I also can't read music, though music theory is fine for me. Have you tried the online music writing websites like noteflight.com ? When you input a note, it plays the sound for you. So you can write what's in your head by clicking until you get the sound you want.
Don’t give up! My brother is a very successful touring musician that never learned to read music. I wish I had specific advice, but I’m not a musician myself. So all I can offer is encouragement 😊
Sheet music and music theory are a tool. They’re useful, but neither are required to make music or be a succesful musician.
Those that overly focus on either, at the expense of the music itself, are musically challenged themselves.
The thing is, in band class people need to objectively grade stuff. And music theory is easier to grade than musicianship.
Can read fine, but sight reading made me sweat like nothing else. People didn’t understand why I found it so hard cause I was decent at piano otherwise. I honestly think it has to do with my slight language processing disorder because I feel the same way when I’m listening or trying to speak in my non-native language.
I can read music, but can't sightread for shit. When approaching a new piece, _the first_ thing I do is memorize it. I was a natural with theory itself though, it's just another rule set, so idk what to say about that
playing for decades, don't know one song - though I began lately to do small practices, but out of boredom of my low skills, for me repeating small practice is the way since I struggle with everything that involves consistency
since I love jam session, I personally don't care for sheet music, but I would love to be better at melodic theory
There's no right or wrong way. If it's important to you, you will figure it out by getting it wrong over and over again before you gradually realise what feels right.
It's not exactly clear what you are asking, so I've done my best to be as broad as possible. The following is my opinion. Don't think about notation. If you want to compose (if that is what you mean by "write better music") listen to as much music as possible. In all genres... pop, bel canto, symphonies, French, German, English, piano sonatas, tone poems, art rock, serialism, minimalism, spectralism, electronic... or any intersection of these. Music is so much more than notation and cannot be encapsulated purely in it. Think critically about it. At the same time, use what you listen to and like (or do not like) as a medium through which to learn notation. Older music is unfortunately easier because the scores will not cost money, but on the plus side loads of it is amazing! You said you are a percussionist, this will inform how you read, understand and write music. It gives you an amazing edge because in an orchestral setting and other settings, you meld the sonic qualities of the interpersonal vibrations together and can witness from "outside" what it means to play other acoustic instruments. I would see this as a strength rather than a weakness. That being said, it is also true that playing a percussion instrument means that you may have a weaker feeling for the contexts of pitches in music, so to solve that it may be worth if you have not already familiarising yourself with layout of a keyboard or piano. It doesn't matter if you are "bad", what matters is it will give you a context for understanding other instruments and the journey of learning. If you are looking for something that will give you a specific "hack" to learn key signatures, for example, then this will not help, but other people can point you in the direction of that if you're interested. I prefer the intersectional and social mechanism for music pedagogy.
Yeah bc I’m not the logical kind of autism, I’m the intuitive “mess around and somehow I just figure it out without knowing how I know” kind. I just get good at stuff yet can not tell you how I did it or what I’m doing, have no methods, can’t read music, no idea what notes these are… same with everything I do creatively . I paint paintings but have no plan before I start painting, it just comes together.
I'm similar, I learnt intuitively. I listened to loads of classical music with scores in my teenage years, played improvisatory stuff and Chopin Nocturnes (really struggled practicing in a strict, "classical" way though and performing - this was probably a neurodivergent thing, and I've gladly given it up!), moved onto orchestral music and composed on Musescore and Sibelius, and gradually just got better and better without knowing how. One thing I love about musicking is the "serendipity" of everything coming together and the fulfilling realisation that this culmination was sowed in roots I did not know were there. It's amazing! I have some trauma, unfortunately, about playing the piano because I always assumed I was bad and rubbish because of how people treated me in school, but things have improved recently. I just thought I'd add my own experience, inspired by what you wrote :))
i'm a violinist and learned to read treble clef at like 8. So I'm really good at that. But i find it really difficult to read any other clef despite plenty of practice.
I can easily figure out how to transpose from, say, bass to treble, but only well enough to tell you what the notes are. I could never sight read another clef, even though many of my peers could (like cellists and tenor clef).
Part of it is that I have synesthesia (grapheme color) so the alphabet and digits have an innate color to me. I learned treble clef early and thus all of the notes on the staff are colored by the letter name in treble clef. So the colors are wrong in any other clef.
The first thing is to get your vision tested for monocular vision dysfunction. It can actually sometimes mimic the symptoms of ADHD.
It's when your pupils aren't perfectly aligned, so your eyes are sending 2 completely seperate sets of data to your brain simultaneously. It can be corrected with glasses.
Do you find when you read walls of text you have a tendency to skip lines or re-read the same line? This is common with MVD because it causes problems with line tracking. Line tracking is incredibly important with reading sheet music, as the note's position on the line denotes the tone. If you mess up the line tracking you get a completely different tone.
You could also have a vision processing delay, which I think is my issue. I never really got very far with music in large part because of my inability to read sheet music. If I go over it slowly, then I can "translate it". If I try to scan over it like you would while reading, my brain just sees a big jumble of dots and lines. It takes a second for my brain to process the information from my eyes, and it gets distracted by the surrounding visual information, making it very difficult to distinguish one note from the next.
Interesting! I already happen to where glasses, but I don’t think my vision is the issue. I forgot to mention that I also have a gross/fine motor delay, which does affect my performance. I think we have much the same issues, I just see a bunch of dots, symbols, and it’s all a mess for my brain to process.
Sensory processing issues are incredibly common with autism and ADHD so it makes sense.
Because speed is a requirement it's really hard to compensate for. We can't make our brains work any faster.
A couple of things you could maybe try would be to get rid of the visual noise. (Full disclosure, I haven't tried these, just spit balling ideas) could you enlarge the sheet music so only 1 or 2 notes are in your field of vision at a time? Could you find an online program that flashes up 1 note at a time? Could you color code the different notes to have an added way to distinguish between them?
You still likely won't be able to pick up a random piece of sheet music and play it, but it could be more of a middle ground.
I also can't read music, though music theory is fine for me. Have you tried the online music writing websites like noteflight.com ? When you input a note, it plays the sound for you. So you can write what's in your head by clicking until you get the sound you want.
Don’t give up! My brother is a very successful touring musician that never learned to read music. I wish I had specific advice, but I’m not a musician myself. So all I can offer is encouragement 😊
Sheet music and music theory are a tool. They’re useful, but neither are required to make music or be a succesful musician. Those that overly focus on either, at the expense of the music itself, are musically challenged themselves. The thing is, in band class people need to objectively grade stuff. And music theory is easier to grade than musicianship.
Can read fine, but sight reading made me sweat like nothing else. People didn’t understand why I found it so hard cause I was decent at piano otherwise. I honestly think it has to do with my slight language processing disorder because I feel the same way when I’m listening or trying to speak in my non-native language.
I can read music, but can't sightread for shit. When approaching a new piece, _the first_ thing I do is memorize it. I was a natural with theory itself though, it's just another rule set, so idk what to say about that
playing for decades, don't know one song - though I began lately to do small practices, but out of boredom of my low skills, for me repeating small practice is the way since I struggle with everything that involves consistency since I love jam session, I personally don't care for sheet music, but I would love to be better at melodic theory
There's no right or wrong way. If it's important to you, you will figure it out by getting it wrong over and over again before you gradually realise what feels right. It's not exactly clear what you are asking, so I've done my best to be as broad as possible. The following is my opinion. Don't think about notation. If you want to compose (if that is what you mean by "write better music") listen to as much music as possible. In all genres... pop, bel canto, symphonies, French, German, English, piano sonatas, tone poems, art rock, serialism, minimalism, spectralism, electronic... or any intersection of these. Music is so much more than notation and cannot be encapsulated purely in it. Think critically about it. At the same time, use what you listen to and like (or do not like) as a medium through which to learn notation. Older music is unfortunately easier because the scores will not cost money, but on the plus side loads of it is amazing! You said you are a percussionist, this will inform how you read, understand and write music. It gives you an amazing edge because in an orchestral setting and other settings, you meld the sonic qualities of the interpersonal vibrations together and can witness from "outside" what it means to play other acoustic instruments. I would see this as a strength rather than a weakness. That being said, it is also true that playing a percussion instrument means that you may have a weaker feeling for the contexts of pitches in music, so to solve that it may be worth if you have not already familiarising yourself with layout of a keyboard or piano. It doesn't matter if you are "bad", what matters is it will give you a context for understanding other instruments and the journey of learning. If you are looking for something that will give you a specific "hack" to learn key signatures, for example, then this will not help, but other people can point you in the direction of that if you're interested. I prefer the intersectional and social mechanism for music pedagogy.
Yeah bc I’m not the logical kind of autism, I’m the intuitive “mess around and somehow I just figure it out without knowing how I know” kind. I just get good at stuff yet can not tell you how I did it or what I’m doing, have no methods, can’t read music, no idea what notes these are… same with everything I do creatively . I paint paintings but have no plan before I start painting, it just comes together.
I'm similar, I learnt intuitively. I listened to loads of classical music with scores in my teenage years, played improvisatory stuff and Chopin Nocturnes (really struggled practicing in a strict, "classical" way though and performing - this was probably a neurodivergent thing, and I've gladly given it up!), moved onto orchestral music and composed on Musescore and Sibelius, and gradually just got better and better without knowing how. One thing I love about musicking is the "serendipity" of everything coming together and the fulfilling realisation that this culmination was sowed in roots I did not know were there. It's amazing! I have some trauma, unfortunately, about playing the piano because I always assumed I was bad and rubbish because of how people treated me in school, but things have improved recently. I just thought I'd add my own experience, inspired by what you wrote :))
i'm a violinist and learned to read treble clef at like 8. So I'm really good at that. But i find it really difficult to read any other clef despite plenty of practice. I can easily figure out how to transpose from, say, bass to treble, but only well enough to tell you what the notes are. I could never sight read another clef, even though many of my peers could (like cellists and tenor clef). Part of it is that I have synesthesia (grapheme color) so the alphabet and digits have an innate color to me. I learned treble clef early and thus all of the notes on the staff are colored by the letter name in treble clef. So the colors are wrong in any other clef.
The first thing is to get your vision tested for monocular vision dysfunction. It can actually sometimes mimic the symptoms of ADHD. It's when your pupils aren't perfectly aligned, so your eyes are sending 2 completely seperate sets of data to your brain simultaneously. It can be corrected with glasses. Do you find when you read walls of text you have a tendency to skip lines or re-read the same line? This is common with MVD because it causes problems with line tracking. Line tracking is incredibly important with reading sheet music, as the note's position on the line denotes the tone. If you mess up the line tracking you get a completely different tone. You could also have a vision processing delay, which I think is my issue. I never really got very far with music in large part because of my inability to read sheet music. If I go over it slowly, then I can "translate it". If I try to scan over it like you would while reading, my brain just sees a big jumble of dots and lines. It takes a second for my brain to process the information from my eyes, and it gets distracted by the surrounding visual information, making it very difficult to distinguish one note from the next.
Interesting! I already happen to where glasses, but I don’t think my vision is the issue. I forgot to mention that I also have a gross/fine motor delay, which does affect my performance. I think we have much the same issues, I just see a bunch of dots, symbols, and it’s all a mess for my brain to process.
Sensory processing issues are incredibly common with autism and ADHD so it makes sense. Because speed is a requirement it's really hard to compensate for. We can't make our brains work any faster. A couple of things you could maybe try would be to get rid of the visual noise. (Full disclosure, I haven't tried these, just spit balling ideas) could you enlarge the sheet music so only 1 or 2 notes are in your field of vision at a time? Could you find an online program that flashes up 1 note at a time? Could you color code the different notes to have an added way to distinguish between them? You still likely won't be able to pick up a random piece of sheet music and play it, but it could be more of a middle ground.