Yes

by Patrick Sills

Created on: August 25, 2009   Last Updated: February 10, 2010

If an individual picks up an instrument for the first time and learns songs by ear (also known as rote), it can be very difficult to learn how to read written music. This is especially true for those who play guitar and percussion in popular music genres. Coming from a rock and roll background, I can personally testify that learning how to actually read music after playing songs by ear for several years is quite the challenge. Imagine an adult learning to speak and write a different language than what he or she learned as a formative child. This is what it's like to learn how to read music after playing by ear for many years.

Obviously, when first taking guitar lessons, written music is plentiful in instruction books, but only a handful of people learn to play guitar in this manner. They instead opt for chord-fingering diagrams and memorizing the positions. Scales can be learned the same way, and once these are mastered, riff patterns can easily be deciphered. Provided the musician has a good ear, sense of pitch, and a keen sense of rhythm, the rest comes naturally. Quite frankly, this is how the vast majority of musicians in rock, folk, and country bands learn how to play. Incidentally, none of the Beatles could read nor write musical notation!

As such, I played bass guitar for a good five years before I could read a note of sheet music. Even when I entered college as a music major and was required to play in the Jazz ensemble, I faked it for nearly two semesters! By listening to what was being played by others and reading the chord symbols above each measure, nobody knew the difference! I realized that this would only work for so long. If I was going to expand my musical horizons beyond rock and roll, I would have to learn how to read music. I was 20 years old, and back to the basics. It was pretty bizarre learning how to read Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star after learning complex bass lines from the likes of Geddy Lee, Paul McCartney, and John Entwistle by ear. Eventually I learned how to read music; as long as it was in bass clef. However, this was short-lived, for I dropped out of college to concentrate on being a rocker. I attained rather modest success playing in various cover bands in bars and at wedding receptions over the following fifteen years, but I never got rich. I haven't picked up a bass in nearly a decade now. As for reading music; I probably still could, but it would be very slow. As for picking up a song by ear? There would be no problem.

This brings me to a final point. Those who learn conventional band and orchestral instruments are at a great advantage because they typically begin playing (and reading music) as small children. But just how well does anyone actually read music with the same ease of reading words? When a child such as my daughter learns a particular piece on her French Horn, she begins as anybody does; by reading the notes at a greatly reduced tempo. Gradually, as she practices, it sounds better and better as she becomes more familiar with the musicand the actual tempo. Soon, it is nearly perfect. The next piece comes along, and the whole process starts anew. Based on my brief experience with written music, I boldly suggest that even those who have read it from the time they were toilet-trained are actually memorizing parts and piecing them together just as rock musicians do. They aren't consciously reading each of those clusters of sixteenth notes individually as they did when first learning the music. They instead "know how it goes" when they appear!

Place a sheet of unknown music in front of such a person and tell him or her to sight-read it. If this can be done, and UP TO TEMPO the first time through, only then does the person truly know how to "read" music. Based on that criteria, ask yourself the question again: Is it hard to learn how to read music?

You better believe it.

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