Talented Children

[Angela Bowles]

How do you deal with a child that has talent to play by ear, and therefore does not pay attention to a new piece of music, but rather tries to figure it out according to how he has heard it in times past. I have a very talented young man… about eleven years old, and he can play just about any tune that he has heard before without any music in front of him. It takes him awhile to figure it out, but he gets it eventually. When he reads music from his lesson books, he does fine; but, when I give him sheet music to a familiar song, it’s like he doesn’t know a thing about reading music, and he reverts to “playing by ear”. I went through ‘The Entertainer” with him yesterday note by note and it took almost the whole lesson to get through just the right hand on just a few lines of the music… and it’s written for Level 3 piano students… so, it’s not that difficult. I know he was getting frustrated, but it was like he would just look at the music and not get anywhere close to what it should have been. He was going on what he thought it should sound like. I don’t want to discourage him, but I want him to learn to read music correctly. I would appreciate any feedback that you have in respect to this area! Is there any way to fix this problem in children?