# Sheng Yuan of the Central Conservatory of Music's Piano Department: Reading Music Before Listening to the Piano, Most Young Piano Students Have the Order Backwards

Many families with children learning piano have encountered these problems: a child is enthusiastic before starting lessons but wants to quit after a few months; practice happens only when a parent keeps watch; or a child develops finger technique but plays pieces with no expression.

Pianist Sheng Yuan, of the Central Conservatory of Music's Piano Department, discussed this issue on *What Music Tells You*, a program on CCTV's music channel. In his view, these problems share a common cause: children are learning piano in the wrong order.

## Learning Music Is Like Learning to Speak

He compares learning music with learning a language. Children first listen, then begin imitating speech after a year or two. As they imitate, they start putting sentences together. Only afterward do they learn to recognize characters and read, and finally to write. No family teaches a child to recognize written characters before teaching them to speak.

Yet piano learning often follows the opposite sequence. The first lesson covers hand position, followed by the musical staff, note names, solfège syllables, and rhythm—all things at the "reading" and "writing" end of the process. Sheng's words, as quoted in the original article, are: "Nor should we immediately get into the question of hand position. The correct sequence for learning music should be the same as listening, speaking, reading, and writing." Ask a five-year-old to read music before they have listened enough, and rote memorization is all they have to work with. Even if they memorize the notes, their playing lacks expression because they do not yet have the sound in their mind.

## The Sequence He Recommends

Listen first. Give children a home filled with music—classical, pop, or traditional music are all welcome. As he puts it, "Any kind of music is fine." Listening is a lifelong activity, and it is also where learning begins.

Then imitate. The teacher plays a phrase, and the child plays it back, relying on their ears rather than the score. His advice at this stage is not to rush to correct hand position or music reading. Playing something incorrectly is still part of learning, just as children make mistakes when learning to speak and, in his analogy, naturally get things right as they grow.

Only then comes reading music. There is a time gap between listening and speaking, on the one hand, and reading and writing, on the other. Reading music develops slowly; do not let it hold back a child's listening and playing. Music theory can come later still, once the child has gained some practical playing experience.

![A child listens to the piano with eyes closed, with the score closed beside them](https://static.lianmuse.com/image/blog/27b6eda359ce7a5880c39599d63193e4.jpg)

## Can Families Put the Sequence Back in Order?

Children who have already started lessons do not need to start over. But they can follow this sequence with each new piece: listen first, play once it sounds familiar, and leave reading the score until last.

With a new piece, the first thing a parent should do is not open the score but have the child listen to it three times—a teacher's demonstration or a recording will do. The original Chinese article describes the Wonder Piano experience in China at the time of publication: every piece in its music library could be previewed by listening before moving on to the first short section. Placing listening before practice, the article explains, follows the same principle.

![Headphones and a score book arranged in order on a table, with piano keys visible beside them](https://static.lianmuse.com/image/blog/922cda3db48bbd2ad9550bcc97d05c83.jpg)

The article's point is that once children have the piece in their ears, the black dots on the page have something to connect to. With the sequence in place, it argues, hand position and music reading will develop faster because children know what sound they want to produce.

What did your child learn in their very first piano lesson?

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Wonder Piano provides AI-assisted support for piano practice at home. Here, we write about practice methods and the difficulties families encounter when putting those methods into practice.

[Original Chinese article](http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=Mzk2NDI0NTYzOQ==&mid=2247488445&idx=1&sn=019dfbb9d7ddb1180f8143e7ace09b53&chksm=c4773255f300bb43464c8f903eadf71f2a07d3730ac567e36a211df1599a386e89c451d4efd1#rd)