Monday, June 4, 2007

Reading music

I'm still working through the Shipton book. I'd been making what seems like good progress.

A couple of times, I've really stalled. Sometimes I think that's probably normal plateauing, but other times it's been something else.

The fact of the matter is that I can't read music very well. I learned how when I was really young and have had no reason to keep sharp with it over the last 30 years or so. What I find is that when I come to a new piece that's written in normal musical notation as opposed to tablature, I can read it, but it's really slow.

This has shown up in the book several times so far, but I'd come to a couple of pieces back to back in the Shipton book over the last two weeks or so written in standard music and it had slowed me down.

I seem to have overcome it a bit. I can play both through (slowly and awkwardly of course!), but I can get through them. So I figure I'm due a little celebration.

1 comment:

AmyFou said...

I, of course, can't really read music properly - but since most of my books are written in standard musical notation I've gotten faster at figuring it out. As long as there aren't too many notes at once.

What messes me up is when the book shows both tab and standard notation. I get all cattywhompus b/c I can't get my eyes to stick to one or the other...