Aural Skills Quotes

I could never overstate the importance of a musician's need to develop his or her ear. Actually, I believe that developing a good 'inner ear' - the art of being able to decipher musical components solely through listening - is the most important element in becoming a good musician.

I play piano, by ear. Yes, I write songs... and good ones.

When I was 4 years old my mother put me into an early music education school. That's where they taught you perfect pitch and harmony and how to write music and all that. At that time, one of the homeworks was to listen to all the sounds and the noise of a day and transfer that into musical notes.

It's easy to get next to music theory, especially between your peers and music classes and so forth. You just pay attention. I had a good ear, so I realized that printed music was just about reminding you what to play.

I was trained completely by ear. And it was actually diving into the Bach that led me to get - there was like a Mel Bay "Teach Yourself How To Sight Read..."

I was improvising before I was reading music. I was just trying to play things on the clarinet by ear. I think my ear is one of my greatest assets.

I've got a pretty good musical ear, and I can pick things up.

Reading and writing music is a wonderful way of getting ideas in your head down to someone else who reads and writes, but if you don't read and write, and the other musician you're playing with are trying to express something who doesn't read and write, than it's a question of "I wrote" so that you must learn from listening and from understanding where that's coming from.

I learned when I started to study piano that I could play by ear. I could hear a song on the radio a couple of times and hear the song and the lyrics and sing it for you after a couple of plays.

My dad noticed some kind of talent on piano when he asked me to play a couple random songs on piano when I was 6 and I just did it. I attempted lessons but I was just so bad at reading notes. I would read "Three Blind Mice" by ear, so learning notes was almost impossible.

I never took sheet music seriously. I could do better myself just by listening to other people and using my own intuition.

I wasn't the best student, and for some reason, I always got music. While other people were having trouble figuring out notes on a page, I could listen to it once and play it back.

I can't read notes well, but I can hear something and sing a harmony to it automatically.

When I was in college and reading music and doing ear training, I was a little more advanced than the other people in my choir classes. So to entertain myself and kind of annoy the friends around me, I would sing just under the pitch or just above the pitch.

I began making music at the age of four. According to my mother, once I just sat down at the piano and played back a tune by ear. My parents were watching and said to each other, 'Maybe we should give him music lessons.'

I grew up with hearing, so I have a really good understanding of music theory and the structure of music.

I don't read music or anything, so when I produce, I go basically by ear.

I play by ear - I'm self-taught. And so everything I do is through that technique.

The only thing you really have to practice is your ability. And this is something I do all the time. I try to teach my hand to do what I'm hearing in my head at any given second. I don't sit around and practice scales. I sit around and just try to make sure my hands are following what's coming to me.

When I was first aware that I couldn't read music I didn't know I couldn't read because I could play the music that was in front of me.

When I'm scoring something like a string quartet, it's all notated music, so it's meticulously written in the score, which is very different than doing things by ear.