Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Veggie Dave" data-source="post: 348883" data-attributes="member: 4016">As someone who started playing sax with no reading ability who now does read, I have to say that there&#039;s reading music and there&#039;s reading music - both of which really do help in your playing.I don&#039;t think you need to be able to read to play an instrument to a high standard, but you need to know your theory, whether you use the same words as &#039;trained&#039; musicians or not. However, I think too many people are put off reading because they think you have to be able to see a series of notes and be able to play the exact rhythm perfectly purely from the dots.You don&#039;t.If you&#039;re playing for pleasure then you&#039;re going to be playing songs written by other people. And those songs will have already been recorded. And that means the only thing you need to know from the sheet music is what notes to play - the recording will tell you how they&#039;re supposed to be played.Eventually you&#039;ll also start to recognise written rhythms but at the moment stop putting so much pressure on yourself because it&#039;s a waste of time - someone else has already done the hard work when they recorded the song originally, you just need to know which notes to use and then copy everything else.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Veggie Dave, post: 348883, member: 4016"] As someone who started playing sax with no reading ability who now does read, I have to say that there's reading music and there's reading music - both of which really do help in your playing. I don't think you need to be able to read to play an instrument to a high standard, but you need to know your theory, whether you use the same words as 'trained' musicians or not. However, I think too many people are put off reading because they think you have to be able to see a series of notes and be able to play the exact rhythm perfectly purely from the dots. You don't. If you're playing for pleasure then you're going to be playing songs written by other people. And those songs will have already been recorded. And that means the only thing you need to know from the sheet music is what notes to play - the recording will tell you how they're supposed to be played. Eventually you'll also start to recognise written rhythms but at the moment stop putting so much pressure on yourself because it's a waste of time - someone else has already done the hard work when they recorded the song originally, you just need to know which notes to use and then copy everything else. [/QUOTE]

Verification