When we were young and in school, a lot of the learning we did was rote learning, but then in the eighties and nineties, rote learning was considered antiquated (or at least this was the experience in Australia). It’s funny how things can go in and out of fashion – even in education circles. Now rote learning in Australian schools is back again, as it is seen as a valuable learning tool.
Even though rote learning has never been abandoned by piano teachers, or indeed other instrumental teachers, rote learning has not been acknowledged as an effective way of learning something on the piano. Let’s face it, those of us that learned to play scales when we were young, we always learned them by rote. Yes, it is possible to learn them by reading the musical notation, but in all honesty, I have never met anyone who learned to play scales this way.
It is not just scales that we can learn by rote. Just about anything to do with the piano can be learned by rote.
In my opinion, I think that rote learning is an extremely useful tool, whether you are having formal piano lessons or not. Seeing someone else playing a certain piece or a certain section can explain far more than a simple explanation. Don’t get me wrong – explanations are always important, but seeing how something is done and then imitating it multiple times is really quite an effective strategy of learning to play a piece of music or learn a new technique.
Hearing someone else playing a piece of music can also help in learning to play something new. A long time ago, I used to think that it was a form of cheating but I quickly changed by mind. I think it is very useful to hear something and then try and imitate it as best as possible and then practice it to refine it.
This is where I think YouTube is a wonderful resource, not only because you can find a plethora of videos and video channels that will help you play the piano better, but that you can also find someone playing that piece of music somewhere on YouTube. Sometimes my piano students end up playing something that is really obscure and I have never not found the exact version somewhere on YouTube.
So even though I’m a big advocate of learning to read music, I freely acknowledge that rote learning is certainly an important part of learning to play the piano, whether you learn to read the musical notation or not.