The best way is by ear, as long as it is sophisticated enough to handle ANYTHING you throw at it. The trick here is, unlike what some are saying, it is NOT a gift, but something that can be taught and trained... While I was at music college, the first 30 minutes of every single day there was spent doing aural exercises. No pen, no paper, no nothing, Interval recognition, chord recognition, melody repetition, singing back what one heard, interval singing... These kinds of things can be vastly improved by practice.

Yes, I had a fairly decent ear going in to college (had some of this while I was at high school, and some of it WAS innate), but those years of sharpening my ear up first thing in the morning, I honestly believe, were possibly the MOST useful thing I ever got from attending college (this was an all classical college, no jazz or pop curriculum, so only technique really was useful when I went off to make a living playing popular music).

Reading is a double edged sword, particularly in pop music. If you want to be a session player, or work in larger, more formal outfits (pit orchestras, bigband, show backing, etc.), you MUST read, but the worst thing is if you ONLY read. Written music is only a GUIDE to playing well. It cannot truly tell you how to play something, it is just a shorthand for the notes and approximate timing and feel, that YOU have to interpret and make better. If you play any pop sheet or chart EXACTLY as written, it will be horrible

So, unless you CAN play by ear as well, knowing charts only gets you half way (barely!) there...

Trust me on this one, guys. If you can't play by ear, and resort to rote charts to get you through, don't give up. You CAN develop the skill of playing by ear. BUT.... it takes time. Just as you spent YEARS learning to play the piano well, it takes a long time (depending on how hard you practice) to train your ears up as well. But the rewards are MORE than worth the effort. You weren't born a great player. You had to work many years to get where you are. Put that kind of time into ear training (and it will pay off from day one) and after a while, you won't need your charts at all.

But at least you'll be able to read them when you DO need them...

Here is Tom River's introduction to the Nashville Number System. http://gospelmusic.org.uk/resources/nashville_numbering.htm

He doesn't mention minors, Augs, Dims and such, but you can add those designations to the numbers.

Eddie

Started off as an "ear only" player, but needed to sight read when I worked as a staff session player.

Diki is right...both skills are needed, but it's easy to rely on charts. The hardest thing to do for me is throw away the "crutch".

I have some old yellow cards on my piano. They are songs I never learned to play from memory.

I'll never learn them until I either throw away the card or it simply dissolves from old age. Some are old enough to be written on parchment or tree bark!


Russ

[This message has been edited by captain Russ (edited 06-25-2009).]

I'm with Diki here, you can train your ears.

I've been playing by ear for as long as I can remember, but also had classical training from 7 to 20. What I found was, despite thinking I'd got quite a good ear, I couldn't "hear" anything too distant from classical chord structures. I could tell that my version of a chord was different but couldn't work out what the difference actually was.

However, playing with a band who had good transcriptions of "modern" pop and light jazz numbers (we are talking early 80's here) introduced me to the wonders of diminished, 9ths, 11th, etc with added extras and bass notes that sometimes seem random. After sight reading such things for a few months I discovered I could hear them as well.

I think I'm really an ear player with adequate for most things sight reading capability. If I'm reading something that gets beyond my technique I start to play the tune as my ears remember it whilst checking as I go along that I'm not deviating grossly from the notes that I should really be playing. I find most singers will forgive small excursions in notes so long as you keep the feel and get any hits and suchlike exactly in the right places.

I'm completely by ear. Though I am very familiar with how printed music works.
When I was in school, I learned braill music, but what a complete pain. Especially for me, who has perfect pitch and a good ear. The problem with braille music is that it has to be memorized first anyway, unless I could learn to read with the tip of my nose or something as my hands were on the instrument. So, if it needs to be memorized anyway, in my case it was much easier to learn by ear.

Another of my teachers, wanting to make sure I understood how music worked, insisted upon dictating my music to me on a tape, rather than playing the part. It would go something like this:
"first measure, quarter G, second line, Tied 8ths' F first space E first line," etc etc. Talk about a long and tedious way to learn a tenor sax part for band class.

Now that I'm in Nashville, I have a good head understanding of numbers, so I can talk the same language as the other people I work with. My only problem is a minor song. I'm used to the root of the song being 1, period. So when a song is in G minor, all the Nashville guys think of that as 6 minor of B-flat. Whoever heard of a song being in the key of 6? So 2-5-1 into G minor is actually a 7-3-6. That's just wrong.

I do all three. I never play in public with music in front of me. Eye contact with the audience is imperative to what I do. I learned to play first by ear. I picked up the reading because of my church work. I also studied music in college. I can play pretty much anything I hear. However, I will sometimes check out the chart for the correct changes and voicings.

Joe

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Songman55
Joe Ayala

Wow! Great topic ... actualy discussing music rather than the next best arranger!!!
Question for all. When the "Chart" calls for a 13th do you play it with your left hand (I'm talking arranger now) or will you simply play a 7th and embelish with your right hand???
I learned to read early on and fare quite well. Even at the age of 58 would like to work on playing better by ear!!! I feel it is absolutly essential to have the ability to play by ear and I do not do it well.