[Harp-L] we're here for a good time-trooper

[Michael Rubin]

My experience teahing reading music is that understanding the concepts is
very easy. Getting to where one can easily tead the notes is almost
instantaneous.

Learning to read the timing tends to be very challenging. Spending an hour
a week with a guiding teacher is not enough to master the skill. Only the
students who practice a lot outside of the class master timing.

Michael Rubin
Michaelrubinharmonica.com

On Tue, Jul 25, 2017 at 7:43 AM Richard Hunter <rhunter377 at xxxxx> wrote:

> Rick Dempster wrote:
>
> >
> > Seconded. I never learnt a thing off tabs. Not only that, but despite
> > having taught myself to
> > read music (very slowly) it takes me forever to learn by heart a piece of
> > music delivered to
> > me in 'dots'. Like tab, it just doesn't 'sink in', even if I can actually
> > play it from the sheet.
> > If I learn it by ear, it's there forever; and yes, you get better at it
> > quite quickly.
> > Even if you memorise from tab, it won't help you improvising, or picking
> > things up, generally.
> > No harm, in writing your own tab, however, as a memory helper.
> >
>
> I'm sorry to hear that you have some kind of mental block where learning
> from sheet music is concerned. For the record, one of the most important
> reasons to learn to read--to read standard music notation, that is, not
> tab--is that it makes the process of learning a new piece of music go much,
> much faster.  The larger and more complex the music is, the more helpful
> reading is to learning it.
>
> I've said a lot about the value of reading music in this forum on other
> occasions, so I'm not going to lay it all out here again. But the idea that
> reading music makes it harder to memorize music is a personal issue, not a
> natural fact.  The experience of literally millions of musicians says the
> opposite.
>
> If you don't need to read to play the music you want to play, fine by me.
> It's your choice. To claim that reading music is an obstacle to learning
> music is something altogether different, and it could do some damage to
> people who otherwise might be inclined to pick up a very useful skill, one
> that expands both their musical skills and their career options.
>
> Regards, Richard Hunter
>
> --
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>