So who here reads black dots?

HAL9000

I can a bit, but not well enough to be able to play something that's just been put in front of me. However if I'm learning something new I quite like having sheet music more to be able to see the note durations and where the repeats happen etc. I can normally work out the chords after one or two hearings of a song, but struggle more with remembering the song's structure.

mike_l

Yes, but not (to my mind) brilliantly well.

When I was having lessons I was reading at grade 7/8 which was much simpler than piano at a lower grade (from memory, it's years since I tried piano).

Teetonetal

Yes - pretty well. No big deal. Like everything simply requires practice. It's a helpful but not essential skill, personally prefer it to tab.

Blueingreen

I can read after my own fashion.

By which I mean if you put a piece of written music in front of me and the guitar part is not too difficult for me technically or too weird rhythmically (odd time signatures etc) I would be able to work out how to play it in a reasonably short time.  I don't need to hear the music.  In fact I have a few guitar books where I've never played the accompanying cd because the written part is enough.

I wouldn't be able to sight-read anything unfamiliar in real time unless it was very, very easy though.

I mainly use reading to learn new material that's going to stretch me a bit, so my inability to sight-read it in real time is pretty irrelevant - I wouldn't be able to play it without practising it anyway.  

For me the main advantages of reading are:

- Unless something is pretty easy I can learn it more quickly and more accurately from reading than by ear - or even ear+accurate tab.

- it helps memorise stuff - sometimes I memorise the pattern of notes on the page faster than I memorise the sound of the part, so although i haven't yet memorised the part I can still play it from memory.  More important, I think there's a synergy from two different parts of the brain mastering the same information in a different way that means you learn material faster and deeper

- if I've learned something, not played it for ages and forgotten it, it's much easier to retrieve it if I learned it partly from notation.  There must be so much stuff I learned before I was able to read that I've completely forgotten.  Re-learning it would mean sitting down with my guitar and the record and painstakingly reminding myself how it sounded and how I played it.  If I learned to read it at the time I can re-learn it in a fraction of the time.

So although I've never been the calibre of reader who could take on a reading gig at short notice or turn up to a jazz jam with a real book and play a bunch of unfamiliar tunes, I still think the time I put in learning to read has been massively worthwhile.  I'd enthusiastically recommend it if anyone is thinking of putting in the effort.

Jalapeno

I can get by - Janet & John book 2 level at best.  Given enough time I can read anything - but not sight read.  (when I was in a choir I was actually getting quite good at it - but it is NOT like riding a bike - you need to keep at it).

Megii

I can read dots - classical guitar lessons in my youth, followed by a stint a music college basically took care of that. One of the bands I play in now has a huge pad of numbers (4 thick volumes) so impossible to learn everything, and I'm often having to read from the music on gigs.

Roland

At primary school I was taught to play recorder from the dots. The treble clef is no problem. I guess that it's a lot easier when you're younger. One of this year's objectives is to be able to be able to read the bass clef to support my newly acquired piano habit.  Knowing the dots and ledger lines is a memory exercise, and shouldn't be too difficult.  Seeing the damn things is likely to be the problem.

Sambostar

I got to Trinity Grade 4 as a kid, then gave up with exams, mostly because of the sight reading.  I've had the odd occasion when I've forced myself to sit down and read a Trinity grade book to work out a piece and I can vaguely do it, but it is so boring, I only get a few bars in.

stickyfiddle

I used to be able to sightread well, at least on sax. I was good on piano too, but never learned guitar from dots so I've lapsed a lot.  

OilCityPickups

stickyfiddle said:

I used to be able to sightread well, at least on sax. I was good on piano too, but never learned guitar from dots so I've lapsed a lot.  

Same here ... I was trained on piano as a reluctant kid ... 

And I have lapsed into next week!

Phil_aka_Pip

I read, but freely admit that my sight reading is not brilliant, I expect that's because of lack of exercise for the skill. I find reading pitch a lot easier than reading rhythm. IMO a lead sheet is essential, as when someone tunelessly hums something (or plays back something on their phone that just goes tsch tsch t-tsch) and then expects me to reproduce it on the guitar I haven't a clue. Even if all I'm doing is comping I still need a lead sheet because it will have timing info on it. So should a proper chord chart, but most peoples' idea of a chord chart is a lyric sheet with chord symbols written above the words which is totally useless.

I can't get on with tab at all. It's music by numbers.

bigjon

Learnt classical piano from age 4, was playing hymns in school assembly and church from age 9, soon gets your sight-reading chops up to speed, learning to quickly diagnose roughly what chord is signified by a particular note-cluster.

ArchtopDave

I prefer reading "dots" more and more as time goes by, though I have to do it at my own pace. Increasingly I more and more hate the style of TAB which has no bar lines or any evidence of note length/timing in it.

Phil_aka_Pip

ArchtopDave said:

I prefer reading "dots" more and more as time goes by, though I have to do it at my own pace. Increasingly I more and more hate the style of TAB which has no bar lines or any evidence of note length/timing in it.

Persactly. And if you've already gone to the trouble of reading the rhythm, you're more than halfway there with the notation.

fretmeister

Grade 3 on sax. On Bass I can sight read Grade 1 but can work out harder stuff as long as I have a bit of time.

ROOG

I can sight read monophonic dots, (a gift from school music lessons I guess) full blown keyboard compositions are beyond me for sight reading, to play proper pieces requires step by step assembly! 

Once learnt Im playing by ear really.

Lack of concentration and practice for sure

bingefeller

Just like others I can do it....very slowly.  It takes me a few seconds to work out the notes.  

thecolourbox

I can't play from tab at all, I tend to use it to get the starting position for stuff but then leave it to my ear for guitar. I am a music reader. Over a decade of classical piano and starting young, it's the same as reading words or a map to me. That said, it has taken me quite a long time to adjust to reading notes for guitar because I learnt the music reading with reference to a piano.

I like taking on occasional difficult tasks, so for that reason I bought the notation book for the Them Crooked Vultures album, which I had heard maybe once at the time, to learn from start to finish from the notes and not the tab, to try and improve my notes-to-guitar association. Worth a try!

Phil_aka_Pip

subject to the physical constraints of eyesight, I can also read dots in colours other than black

axisus

Long John Silver?

HAL9000

axisus;574659" said:

Long John Silver?

Very good.