Enhance Your Musicianship By Learning To Read Music
The most enjoyable thing to do when playing piano is to pull up the piano bench, stretch out the limbs and rip out a song you’ve previously learned, or a solo piece you’re experienced with. What’s not so much fun is staying on piano benches trying to learn what all the squiggles and dots of music notation mean, and trying to understand them as fast as possible. Often the music you’re trying to study will be thrown into a sheet music cabinet, not to be considered until motivation happens to come again. Is practicing reading notation all that important? Wouldn’t it just be superior to focus on the aspects of playing that is fun and simple?
The answer to that is a definite “No”. In order to become a well-rounded musician, the difficult aspects of music will have to be studied along with the fun parts. But in stating that, I’m misrepresenting the actuality of studying music. The fact is that all aspects of musical study can be fun, and as you grow more and more skilled in reading music notation, you’ll notice yourself enjoying the experience.
The basics of reading music are pretty elementary. The difficulty, of course, is learning to understand these symbols well enough so that it becomes second nature.
If you’ve decided to start practicing to read notation, make sure that you do it consistently. Don’t just shove in as much study as you can while your motivated and then forget about it until the desire to learn again comes back. It’s better to practice reading notation for ten minutes every day than to practice for a full hour every six days. You want the definitions of symbols to stick in your head the same way writing does.
Notice for a moment how easy it is for you to understand everything I’m writing here. If you’ve ever tried learning a language with a unique set of letters, you’ll know just how hard it can be to get into your head what those squiggly lines mean. But when you consider reading English, we don’t think of squiggly lines or even single letters, the words just come out at us with seemingly little effort from our mind.
The same is possible| to have with reading music notation, and it’s referred to as sight-reading. Sight-reading is only achieved with the classic method of practice, practice, practice.
Remember, when you find something in music that’s hard to learn, that’s a good thing. The harder something is for you to do, the more your mind will benefit from tackling the problem straight on. Some players focus on repeating solo pieces they know well and can play fast, while some are always searching for what they don’t know, for things they can do better. This is what separates a good musician from all the rest.
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