Read / Don’t Read!
Sometimes it feels like I’ve spent half of my teaching career convincing people to read music on guitar and the other half trying to get them to stop reading. Note reading is an extremely valuable skill that I encourage all my students to acquire—but it’s not music.
Written symbols provide useful information that make it easier— and, in the case of music you haven’t heard, possible—to determine where to put your fingers on the fretboard. But it’s useful in much the same way a map is. A map of Paris is not the experience of Paris, but a doorway into an experience. The magic happens after you put down the map and surrender to the experience.
Here’s my pitch for reading music
This article on the pros and cons of note reading for guitar players contains more than just a pitch, so you’ll want to read it. If you read TABs but not standard musical notation, you’ll still benefit from the thoughts and information in the article. TABs are still a map, and getting away from them can be just as important to musicality, if not more so.
And here’s my plea to stop reading!
When you’re learning a piece, it’s easy to get so absorbed in the placement of your fingers that you forget the sound. If you have that problem, it will likely persist as long as you’re attached to the page or screen. This issue can obviously occur without interjecting note reading into the formula, but the risk increases when symbols become involved. When focus becomes narrowed, sound suffers.
The worst mistakes I’ve observed related to reading involve such a total disconnect that the guitarist actually plays one or more notes in the wrong octave! A more common problem occurs when the music reader loses aural connection with other musicians they’re playing with. This often results in a train wreck by the conclusion of the piece.
But even if each note is played correctly and on time, dynamics, time feel, tempo, and more elements of expression can easily be lost when the reader’s attention is tightly trained on symbols.
Make it work for you
Experienced musicians who are also highly skilled readers are able to play expressively while referring to written music. They’re able to do this by maintaining a wide visual and mental focus. If you fit into this category, you’ll be able to hear the music in your head when you look at the notation. You’ll play what you hear, rather than only following directions that you see.
If you haven’t yet reached that level of musicianship, you can enjoy the benefits of written music without sacrificing musicality. Just make a point of detaching from the symbols at the appropriate stage of learning a piece. Use the map to comprehend and navigate, and then step away from it and climb into the experience!
