The Two Paths: Playing Piano By Ear vs. Sheet Music

What is the best way to learn how to play the piano?

Some will say you have to learn how to read music. You have to spend hours learning how to play Mozart and Beethoven or you aren’t a “real” piano player.

Some will tell you the Suzuki Method is the only way to go. Or some guy on Facebook will tell you he has the “ultimate course for beginning piano players.” Learn how to play the piano with no work at all!

Are you as sick as I am of all the Facebook Ads selling piano courses?

I mean, good lord. Where are you supposed to start?

Let me help clear this up for you.

There are two paths when it comes to learning to play the piano.

The First Path: Reading Music

The more traditional path is learning to play by reading music. Most teachers teach this way. You sign up for lessons, they give you a bunch of books and tell you to crack ‘em open and start reading. You do as you’re told. You may even start to get better at it. But eventually, you ask yourself, what am I doing? What is the point of this? What am I even playing?

The problem with only learning to read is it doesn’t teach you how music works other than how to read it. It doesn’t teach you how chords work and how songs are built. It just teaches you to read and how to do as you’re told.

There is nothing wrong with being a good music reader. In fact, it is incredibly helpful to be able to read music. It will connect some dots and bring along many musical opportunities that wouldn’t come your way otherwise.

The Second Path: Playing By Ear

When you learn how to play piano by ear, you train yourself to truly understand what is going on in the music. Instead of just reading along and doing what you’re told, you are taught to think for yourself. You learn how chords work and that songs are built on chord progressions. You learn how melodies work and how to understand them better.

You can learn songs quicker because you don’t have to memorize every note. You can just memorize patterns and chord progressions. You learn to be free to enjoy your playing because your head isn’t buried in a book. You learn how to improvise and make up your own songs and melodies.

You can play with a much bigger group of other musicians when you know how to play piano by ear. You can play more genres like pop, rock, and jazz and go beyond classical music. You can make music fun again. And you can pass on that fun to your kids or your friends and show them that music can be so much more than just reading out of a book.

Don’t get me wrong, reading is important to some degree. But just because you aren’t a good reader, doesn’t mean you don’t get to be a musician. This is the lie that drives me crazy. I’ve seen so many people give up on music because they never get good at reading. They get frustrated and give up because they think if they can’t read music then they will never be any good at playing music.

That is just not true.

Playing Piano By Ear vs. Sheet Music

There are two paths to learning how to play the piano. One is not better than the other. And you don’t have to be great at both to succeed. You can be a great reader and play all the classical hits. Or you can learn how to figure out songs by ear. Both have value and have their place in the world of music, despite what some music snobs may tell you.

Each musical path accesses completely different parts of the brain. That’s why some piano players are great readers, but they can’t play anything by ear. They don’t even understand where to begin without the written music.  Some players are really good at playing by ear, but can’t read a note of music. They look at written music like it’s a foreign language with no idea what to do with it.  It’s true that some players are really good at both, but usually, we are created to naturally go one way or the other. It’s ok to go in the direction that speaks most to you.

Thinking you have to be something you are not will only lead you to a life of frustration.

I guarantee you some of the biggest stars in music today are not great readers, if they can read music at all. But they found what they loved about music and got really good at that. At the end of the day, you just want to be able to play music. If that comes from reading notes on a page, great. If that comes from listening to a song a bunch of times until you figure it out note by note, great. The point is to be able to play the song! How you got there doesn’t matter to anyone listening to you perform.

We get so caught up in music theory and music rules. We all think everyone should do it our way. That’s just not fair.

Most great jazz players back in the 1940’s, 1950’s, and 1960’s learned by listening and copying patterns and licks from other great players. They didn’t always know how the theory worked, but they knew how to swing. Errol Garner (one of the greatest jazz pianists of all time) is just one example. He couldn’t read a note of music yet he wrote “Misty” which is still performed in piano bars around the world to this day!

A lot of what we call jazz theory now was just figured out by ear. Then a bunch of really smart people went back later, wrote it all down, and made all the rules. But jazz was developed out of freedom and a whole lot of trial and error.

Were these jazz giants supposed to wait until we figured out the rules until they could play the amazing stuff they did?

Of course not.

So don’t let anyone tell you you have to learn music one way or the other. You just need to figure out what makes music fun for you and go all-in on that. If you do that, I guarantee you will become a great musician!