Enhance Your Playing By Learning To Read Music
The most enjoyable thing to do when learning piano is to pull up the piano bench, stretch out the fingers and rip out a song you’ve previously learned, or a solo piece you’re familiar with. What’s not so much fun is sitting on piano benches trying to learn what all the lines and dots of music notation mean, and trying to read them as fast as possible. Often the tunes you’re trying to learn will be thrown into a sheet music cabinet, not to be looked at until motivation happens to come again. Is practicing reading notation all that important? Wouldn’t it just be superior to focus on the areas of playing that are fun and easy?
The answer to that is an emphatic “No”. In order to grow into a well-rounded player, the difficult aspects of music are going to have to be studied along with the fun parts. But in saying that, I’m misrepresenting the actuality of studying music. The fact is that all aspects of musical learning can be fun, and as you become more and more skilled in reading sheet music, you’ll find yourself enjoying the experience. The basics of reading music are pretty elementary. The difficulty, of course, is learning to comprehend these symbols well enough so that it becomes second nature.
If you’ve decided to begin practicing to read notation, make sure that you do it all the time. Don’t just cram in as much learning as you can while your motivated and then dismiss it all until the urge 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 meanings of symbols to stick in your head the same way language 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 difficult it can be to get into your head what those squiggly lines mean. But when it comes to reading English, we don’t think of squiggly lines or even individual letters, the words simply jump out at us with seemingly little effort from our brain. The same is possible| to have with reading music symbols, and it’s referred to as sight-reading. Sight-reading can only be achieved with the classic method of practice, practice, practice.
Remember, when you find something in music that’s difficult to learn, that’s a good thing. The harder something is for you to learn, the more your mind will benefit from tackling the problem straight on. Some players focus on repeating individual pieces they know well and can play fast, while some are always looking for what they don’t know, for what they can do better. This is what separates a great musician from all the others.
Connor Sullivan was interested in purchasing piano benchesfor his music room. A friend of Connor’s loves the piano bench he ordered online. Connor ordered a beautiful sheet music cabinet online to add to his music room.