With Practice, Reading Music Becomes Like Reading Words

Learning to read music is like learning any new language. Once it all clicks, reading is nearly effortless. (Sketch from www.waltribeiro.net)

Reading music is like reading any language. There are essential things to learn, and then there’s practice. Regardless of your instrument, there are three fundamental areas of reading:

• First, you have to recognize the notes on the staff.
• Second, you need to correlate them with the location on your own instrument.
• Third, you have to recognize rhythm by sound. Rhythm is a language and is, as such, phonetic not mathematical. For a more thorough explanation of this concept see Modular Phonetic Rhythm, and if you’d like to take the next step, you can buy the book here. It shows a  unique approach to “hearing” a rhythm rather than counting it. It develops the eye – ear – hand reflex necessary for reading music fluently.

Each instrument has unique issues in reading and executing music, ie, different clefs, different fingering systems. Regardless of your instrument, however, reading music is just like reading a book or magazine. When you do it well, you don’t have to work on the reading or work out the words – you just read!

If you start with the fundamentals, you’ll be on your way. I currently write a section on reading for the guitar in Just Jazz Guitar, a national magazine out of Atlanta. Read a previous post on why I believe guitar players should learn to read music and focus less on tabs.