It is a tendency of many musicians to just start with the technical aspects of the instrument. Scales, finger studies, chord voicings, or embouchure methods. The idea is that once the physical aspect of making music is mastered then the expressive playing will come. This is the opposite of the truth. The technical playing is worthless without the ears to guide it. Once your ears are fully educated to hearing and feeling the music, then the technical aspect of playing comes quickly and naturally.
The ear tells you what is correct. If you teach someone how to recognize an interval, to understand the resolution of the dominant chord, to understand the different characters of the minor second and major seventh, then the body will learn it, almost by default. If you don’t have this, it will take several years to correct the physical action that the person had been practicing without the ear’s input. A violin student who is not yet able to tell that a note is flat will practice it flat until the ear corrects it, and undo months of practice. This way, the technique will always correct the musicality, rather than being in opposition to it.
Not only does this process speed up learning, but it cuts down on stress and helps to make practice fun. A person who can already imagine how a line should sound will experience the thrill of triumph when they actually produce it. The ears help to guide the player throughout their practice session, without the use of metronome or tuner. Not only will they show whether a note was in tune, but whether it was played with feeling, whether the melody soared, whether the chords moved. A student who uses their ears in this way will know what it means to practice as a dialogue with the music, not as a drill to be suffered through.
Another benefit is that ear training allows you to be independent. When you can really hear the music, you can pick up tunes on your own, transpose music on the fly, improvise freely and play with expression, without having to read music to get there. You learn to hear music in your head and reproduce it on your instrument. It’s this ability to hear your music inside that makes the difference between playing notes and being a musical artist. Technical skill without ear training results in good players. Ear training even without great technical skill results in musical people with powerful voices.
Ultimately, putting ear development first is not a detour; it is the shortest, safest, most dependable way to true musicianship. With the ear as guide, the body is only too happy to accompany, technique serves up instead of dominating, and music ceases to be something to be learned and begins to be something to be lived. Whoever lays the foundation of his or her musical home on the solid rock of hear-first almost never complains about the wait; they just cannot understand why anyone would dream of building any other way.