Does playing by ear hinder or help playing by sight?
Students who can play by ear are sometimes perceived to resist reading music on the page. The argument is that a student may feel: “If I can play music by ear, why learn to read it? Give it to me by rote, please.” Such a student may resist sight-reading, expect the teacher to play a piece first, and try to memorize by sound or let the sound guide him to guess at the notes on the page. He may prefer to look down at his hands in preference to looking at the music. But these are problems unto themselves, and should not be blamed on a student’s preference for playing by ear. To encourage reading, one should rather address the root of these problems, taken separately. The student generally desires to avoid mistakes and criticism, and to get on with the lesson. He compensates for problems with eyesight, eye-hand coordination, and imperfect comprehension of notes or patterns on the musical staff, by thinking back to his ear comprehension. He may not yet comprehend the usefulness of the black
