

Just random thoughts from a non professional.

[juelle]

Good suggestions from all of you, many of which I've tried already.
But I don't have MIDI, so I just write out the music they play
and we go from there.  The most recent student with this background
has amazing abilities.  He learned the first three lines of a Chopin
Nocturne by copying his keyboard, in just one day, and has retained
it for weeks.  He also heard someone play a complex song in the choir
room at school, while he was in the band room, and several hours later
at home he replicated it.  He has retained everything he has learn so far,
by memory.  It does amaze him to watch seasoned performers like
Lang Lang and be aware that they read the pieces they play (with the
great help of a great ear!).  I've thought of taking him to our nearby
campus (University of Wisconsin at Madison) to see if there is someone
there who could work with his abilities, even better than I can.  But I hesitate,
because we have a good rapport already, and he has major challenges with
his social skills. 

[chopin2015]

Sometimes I am lazy and when I read something and I can hear it's wrong, I'll learn it according to what I hear in a good recording I like. I use MIDI files as well. That way I can listen to rhythm differences and notes individually. Quite fun.

[hfmadopter]

Good suggestions from all of you, many of which I've tried already.
But I don't have MIDI, so I just write out the music they play
and we go from there.  The most recent student with this background
has amazing abilities.  He learned the first three lines of a Chopin
Nocturne by copying his keyboard, in just one day, and has retained
it for weeks.  He also heard someone play a complex song in the choir
room at school, while he was in the band room, and several hours later
at home he replicated it.  He has retained everything he has learn so far,
by memory.  It does amaze him to watch seasoned performers like
Lang Lang and be aware that they read the pieces they play (with the
great help of a great ear!).  I've thought of taking him to our nearby
campus (University of Wisconsin at Madison) to see if there is someone
there who could work with his abilities, even better than I can.  But I hesitate,
because we have a good rapport already, and he has major challenges with
his social skills. 

You have a special student there. It's worth putting in extra effort on this person I'm thinking. Obviously you have already considered that thought. Just backing you up !

[teran]

I am more reliant on rote learning because I am pretty much blind in terms of central vision. Although I can actually read if I leer at a blown up score pressed up to my face, but yeah, generally I pick up from the first note and mainly just finsh off phrase by phrase by ear, mostly just using the sheet music as a rhythmic guide.

It does give me advantages over others in basically never relying on the dots, but following sheet music is always invaluable for learning a piece imo, really makes it a lot more efficient.

Every method has its strong and weak points.

[hfmadopter]

I am more reliant on rote learning because I am pretty much blind in terms of central vision. Although I can actually read if I leer at a blown up score pressed up to my face, but yeah, generally I pick up from the first note and mainly just finsh off phrase by phrase by ear, mostly just using the sheet music as a rhythmic guide.

It does give me advantages over others in basically never relying on the dots, but following sheet music is always invaluable for learning a piece imo, really makes it a lot more efficient.

Every method has its strong and weak points.

In your situation you don't have a whole lot of choice as to how you go about learning music. The good news is you go about learning music and that's wonderful ! I agree that there are advantages to both methods, as well as disadvantages I might add. The ideal may be to use both.

[starlady]

Your students are like Younger Daughter.  When she started learning piano she would just watch the teacher play and memorize her actions.  With that and having a good ear, she was able very quickly to play quite complicated and long pieces, which got her positive feedback, so she did it more, etc.etc.   All this time she could barely read music!  To the extent that if she got stuck, she'd ask me to tell her which the notes were supposed to be  ('and don't bother telling me to learn to read it myself, mom').

 So she didn't change, because she saw no reason to change, for a few years.  Finally when she had to start preparing pieces on her own, she buckled down and learned the notes.   

But now she plays a lot, by her own choice, and she enjoys it, so it worked out somehow. 

--s.

[cadenza0123]

I actually just made my first forum post on a topic somewhat similar to this - I use the Faber & Faber method books with my students, and it dawned on me fairly recently that I've been "duped" by two of my students who, it turns out, have fabulous ears. I became suspicious when I noticed during lessons that they would hardly look at the page, but would mostly look down at their fingers.  Turns out they were memorizing the sounds, and sometimes the fingering I would show them while demonstrating, but when push came to shove, couldn't quickly identify a treble G on the staff despite me having diligently worked with them through theory books, exercises, etc.

It DID really frustrate me to realized I'd been oblivious to this for so long!  I know from my years of piano growing up that having a good ear is a wonderful gift, and my mom tells me that my teachers went through the same frustrations with me as a young child.  I've since discovered that my ability to read notes and understand musical phrasing and structure has, in turn, made my ear that much better, and I've since been looking for ways to balance out my students' natural tendencies to learn by rote, while mixing in some note identification and sight reading.

[fleetfingers]

For my students with good ears, I have books that they borrow from me to go through for sight reading. They are short pieces that they've never heard before, and we aim to learn one each week. We polish their performances pieces, but for this sight reading book, they only have to play mostly the right notes and rhythm. I don't care if it's slow or if there are breaks. All I want to see is that they are processing the notes and transferring them to the piano. Not only their ears, but their memory is good, so this is the only way I've found to get them to actually read. The notes have to sound unfamiliar and truly be "new" to them.

[dcstudio]

I really love that you encourage them to play by ear...  yes it is difficult to teach them to read after that...  it bother's me that some parents and even some teachers regard playing by ear as a "lesser skill" and don't consider it to be of any value.   The truth is really the opposite--really anyone can learn to read music...  only those who are blessed with "ears that hear"  are able to play by ear. 

yes, what is wrong with that?  they enjoy the keyboard right away, and they don't seem to have the neurotic tendancies most classical students have when it comes time to perform.  They live for it--and they come to their lessons each week excited to play what they figured out...

I try to teach them theory--we analyze the progression and chord structures of songs that they learned by ear and I encourage them to remember what they played in theoretical terms.

to encourage them to read I tell them that it adds a visual scope to music and it is a way of communicating musical intentions.  It is also a very efficient way of storing their musical ideas.
lol sometimes it works.