First of all, many people erroneously believe that it involves some kind of magical talent or special ability, reserved only for the “gifted.” I like to make it very clear to my students that learning to play purely by listening is a skill that can be developed over time, just like learning to read notation. This process of strictly aural learning is often nicknamed “playing by ear.” Partly because of the nickname, there are several common misconceptions about this process of learning. Unfortunately, in this case, that means we will be using our aural abilities less when we read music than when we play strictly “by ear.”īut what does it really mean to play “by ear?” Obviously, since music is sound, we can develop the ability to actively experience it simply by deciphering how the sound is organized, and then reproducing it on our instruments. The only problem is that when we use two senses to do something, one of them will naturally be used less than if we were using it by itself. This is one of the reasons why music reading is so heavily favored in our educational system.
If we use two of our senses to learn an instrument instead of just one, the process should be faster and more effective. For music students, the main advantage of learning this skill is that you gain a visual element to what would otherwise be a completely aural experience. So learning to read music is very similar to learning how to read a language. The relationship between notes/symbols and sounds in music is much like that between written words/punctuation and spoken words in a language. The code is the aggregate of all the various note shapes and signs/symbols placed on a grid (the staff), and serves as a visual representation of the desired sound.
Basically, written music is a code that, when deciphered properly, enables a person to produce a sequence of sounds on his/her instrument as designed by a composer.
This is often referred to as “learning to read music,” and is, by far, the most popular and well-established method for learning an instrument in this country. Let's begin with the concept of learning to play by notation.
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