Sight-Reading vs Playing by Ear: Why You Need Both

Some pianists hear a song once and play it. Others need the music in front of them. Both often envy the other. Sight-reading vs playing by ear is not a contest: they are two different skills, and each opens a door the other cannot.

What playing by ear gives you

• Freedom to play songs you hear, with no music.
• A strong sense of harmony and accompaniment.
• Easy improvisation and playing with others.

What sight-reading gives you

• Access to almost the whole written repertoire, from Bach to Debussy.
• Learning new pieces quickly, exactly as the composer wrote them.
• Reading music you have never heard, which the ear cannot do.

Why players end up with only one

Ear players often learned early that listening is faster than reading, so they stopped reading. Readers often learned only from the page and never trusted their ear. In both cases the weaker skill was simply used less.

If you play by ear and read slowly

Use your ear as a helper: read music you already know, so your ear can confirm what your eyes see. Read every day, a little at a time. And remove the hardest step of reading for ear players, the sharps and flats, which are exactly what the ear knows and the page hides.

• F sharp: right half black. Play the black key to the right of F.
• B flat: left half black. Play the black key to the left of B.
• B natural: no natural sign. A note that is all black or all white is played on a white key.

If you read well and want to play by ear

Start with simple melodies you know, find them on the keyboard, then add one bass note per bar. Ten minutes of this a day trains the ear the way daily reading trains the eyes.

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