I've played/learned piano for ~25 years and I've decided that not taking the time to actually sit down and level up my ear training has held me back quite a bit in some ways:
- I can't improvise to save my life
- I can't accompany a melody by ear
- I really struggle to transcribe music
- Sightreading is hard because I don't have a good handle on being able to anticipate harmony
And yet I've had friends who were far less able than me in terms of raw technique be able to play pretty much any pop song on request just from memory - something I've always envied!
Learning a handful of scales got me a long way toward sounding like I was good guitar/music. Then the progressions on top of that allowed me to make songs that sounded like songs.
But just knowing a scale is worthless unless you know the key a song is in, so I can not play with others really.
I've played/learned piano for ~25 years and I've decided that not taking the time to actually sit down and level up my ear training has held me back quite a bit in some ways:
- I can't improvise to save my life
- I can't accompany a melody by ear
- I really struggle to transcribe music
- Sightreading is hard because I don't have a good handle on being able to anticipate harmony
And yet I've had friends who were far less able than me in terms of raw technique be able to play pretty much any pop song on request just from memory - something I've always envied!