Why Is It Difficult to Read Music?
Updated: Mar 20, 2022
“It’s easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.” Johannes Sebastian Bach
During the course of my teaching, I had many students who found reading music a challenge, the type of students who start memorizing their piece the moment I start teaching it. The lesson would look something like this: The moment we start a new piece, even before attempting to play it properly, my student would start memorizing, me trying to convince the student to look at the sheet and read instead of looking at the hands to no avail. In many cases, my student would end up memorizing and playing robotically from memory with no expression and with many mistakes in rhythm, pitch, and dynamics, and to make things even worse, those mistakes were almost always very difficult to correct, and to make things even worse than all of that, if my student left this piece for a few weeks to work on something else, playing it again would mean re-learning it all over again from the beginning no matter how much time we had previously spent learning it.
If you want to eliminate these situations from your studio, you have to first understand the origin of the problem and the reason behind it. Once you identify the problem, it will become much easier to find a solution.
Music reading is a complex procedure, the term “reading” in itself is deceptive and gives the idea that music reading is somehow comparable with general reading. Nothing is farther from the truth. I will start by demonstrating in more detail the concepts and the skills needed to make music reading work.
I will first set a few examples of the concepts most usually taught in the first few lessons and the skills that the children are assumed to have which form the basis of instruction.
What typically is introduced during the very short period of a few lessons, the first month, will in most cases be something like:
Learning the names of the piano keys and finding them on the piano.
Learning the whole note, half note, and quarter notes.
Learning the bass and treble clefs.
Recognizing and reading the notes of the middle C position or the C position, playing simple tunes using these notes on the piano using the correct fingers, and using the correct hand and the correct rhythm.
Before going any further, I want to be clear on what exactly I mean by the two words: concept and skill.
A Concept as defined by the dictionary is a principle or idea.
In other words, it is knowing the workings behind the answer of a problem and why you are doing certain things without having to memorize formulas to figure things out.
Counting by 1’s
Writing down the numbers from 1 - 9
Matching numbers with objects
A skill, however, means the ability to do something well.
Referring to the math concepts listed above, you will need at least one or more of the skills below:
The skill of speech.
The skill of holding the pencil properly in your hand.
Spatial sense.
The skill to identify patterns.
Now let’s Go back to teaching piano:
In an attempt to break down, what is traditionally taught in the first few lessons into concepts, I came up with the following list. I invite you to go through it and most probably and very easily, you will be able to add more concepts:
Understanding the white/black key pattern
Knowing the first 7 letters in the alphabet
Concept of different keys having different names
Assigning numbers to fingers
Finding the keys on the piano
Concept of pitch and relative pitch
Concept of assigning shapes of notes to time values
Counting rhythm
Concept of notes moving up and down the staff will change the note name although it still is keeping the same shape.
The concept that going up on the staff is going to the right on the piano.
The concept that going up on the staff is going to the right on the piano.
One note on the paper means one key to be pressed
Concept of maintaining a rhythm.
Understanding that each note is written in a different place on the staff.
Differentiating between treble and bass clefs
The 5 lines on top of the grand staff starting with the treble clef are for the notes to play with your right hand.
The 5 lines on the bottom starting with the bass clef are for the notes to play with your left hand.
If we try to teach all the above concepts in a very short period of time to a beginner child we are assuming that the children we are trying to teach have at least the skills listed below before beginning any piano lessons:
Recognize patterns
Memorizing ability
Assign an abstract (number) to a physical object (finger)
Read a few letters
Manual dexterity
Motor planning
Sit still for at least a few minutes to perform a short melody
Hand-eye coordinate
Ability to sense the rhythm
Ability to identify pitch
Know the difference between left and right
Able to eye track the sheet
Good attention span
Ability to follow instruction
Communication skills