Reading music

[tr4252]

It helps to avoid bad habits. From the sound of your post you're already a player. That means you've probably either learned what you know by ear, or maybe had somebody show you. In your practicing, think of the names of the notes you're playing as you play them, whether or not you have to stop or slow down to accomplish it. You're learning the apphabet, not writing a paper on astrophysics. Just focus on learning the note names. Practice that until you are fluent up to the 7th fret or so. Then study some sheet music until you can identify those notes on a regular musical staff.

At that point you will be able to jot down whatever you can play, albeit without the benefit of key signatures, rests, time signatures, note durations, etc. Learn about those as you go. One good course in theory would get you to that point and beyond, and save you a lot of time. I learned it in high school.

A thing that helps in sight reading is getting to know what intervals sound like. 3rds, 5ths, etc. should be so familiar you can hear them in your head (I still use an old Link Wray tune to mentally visualize a 4th interval).

One more trade secret. Find a way to make it fun to do.

Good luck.

Tom

 

[BigJohnAZ]

I'm a crappy reader because I put some effort in, get better, then get distracted by life or whatever, and lose any gains made.

Now, when I was improving, it's like others had said, you see the patterns, the grouping, not so much the individual notes. It's kinda like math, when you se. 8-2 on the page, you see it as 6. It's alsj kind of like learning touch typing as far as the muscle memory kicks in. I used Mavis Beacon lol

I need to get back in the groove again. Just keep working, every day, without fail. 15 mins a day is better than an hour once or so a week. You need that short term memory to move to long term memory. Repetition.

Good luck!

 

[devnulljp]

I'm getting better at it, but yeah you find signposts and eventually you just know that's a G or a Bb or whatever.
SBL has a nice sightreading course that takes you through it. Best thing is to just practice. I don't think there's a shortcut.
I still freeze sometimes when a piece of music is put in front of me, even a simple bit, and I'm not great yet at reading rhythm, which is a whole other skill than just knowing where the notes are.
I've found actually transcribing tunes has had a positive effect on my reading level. it makes you thnk about it on a whole other level.

 

[logdrum]

The goal is reading a bar or 2 ahead. even better if you can play it in tempo and you've never heard the tune before. Like any other skill, it takes practice. There are really no tricks and you can lose it quickly (I certainly have). One thing I do have is the ability to cold transpose because I play transposing instruments Eb and Bb.

One thing I can recommend is to play etudes, you will recognized things as patterns, kind of like reading Mandarin. Certain shapes translate to short musical phrases.

But again the only way is to practice and do it. Start small, get the transcription to Happy Birthday to you and learn to read that in all keys.

 

[zontar]

I learned to read music when taking piano lessons so many years ago.
It’s just natural now.
So notsure how it works when I play a new piece, I just try to play it.

 

[SteveCS]

I disagree that reading and sight-reading are separate skills. Good sight readers are just very proficient readers.

I didn't say they were entirely separate skills - obviously one is a highly developed consequence of the other. My view is that the process of learning to read and practicing to become a proficient reader (sufficient for the purposes of, say, learning or analysing music) is very different to the act of sight-reading, i.e. performing in real-time from an unknown score at first sight. As such, they should be approached differently. Someone learning to read should have no expectation, initially, of actually playing music at any level of performance readiness, nor with a view to 'sight-reading' the material. When they discover, as they will, that music does not happen off the bat on day 1, it is all too easy to see this as failure and to become discouraged. My point was to start with very simple material and set realistic expectations and small achievable goals that act to encourage and help folks setting out to recognise success and progress. Of course sight-reading can be practiced alongside, but pressure to 'perform' should not, at least in early times, be part of learning to read.

 

[Groove Master]

I can very painstakingly read standard notation, but would like to improve a bit.

My question: when sightreading, do you look at a note, say to yourself internally the note name and then find it on the fretboard?
Or can you go straight from the note on the staff to a note on the fretboard?

I can imagine seeing the low E on the staff and going straight to the open E string, but beyond that it seems like a challenge.

Any suggestions for working on this?

Thanks!

Michael

Don’t Forget that written music is based 99.9% on key signatures. Learning your scales,arpeggios and patterns based on harmonic material is the key (!) to successfully understand what you are reading. It will help you to find positions and efficient shifts and a better understanding of the neck.

 

[Lo-E]

I got better at sight reading when I was in situations that required it.

As someone who has mostly played in pop and rock bands for my entire playing history (almost 40 years), I constantly struggle with reading - both basic reading of notation and sight reading. Most of the music I play is not written and is provided to me via recordings or simple block chord diagrams.

While I've never had formal, institutional music training I have studied privately with a number of good teachers over the years so I can read notation, but not well and not fast. Certainly not fast enough to call myself a sight reader! One of my recent projects actually required me to read; I met with the band leader expecting him to hand me a CD or link me to a DropBox and, instead, he handed me a dozen pages of manuscript. Later I joked with a friend at work who had played drums in wedding bands: Me:"I'm not much of a reader." Him:"You're gonna be!"

Anyway, for me it's a struggle to keep my reading up and I don't do that good a job of it. I work long hours and also have a fair amount of material to keep up on for three originals bands. I agree with others who have stated that working a little bit every day is far more productive and lasting than doing binge sessions less often.

My strategy (which isn't a very good one) has been to get too busy to practice reading for a couple of months, then get frustrated, then work out of a book every day for a while to claw my way back to where I left off. I do not recommend this method! What I do recommend, though, is to build a library of method books that interest you and alternate between them. It's good to follow a comprehensive method to completion and I advocate doing that, but it's also good to mix in exercises from other sources - ones that focus on other things or teach in a different way - because it forces you to read things that may not follow some of the familiar patterns of the method you use most of the time. Reading from other bass clef instruments can also be fun and challenging (trombone music can be fun to play on bass. And hard!). I also find it helpful to take exercises from texts and transpose them to all 12 keys and that's a good exercise you can do when you're away from the instrument.

The main thing is to NOT do as I do; establish a daily routine and stick to it! That's really the only way to make progress. Don't let it slide and then play catch-up. I've literally lost years of progress that way.

 

[oren]

One resource that might be helpful is the old (1881!) tried and true Simandl method book for double bass, which starts off with slow notes on the open strings and methodically works its way up the fingerboard, with exercises in each position. The fingerings are of course meant for upright, where you typically only can cover three half steps in a single position, using fingers 1,2, and 4, but it won’t do you any harm to learn reading with those fingerings and then later reinterpret if you wish.

 

[Paul New]

Well you’re not wrong. They are at least related– based upon the same general skill. But at the very least, they are two separate processes. Reading music has no tempo constraints; site reading does. Music has no limits to how many times you can practice it; site reading does. Music has no limits to how many times you can read it; site reading does. You get the idea.

Site reading has a very specific set of rules that you must follow in order to be able to do it correctly. Music reading just means can you read the notation on the page, yes or no. But site reading means can you pick up a new piece of music you have never seen, and play it perfectly in an ensemble from top to bottom the first time with no mistakes. And more importantly, the way you learn site reading is completely different than the way you learn music reading.

• Start with a new piece of music you have never seen before, that is not too hard for you. This means one level or three pages behind where you are at with your music reading
• You get a couple minutes to look at it, but you can’t play any of it except in your head and with your fingers. You have to quickly scan for trouble spots, directional markings, Key changes, dynamics and tempo markings (reading above and below the music line). You can finger the trouble spots, but you can’t play them out loud.
• You must play it one time, and one time only at performance tempo. You cannot slow down during hard parts. You cannot go back or start over, even if you make a mistake. You have to pretend you are playing with a band, and they are not gonna stop or slow down if you get into trouble. You have to keep up with them and you only get one chance to do it. So if you make a mistake, wait a note and then come right back in, in tempo without missing a beat. If you make a bigger mistake than that, lay out for a whole measure, and come in on the next one.
• Once you have played it from top to bottom – hopefully without any mistakes – you don’t go back and try it again. You are not trying to learn or memorize it. You were trying to play it perfectly the first time
• And you have to do this regularly. At least once a week or so. Some people do it every day.
• Now this one is really important: you have to read ahead. You should know what’s coming up a few beats or a bar ahead. Put it this way, if you don’t know what to play on the next beat until you get there, you are already behind.

The only way to get better at site reading is to practice site reading.

There must be something in that post that isn’t wrong, somewhere.

Do yourself a favor and refer to sight reading as sight reading.

Reading music can be anything from slowly reading a short phrase, at Tempo de Learno. to reading a long elaborate score for a broadway show on sight. But both and everything in between are reading music.

 

[Richard Lindsey]

Yes, reading music and sight-reading music, though not 100% synonymous, are not really two separate skills or processes. The second is a specialized subcategory of the first. Not all reading of music is sight-reading, but all sight-reading is reading (by definition).

It's sort of like speed-reading of words as compared with regular vanilla reading: The first is a subcategory of the second. (Anybody remember Evelyn Wood?)

 

[LowWay]

Well, as someone who gave up gigging in 2018, and just plays for fun at home (and does the occasional recording project with friends) I’m taking up sight reading at 56 years old. I could read at a rudimentary level as a kid taking guitar lessons 43 years ago, but have never read bass clef, and never gotten very rhythmically advanced.

I appreciate the resources in this thread. I’ve ordered the Jeff Berlin and Improvisors Bass Method materials. Looking forward to playing at least just 15 minutes per day, every day, and seeing if this old dog can learn a new trick.

 

[ryco]

It's also fun to learn to read treble clef and apply to bass.
99% of the music world reads treble and if someone brings a fake book to the gathering, it's fun to read the melody line when it comes your turn to solo, just for giggles.

 

[bigjames]

For me, practice...I played several instruments so I became very comfortable reading notation (in both treble and bass) and when I picked up bass I learned the fretboard...so I read the note and simply play it. Often the first time reading through a sheet I am also figuring out the best place to play the note on the fretboard based on the previous and next notes / passages.

 

[gln1955]

If you think about what a pianist has to do - sight reading two clefs-worth of chords- reading a bass line seems manageable. That said, even though I know what all of the symbols mean and can muddle through anything, I never had to practice that skill enough to sight read a piece.

 

[SteveCS]

Yes, reading music and sight-reading music, though not 100% synonymous, are not really two separate skills or processes.

My distinction is between learning to read, which has to be done out of time, slowly, deliberately in the same way people are taught to read English - letters > vowels and consonants > phonics > simple words > syllables > complex words > punctuation > sentences, etc, and practicing reading to the desired or required level of proficiency, which might be, but need not be, reading at sight, i.e. Prima Vista.

 

[VicDiesel]

When I learned to play viola,

Oh man. G clef, F clef, I see a note and it immediately translates to fingering, on whatever instrument. C clef? Not so much. And then there are 4 or so of them. It's what makes me empathize with the OP's reading problems.

PS just to be obscure: French dropped G clef can be faked by reading as if it's bass.

 

[turf3]

I can very painstakingly read standard notation, but would like to improve a bit.

My question: when sightreading, do you look at a note, say to yourself internally the note name and then find it on the fretboard?
Or can you go straight from the note on the staff to a note on the fretboard?

I can imagine seeing the low E on the staff and going straight to the open E string, but beyond that it seems like a challenge.

Any suggestions for working on this?

Thanks!

Michael

I read music fluently, and I'm either recognizing whole patterns, or immediately translating from spaces and lines to a fingering or sound. It's very much the same thing as reading text fluently.

Of course, just like you might occasionally have to puzzle out a word if you're reading something archaic or extremely technical, you'll have to occasionally puzzle out something in written music - it's almost always rhythms. The coding for rhythms is more complicated and difficult to interpret than that for pitches.

 

[turf3]

Excuse me, reading music certainly DOES have tempo constraints. Tempo and rhythmic feel are components of written music.
Reading music is practice for sight reading music. That merely means that the more a musician practices reading music, the better the musician will get at reading and playing it correctly the first time. Sight Reading is just playing a written piece the first time.

I'll tend to agree.

A sixth grader in their second year of band can play a simple four note melody in the key of C at sight, but will probably have to take their time and maybe go over a couple times, a more complex melody. A professional studio woodwind player can read down the lead alto parts in a big band at sight, but might have to study on the Bloch Suite Modale for flute.

 

[Shenron]

I can very painstakingly read standard notation, but would like to improve a bit.

My question: when sightreading, do you look at a note, say to yourself internally the note name and then find it on the fretboard?
Or can you go straight from the note on the staff to a note on the fretboard?

I can imagine seeing the low E on the staff and going straight to the open E string, but beyond that it seems like a challenge.

Any suggestions for working on this?

Typically I use standard notation only when I play the piano. On that instrument, you can definitely go from the note on the staff directly to the note on the fretboard! There is an easier visual correspondence between the notes on the standard notation and the piano keys, thanks to the fact that (1) there is only one key on the piano to play each note, and (2) notes without sharps or flats are on white keys, and notes with sharps or flats are on black keys. String instruments do not have these properties, so in sightreading it might be a bit more difficult to create visual mappings onto the fretboard.

I think in general to improve on anything that is about memorization, a couple of concepts to follow are:

1) work on a subset instead of trying to memorize all at once
2) create some visual association to work as anchors
3) do some speed runs for practice (for example using an app)

The last concept is the equivalent of using flash cards when studying school topics that require to memorize lots of items, but doing it fast to force the brain to move on quickly even in case of errors. I know there are free apps for sightreading on piano (I have used one for Android called "Vivace") but maybe you can find one for bass or at least for guitar.