[tobr]

> seeing highly-upvoted comments like this one that are so confident and yet so completely wrong

Looking back at my comment and scratching my head. In what way could it even be wrong? I’m literally just offering my personal experience from a life of playing piano, in reaction to the implicit assumption in the post that learning to play the piano means learning to play by reading a score.

I’m not against reading sheet music, but I’m against the idea that you somehow must do it to play this instrument, because I know it’s absolutely wrong. I’m not cut off from any genre I’m interested in playing, I’ve been able to receive in-person instructions, and I’ve certainly played in bands. I’m not really sure what “written pedagogical resources” about playing the piano would be, so not sure what to say about that.

> background as a professional music performer and educator (now a software engineer)

For what it’s worth, this is a reasonably accurate description of me as well.

[gjulianm]

> Looking back at my comment and scratching my head. In what way could it even be wrong?

Your original comments gives the impression that reading scores is "bad" somehow. The analogy of "These things are about a different as learning to program and learning to type in a program from a magazine" gives off the wrong impression. I play piano and I get what you mean, music is much more than playing a score. But the score is just a medium to learn a song. It's not "typing a program from a magazine", it's more towards "reading an algorithm description and writing the code".

> I’m not cut off from any genre I’m interested in playing,

The "I'm interested in playing" part is important. I don't think trying to play some classical piano pieces by ear is going to be easy, for example.

Is it necessary? No, of course it isn't necessary to be able to read sheet music. But it's pretty useful, not that hard, and will make a lot of things easier. You could make analogies diminishing every way to learn music (e.g., learning by ear is just like looking at a program your buddy wrote and writing the same, you're just imitating; or learning chord notation is just like writing in scratch, you're limited to the blocks someone created before) but they're not useful at all. While it worked for you, most people will actually benefit from having multiple ways to learn music.

[jacquesm]

> not that hard

I'd beg to differ. To read a moderately complex piece at the speed at which it is played while playing is tougher than most other skills that I've acquired. If it weren't hard then it probably wouldn't be the major reason lots of people give up music, the notation is inconsistent, hard to read, requires mode shifts, requires a lot of attention and can get extremely cluttered. It is anything but easy, but of course, once you've mastered it completely it might feel easy. Just like computer programming feels easy to me. But that doesn't mean that it is easy. It's just something I've been doing all my life so the underlying complexity has been long ago internalized to a level where I'm not really thinking about the code, just about the problem I want to solve.

[gjulianm]

> To read a moderately complex piece at the speed at which it is played while playing is tougher than most other skills that I've acquired

Playing moderately complex pieces will be tough, no matter the method. Also, you're using the score to learn it, in most cases by the time you're able to play it at the correct speed you don't need to read every note, you use the score as a cue and guide. And some pieces fit with different methods, for example I find it more difficult to play pop songs by sheet music than by ear (or ear + chord notation for the harmony). On the other hand I recall Satie pieces, they're pretty easy to read but I'd really struggle a lot if I wanted to play them by ear.

> If it weren't hard then it probably wouldn't be the major reason lots of people give up music

Is it though? I'd say that the major reason lots of people give up music is because it's harder than they think, and because there usually is a disconnect between what the student expects and what the teacher wants or teaches.

> once you've mastered it completely it might feel easy

This also applies to your point. I think people would get frustrated with their professor if their way of teaching pieces was just playing it and saying "now play it" without telling them what the notes are. Playing by ear is not easy, and it's really tough for people that haven't developed a musical ear and don't know any musical theory yet. At least when reading there's a set of instructions that you can follow and advance on that.

[turtlebits]

There is a balance between memorizing/finger memory and reading across piano players.

I think the skill you are talking about is sight reading, which isn't necessarily something that is required to play the piano at a high level. No matter what, you still need to practice. A lot.

[jacquesm]

I think I'm aware of that :) That's why I wrote this software in the first place, see title of the article!

[cassepipe]

Have you got interested in alternative music notations? I've dug around and it turns out people have thought about the problem. Have you ever tried any of them?

[jacquesm]

Yes, very much so. There is this Japanese one that I really like:

https://muto-method.com/en/history.html

[jader201]

> Just mentioning this because sometimes it seems that people think the way you learn to play an instrument is by learning to play a score.

I think this is what can be a little misleading, depending on what “learn to play” means.

Yes, anyone can “play” an instrument without formal instruction/training, but it will definitely limit your abilities and potential (for the average person and most above average people).

As someone that took very little formal training and can play piano by ear relatively well and can pick out and play many tunes, my abilities and potential are quite limited. I can also read music (I’m more formally trained as a trombonist), but I’m super slow at reading and playing piano music.

Looking back, I now wish I had learned more formally.

I’m speculating this was one of the points the GP was trying to point out.

[NikolaNovak]

Per my bigger post, a lot of people are conflating "music theory" or "formal training", with "sheet notation". You will be limited performer if you don't develop an understanding of music theory at some level yes. But I've successfully challenged my music Instructor to teach me music theory without sheet music for the last year... They really aren't as inseparable as sometimes people assume :)

[palimpsests]

Are you learning music theory without learning how to read music at all?

If so, how, for example, are you talking about the concept of a dominant 7th chord? Or a ii-V-I?

[NikolaNovak]

For example, here is a music theory author that recognizes that two are separate, and therefore has two books:

Music Theory - which explicitly does not require nor teach sheet music: https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/1986061833/

How to read music https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/1546933301/

I have half a dozen other "music theory" books which in actuality spend 70% of the time on "reading music"; worse, this boring, discouraging, counter-intuitive cluttered part is typically first in the book (which means that interested minds will give up before ever getting to "the good stuff" :( ).

Basically I had to fight uphill battle with majority of professionals to actually learn something interesting and useful and insightful, as opposed to memorize sheet music (or memorize music theory terms without understanding / reasons why). I may one day decide to come back to sheet music, for many valid reasons; but reading sheet music is 100% not needed to discuss music theory - at least for me!

Edit: I noticed you had similar conversations in the past; it seems I had similar needs/perspective/experience as "jeofken" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25812227).

I'd be eager to continue conversation via email / chat to obtain your further perspective, if you'd be willing:)

[palimpsests]

interesting, I wish amazon would let me see inside the music theory book.

I'm just curious if they are still using note names and how this teacher is going about things... Because yes it's totally true you don't need to be able to read sheet music in order to understand theory well

Look at a jazz lead sheet for example, where chord voicings aren't usually spelled out (big band being an exception sometimes). Or in analysis e.g I - V7 - iv

[NikolaNovak]

>>how, for example, are you talking about the concept of a dominant 7th chord? Or a ii-V-I?

I mean, exactly like that :).

You don't need sheet music specifically to talk about notes and chords and scales and modes. It's just an ingrained unquestioned assumption that we do. And personally, I found it getting in the way of music theory.

There are 12 notes in Western equal temperament and you can wonderfully beautifully transpose and move things back and forth; sheet music locks you into a seeming 7 notes on a seemingly privileged scale, and makes it far far harder to develop an intuitive understanding between notes, intervals, chords, etc. I find most of my music teachers learned these things by rote, unfortunately, rather than method or relationships :-/

[palimpsests]

happy to continue the conversations.

I don't hold this assumption that you name, and it's not a part of formalized music education. which actually does emphasize method and relationships, versus rote learning. I'm curious why you think anything else would be the case. how much exposure do you have to this world? I hear that you have worked with music teachers - in what context?

also, curious to understand how many of them were coming from a jazz background?

learning to read music on the staff has no relationship to 7 notes on a privileged scale, so I'm not sure what you mean here. no note is given priority over any other note, in any clef. what makes you think that sheet music locks someone into 7 notes?

I don't intend for this to sound condescending - how well can you read music? are you speaking about all of this from the perspective of someone who has read about reading music or someone who actually understands how to read?

your comments (and those that you refer to) seem to sound like those that deride reading music as some kind of crutch or limitation in music education. I see these amusing comments a fair amount on this website.

being able to read music is having an ability to speak a shared language. like English, but with a lot smaller alphabet and an incredibly smaller set of rules. it's funny to me the degree of resistance I hear to this from people who often want to "disrupt" this language without actually understanding why it exists in the first place.

to use an analogy from mathematics, students usually benefit from learning multiplication before learning algebra as a way to see examples of logic based symbol manipulation. theory is the algebra, reading music is multiplication. that's why theory is usually taught to people who have a rudimentary understanding of the language of music.

[tobr]

Learning to play by a score is very different from getting instructions or training.

[jacquesm]

> in reaction to the implicit assumption in the post that learning to play the piano means learning to play by reading a score

And even that wasn't implied, I'm well aware of many people playing piano at a level that I can only dream of that couldn't read a score if their lives depended on it.

[ajkjk]

Of course, if they could read scores, they'd be more capable (and more employable) pianists for it, all else being equal.

[contrast]

You were literally just saying that people who learn to play an instrument and express themselves through music, if they learned how to read, were no more musicians than some who can’t actually program is a programmer.

I suppose you can argue it’s just an opinion, so therefore while it might sound condescending, arrogant and profoundly self-centred, it isn’t wrong as such. The problem with that is it wasn’t just an opinion, it was an argument. I would say that learning to become a concert pianist it a completely different thing to typing in programs from magazines, and so you are very much wrong to say that it is.

[tobr]

I have absolutely not said that if you learn how to read a score you’re not a musician. I compared learning to play an instrument by first learning to read a score to learning to program by first learning to type in a program accurately from a magazine. The similarity is that you’re trying to learn something that, while hard to master, can very quickly be fun and creative, but first you decided to learn to do a different thing that is just as hard and very tedious and only tangentially relevant. For a lot of learners, it’s likely to be a turn-off, or a distraction.

Concert pianist are not beginners, and they have chosen to focus on the type of repertoire that is completely centered around sheet music, so they are way, way outside where this analogy makes sense.