Playing it by ear

I live life the same way I play music. The same way I write, learn a language and perceive beauty.

Jul 24, 2025

The other day at work my colleague was emailing a donor about catching up when she suddenly stopped and asked no-one in particular: “‘Let’s play it by ear.’ Is that right? Is that what we say?”

It’s an idiom I’d never given much thought to either. But that mundane moment in the middle of the work day got me thinking. I’ve rolled it around in my mind, tasting it like a new yet familiar ice cream flavour at Messina.

Play it by ear.

I like it. It’s a phrase that says a lot about how I operate.

Music by ear

The phrase playing it by ear comes, of course, from music. I can read a little music, but slowly and painfully. It feels like pulling greys. So by “read”, what I actually mean is that I decipher each notes then scribble the corresponding letter between C and B next to it. Then, by reading the letters rather than the notes, I play the piece on loop until I’ve built some muscle memory.

There is a handful of sheet music I’m challenging myself to learn to sight read, as they say. But mostly I just play chords on guitar and piano, making it up as I go, playing it by ear. My sister is better at this than I am, and little Zoe Erianna was better at 7 years old than most of us can ever train to be.

Writing by ear

In writing I play it by ear too. When I put words together to construct sentences, I’m always thinking about:

Alliteration and assonance
Creating rhythm by varying sentence length, and phrases within sentences
Not starting consecutive sentences with the same word or syntax

Because I am an intuitive writer, this happens subconsciously. A rhythm forms within the natural flow of finding words in my mind and putting them down on the page. But I’m intentional about this in the edit: I’ll have my ears open to detect jarring words and awkward phrasing (and typos).

One writing tip I’ve seen around the traps is to edit by reading your piece out loud. This is good advice. Writing should move like music and I really believe we use our ears when we read, even when it’s our inner narrator and not an audiobook narrator doing the reading.

Languages by ear

I rely more on my ears for language learning than I realised.

I always thought I was a textual learner, that I needed to see things written down to learn it. I remember names I can spell but struggle with those I can’t. I believed this was the reason I found Spanish easier than Mandarin. (The truth is Spanish is just easier than Mandarin, at least for English speakers.)

But in the last year-and-a-half of learning Japanese and Arabic on Duolingo, I’ve discovered that while I’m faster at reading the romanised words than the hiragana, katakana or Arabic script, I’m actually learning more than I thought I was by hearing and recognising the sounds of the words in a sentence. For comprehension and translation exercises, I often end up listening to the audio rather than reading the text.

You can complete the question by reading the Arabic script yourself or by listening to someone read it.

Beauty by ear

Beyond enjoying music (most people do) I experience beauty through my ears. I have pretty sensitive ears despite doing fine living next to a noisy train line for three years. I’m not just talking about loud sounds or bum notes.

A person’s voice is a significant factor in whether I find them attractive or not. This goes for men and for women, for speaking voices and singing voices.

For a whole week I had to stop using the Lectio 365 audio devotional — which has been part of my daily morning routine since COVID — for no other reason than the voice of the lady doing the Bible reading portions that week. Her breathy enunciation drove me so bonkers I couldn’t focus on the Scripture at all. (The Kiwi accent didn’t help – I find it cute-ish in general but always distracting because it’s like the Australian accent but off-key. Ironically this makes it feel more wrong to me than any other accent in the world).

My own voice isn’t one of the things I’m most proud of. The bizarrest and best compliment I’ve ever received was an Ecuadorian taxi driver asking if I worked in radio because I had the voice for it. It was a massive confidence boost even if he was a total outlier.

Living life by ear

In the metaphorical sense, I’ve pretty much played my entire life by ear. I don’t love planning ahead and certainly not in any detail – I far prefer to reflect after the fact than angst or anticipate beforehand.

When I was kid, I never had an aspiration for what I “wanted to be” when I grew up. After six years at university, I still didn’t really have a sense of career, let alone vocation. I would spend my entire twenties exploring, feeling things out, figuring myself out.

Playing it by ear.

a woman holding a map in a field — Less of a map girl … *Photo by Peyman Shojaei on Unsplash*.

person holding black round container — … more of a compass girl. *Photo by Ali Kazal on Unsplash.*

Paradoxically, not knowing was empowering for me. Freeing. In many ways I felt the most “agentic” (to use the fashionable parlance) and intentional when I moved to rural Ecuador on a one-way ticket. When I didn’t have a clue where I was going with my life or career.

For the first time since I was 5 years old, I was free of studying. I was consciously rejecting (or just delaying?) the well-worn post-uni path of a desk job, mortgage and marriage.

I was exploring, and that was exciting, energising.

I have no regrets about taking my time to figure things out. For all the occasional moments of comparison, I’m okay with not winning any 30 Under 30 awards. There were no time signatures, notes or rests on the page for me to perfect.

Improv all the way

Things are more settled for me these days. Sometimes I wonder if my twenties were just a giant detour and I’ve joined that well-worn path after all – late, as per usual. I figured out a career. I found a life partner. I’ve forgone living abroad.

But I still don’t have any sheet music in front of me. I still don’t know what next year will look like, much less the year after. I may have more commitments than I used to, but I’m still ad libbing.

I’d hate for life to be a composition to follow to the letter, with perfection as the goal. I am not an orchestra girl. Let life be improv jazz.

Let there be surprises, twists to adapt to, other people and the harmonies they bring. Let there be a bum note or two that we can laugh at and move on from. Let there be discovery, together.

I want to keep my ears open to inspiration, to nuance, to the hearts of the humans around me. Playing it by ear is the only way I know how to live.

🧡 suansita k.

PS: Oh and here’s Zoë Erianna naming notes in complex chords by ear.