From: jonb@Ingres.COM (Jon Berger)
Subject: Re: Concrete questions on music reading
Keywords: music, reading
Reply-To: jonb@ingres.com
Organization: Ingres, an ASK Company
Date: 12 Jan 93 00:42:02 GMT

In article <C0KJJC.C0v@constellation.ecn.uoknor.edu>, norlin@midway.ecn.uoknor.edu (Norman Lin) writes:
>(1)  Do sight readers "see" in sheet music:
>     a.  Absolute notes, i.e., "D, F, A, C, D"
>     b.  Relative positions within a scale, i.e., "2 4 6 1 2"
>     c.  Intervals between notes, i.e., "D, up a minor 3rd, up a major 3rd..."
>     d.  Logical groupings of melodic notes (movites)
>     e.  Progressions of chords/parts of chords
>     e.  Combinations of the above (and if so, when for which?)
>     f.  Other?

Interesting question.  I actually fit into category "f" for quite a
number of years.  I learned to read music as part of learning to play the
violin in an elementary school music education program.  They followed
the quickest and most pragmatic style of teaching, which was to teach me
the correspondence between the notes and the physical fingerings on the
violin in first position.  To this day, unless I concentrate fairly hard,
when I see, say, a note on the second-from-bottom line of the staff,
I tend to see "third finger on the D string", not "G".  Warning from
one who's been there: DO NOT learn to read this way.  It's been a nasty
obstacle to overcome, especially when learning to read in other clefs.
I still tend to read bass clef in terms of adding a third to the "real"
value of the note.  Dumb.

>(2)  What is the best way to learn sight reading?  Just "practice" doesn't
>     seem to do it.  Perhaps I am just lacking in discipline, but I suspect
>     I am lacking in direction also.  I cannot seem to make progress simply
>     by slowly staring down a sheet of music until, note by grueling note,
>     the tune emerges.  For learning 2/3/4 part music, the process becomes
>     exponentially slower (which leads to the next question).

The best thing to be working on, in my opinion, is sight-singing,
rather than sight reading on a specific instrument.  One thing I don't
think I've seen mentioned is, you might have fun reading through one
of the shape-note hymnals, like the Original Sacred Harp.  (You'd be
best off doing this with two or three like-minded friends.)  These are,
in addition to being collections of some really fascinating American
folk/religious music, meant to be sight-reading primers.  The notes
are drawn in different shapes according to their position in the scale,
and they also appear in their usual places on the staff.  A number of my
friends have become fairly decent sight-singers just through prolonged
exposure to shape-note music.  I've never been able to figure the damn
system out myself, but lots of people have had good luck with it.

>(3)  How do people read 2/3/4/more parts at once, keeping track of
>     all the various rhythms, etc?  I can barely do this if I don't
>     already know how the piece is supposed to sound.

Magic, I think, which is by way of saying that _I_ can't do it.  My father
can sight-reduce orchestra scores on the piano, which is pretty amazing as
far as I'm concerned.  You probably didn't want to hear this, but, like
the cop said when he was asked how you get to Carnegie Hall, "Practice."
However, practice does involve starting with easier stuff.  Find things
you can sight-read really easily, even if it means getting the sheet
music for "Mary Had a Little Lamb", and work up from there.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
   -__ __ /_   Jon Berger              "If you push something hard enough,
  //_// //_/   jonb@ingres.com          it will fall over."
_/ ---------                              - Fudd's First Law of Opposition