![]() Everything you hear, including overtones, will affect your interpretation of a piece. And at an advanced level, there are more nuances. In fact, I think better, because you need to hear more simultaneous pitches AND on multiple planes. At that point is it still music? So you can see why the exams test you on aural skill so the pianist should have pitch no less than a violinist. You can even do this with the digital piano's sound turned off. It's easy in the beginning because you just press the key corresponding to the dot on the page. I've heard it said the piano is the easiest to learn in the beginning, and the hardest to play very well. If you are performing and you suddenly "forget", you can still fake it by playing through based on sound. You can rely on that memory to play pieces you learned last year. Luckily most people have great long term memory of sound and can hum a familiar tune heard many years ago. You don't need to keep repeating to get muscle memory (which is quickly lost), so you can spend your practice time working on other stuff. You can memorize pieces easier and retain it longer. Your hand reaches for the width representing the interval you hear. Once you are familiar with the melody and the chords, you don't need to look at anything at all. When your (acoustic) piano is out of tune, you know it. As someone who has some aural skills, I cannot imagine playing any instrument without it. So my piano teacher didn't continue more with that. Also I could sightsing from childhood choir training. My current teacher tested my ear training from day 1, but she then realized I already play the violin and have pitch. Without an inner ear, a pianist will not be able to play a country song with ensemble. Initial abilities are required to start doing something and then develop them as much as possible. "Why is it important to be well-rounded?" " Sorry, but you cannot become a basketball player - you do not have one eye and several fingers on one hand!" Imagine a situation when someone really wants to become a basketball player, but he has a problem: his right eye and a few fingers on his left hand are missing. ![]() *Which is kicking the can down the road-why is it important to be well-rounded? Maybe the answer is that it makes you a more well-rounded musician.* Just like knowing how to solve a quadratic equation might not be useful for me at this point in my life, but knowing how it's done informs my understanding of certain things in the physical world. If you're going to compose or improvise, yes, it would be important to be able to instantly move back and forth between something you hear to something you play on an instrument, and between what you play and what you hear and store away in memory. I had three semesters of ear training, and I still suck at it. LOL, if you're good at it, it's important if you're not, then what's the point. This to me is even more difficult than writing down what someone is playing, because I am truly bad at singing. I forgot to mention also that at our universities/conservatories, another mandatory test/task is to sing an unknown melody from a manuscript (solfege at its best !), regardless if you're in to learn piano, trumpet or percussion. Or if ever while walking in the woods you suddenly hear a great melody in your head that could become a good composition. How will you remember it if you can't figure out what's played. Same if you go to a concert and hear something unknown that you find remarkable. Certainly not recommended, but it was doable/needed sometimes. A couple of times, I had to listen to such unknown pieces a few hours in the car carrying me to the gig and learning them "by ear" as it was the only way/time before the performance. Sometimes I would be asked to replace someone at the last minute in a band I didn't even know some of the pieces they played. Some decades ago I was available as a pianist/keyboardist for progressive/rock/etc groups doing gigs. It is certainly not needed for many, sure, but could become very useful someday. Yep, as you mention, invaluable for composition, improvisation and more.
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