s/o of music lessons - reading music

[fraidycat]

I've seen it mentioned here several times that many think it's important to "be able to read music."

 

Here is my question:

 

Why?

 

I played clarinet for 3 years in junior high and recorder and ukelele in elementary. At that time I could read music. Now: nothing. zip. nada. If I look at a sheet of music today - it might as well be written in Greek. It has absolutely ZERO meaning to me. So, I learned "how to read music" and like much the rest of my "education", once I didn't have a need for it - it's gone. Poof. Right out of my brain. So learning how to read it is, essentially, useless to me as a grown adult. I've never rediscovered a "need" for it either - unlike algebra - which I will have to brush up on before DD gets there.

 

So for those who think being able to read music is important - what is your reasoning behind it?

[SarahW]

Reading music is like riding a bike, ime.

 

I didn't do anything concerning sheet music for a long time, but then we moved into a house with a piano, and my husband wanted to learn how to sing, so I sat down at the piano and worked it out. Middle C, ok, move up from there - and here's G, ok. It took a few minutes, and I still have to stop and think sometimes, and I had to look up what, exactly, the dot after the note was doing, which took a few minutes of googling. But I could do it.

 

I can't sit down and play a song again, but I know how to help my husband when he asks "what does this note sound like?" So what I learned as a kid is worth it to me.

[Shmead]

As I mentioned in the other thread, I think it has to do with making your brain do something really different. It's not just a different alphabet, it's a notation system where the relationship between the parts, more than the parts themselves, carries the meaning. It also requires you to respond physically to what you see--to translate visual input into immediate physical action, without any intermediate step: you don't thing "C-A-B-E-E", you just see the notation and your hands (and/or lips) follow. Nothing else is really like that. Even if you forgot it 100%, I think the growth of your brain to do this new thing is a permanent advantage, in the same way that I think higher math leaves your brain more flexible, even if you forget the details.

[Shmead]

I agree with you on "why". I can't see the point at all unless one wants to play an instrument or some other musical endeavor. I think it would be hideously boring to learn how to read music just in and of itself without connecting that with making music.

 

Shmead, I don't disagree, but that can be accomplished with other things.

 

It's like anything else though, people have different opinions about what is important.

 

I am confused. If you "can't see the point at all", then you disagree with me. Saying "I can't see the point at all" suggests that you think other people are wasting their time. Saying you agree with me, but there are other ways, suggests that you do see the point but that you don't think it's absolutely mandatory, as there are a million valuable things to do and only so much time--and I agree with that.

[Shmead]

I agree with what you say about "making one's brain do something different". That part can be accomplished various ways. I don't see the point in it "for me". I also said that different people feel different things are important. Music reading in and of itself isn't important to me. This doesn't mean I think YOU are wasting your time.

 

Thanks for clarifying. I do think that a lot of people think learning to read music is a waste of time for anyone, and there's a kind of reverse snobbery involved: they think the only reason anyone learns to read music is sheer pretentiousness. And while I agree with you that there are a lot of ways to make your brain do something different, I think that they are all different differents: nothing else makes your brain do what learning to read and perform music does, just as nothing else makes your brain do what learning calculus does, or what learning yoga does. There isn't time to do all of them, but they would each bring something different to your cognitive ability if you could do them all.

[Crimson Wife]

How do you sing along at church if you cannot read the hymnal? St. Augustine once said that singing in praying twice. I may not have much to show for the decade of piano lessons I took, but at least I can read the music in the hymnal.

[Paintedlady]

For our family it's very useful. Our church uses hymnals with sheet music and we sing from them several times per week.

[mamajudy]

It would be possible for songs to vanish from the earth, when no one knows the tune any more. Wirh a written system, the song can be preserved.

 

This is exactly why Guido of Arezzo, the Benedictine monk (991-after 1033), invented the "do re mi" system and modern music notation using the staff of five lines. Apparently, people were having difficulty remembering the Gregorian chants, so he came up with a way to write them down. (good subject to research)

[Ellie]

You would have to hear it at least once and remember it. Eventually you would start to understand how to shift keys. But without any training at all, it would take a fair bit of time listening to match pitch and develop the ability to participate in a musical fashion, rather than a joyful outpouring of noise. (you do not want to hear me sing; my K-8s did not include chorus, so I am pitiful). It would be possible for songs to vanish from the earth, when no one knows the tune any more. Wirh a written system, the song can be preserved.

 

Oh, I disagree that reading music helps you match pitch and develop the ability to participate in a musical fashion. I don't even know where understanding how to shift keys would come into play as a member of a choir.

 

I've been singing in church choirs for many, many years. Most of the people in most of the choirs could not read music, other than to be able to follow the notes when they go up and down, and know how to start at a specific measure number. I have sung in smaller groups, too. I have to say that things go much better if the singers have more knowledge of music--oh, yes, they certainly do!--but all of those choir members were able to participate in a musical fashion, and we sang some beautiful music.

 

OTOH, some of those singers who had naturally beautiful voices were almost snobs about not being able to read music, not even the most basic things like time signature. I spent a frustrating few weeks with a small group preparing four songs for Easter; one of the men didn't know if he was a tenor or a bass; one couldn't hear that he was singing an octave higher than he should have been; the group couldn't count a four-bar intro to know when to start singing...::face palm:: I had finagled Mr. Ellie into joining, because he has a nice voice (and he reads). After the first rehearsal he said, "You don't have to volunteer me for anything like this again." LOL. On Easter morning, we sounded beautimous. At least the music was memorized...

 

ITA that the ability to read music is *very* helpful if you're singing in a choir. I just don't believe that it affects your actual ability all that much to learn the music and sing it well.

[Dmmetler]

I think that we're, as a society, moving towards music illiteracy. I went home and cried the first time I attended an LCMS service that used words on a screen. Still traditional hymns, but words on a screen. You see this almost everywhere-the karaoke style has taken over.

 

When I was a child, before i learned to read music, I sort of knew how to read music, because I'd seen it, sung along with it, and started to internalize it. So, when I was given the language, the code, I broke it quite easily. What I see now is the opposite. Kids come to me at age 7-8 for music lessons, and they've never seen music notation in context and actually used it. It's like a child spent their first 5 years of life without ever having a book read to them, or even seeing text on a TV screen when the voice over reads it, and is expected now to learn the alphabet. There's no context. And it's so hard for them. As a result, you see kids get bogged down on the very basics of music notation, and they struggle.

 

I do think that some of the schools of music education-INCLUDING my own Orff-Schelwerk, tend to play into this. While ideally, a child should get exposure to notation on all those various Orff visuals, in practice, it's SO easy to teach Orff orchestrations without actually showing the notation that many teachers miss that step. And while, traditionally, kids got the background exposure in their day to day lives, so that as they got older, they could sort of naturally move into reading music as they were developmentally ready (and the extra visuals provided the support for those who weren't quite there yet), now that step is not there. A teacher has to make a concerted effort to teach the language of music and expose kids to the language of music before they start reading, or they won't get there. I've seen the same with Suzuki students-the natural transition that used to be so easy, now isn't.

 

Add that music classes are being cut right and left in public schools-the Orff program I used to teach for, the oldest in the USA and one of the largest nationally, is on the chopping block currently in our local schools. Music ed is probably the ONE thing our local school district has regularly done a good job, and about the only thing that we've ever made it on the "best communities for" lists for-and it's likely to die. Piano and strings programs in schools have basically become extinct. Band has been pushed back to starting no earlier than 6th grade, if then. After school choruses and choirs are much less common because so many of the schools are pushing after school tutoring, and because there's no funds to run late busses for after school activities.

 

Sigh....

[mamajudy]

Yes, Ellie, it is possible to sing in a church choir without reading music. But SOMEBODY (probably your director) is reading the music in order to teach the parts. With practice, you can learn to read the notes and match the pitches with your voice. Imagine how awesome your choir (and mine!) could be if everyone read music and more time could be spent on dynamics, diction, and interpretation of the music instead of just learning the parts!

 

Besides, don't we want to give our very best to the Lord? Why strive for mediocrity?

[musicianmom]

I am a choir director and a piano teacher. I have a hard time getting men in my choir. There are men in my church who have nice voices and would sing with us, but they can't read music. There's no way I have time to teach tenor and bass parts by rote for every single choir piece!

 

I have a piano student now who has great musical instincts, but his reading ability lags way behind his playing potential. It's frustrating for both of us.

 

Learning to read music is required for my children as much as learning math.

[blondchen]

How do you sing along at church if you cannot read the hymnal? St. Augustine once said that singing in praying twice. I may not have much to show for the decade of piano lessons I took, but at least I can read the music in the hymnal.

 

 

Well, that's true if your church uses hymnals and regularly sings unfamiliar hymns. Many churches no longer use hymnals, though. I am a classically-trained singer whose career was primarily as a church worship director, and I'm not a fan of using hymnals, one of the reasons being that I like my hands free to raise them in worship to God, and/or to hold my children. I also think that having words projected on a screen is one of the best things to happen to worship music, frankly (regardless of the style of the music - our church does all types of songs and they're all projected). I understand that there are those who vehemently disagree for various reasons, but my preference is to have people looking up to sing to God rather than having their faces buried in a book. I've found that a congregation generally picks up the tune to a song pretty quickly if they've heard it more than once, so I don't consider the inability to read music to be a real problem in that regard. But of course, it depends on the church.

 

ITA that the ability to read music is *very* helpful if you're singing in a choir. I just don't believe that it affects your actual ability all that much to learn the music and sing it well.

 

 

Yes, if you like to sing and want to participate in a choir or other kind of ensemble, knowing how to read music is an invaluable skill. Sure, you can pick up the melody if it's taught by rote, but that's the long way around, especially for the choir director.

 

I am a choir director and a piano teacher. I have a hard time getting men in my choir. There are men in my church who have nice voices and would sing with us, but they can't read music. There's no way I have time to teach tenor and bass parts by rote for every single choir piece!

 

 

Oh yes, I sympathize with this. As a church worship director who desperately wanted my praise team members to sing harmony, it was a frustrating and tedious process to deal with people who couldn't pick up a piece of music and read it. And as a voice teacher, I will not teach a student who doesn't read music (unless he/she is learning to do so by concurrently studying an instrument).

 

All that said, for the average person in our contemporary society who has no interest in doing anything other than singing songs/hymns in worship along with the congregation, I'd say the ability to read music is irrelevant. I believe there's inherent value in learning music (both to read it and appreciate it), and that some level of music instruction should be part of a well-rounded education (like many other things), but on a purely practical level, I don't see that it's all that useful for the average person.

[Roadrunner]

I don't think learning to read music makes sense without learning to play an instrument or sing. I do think learning the instrument is a key to developing deep appreciation and love of music. For me not studying classical music is equivalent to never reading great books. Or to say it another way, classical music is to music what classics are to books. Not everybody will learn to love it, but I do think it should be part of education and I do think its very important to child's development.

 

You can tell this is coming from conservatory grad :)

 

[lllll]

..

[duckens]

Why do I think it is important to read music?

 

(The following is just my opinion).

 

1) Reading music is a part of being well rounded. I put it in the same category as knowing how to play a specific sport, change the oil in one's car, be science literate, being historically literate, etc. You don't have to major in it, but there is a minimal level of proficiency for these subjects.

 

2) Knowing how to read music indirectly helps one to converse semi-intelligently on musical topics....and make polite conversation. One may not be able to sight read, but one would still know the difference between a whole note and a 16th note, piano and forte, and largo vs. presto.

 

3) A mom wiser than I listed the traits of a well-rounded child:

--academics

--a sport (or exercise)

--music or art

--something that can be developed as a second income like swimming (lifeguarding, swim lessons), instrument (teach basic piano or instrument lessons), woodworking (carpentry, build/repair furniture), etc.

 

Piano meets that goal.

[Donna]

I took piano for 10 years as a child. No, I was not any good at it. I didn't like to practice. I didn't like to perform and I had a teacher who simply gave me songs out of a book each week with no theory or technique work at all. (I think after 3 years of violin lessons, my dd played violin better than I played piano after 10 years to put it in perspective.) After I went to college I didn't even look at a piano until dd was 2 years old...so, about 16 years without playing. Around that time my parents bought us an upright electric piano. I found, though I was slow, I could still read music. It was like riding a bike. I didn't forget how. I am slow at it....always was but I am able to pick out enough to help dd get the notes right in a new piece.

 

My oldest is a drummer so he doesn't read music in the reading notes sense but can read drum notation (whatever it is called). My middle ds plays guitar and can read tab and passable note reading but he rarely uses it to play since he has a great ear so just plays whatever he hears. My dd learns all her fiddling tunes by ear and is able to read music for her violin pieces but once she's read through it once or heard it, it is in her head and she isn't really reading anymore. She can read well enough to get through the first night of orchestra rehearsal when they hand out new music but after she's heard it, she isn't reading anymore. Any of my kids could get along just fine without being able to read music (except maybe that first night of orchestra rehearsal for dd). They play really, really well and use their ears primarily.

 

Dd was in a camp this summer and the orchestra was full of kids 10yo and younger who all played really, really well but a large number could not read music very well at all even though the music they were playing was very simple....much easier than their playing ability. Being able to play and being able to read can be completely unrelated.

[Alexigail]

Music is really important to me personally, so I may be biased, but here's how I see it:

 

1. I teach my kids a lot of things that they might not necessarily *need* later in life. But I like that the skills are there so that if they wanted to pursue those things, they won't be limited in their options just because I didn't see the point. It broadens their options later in life. It's much easier to use a skill that you've been familiar with for years.

 

2. If you are going to participate in a musical group, reading music is pretty important. Yes you do use things like key signature, time signatures and dynamic markings to decipher how something should be sung or played. Two people can look at the same sheet of music, same notes, same time etc and if the key signature is different, they will be singing two different things.

 

3. Learning to read music is great for all kinds of things: languages, math, dancing, history, etc. Plus, it's fun and lots of kids love getting out the recorder and playing their first tune :)

 

You can argue that you can get through life not knowing a lot of things - a second language, upper level math, how to read etc. (And no I would never argue that reading music is more important than math or reading). I just feel like it's another way to learn about the world and it can be such a healthy outlet for kids. Of course everyone has their own priorities and yours may be different from mine. I would never say that a parent who doesn't include reading music in their curriculum isn't giving their child a great education. These are just my reasons.

[lllll]

..

[mamajudy]

I just remembered another reason to learn to read music. To write down original compositions, for people who can actually create music and not just play it. Slipped my mind because I'm not creative. But I suppose there are still people out there who can compose their own music and don't want to have to depend on others to write it out for them.

 

 

I have had people come to me to do just that. They had written a song and had no way to write it down for others. Even though some people are very talented and creative, they can be handicapped by their lack of education (in this case, not knowing how to read and write music). They could do so much more and do it so much better, if only they had more knowledge.