Music Reading

 Music Reading — is It Necessary

to Learn

Many people associate music theory with reading music. And this is because
when people teach theory, most notably in music schools, they often teach it on
the staff (the system of musical symbols), and usually they do that with respect
to the piano. Reading music can help people to understand the fundamentals of
harmony, melody and rhythm, so some people think, because it gives us a way
of writing it down, visualizing it, and communicating it clearly.
If you are interested in learning to read music, then there are many tools
available for you to do so, but it is worth saying here that it isn’t a necessary part
of learning theory. Theory is a collection of ideas, ideas that interact with one
another and guide our ears. Putting that theory down symbolically on the staff
can be useful, but it doesn’t all by itself mean that we will understand it or be
able to use it any better.
In short, when learning music theory it is not necessary to learn to read music.
There are cases, however, when it is useful. If you are a band leader or
composer, then it is essential to be able to communicate your vision to other
musicians. While that doesn’t necessarily mean writing music traditionally, it is
useful to know how to. Likewise, if you are a session player or a member of
someone else’s band, it is highly likely that people will be handing you sheet
music to learn, or even to sightread (sightreading is the act of playing a piece
while you read it, usually one you have never read before).
In those cases, it is useful to be able to read music. But in general, if you aren’t
going to be making your living playing in other people’s bands and on other
people’s albums, and if you are happy to learn ways of communicating your
music to other players that is non-standard or non-traditional, then you may be
just as happy not learning musical notation. There are many great musicians who
don’t know how to read music, however they do understand music theory and
how music works.
Reading traditional musical notation is part of the big world of music theory; but
remember that you can learn and use music theory without having attained this
skill, but you cannot learn and understand how to read music without
understanding the basic music theory first.
The choice of whether or not to learn how to read music and write it down on the
staff using traditional musical notation is entirely up to you — it depends on
your goals as a musician. This is certainly a useful skill that will deepen your
understanding of how we think about music, and I would definitely recommend
you to learn at least the basics of how we capture it on the staff. This book
explains theory in detail but it doesn’t deal with reading or writing down music
using traditional notation, because that is a separate subject—more suitable for a
separate book. It is not essential in order to benefit from learning music theory,
plus it makes it less complicated and easier to learn, especially for beginners or
nonprofessional musicians.
If you decide that you want to learn how to read music, write it down, and
interpret written notation, and how it’s all connected to the music theory, then I
have a great tool for you to consider:
A sibling book (2nd book in the Music Theory Mastery series) dedicated solely to
learning how to read music for beginners and attaining the basic level of
sightreading. You can check it out here:

www.amazon.com/dp/B071J4HNR5
With this book you’ll easily learn the fundamentals of the notation system and
key signatures, clefs, staff elements, notes, how rhythms are written, solfege and
much more. There are also progressive exercises at the end in which you’ll be
required to apply everything you’ve learned in the book and actually sightread a
musical piece. It will also be very exciting to see how it all relates to what you
learn here and how many concepts complement each other