The Truth About Reading Music!
In this video, I’m talking about why everybody needs to read music. Although many teachers leave the decision up to their students, without the skills to read music – at least a little bit – is the very same thing as being musically handicapped!
To find out more, watch the video!
All the Bass
Joe
Dead good Joe. You’re growing on me as a person. Had to write down “synergistic galvaniser” and think about that. Getting a lot from this. Had to listen more than once to get it.
Joe,
Thoroughly enjoyed your video on Truth about Reading Music. I am a bass player and I have lost a lot of gigs as I am not a fluent reader of music. I am now doing a self study on Bass Clef. I have purchased books on classic evergreen songs and I am working my way through them. I was wondering whether there are any pointers you can provide to make me a better bass clef reader.
Regards,
Vic
This comes at a great time for me and I can vouch for this methodology. I spent a long time doing, as Joe said, plowing through books hoping to get better at reading. Not only was I not seeing much improvement in my reading, but I wasn’t really gaining anything from the music I was playing.
I switched my approach and started taking pieces and breaking them apart. Depending on the difficulty I might take a 4, 2, or even 1 bar phrase and learn it until it’s muscle memory..then I work it through all 12 keys in the same fashion. Rinse and repeat through the whole piece. So it might take me a month to work through a piece, but I now notice that I’m able to sight read newer stuff quicker. As an added bonus, the material I’m reading starts working its way into my vocabulary and becomes much more than just reading practice.
So, ironically, by reading “less” I’m becoming a better reader.
Pay attention folks..Joe is spot on with this one.
Hi Joe,
I hope you are well.
Thank you for the email.
I don’t need convincing on the importance of learning to read.
I have been frustrated not able to read and write out lines when transcribing, or being able to communicate with other musicians effectively, and of course not able to study my favourite music from charts.
I have your book and am working through starting with learning the notes on my bass and recognising the notes on the staff in the next lesson.
I can see that what you taught me as a subscriber in the past about chord tones coming into the early lessons. I look forward to my progress.
You are inspiring, thank you,
Cheers Bill