Learning to play well “by ear” is important for becoming good at playing jazz. It is probably a more useful skill than being able to read music well. But don’t think that you needn’t learn to read music too – you absolutely should. Here’s what playing by ear means, why it matters, and how it can become a handicap if you rely on it too much.
What does playing by ear mean?
Playing by ear means playing music without relying on reading notation. For jazz musicians it usually takes two main forms. First, it can be someone learning a tune by hearing a melody and then playing it back. Second, it can be a musician improvising, creating new music just from their own imagination or taking patterns, licks, scales, melodies, phrasings, and rhythms that they have heard or memorised and assimilating them into their own musical expression in real time.
Why is playing by ear important in jazz?
Playing by ear is fundamental to playing jazz. To improvise is to play by ear, so the better you become at it, the better you can become at improvising. Also, it is routine for jazz musicians to bring aspects of improvisation to the way they interpret and perform composed music, such as the heads of tunes. They frequently vary the ‘written’ tune to create their own interpretation unique to each performance. Of course it’s possible to some extent to do this while reading music, but a core skill in jazz, and one that is highly-valued in the jazz world, is to know tunes and chord progressions from memory. However, the importance of playing by ear goes deeper than this.
Improvised jazz is done in real-time and most often interactively, with other musicians. Jazz players listen to each other as they play and respond to one another. That involves playing by ear. In jazz, musicians listen to how their solos or comping fit with the sound of the chords, bass line, drumming, or other soloists. They spontaneously adapt chord voicings or alterations to fit what others are playing; rhythmic ideas played by one person will be taken up or developed by others; they paraphrase each other’s lines; they transpose patterns or quote melodies from one key ad context to another; and more. All of these things demand a high-level of aural skill.
If you neglect playing by ear, then you will struggle with playing jazz. But in the world of jazz, reading music is also an invaluable skill.
Why you shouldn’t neglect reading music in jazz
Being able to read music saves a lot of time and opens opportunities that aren’t available to musicians who can only play by ear. Even if you are so good that you can play something complex after just one listening, there are situations when that is too slow. If you can’t sight read, you can’t do ‘reading gigs’, such as big band or any other band where you’ll need to read music. If you can’t read, then a lot of more complicated music or arrangements might be out of reach, meaning you miss out on lots of great music. Even if you aren’t great at sight reading, just being able to learn tunes by reading can be a huge time-saver. But musical literacy could even have life-changing consequences.
It is common for prestigious university and college music programs to require students to read music, even guitarists and drummers. If you can’t read, you can find yourself excluded from potentially great opportunities like that. If you are studying music at school, illiteracy can also be a real problem and even preclude you from access to higher-status courses. What’s more, if you rely too much on playing by ear, reading can become too difficult.
Why being too good at playing by ear can become a handicap
If you are really good at playing by ear before you learn to read music fluently, it can make it tempting to rely on your ears too much. This would be familiar to many guitar students especially, or anyone who has taught an instrument to children. Children with good ears can learn very quickly at first, and we praise them for their progress. But eventually this over-reliance on ear-playing will catch up with them and become a handicap.
If you or your student are excellent at playing by ear, that’s wonderful and should be developed. However, don’t give in to the temptation to neglect reading. Better to be able to read and never use it than to need reading but be unable to. Currently, jazz playing and studying jazz at higher levels really demands both highly developed aural skills and strong reading skills. If you’re not a guitarist, drummer, or electric bassist, however, it’s more likely that your reading is already strong because that’s probably how you started learning. If you want to play jazz, you’ll need to develop your aural skills. Playing by ear really is an essential skill.
