Why Learn to Read Music?
1. Patterns of Learning
Over the past several years, I have made many videos on reading sheet music, learning to sight-read, and the difficulties I and many others have faced when learning to read. Yet, one of the most frequent comments on these videos is the question: “Do I really need to learn to read music?”
There are many different methods for learning the piano, and those that are learning the piano for fun with the hopes of being able to play some simple pop songs may be quick to assume that there is no need to learn to read music. Whereas those that want to learn more methodically might assume that you need to learn to read music.
There is no doubt that for some people, their goals might not require them to learn to read. However, this is likely a very small percentage of learners. Music reading isn’t just a way to learn classical pieces of music; it is a way of translating music from person to person in a detailed way. This means that anything that you might want to learn can be seen and demonstrated in a piece of sheet music.
Let’s take chords for example. In order to play a pop song on the piano, we can, of course, learn how to make the chords, find them on the piano, and play them. You can also learn to voice these chords in different ways by watching a video, asking a teacher, or finding different ways to play the chords yourself. However, if you can read sheet music, you can see these chords played in endless interesting ways in lots of different songs and pieces written by thousands of musicians. This means that you learn a lot more about music by being able to read sheet music.
It’s a little like trying to learn about Ancient Rome by asking one local history teacher and going to look at Rome yourself without reading any of the signs. While you would learn some useful information using this method, your information is from 2 perspectives: the teachers and your own. You would learn a lot more information by reading books, articles, signs and other content that gave you a much more varied and wider picture of what it was like at the time of the Ancient Romans!
2. The Details
When learning particular techniques and pieces of music, a performance of a piece of music that is learned by sheet music is almost always going to be more detailed. The reason for this is that you can see and recreate all of the details that are written down.
If a student comes to me having learned a piece like Clair de Lune (for example) from YouTube, I can immediately tell! The reason is that there will be a lot of information missing. The dynamics are likely to be missing and the way that the chords and melodies are shaped will be different to what is shown in the sheet music.
Reading the sheet music allows us to find and recreate a much more detailed version of the music and analyse what it is exactly that we are supposed to be conveying. It also helps us in a much more practical sense when we see details such as the fingers that are best to use.
3. A Backup
Depending on the song or piece of music that you are learning, the amount of chords, notes, and sections within the music will vary. However, using any other method of learning requires you to rely solely on your memory (which can be unreliable). Let’s say you learn a song by watching a YouTube video or by listening to it and working it out. In either of these situations, you ultimately have the music stored in one place, your memory!
Learning to read sheet music gives you a real-time backup for those occasions where your memory fails you. Imagine doing a performance of a song and you can’t quite remember which chord you’re supposed to play in the bridge or you can’t remember one section of a piece of music you’ve spent months learning. Well, reading sheet music prevents a performance falling apart because of your memory. It allows you to double-check everything you are playing in real-time.
Ultimately, for the casual learner that wants to learn to play the piano for fun, you may not want or need to learn to read sheet music. However, if you want to see how thousands of musicians use music concepts, you want to play detailed pieces of music, or you want to make sure that your memory isn’t a limiting factor for you, then learning to read sheet music is a good idea!
Matthew Cawood
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