Learn By Ear

Music education has often neglected the importance of learning music first by ear before learning to read and write music. This is not the way we learned our native language. We learned to speak words by ear, listening to our parents, repeating the sounds we heard.  As  our mother tongue fluency developed, words became phrases and so on until we were able to not only repeat what we heard others say but actually be creative participants in conversation even if it came out like toddler talk. Prioritizing learning music by ear is an important part of each music student's musical childhood. There is plenty of time later to develop music reading and writing skills.