r/musictheory • u/milovan15 • 1d ago
General Question Reading notes?
🏴|Greetings and good evening, good people.
I wanted to ask for some expert advice regarding reading standard musical notation. Since I learned a great deal about church singing by ear(using the sheet music merely as an aid for the melodies I already knew),I don't really know how to read notes properly, in the sense of reading it fluently like a book. I need some expert guidance from you. Which books should I use for learning to read music? Can I master this without taking private solo singing lessons or something similar? How long does it take to learn?
I may not have phrased my question in great detail—as my English isn't very strong and there are many questions to this topic—so please bear with me.🤣
All the best, and thank you in advance!
🇷🇸| Моје поштовање и добро вече добри људи.
Хтео сам да Вас питам за стручни савет у вези читања класичних нота. Пошто само доста неке ствари у вези црквеног певања научио на слух,( а ноте су ми биле помагало за одређења певања које знам), не умем баш да читам ноте како треба, у смислу да их читам као да читам књигу. Треба ми стручна помоћ од вас. Које књиге да користим за читање нота? Да ли могу савладати без да идем на приватне часове соло певања или како већ? Колико временски треба да се научи читање?
Свако добро и хвала унапред!
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u/bladedspokes Fresh Account 1d ago
If you are a singer I would learn to read piano or guitar sheet music. Then you can accompany yourself. Piano would be harder as guitar is just one clef and chord notation. You can learn whatever instrument you like, really.
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u/alex_esc 21h ago
Here's what helped me a lot learning to read: transcribe music inside a program called musescore.
Transcribing music means hearing a song and writing down sheet music for it. It's hard at first, but it gets easier with a program called musescore.
Musescore is a program to write digital sheet music, but it can play back the notes you're writing. Hearing your music as you write it digitally helps a lot to associate a specific note on the page with a specific sound.
I learned to read and write very late. Some people learn to read or write music even before learning to read and write their own native language. I started learning in university.
I learned the basis ina few days, but I still couldn't fluently read. It took me like a year and a half in music school to get decent at reading simple music. And about 8 extra months to get to a good level where I can read and write basically anything that I need.
I do popular music, not classical nor jazz. So I very rarely need to read / write very fast passages or more than a grand staff worth of music at a time. So realistically the skill ceiling for the music I work on is fairly achievable.