Reading Music

Introduction

Have you ever stared at written music and felt like you have no bloody idea what you’re looking at?

Yeah, me too. Having sucked at reading music for most of my life, I completely understand how hopeless it feels to stare at the squiggles and not know what to do with it.

To give you an idea of how much I sucked, yknow how in piano exams they give you 1 minute to read a short song, practice it, then play it on the spot? Each song is maybe… 10 bars long? Every single year, I was still figuring out where to put my fingers for the first chord by the time the 1 minute was up. You should have seen the look of despair on the examiners’ faces…

That was before I quit piano and got into choir, then acapella music. The wonderful thing about that sort of music is that you don’t need to read all the parts for it to work; you just need to read and sing your own.

Much easier heh.

More importantly, my choir conductor taught us how to read music in a simple, structured and very effective way.

For those of us privileged to be taught by him, I can confidently say this: most of us can now pick up any acapella score, and sing any part immediately. For those who can’t, give them 10-15 minutes and they’d have written all they need to be able to sing through it smoothly.

That’s what we can teach you 🙂

For those who’ve literally never been able to read music before, believe in yourself. Some of the best music-readers I know are those who’d never even seen sheet music before stepping into choir.

So that’s what this part of the blog is for! With a little hard work and patience, I promise that you’ll be able to read acapella music too 🙂

~ Andrew