Playing by Ear as opposed to Reading Music

Why is it that so many people are impressed when someone can play music by ear?  If you know nothing about music, then of course, playing a song by ear seems like magic.  However, it isn't an efficient way for most people to play a song.

You would never recommend that someone hear a book and then play it back instead of reading it.  If you try to compare literacy of words and books to literacy of music, it can become a frustrating endeavor.  Someone looks at a word in a book and as soon as they can sound it out, it will make sense to them.  When you try to look at the symbols on the grand staff, and you don't know anything, they look like gibberish, or it's all Greek to most people.  I think back to when I learned how to read music, and I can't remember for the life of me when it began to make sense. I just know that one day I was all of a sudden reading notes in both hands, and playing the piano with no problem.  It didn't keep me from also playing songs by ear, but it was much faster to read the notes in the end, and much more efficient as well. Also, the songs sounded better when I read all the notes for them, instead of just being able to figure out the melody to something.

So now here I am trying to teach large groups of students to play the piano and learn to read music.  I want them all to become musically literate, as they are verbally literate.  I tell them every day be persistent, keep at it, don't get frustrated, use perseverance, and GRIT.  It takes coordination to get the piano down, as well as remembering what the symbols all mean.  But if you take it slow at first, in the end you will be so happy to worked at it.  You will be so happy to be able to sit down and read a song off of some sheet music, instead of finding the hand positions and notes on youtube.  You will be at a different level from someone who can "play music by ear" as magic as that sounds, you will be not only performing magic, you will also be a genius.  Just imagine what that could be?  Don't give up!

MONOLOGUES AS EXEMPLARS

What is it with these kids?  I just don’t get it. I explain and explain, and they sit around and whisper to each other, and don’t listen to a word I say.  They don’t want to be bored, but they don’t want to do anything that I ask them to do. In the old days, when I was growing up, I would have been severely punished for treating a teacher that way.  I still remember when I was a child and I revered my teachers. I thought every last one of them hung the moon. I can’t say I didn’t also love the class joker, the kid that always tried to push the teachers’ buttons, who drove her and everyone else in the class crazy.  I loved that Ted, kid, I thought he was brave, and courageous, and naughty and adorable. But I gotta say, it was always really fun to watch him get in trouble, he was kinda cute..but there he was at our 35th reunion, and he barely said anything at all! I wanted to say, what happened to the crazy, funny, brave dude I used to know?  

Anyway, I digress.  I never got in trouble, but my mother still wasn’t all that thrilled with me, I felt.  She always got mad at me, no matter what I did. Do you think it was because I was a terrible test taker?  All my siblings were really smart, and really good at test taking and got really high scores, and she thought they were brilliant.  I was just basically a dummy, with a talent, a good voice, but she didn’t even like that, except at parties, when she made me sing for her guests.  It wasn’t until I was in my thirties with kids of my own that she shared with me what my test scores were when I applied to prep school. But again, how does this have anything to do with how students treat teachers now?  It must be me. I have a deep-seded contempt for how I was badly treated as a child, and so when students are not respectful to me, I take it as personally as if I were twelve again myself. I guess I better just work on that, hadn’t I?