When you make up your mind that you are going to figure out how to play a song on the piano, or guitar, or whatever instrument you play, you have already set a goal for yourself.

Another thing you stand to gain when you realize you’ve managed to learn how to play that song,is you feel accomplished. You would feel talented and being successful which is a motivator and intelligent people think this way.

Ultimately you get into the knowledge that you can indeed play music

I notice this with my adult students and my young beginners alike: when someone comes to me with a song that they’ve taught themselves how to play, they’re beaming! They’re excited. They want to learn more.

What it boils down to is this: we’re addicted to success, to experiencing positive feelings such as achievement and pride in ourselves. We feel confident. We are encouraged by this combination of emotions and will generally perform at a higher level, compelling us to learn more on our given instruments.

The student who learns to play by ear first has already made numerous auditory connections that would help him later during his play

Whether they realize it or not, the by-ear students have trained themselves to anticipate song melodies and recognize various structures in musical composition. This makes learning songs much easier.

A student who can walk into a lesson with some background knowledge of how to play will also have an easier time learning to read music.

If you start off with ear training, you can already play a little (or a lot) on your instrument and have some kind of understanding of how the notes and keys work together. Learning to read sheet music becomes a simple matter of labeling the notes on the staff in relation to the location and names of the notes on the instrument so it isn’t as challenging for the self-taught, ear-trained student, as for the student who has to learn it all brand-new and at once.

Spend some time on 4 chords keyboard practice (or playing 3 chord guitar songs) and when you come to reading sheet music you’ll find it has far more meaning than if you didn’t understand those popular chord progressions: you’ll immediately know why each chord follows the last one.

Practice playing broken chords by ear and all those notes on the staff won’t just seem random – you’ll see them as the chord arpeggios they are.

Do scale ear training to appreciate the sounds of scale degrees and use them in your improvisation or solos, and you’ll see a meaningful context around the notes on the page.

Students who develop their play-by-ear skills will enter formal training ahead of the game.