Keyboards Reading music is so easy...

[Tenor Viol]

@Colin the Bear yes the main issue is time plus some tuition for technique issues. Tuning is same as double bass ie violin backwards!

 

[MandyH]

I have been playing sax for 9 years and piano for 18 months.
Give me any piece of sax music and I wouldn't bat an eye-lid. Maybe not perfect first time, but it wouldn't take me much time to get it "reasonable".

Piano is (for me) a completely different ball-game.

Firstly, I would definitely recommend having lessons. I started by teaching myself, with a good adult tutor book.
After about 3 months, I realised I needed help!

My piano teacher has been working through very methodically - he knows how able I am at playing sax, I have played sax with his male-voice choir in a concert.

By working through methodically, I have learned - to recognise the position of each note on the piano (at first I had to keep referring back to C and working out where the next note was); to recognise the position of each note on the Bass clef (at first, everything was counted up or down from the F line, as that was all I knew).
In the early days, piano lessons are based on 5 fingers, 5 notes - you never move your hands; then as lessons progress, you might move your hands once and stay there (from C position, to F position, say)
Then the lessons introduced stretching - so instead of 5 fingers, 5 notes, you stretch to 6 notes. etc.

With this methodical approach, you improve and learn. It all takes time. However, after 18 months, I might pass grade 1 piano, but I already had passed my grade 4 sax at 18 months!

Also, I went to a Masterclass with Rob Buckland recently - he made a comment about Synapses and the Myelin sheath. I know nothing about biology or neurology, so I have to believe what he said (the only reason I knew about the Myelin Sheath is because my sister has MS!) Anyway, he said that as you learn a new skill, you create a new synapse. As the message goes from your eyes to your brain to your hand/arm muscles, a new synapse is created. Every time you repeat that same skill, Myelin sheath develops around the synapse, the more times you repeat the skill, the more myelin develops and the faster the reaction moves through the synapse. Focussed practice improves your skills.
If you have learnt to do something, but you have learnt it incorrectly, you need to develop the skill anew, and develop a new synapse, and as you repeat that skill correctly, the myelin reduces on the "incorrect" synapse and increases on the "correct" synapse. Only when the myelin of the correct synapse is greater than the myelin of the incorrect synapse have you converted you automatic response to the correct one.

No idea if any of that is true, but it made sense to me, even if the neurological argument is a bit dodgy!

 

[Moz]

The myelin sheath is formed around the axon which a part of a neuron. The synapse allows the neuron to communicate with another neuron via it's dendrite(s). The synapse is central to the use of SSRI's -- selective seratonin re-uptake inhibitors -- that help with depression as seratonin is a neurotransmitter that can promote good feelings and an SSRI restricts the amount of seratonin that is re-absorbed after use [in enabling the synaptic connection] thereby increasing the amount of 'happiness' a person feels.

I think your teacher was on to the right thing regarding repeitition but that repetition increases the connections [dendrites] that a neuron makes to other neurons.

I apologise for being such a pedant, it's the way my neurons work.