Some musicians can pick up a score and play it flawlessly the first time.
Some musicians can hear a piece and play it flawlessly without any music at all.
Few can do both. Plenty can do neither. Join our discussion and see where you fit in.
As in any area, when you develop an expertise, you get better at chunking material so you can process it faster. Sight-readers can see groups of notes as a unit and process them quickly, moving ahead to the next group as they play the "chunk" of notes. This essay on sight-reading cites research showing a knowledge of musical structure allows sight-readers to process faster. An interesting aside was the number of sight-readers who mentally corrected a printing error in Brahms' Capriccio, Opus 76, No. 2; since it made no sense musically, they played the note that "should" have been there instead. The error was found by a performer who could not sight read and learned the piece note by note.
I'm an ear-player and always have been. I plateaued at reading notes when I was ten. I just found that it was easier to glance at the melody line and the guitar chord charts and make up my own baseline. I didn't realize it, but I was using sheet music like a "Fake Book."
What is a fake book, you may ask? It's a minimalist musical arrangement: melody line, chords, and lyrics, enough for an improvisational musician to "fake" their way through a piece. Fake books try to hit the sweet spot between sight-reading and ear-playing; you need to be able to read notation to use the melody line, but there isn't enough information if you can only play what's on the page. You must provide your own rhythm and chord arrangements.
Since my parents picked my music teachers, not me, the emphasis was always on classical repertoire and performance. So I dutifully picked my way through the musical notation for those recital pieces, while picking up the pop and rock tunes on my own. Occasionally I'd not be able to figure something out, and I'd just pick up the sheet music in the music store, take a look at the section giving me trouble, and that would fix it. Rarely did I have to buy the sheet music.
Sight-readers mystified me. Despite years and years of piano lessons, I could never look at musical notation and understand what was on there. I was usually in deep trouble if I'd never heard the piece before. I'd slowly pick my way through it, note by note, not even worrying about rhythm until I'd ensured myself I knew what the notes were. It was like building a house worrying about where every nail went, where the window putty had to be applied, without ever seeing the architect's sketch of what the place would look like when finished. Hearing the piece played by someone else WAS the sketch for me - suddenly it would all snap into place.
I've met many musicians who can't read a note. They didn't need to, they were ear players. Hand them sheet music and they'll toss it away, they want you to play for them, or listen to a recording instead. But once they've listened to a piece, they'll reproduce it in any key you want, vary the tempo, change the style to jazz, folk, Latin, whatever you need.
I've also met many excellent sight-readers who can hear the piece in their head as they look at the score. But I've found some of the latter often don't get the dynamics of a piece despite hearing it - if it isn't written in the score, they don't play it. If you ask them to play the same piece in a different key (to accomodate a singer's range, say), they're helpless. "This is what's on the page, that's what I can play." They know where every joist was installed, but can't tell you what color the kitchen is.
Ear-players are therefore drawn to improvisational music styles such as jazz, rock, and blues, and are more comfortable playing with other musicians since they can adapt to changes quickly. Sight-readers would find the classical world, with the emphasis on perfect reproduction of difficult pieces, more their style. Sight-readers are preferred for rehearsal pianists, because they wouldn't play the same song ten different ways as someone like I would.
Here's an article on improving your sight-reading or ear-playing abilities if you find yourself deficient in one or the other. I read it and laugh - I struggle through reading music every time I have to learn a piece I don't have a recording of, and if my years of classical training haven't kicked in by now, it isn't going to happen to this middle-aged keyboardist. I am truly on the extreme end of the ear-player/sight-reader divide. Author Eileen Duggan agrees that most musicians tend toward one or the other ability.
Update: Lefty Mama provides a great link to an article about "using it or losing it." An ear-playing hobbyist went to music conservatory full-time and found as she developed her sight-reading, the ear-playing vanished.
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Previous Music Room Diaries
#3 - 3/31/07 Perfect and Relative Pitch
#2 - 3/25/07 Music Lessons
#1 - 3/18/07 Jokes & Stories