Teaching by Ear

One word which comes up so often when I am working with my students is “listen”. I think as a society that we are all great at hearing, but rather terrible at listening. We must start encouraging our students to do two types of listening: 1) listening to great musicians playing great music and 2) listening to themselves, both when practicing and performing.

Students have enough trouble listening to themselves for technical errors, such as wrong notes, rhythms, etc. It falls on the teacher to develop that sort of ear-training from the beginning. We also must develop a way of teaching students to listen for the musical integrity of their playing. Students can often hear these things when we draw their attention to them. And as all things, if we make them focus on it for long enough, it will simply become a habit.

Rather than going straight to telling a student what they did “wrong” or need to fix, I ask my students to tell me what was well-done and what needs improvement. I often get responses like “Dynamics”, “Fix pedaling”, etc.; things which they have grown accustomed to hearing me or previous teachers say. I then have to follow-up my question and ask, “Which dynamics need improving?” or “Where does your pedaling need cleaned up?” This makes doubly sure that the student isn’t just spouting what they think I want to hear.

In the same way, they must learn to listen for the musical integrity of their playing. I find the answer to the simple question of “What were you trying to do with your phrasing here?” points to the biggest problem, because that answer is often “I don’t know” or “I didn’t think about it.” If we have trained them in how we can shape phrases and we know they can do it, then drawing attention to the need for it often does the trick. They can’t just program it in once and go back into “auto-pilot” mode. They must think about it every time they sit down to play the piece, including in performance.

I remember being the student who knew that if I started thinking during a performance, I would mess up, which usually manifested itself in the form of a memory “slip”. As I started teaching and studying with other teachers, I began to realize the importance of the thought process that goes into music. At this point, you may being thinking, “DUH”, and I assure you that I thought the exact same thing. The reason I didn’t want to think during performances was because I didn’t think during my practice sessions. Once I was comfortable with the mechanics of the piece, and had a pretty solid outline of the dynamics, I would just coast through without thinking. If I had recordings of my playing during those days, it would probably make me cringe to listen to them. I would guess that I would not find an ounce of feeling or meaning in my playing from those days.

One thing that I wish I had been able to do more of as a young student is listen to more great pianists play great repertoire. I remember one of the first big pieces of the repertoire that I heard was the Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto (played by Eugene List, I believe, though I long since have gotten rid of that cassette). What a rush hearing that!!!! And a realization: there was something to his playing that I didn’t have, besides the obvious lack of virtuosity. The more I’ve listened to my favorite pianists, the more I have grown in my ability to give a performance that has musical integrity. Not that I am trying reproduce a duplicate of someone else’s interpretation. Rather, I am gathering ideas for my own interpretation. I gain these through listening to others play, not only the music on which I am working (in fact, it is less often that I listen to the repertoire that I am learning) but other works by the same composer or composers of the same era.

It may be impossible for us to collectively agree on who the greatest pianists (or other musicians) are, or what is the greatest repertoire for listening; the good news is that we don't have to! It is our responsibility, however, to encourage our students (especially with resources like YouTube) to listen to as many great works as they can. All it takes is a few keystrokes to send them a link to listen to a recording. If they like it, encourage them to purchase it on iTunes or some other platform, so they can legally listen to it as many times as they’d like.

Once they start listening to great music played by great musicians, it gives them an idea of what they ought to listen for in their own playing. Be careful here that the student realizes that you do not have the virtuosic expectations of them, only the musical. It is important for them to realize that they can play their sonatina, invention, or character piece with as much musical integrity as (insert your own favorite musician here) playing the (insert your own favorite work here). Encourage them to listen to multiple pianists playing the same work; this helps them to realize that several different great musicians will have several different interpretations. Encourage them to listen to one pianist playing works of different eras and composer; this helps them to realize that some pianists may more comfortable with one composer or era of music than another composer or era of music.

                There are so many things to take into account as teachers, and they all seem so important. However, I consider this one to be foundational. How do we expect to do our job (train our students to make music) when we have not taught them what music really is? Next week, I will be posting the prequel to a series of posts that will be coming over the next several weeks. Without learning to use their ears, the work outlined in this series will not be of any use to the students.