The piano is a beautiful instrument that normally takes years of tedious practice to master. Countless music teachers will spend hours on just teaching you the basics of where to place your fingers on the keys, how to read notes on sheet music, how to play chords and going over the musical piano scale. It can be weeks before you even begin working on a real song.

So, why do some people seek to skip all of that formal training in favor of learning to play piano by ear?

I'll tell you why.

It's because they don't want to spend all that time getting to the good stuff. And, the good stuff is being able to play real songs from memory. I know from personal experience how long it can take to go over all of that basic music theory and practice lessons. I took traditional lessons for several years as a kid, yet, was never taught how to memorize a popular piece of music from just listening to a record or the radio.

And, that's the problem with traditional piano instruction. Most people get really bored long before they've learned enough chords to play their favorite tunes. Even then, you're told to play music from a boring list of songs that you could care less about.

Yet, you can walk into a church on any Sunday morning and find the church pianist happily playing away, even though they've never taken a formal piano lesson in their life. This proves that you don't really need all of the formal training. You simply need to understand how the piano keyboard works, and where to place your fingers to come up with the right notes.

In fact, it can be downright fun to teach yourself to play piano by ear, because you won't have to worry about music theory, or how to tell the difference between a whole note and a half note. All you care about is figuring out how to play the beginning, middle and end to one of your favorite songs. While others are suffering through dull scale practices, you'll be slowly memorizing the melody to a song that you know and love.