Ideally, either way—both ways.

At first, because I couldn't read the dots, I had to learn songs by ear. I either had to hear someone else sing it, or I had to learn it from a record. But I had a stack of books by the Lomaxes, by Carl Sandburg, and by a bunch of others folks. If I'd heard a song a few times and got the tune in my ear, I might be able to get the words from one of my books—provided it was the same version—but there were hundreds of other songs in these books that I had no access to because I couldn't read the bloody dots! There it was, right in front of me and I couldn't get at it!

So I taught myself to read music. It isn't that difficult.

And I don't think anyone can tell by listening to the way I sing a song whether I learned it from a live singer, a record, or by reading the dots in a song book.

I do know people who have had music lessons, usually piano, who can read music quite well, but who are totally lost without it. I think a lot of this is the teacher's fault. It's fine for a teacher to insist that the student play the notes as written, first to get the exercise or the piece right, and secondly, to hone their reading skills. But as long as the student does that okay, I think it's a horrible mistake for the teacher to discourage a student from spending some time just messing around on the instrument, or to forbid it altogether. Pete Seeger is right. One of the ways to learn the capabilities of a musical instrument, and oneself—and this includes students who aspire to play classical music—is to "goof off:"   Play around. Experiment. Find out what you and the instrument can do.

But sometimes a person who learned to play by the notes, whether they had a hard-nosed teacher or not, comes unglued if you take the written music away from them because they're afraid they might make a mistake! That's a whole other problem; it's them, not the way they were taught. You have to try to convince them that, so what if they do play a real clanker? Or start out by fumbling a lot? It's not the end of the world. As long as they're not doing it in front of a capacity crowd in Carnegie Hall or Covent Garden, their goofs are not going to be written up in the papers by music reviewers. Nobody is going to point at them and laugh (well, maybe not).

I'd say, if you play strictly by ear and can't read music, you're limiting yourself badly. But if you have to have the music to be able to play, you're limiting yourself just as much. Put the music aside, listen to a record, or play something in your head, and then try to play it on the instrument. It's like shooting from the hip. At first, you miss a lot, but the more you do it, the more accurate you get.

Don Firth