Playing By Ear - A gimmick or just back to basics?

Music as part of our human heritage has been around longer than any written symbol or character. Every culture from the dawn of time has had music and sound as an essential ingredient in their ethnicity and custom be it for religious or social purposes. Thus music came to be as people regarded it as their own unique identity and way of life. Just listen to music from different parts of the world and th«r origin can be easily discerned by the melody, rhythm and instrumentation.

It is then only logical to conclude that as music is played even in the most illiterates and backward of cultures that written symbol has had little or no influence in the learning and playing of music up till the introduction of music of notation. So, playing by ear is basically a turn back to the original way that music was learned and taught.

Though it is accepted that notation based music was designed to ensure every musical piece is lovingly maintained to every last mote and beat, it is exactly the reason why learned by such s method curtails freedom of expression and creativity! The learner and player is required to reproduce each musical work to the letter or rather, note and there-fore  ensuring that any student may sound exactly alike when they are required to play the same piece of music. This then makes it easier to formalize the syllabus because the 'answers" are identical!

However, the restrictions imposed by the conventional method are currently deemed too restrictive and contributes to the loss of musicality and the freedom of improvising. Instead of nurturing individuality, n nurtures conformity and thus creating clones of what can be referred to as "playback machines" who sounds just like the next person.

It is not surprising then that those who have succeeded in breaking away from these bonds and then embracing freedom of creativity and expression has made it BIG in the world music scene. Think the Beatles and Eric Clapton, who were "play by ear" musicians from the onset to Elton John, a classically trained piano player who is now a legend in his own time.

Going back to basics could be just the remedy that is needed to stop the loss of our musical heritage as the freedom would be a more acceptable option to the tedious and restrictive approach being adopted currently that is killing off the "joy" that is supposed to be part and parcel of music!

As the world advances so quickly sometimes it is unfortunate that we tend to forget our origin and thus losing the exact nature of who and what we are - individuals with our  unique personality and ethnicity. Our music should then be allowed to let these traits shine through and not just be a faceless piece of work that sound's exactly like something by another person on the other side of the world!