Fermata

fermlogo.gif I read music pret­ty well, but some­times I think my gui­tar instruc­tor thinks I’m an idiot, because I read music strange­ly.

He’ll say ‘Start from the E’ and it will take me 5 or 10 sec­onds to find the right note from which to start. When I read music I don’t read notes as their names, I read them as tones. I sup­pose the best anal­o­gy I can come up with is that when you read this, you don’t read each let­ter and think A‑D-A‑M adam I‑S is D‑U-M‑B dumb. You just read it as: Adam is dumb. I’ve always read music this way, but I used to be bet­ter at pick­ing up the notes on the staff, but since I had an 8 year break from read­ing music, that semi-abil­i­ty is slow to come back.

In the oth­er direc­tion, sort of, I can’t play things by ear unless I’ve read and mem­o­rized the ‘pas­sage’ first. I’ve got a good mem­o­ry for rote things.

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