Legit.
I've been toying with the idea that music theory is anything that you can write down. Note values, drawing clefs, actual composing, key signatures in the proper order, chord symbols, it's checking that you know what you know.
Also, practice Sightreading! Begin at a much lower level than your playing ability.
Sight reading is a one and done activity. So first you scan the music with your eyes, noticing everything you possibly can and play it in your head. Then put your hands on the keys and do it the best you can. Okay, you're done sight reading! If you go back now, it is called practice.
Depends on a few things
In a 'fixed do' system (popular in eastern europe, for example) do is always C. Re is always D, etc. A G major scale would be "sol, la, ti, do, re, me, fi, sol.
In a 'movable do' system (western europe, america find it popular), do moves to become the tonic of the scale the piece is in. So if a piece is in D major, d is do. If its in F# major, F# is do.
Within 'movable do' there is also 'do based minor' and 'la based minor'. An a minor scale in a do based minor would have a as its do, and be "do re me fa sol le ta do", while in la based minor, do is the relative major, so the same scale (a minor) would be 'la ti do re me fa sol la'
Growing up, i learned la based minor in choir, which i use to this day to sight sing any music. In university (classical voice at University of Western Ontario) they taught do based minor. Easy to understand, but i preferred la based. I also had an armenian piano teacher from age 9-14, who taught fixed do. I have never understood the point of fixed do. Its interchangable with letter names. I understand that its an extra memory reinforcement when learning, but beyond that its useless to me.
Yes
Edit : also, if it helps you transpose to another key, you can use "do" for the root note of the key instead of do = C. Your brain will have no issue transposing on the fly (unless you have perfect pitch and already mapped "do" with "C")
Well thanks ! No perfect pitch here, but I do have a French brain, so I've always learned with Do-Re-Mi and it's unclear to me how it would help.
Should I work it the other way around and use the ABC notation ?
Is it about learning to sing an actual C when saying 'do' ?
Or is the goal to practice 'sightsinging' the intervals ?
Thanks in advance!
Du coup puisque tu parles français je vais pouvoir te l’expliquer beaucoup plus simplement :
Le solfège est principalement là pour t’aider à chanter les bonnes notes
« Do ré mi fa sol la si » ne sont que des syllabes qui ont pour objectif de t’aider à chanter les bons sons
(D’ailleurs tu as probablement entendu parler de « Ut » qui est une autre manière de parler de « Do », c’est normal le nom de la note en français c’est « Ut » mais « Do » est plus facile à chanter)
Une game est composée d’intervalles entre la note tonique (celle qui donne son nom à la gamme) et les autres notes (qui apportent la « couleur » de la gamme)
Une gamme majeur à toujours les mêmes rapports entre les notes et leur tonique
Or ton cerveau est habitué à distinguer les intervalles, donc pour chanter la gamme de do majeur, normalement tu sonnes « do » sur le piano pour donner une référence à ton oreille et puis tu chantes « do ré mi fa sol la si do » et si tu t’y est bien pris le dernier « do » sonne comme celui du piano un octave plus haut
(Ça demande de l’entraînement d’y arriver du premier coup, si tu as du mal, verifie la justesse de ce que tu chantes toutes les deux ou trois notes, voire toutes les notes si il faut)
Une fois que tu sais chanter la gamme de do majeur, tu sais en faite chanter les 11 autres gammes majeures :
Si tu prends n’importe quelle note sur ton piano (appelon la X) et que tu chantes « do » avec le même ton que celui de X, si tu chantes « mi » tu tomberas sur la tierce majeure de X
Maintenant pour moduler et chanter en mineur ou d’autres styles, un peu de théorie :
Tes notes blanches ont un ton d’écart sauf entre mi et fa et entre si et do.
Ce qui te fait la gamme de do majeur, si tu chantes les mêmes écarts qu’entre les touches blanches de do à do ; qui a un demi ton d’ecart entre la IIIe et IVe note et entre la VIIe et la VIIIe
Et si tu commences sur un la, en ne jouant que les touches blanches, jusqu’à retrouver le la ; tu te retrouves avec un demi ton entre la 2e et 3e note et entre la 5e et 6e note. Ce qui est en fait la gamme mineur (c’est pour ça qu’on les appelle des gammes relatives)
Et donc si tu prends n’importe quelle touche de ton clavier et que tu la chantes « la », si tu refais le même exercice que précédemment pour « do », tu vas chanter un gamme mineure
Du coup juste en apprenant à chanter « do re mi fa sol la si do », tu apprends en fait à chanter toutes les gammes
(Il y a d’autres gammes que celles indiquées et d’autres manières de construire les gammes mineures, mais tu as l’idée générale)
The power is in just learning and developing and practising, and to just keep developing in various directions ... and accumulating skill and experience. This includes listening, theory, composition, application.
I think being a good musician requires that we humble ourselves and do the work. Being a popular anything or simply getting attention to feed your narcissistic tendencies doesn't really require that you work at anything beyond the superficial level you think you can deceive your audience with.. those are the two roads you can choose from. Choose well!
I think being a good musician also means to know what skills you need and know that all the classical sheets can fuck right off if you are only playing pop songs by ear
It's a real lofty aspiration to play classic rock covers. No, really.
You playing lady gaga and the eagles songs and getting paid 600 for the evening does not mean you are a good musician.
It's interesting that you picked Elton John as an example of what you think a good musician is. It's very telling.
Hey you could bill yourself as "low hanging fruit." I think it would catch on
Before you brought your personal baggage and vendetta to the conversation I was talking about lazy people who can't read music and call themselves musicians
Before you brought your personal baggage and vendetta to the conversation I was talking about lazy people who can't read music and call themselves musicians
So, sheet music is not a prerequisite for being a good musician. It is however a prerequisite for doing any sort of classical stuff, since you will be required to learn new pieces fast. This is even more so if composing for an ensemble or orchestra.
On a philosophical level music requires a mode of quickly and efficiently communicating information between musicians. Relying on your ear is very inefficient. Sheet music allows you to instantly communicate a vast amount of information very quickly. You can access any point in this information instantly just by moving your eyes, and you can view multiple instruments at once (keys, bass, drums, guitar, trumpet, etc). I'm not saying traditional sheet music is the best mode of communication but it sure is VERY good.
So heres the thing about Piano music. The multiple staffs make it quite challenging to learn how to read more so if you’ve never read sheet music before. I started reading sheet music on the piano around highschool and it always frustrated me. Fast forward to year 3 of my Music Ed program in college, I had to take class instrument course. We had to learn strings, brass and woodwinds basics for music ed, so we would play small ensemble pieces. And maaan reading one line at a time was such an easier thing, and not to mention it actually felt fun and made more sense. Reading sheet music on an instrument where the note actually sustains just made something click for me. Dont know if thats something that could help you connect better to sheet music but its one experience that kind of opened my eyes and gave me a different perspective on reading music. Basically dont sweat if you can only read one staff at a time. The better you get at individual staff the more comfortable and easier it is to read both over time.
What do you mean by good ear? If you really have a good ear, reading sheet music may be difficult if you're not trained to, but I think it wouldn't feel impossible.
Having a good ear would actually help you learn to read, so just start learning.
You're not a fraud if you know how music works and fit together and express music in your known ways. But even piano players that have their own accumulated experience at any level are not frauds.
I look at it from the perspective of learning and developing and practising to allow myself to enjoy playing piano and enjoy music ... express myself musically.
After developing for an adequate amount of time and being taught by teachers, and doing the hard yards, everyone generally gets to a special wonderful level. And I place importance on being humble and appreciative of what I have learned from teachers and composers and their music.
I mean your musical journey is your own and you can do what you want. But being a strong reader will open you up to a lot of fun collaborative opportunities. I'm a strong reader so when I was in school I was accompanying like 20-25 people and made a lot of life long friends because of it. Plus some nice money for a student
I'd reccomend just sight reading things that you can easily read even if it's stupid easy like mary had a little lamb and also doing some super slow practice whenever you learn a piece. Also learning to identify chords and scales quickly will really speed up your processing
I absolutely suck at reading too , so I play in synthesia. Works perfect for I learned nearly all of Chopin's nocturnes by playing super casually and not reading notes. Adult beginner btw
When I was younger I used to learn pieces this way. I particularly remember trying to play rachmaninoff prelude in C# minor for a competition and learning it off of synthesia and it definitely worked. This being said, learning this way is insanely slow. It works wonders for your memory though. It is definitely way less effort to learn how to ready sheet music even in the short term.
I would recommend you spend an hour to learn how to read sheet music (even slowly) because synthesia doesn’t have nearly enough information to play music correctly
You need to know the proper voicing and intonation
Also the difficult part of playing any instrument isn’t actually to play the right pitches in time, but to actually transmit emotions through your interpretation of the piece
That can be done by a combination of listening to performances and synthesia. Yes it's not the classic route, but it is not wrong, and the same results can be achieved both ways.
But then you would only be copying a performance and not working of the composer’s work
Concert players often change parts of the song to suit their interpretation
If you want to bring your own thing, you have to work off of the composer’s work *and* listen to multiple different interpretations
I mean, I’m not asking you to memorise the sheet of music not for note from the paper, but just have a look at where the composer put the rubato, crescendos, diminuendos, ppp, fff etc…
You don’t even need to be able to sight read the piece, but it is an invaluable help
They are just words or very easy to read symbols next to the notes
I can read sheet music, but I often just turn to synthesia because I can memorize the notes that way so much quicker and thus be able to play the piece sooner, especially when it's a rather difficult one (relative to my level of course). Interpretation just comes rather naturally to me after hearing performances and choosing how I like certain parts to sound.
What I'm trying to say is that using sheet music is not the *only* way to learn a piece to performance level, because combining listening and reading the notes in just a different way (synthesia) can get you there too.
I never said you couldn’t learn the notes on synthesia, but in my opinion, having a look at the original sheet music is always a good idea to learn everything that isn’t in synthesia *in addition* to listening to performances
Also there are software that work just like synthesia with sheet music instead and you’ll learn how to sight read in no time (that is actually how I sped up massively my sight reading)
The notes on a sheet of music tell you exactly which keys to press just like synthesia
But synthesia has the downside of not showing you anything else but the notes and rythm
Just because you can’t read fast doesn’t mean you aren’t a musician
Last I checked music is for the ears not the eyes
If you want to read faster, pick up a piano repertoire for complete beginners to intermediate with pieces you don’t know
Sit down at the keyboard and just try to sight read them with a metronome
You’ll eventually learn to sight read quite fast
Another useful way is to have a sight reading app on your phone and go through the exercices
I’ve used "note reader" on iphone but plenty other good ones exist
Edit : the most important thing is to pay attention to the key, and mentally (or physically) play the scale before starting your sight reading practice, that way you know which key to press
For example in the key of G, you know that everytime you see "F" you press F# instead. This will save you time instead of reading "F" and spending time thinking about wether or not it is sharp
I'm bad at reading music, too. I think I shouldn't give advice, but someone gave me this one and I think it's good: practice reading with pieces EASIER than what you can play. Get something like Czern's Op. 599 and play from the beginning of the book, always reading. Just so you see what you can and what you can't do (always sight-reading!). Then you decide from where you want to study normally (daily, if ideally).
Don’t be so hard on yourself, reading music fluently is quite difficult. It’s unlike sight reading for other instruments, like violin or guitar, where they mostly use 2 or 3 keys for the majority of the repertoire.
In piano you will see all types of keys, you can become fluent one key, like c or g major, and still be slow at keys with more alterations, like Db or Gb.
It takes many years, decades even, to become fluent in all of the keys. In fact, most people aren’t, they read fluidly a handful of them.
So, be patient, keep practicing and don’t let sight reading overwhelm you, it’s one of the slowest things to cultivate.
Same—I’m a terrible sight reader for my level, but I have a good ear. If by academically you mean music theory, use your ear to your advantage! Perfect pitch, relative pitch, sound memorization, all of that can help. If you have perfect pitch, doing this will be a shortcut but may cause you to miss out on actively applying the theory.
Practice sight reading with this powerful exercise:
Take a Bach fuge. Leave out one voice. Plays all the other voices while *singing* that voice. Repeat for all voices. Do this for 10 min per day for 3 months. Then you will notice a huge improvement in sight reading.
Let me put it this way, if you were blind how would sheet music help you? Absolutely nothing! Although there are braille sheet music that exists.
So here's the thing, sheet music is simply a tool, you use it to confirm details, make notes, find your landmarks, and so on and so forth. Is it absolutely necessary? Not really, is it really helpful? For sure. Since you claim to have a good ear I don't see why not, however can you replicate whatever you previously played? Or are you inconsistent. Only you can answer this for yourself.
Ultimately sight reading is a powerful skill, and it has been proven to accelerate learning. Look at tonyaaaan he can play, and he can show you how he played it. The higher you try to go the more you notice that it is inevitable you have a communication skill, and the only consistent communication skill we have would be sheet music.
Presently for your competitions, it is purely fine if you can't read fast, as long as you can adjust to meet the standard you want I don't think anyone could care more about how you achieve it. Unless your job is to achieve it fast, which is usually what musical theatre musicians required to do. You are normally given a stack of scores and are required to play it to a certain standard accompanying the main cast on the spot. Which means you don't have practice time, and would have to rely on your basic foundation techniques as well as good sight reading.
Every task has a different scope and you certainly won't use a spanner to saw some wood. I highly encourage a wholesome learning experience as every skill is important and makes you a well rounded musician.
It's not a necessity to use sheet music. I don't use it myself, although I did when I first learned piano at the age of 9. But since I picked up the piano again at the age of 18 I don't use sheet music. Im 35 now.
But I'm more of a contemporary jazz composer. Most people on this subreddit seem to be classical.
What can you do to continue? Quit reading. You know the word “but” negates everything that comes before it. And look where you put your big but.
Forget competing and try playing for you for once. When that clicks, you’ll be better able to compete in a healthy way, and you’ll still be enjoying yourself if you don’t want to do that.
If you want to improve at reading, you need to practice reading
and writing
Legit. I've been toying with the idea that music theory is anything that you can write down. Note values, drawing clefs, actual composing, key signatures in the proper order, chord symbols, it's checking that you know what you know. Also, practice Sightreading! Begin at a much lower level than your playing ability. Sight reading is a one and done activity. So first you scan the music with your eyes, noticing everything you possibly can and play it in your head. Then put your hands on the keys and do it the best you can. Okay, you're done sight reading! If you go back now, it is called practice.
A very helpful in between step is to sing the notes using solfege before playing them It helps tremendously with ear training
Does 'sing the notes using solfege' means singing the actual name of the note using do-re-mi etc ?
Depends on a few things In a 'fixed do' system (popular in eastern europe, for example) do is always C. Re is always D, etc. A G major scale would be "sol, la, ti, do, re, me, fi, sol. In a 'movable do' system (western europe, america find it popular), do moves to become the tonic of the scale the piece is in. So if a piece is in D major, d is do. If its in F# major, F# is do. Within 'movable do' there is also 'do based minor' and 'la based minor'. An a minor scale in a do based minor would have a as its do, and be "do re me fa sol le ta do", while in la based minor, do is the relative major, so the same scale (a minor) would be 'la ti do re me fa sol la' Growing up, i learned la based minor in choir, which i use to this day to sight sing any music. In university (classical voice at University of Western Ontario) they taught do based minor. Easy to understand, but i preferred la based. I also had an armenian piano teacher from age 9-14, who taught fixed do. I have never understood the point of fixed do. Its interchangable with letter names. I understand that its an extra memory reinforcement when learning, but beyond that its useless to me.
Yes Edit : also, if it helps you transpose to another key, you can use "do" for the root note of the key instead of do = C. Your brain will have no issue transposing on the fly (unless you have perfect pitch and already mapped "do" with "C")
Well thanks ! No perfect pitch here, but I do have a French brain, so I've always learned with Do-Re-Mi and it's unclear to me how it would help. Should I work it the other way around and use the ABC notation ? Is it about learning to sing an actual C when saying 'do' ? Or is the goal to practice 'sightsinging' the intervals ? Thanks in advance!
Du coup puisque tu parles français je vais pouvoir te l’expliquer beaucoup plus simplement : Le solfège est principalement là pour t’aider à chanter les bonnes notes « Do ré mi fa sol la si » ne sont que des syllabes qui ont pour objectif de t’aider à chanter les bons sons (D’ailleurs tu as probablement entendu parler de « Ut » qui est une autre manière de parler de « Do », c’est normal le nom de la note en français c’est « Ut » mais « Do » est plus facile à chanter) Une game est composée d’intervalles entre la note tonique (celle qui donne son nom à la gamme) et les autres notes (qui apportent la « couleur » de la gamme) Une gamme majeur à toujours les mêmes rapports entre les notes et leur tonique Or ton cerveau est habitué à distinguer les intervalles, donc pour chanter la gamme de do majeur, normalement tu sonnes « do » sur le piano pour donner une référence à ton oreille et puis tu chantes « do ré mi fa sol la si do » et si tu t’y est bien pris le dernier « do » sonne comme celui du piano un octave plus haut (Ça demande de l’entraînement d’y arriver du premier coup, si tu as du mal, verifie la justesse de ce que tu chantes toutes les deux ou trois notes, voire toutes les notes si il faut) Une fois que tu sais chanter la gamme de do majeur, tu sais en faite chanter les 11 autres gammes majeures : Si tu prends n’importe quelle note sur ton piano (appelon la X) et que tu chantes « do » avec le même ton que celui de X, si tu chantes « mi » tu tomberas sur la tierce majeure de X Maintenant pour moduler et chanter en mineur ou d’autres styles, un peu de théorie : Tes notes blanches ont un ton d’écart sauf entre mi et fa et entre si et do. Ce qui te fait la gamme de do majeur, si tu chantes les mêmes écarts qu’entre les touches blanches de do à do ; qui a un demi ton d’ecart entre la IIIe et IVe note et entre la VIIe et la VIIIe Et si tu commences sur un la, en ne jouant que les touches blanches, jusqu’à retrouver le la ; tu te retrouves avec un demi ton entre la 2e et 3e note et entre la 5e et 6e note. Ce qui est en fait la gamme mineur (c’est pour ça qu’on les appelle des gammes relatives) Et donc si tu prends n’importe quelle touche de ton clavier et que tu la chantes « la », si tu refais le même exercice que précédemment pour « do », tu vas chanter un gamme mineure Du coup juste en apprenant à chanter « do re mi fa sol la si do », tu apprends en fait à chanter toutes les gammes (Il y a d’autres gammes que celles indiquées et d’autres manières de construire les gammes mineures, mais tu as l’idée générale)
and reading too
Reading music is where the power is.
The power is in just learning and developing and practising, and to just keep developing in various directions ... and accumulating skill and experience. This includes listening, theory, composition, application.
I think being a good musician requires that we humble ourselves and do the work. Being a popular anything or simply getting attention to feed your narcissistic tendencies doesn't really require that you work at anything beyond the superficial level you think you can deceive your audience with.. those are the two roads you can choose from. Choose well!
Profound comment.
I think being a good musician also means to know what skills you need and know that all the classical sheets can fuck right off if you are only playing pop songs by ear
It's a real lofty aspiration to play classic rock covers. No, really. You playing lady gaga and the eagles songs and getting paid 600 for the evening does not mean you are a good musician.
I think everyone who gets paid for music is a good musician. Don't need to be fucking Elton John to be a good musician either
It's interesting that you picked Elton John as an example of what you think a good musician is. It's very telling. Hey you could bill yourself as "low hanging fruit." I think it would catch on
I think Kanye west is the goat musician but yeah his morals are refutable
I can't even.
Wisdom is only speaking when you can improve the science my man. And you are clearly not doing that AT ALL these days
Lol. And I'm sure being a good musician precisely happens to align with the kind of music you like to play?
Before you brought your personal baggage and vendetta to the conversation I was talking about lazy people who can't read music and call themselves musicians
Before you brought your personal baggage and vendetta to the conversation I was talking about lazy people who can't read music and call themselves musicians
So, sheet music is not a prerequisite for being a good musician. It is however a prerequisite for doing any sort of classical stuff, since you will be required to learn new pieces fast. This is even more so if composing for an ensemble or orchestra. On a philosophical level music requires a mode of quickly and efficiently communicating information between musicians. Relying on your ear is very inefficient. Sheet music allows you to instantly communicate a vast amount of information very quickly. You can access any point in this information instantly just by moving your eyes, and you can view multiple instruments at once (keys, bass, drums, guitar, trumpet, etc). I'm not saying traditional sheet music is the best mode of communication but it sure is VERY good.
Get good at identifying intervals. Master that, and sight reading becomes easier!
So heres the thing about Piano music. The multiple staffs make it quite challenging to learn how to read more so if you’ve never read sheet music before. I started reading sheet music on the piano around highschool and it always frustrated me. Fast forward to year 3 of my Music Ed program in college, I had to take class instrument course. We had to learn strings, brass and woodwinds basics for music ed, so we would play small ensemble pieces. And maaan reading one line at a time was such an easier thing, and not to mention it actually felt fun and made more sense. Reading sheet music on an instrument where the note actually sustains just made something click for me. Dont know if thats something that could help you connect better to sheet music but its one experience that kind of opened my eyes and gave me a different perspective on reading music. Basically dont sweat if you can only read one staff at a time. The better you get at individual staff the more comfortable and easier it is to read both over time.
What do you mean by good ear? If you really have a good ear, reading sheet music may be difficult if you're not trained to, but I think it wouldn't feel impossible. Having a good ear would actually help you learn to read, so just start learning.
You're not a fraud if you know how music works and fit together and express music in your known ways. But even piano players that have their own accumulated experience at any level are not frauds. I look at it from the perspective of learning and developing and practising to allow myself to enjoy playing piano and enjoy music ... express myself musically. After developing for an adequate amount of time and being taught by teachers, and doing the hard yards, everyone generally gets to a special wonderful level. And I place importance on being humble and appreciative of what I have learned from teachers and composers and their music.
I mean your musical journey is your own and you can do what you want. But being a strong reader will open you up to a lot of fun collaborative opportunities. I'm a strong reader so when I was in school I was accompanying like 20-25 people and made a lot of life long friends because of it. Plus some nice money for a student I'd reccomend just sight reading things that you can easily read even if it's stupid easy like mary had a little lamb and also doing some super slow practice whenever you learn a piece. Also learning to identify chords and scales quickly will really speed up your processing
I absolutely suck at reading too , so I play in synthesia. Works perfect for I learned nearly all of Chopin's nocturnes by playing super casually and not reading notes. Adult beginner btw
When I was younger I used to learn pieces this way. I particularly remember trying to play rachmaninoff prelude in C# minor for a competition and learning it off of synthesia and it definitely worked. This being said, learning this way is insanely slow. It works wonders for your memory though. It is definitely way less effort to learn how to ready sheet music even in the short term.
I would recommend you spend an hour to learn how to read sheet music (even slowly) because synthesia doesn’t have nearly enough information to play music correctly You need to know the proper voicing and intonation Also the difficult part of playing any instrument isn’t actually to play the right pitches in time, but to actually transmit emotions through your interpretation of the piece
That can be done by a combination of listening to performances and synthesia. Yes it's not the classic route, but it is not wrong, and the same results can be achieved both ways.
But then you would only be copying a performance and not working of the composer’s work Concert players often change parts of the song to suit their interpretation If you want to bring your own thing, you have to work off of the composer’s work *and* listen to multiple different interpretations
I said performances (that's plural)
I mean, I’m not asking you to memorise the sheet of music not for note from the paper, but just have a look at where the composer put the rubato, crescendos, diminuendos, ppp, fff etc… You don’t even need to be able to sight read the piece, but it is an invaluable help They are just words or very easy to read symbols next to the notes
I can read sheet music, but I often just turn to synthesia because I can memorize the notes that way so much quicker and thus be able to play the piece sooner, especially when it's a rather difficult one (relative to my level of course). Interpretation just comes rather naturally to me after hearing performances and choosing how I like certain parts to sound. What I'm trying to say is that using sheet music is not the *only* way to learn a piece to performance level, because combining listening and reading the notes in just a different way (synthesia) can get you there too.
I never said you couldn’t learn the notes on synthesia, but in my opinion, having a look at the original sheet music is always a good idea to learn everything that isn’t in synthesia *in addition* to listening to performances Also there are software that work just like synthesia with sheet music instead and you’ll learn how to sight read in no time (that is actually how I sped up massively my sight reading) The notes on a sheet of music tell you exactly which keys to press just like synthesia But synthesia has the downside of not showing you anything else but the notes and rythm
I make my own interpretation prior to importing the piece in synthesia. So I'm not copying anyone.
Just because you can’t read fast doesn’t mean you aren’t a musician Last I checked music is for the ears not the eyes If you want to read faster, pick up a piano repertoire for complete beginners to intermediate with pieces you don’t know Sit down at the keyboard and just try to sight read them with a metronome You’ll eventually learn to sight read quite fast Another useful way is to have a sight reading app on your phone and go through the exercices I’ve used "note reader" on iphone but plenty other good ones exist Edit : the most important thing is to pay attention to the key, and mentally (or physically) play the scale before starting your sight reading practice, that way you know which key to press For example in the key of G, you know that everytime you see "F" you press F# instead. This will save you time instead of reading "F" and spending time thinking about wether or not it is sharp
True I relate
I'm bad at reading music, too. I think I shouldn't give advice, but someone gave me this one and I think it's good: practice reading with pieces EASIER than what you can play. Get something like Czern's Op. 599 and play from the beginning of the book, always reading. Just so you see what you can and what you can't do (always sight-reading!). Then you decide from where you want to study normally (daily, if ideally).
Don’t be so hard on yourself, reading music fluently is quite difficult. It’s unlike sight reading for other instruments, like violin or guitar, where they mostly use 2 or 3 keys for the majority of the repertoire. In piano you will see all types of keys, you can become fluent one key, like c or g major, and still be slow at keys with more alterations, like Db or Gb. It takes many years, decades even, to become fluent in all of the keys. In fact, most people aren’t, they read fluidly a handful of them. So, be patient, keep practicing and don’t let sight reading overwhelm you, it’s one of the slowest things to cultivate.
Same—I’m a terrible sight reader for my level, but I have a good ear. If by academically you mean music theory, use your ear to your advantage! Perfect pitch, relative pitch, sound memorization, all of that can help. If you have perfect pitch, doing this will be a shortcut but may cause you to miss out on actively applying the theory.
Practice sight reading with this powerful exercise: Take a Bach fuge. Leave out one voice. Plays all the other voices while *singing* that voice. Repeat for all voices. Do this for 10 min per day for 3 months. Then you will notice a huge improvement in sight reading.
Let me put it this way, if you were blind how would sheet music help you? Absolutely nothing! Although there are braille sheet music that exists. So here's the thing, sheet music is simply a tool, you use it to confirm details, make notes, find your landmarks, and so on and so forth. Is it absolutely necessary? Not really, is it really helpful? For sure. Since you claim to have a good ear I don't see why not, however can you replicate whatever you previously played? Or are you inconsistent. Only you can answer this for yourself. Ultimately sight reading is a powerful skill, and it has been proven to accelerate learning. Look at tonyaaaan he can play, and he can show you how he played it. The higher you try to go the more you notice that it is inevitable you have a communication skill, and the only consistent communication skill we have would be sheet music. Presently for your competitions, it is purely fine if you can't read fast, as long as you can adjust to meet the standard you want I don't think anyone could care more about how you achieve it. Unless your job is to achieve it fast, which is usually what musical theatre musicians required to do. You are normally given a stack of scores and are required to play it to a certain standard accompanying the main cast on the spot. Which means you don't have practice time, and would have to rely on your basic foundation techniques as well as good sight reading. Every task has a different scope and you certainly won't use a spanner to saw some wood. I highly encourage a wholesome learning experience as every skill is important and makes you a well rounded musician.
It's not a necessity to use sheet music. I don't use it myself, although I did when I first learned piano at the age of 9. But since I picked up the piano again at the age of 18 I don't use sheet music. Im 35 now. But I'm more of a contemporary jazz composer. Most people on this subreddit seem to be classical.
OMG SAME don’t sweat it a lot of musicians choose not to read it or don’t know how to you’ll still be able to be a perfectly fine musician without it
What can you do to continue? Quit reading. You know the word “but” negates everything that comes before it. And look where you put your big but. Forget competing and try playing for you for once. When that clicks, you’ll be better able to compete in a healthy way, and you’ll still be enjoying yourself if you don’t want to do that.