ON PLAYING BY EAR ~ Dion Walsh

A gem from the past... :-)

ON PLAYING BY EAR ~ Dion Walsh

When I was a small boy, learning to play the piano, I was always told by my teacher and my parents that I must never "play by ear." Now, "playing by ear" was my one accomplishment and delight, and I used to think it extremely hard that I should not be allowed so to play. I was supposed to do an hour's "practice" every day, and when I couldn't get out of it, I used to do it. There were horrible things called, I remember, Czerny's Exercises, never a one of which had a tune in it, (except, perhaps, just a faint mocking resemblance of a dreary ghost of a tune), but they were full of carefully-planned difficulties, especially in the left hand, and no doubt they were very good for one.

I used to begin my "practice" with these abhorred things, having first shut the door, banging them out as loud as I could, so that my mother, listening intently a room or two away, might judge by the uninteresting nature of the noise I was making that I was really doing something that was good for my musical soul. After a bit, I would begin on "scales," which I hated even more than "exercises," especially the minor ones, because they had not even a semblance of a tune about them, and because the book I played them from was so irritatingly exacting with its little 1 2 3 4 5 over the notes. These also I played loudly, and my mother used to purr as she listened.

But after a time, my spirit having descended into the profoundest depths of boredom, I used to seek recreation by "playing by ear."

Now I knew all sorts of jolly tunes - all these songs I could play, at any rate, so far as the right hand was concerned. As for the left hand, I let that take care of itself, and I played all my tunes in the key of C major, because that was the easiest key to play in. Sometimes I would get through my entire repertory without interruption, but more often the door would fly open, and my mother would rush in, exclaiming, "Now then, stop that. You're playing by ear."

I often wondered in those days why it was such an unforgivable sin to play by ear, since it only was by such means that I obtained any enjoyment from music. Since then I have realised that my mother and my music teacher were both wrong and right in their prohibition. They were wrong because playing by ear is the only way of playing any instrument, if music, and not noise, is to be the result; and they were right because MY "playing by ear" was not only mere self-indulgence and laziness, but would have resulted, unless it were checked, in my having no "ear" at all for the more delicate and beautiful harmonies and effects which produce the finest and most lasting pleasures music can give.

Every great musician plays by ear; but that ear he plays with has been trained to the utmost sensitiveness by prolonged and arduous study. Beethoven not only played, but composed by ear. In his later years his physical sense of hearing was destroyed by disease. He was doomed never to hear with the ears of his body his glorious compositions, but with the ears of his mind he heard every instrument in the orchestra express the delicate and subtle rhythms and harmonies he had imagined. That is what one should mean by "playing by ear" - one should be listening all the time one is playing, not only with the ear of the body, but with the ear of the mind, and for this it does not matter in the least whether one is reading from music or not. The musical signs are set down on the paper merely to guide the fingers to the right notes or strings. It is the ear one should play by.

But of course, if the ear is insensitive, either naturally or through lack of training, it is useless to attempt to play by it. In that case, one must play by the ear of the composer, who has set down the exact combination of notes to produce the effect he desires. That is where I (and, I suspect, a good many other boys and girls) made the mistake. My ear was only sensitive to tunes, and I was quite content with a monotonous and, I fear, often discordant tumti, tumti-tum in the bass, which would have given anybody who had an ear a pain in his internal economy. The idea of those exercises I hated so was to train my ear to appreciate subtler effects, which in time would give me, and those who listened to me, infinitely more pleasure, and to train my fingers to be nimble enough to produce those effects by all sorts of difficult and complicated movements.

And so I would say to all boys and girls who are learning to play an instrument, any instrument: Learn to play by ear, whether you are reading from printed music or playing from memory. Most people have a natural ear for music, and by neglecting to cultivate it, even by a little hard and, perhaps, disagreeable work, they are throwing away the chance of one of the purest and finest pleasures life can offer.

For this is the difference between the trained musician and him who is untrained: that the first hears more than the second, and so very much more that is worth hearing...

Now, how about some "Fascinating Rhythm" by Gershwin, as you ponder the above... :-)