5/18/2011

You Might Think About Reading Music

By Ray Stanley


There are lots of people who would dearly love to play an instrument. What they may not realize is that even the most experienced musician is not necessarily any good at reading music. Musicians like to use their ears and listen to something to figure out how it goes, so this is probably to be expected.

You can listen to a piece of a song over and over again while you pick the notes out on a guitar or piano, and this can work well if the progression is simple or the melody is plain. If the piece is significantly complex or sophisticated, this becomes a lot harder, if not impossible. It is much easier to figure out how to play a campfire song on a guitar than it is to learn a song in the Spanish classical style, for example.

You can save a lot of effort, time, and frustration if you are able to sight read. Think of it like words on a brochure. You can process notation in exactly the same way as you do letters and numbers, if you are trained.

It doesn't matter if all you can understand at first is the tempo or the basic chord structure. With training you will learn to be as fluent in notation as you are with the English language. And the best part is that any education at all will have immediate effects.

If you do not yet play an instrument, you can make the entire learning process easier if you start to acquire this skill from the beginning. Take these elements of your lessons seriously. They seem boring, but theory and the ability to think in notation is very important.

Many people are self taught musicians, and even famous rock stars aren't proficient at reading music. But if you are able to sight read then you will be able to make a decent attempt to play anything you have the notation for.




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