Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Why Playing the Piano by Ear Can Slow You Down Creatively
You've all heard the expression "play piano by ear" right? This refers to a musician's ability to pick out a tune, harmonize it, and figure out the rest of the song along the way.
A great skill to have no doubt. But, just having the ability to play by ear won't help you create your own music. Why? Because you still have to be able to improvise freely - a skill that is quite different than just picking out tunes on the piano.
Playing by ear assumes that you want to learn how to play other peoples music. Guitarists do this all the time. They'll sit around in front of the stereo strumming along to their favorite songs trying to figure out the chord changes.
Eventually they get it and can play these songs. Pretty impressive right?
But what if this same guitar player took these chords and relied on the heart instead of the ear to guide him? What if this guitarist decided not to try and imitate or copy what they "heard" on the radio and instead took those same chords and created something new and original? That's playing by heart!
It's very hard for most of us to trust our own intuitions. We're constantly being told we're not good enough, or not ready, but by trusting your own intuitive mind first, you leap from way ahead of those who can only copy or imitate. You learn that there is another way of playing. A way where copying is not necessary and only serves to slow down creativity.
Look, there's nothing wrong with learning from those you love, but at some point, you're going to want to create something on your own. And unless you've exercised your intuition a little, you're going to have a hard time "coming up" with something. But, if we start out by trusting our own hearts and ourselves, we can quickly bypass this "copying" and launch directly into our own unique creations!
Edward Weiss is a pianist/composer and webmaster of Quiescence Music's online piano lessons. He has been helping students learn how to play piano in the New Age style for over 14 years and works with students in private, in groups, and now over the internet. Visit http://www.quiescencemusic.com now and get a FREE piano lesson!
