Learning to read and play Music

JackLuis

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A couple of weeks ago I decided to learn to read music. After four years of playing chord sheets and strumming, I thought I needed to learn to play notes.

I found a Android app that quizzes you on the Staff and after a few days could recognize the whole Treble staff from Low D to high C. Not really fast, but enough to start trying to play notes.

In the last four years I learned the first position notes on both the Sop/Concert and the Baritone Uke, so I thought I was in good shape.

However the transition from note recognition to actually playing the notes without looking is HARD!

For you who want to learn to read the staff I recommend DoReMiNotas a free App from the Google Play store. In fifteen minutes a day, in a week you can learn to read the Staff. Then the hard work of forcing muscle memory to fit the notes into your left hand and picking into your right hand begins!

I've almost learned Skip to My Lou, just thumb picking and will start trying to use T-I-M fingers on the right hand.

Wish this old man luck!
 
Luck!! You are on the way to reading music. It should get easier as you go.
 
A couple of weeks ago I decided to learn to read music. After four years of playing chord sheets and strumming, I thought I needed to learn to play notes.

I found a Android app that quizzes you on the Staff and after a few days could recognize the whole Treble staff from Low D to high C. Not really fast, but enough to start trying to play notes.

In the last four years I learned the first position notes on both the Sop/Concert and the Baritone Uke, so I thought I was in good shape.

However the transition from note recognition to actually playing the notes without looking is HARD!

For you who want to learn to read the staff I recommend DoReMiNotas a free App from the Google Play store. In fifteen minutes a day, in a week you can learn to read the Staff. Then the hard work of forcing muscle memory to fit the notes into your left hand and picking into your right hand begins!

I've almost learned Skip to My Lou, just thumb picking and will start trying to use T-I-M fingers on the right hand.

Wish this old man luck!

I'd been strumming/chording for over 40 years before I finally decided to learn to read music ... it gets easier :)

I'd suggest, from my experience, not to try to learn too many things all at once. Get your fretting hand very familiar with the notes on the fretboard, then once that happens almost automatically whilst thumb-picking you can start to introduce extra fingers of your picking hand, fairly secure in the knowledge that once your reflexes have figured out which finger to pick with your fretting hand will have the note ready to be played ;)

Just my tuppence worth - YMMV- Good luck! :music:
 
Practice, practice, drink a beer and practice more, is that recommended?:eek:

I was surprised how high up the staff I've been playing with my C tuned concert. Using my baritone tuned ukes to practice, as the big Zebra covers the whole two octaves, is really fun.

I'm still misreading some notes the first glance but the app will give you the note, if you hit it right, to help the ear learn the staff as well.

Good point about the T-I-M thing. Sticking to thumb picking will help my right hand training as I don't ever strum with it.
 
For those who can write computer code, starting with ABC notation is a way of moving into Standard Music Notation. When you write out a piece in ABC notation it is effectively a computer program to drive a sound generator (you and you ukulele in this case). The program has all the attributes and parts of Standard Notation in a computer code format, so you can then look at the Standard Notation and see the parts and the headers for what they are, instead of just seeing confusing graphical symbols.

If you have never coded a computer, this post wont be any help to you.

Way back in the '70s I wrote in 'basic' and HPL for automatic test equipment. HPL was a language HP developed but I never went to any other language and got out of test equipment, eventually into sales and marketing.

I definitely do not want to put another layer of confusion into my music, though I have looked at ABC but decided against it. For me it would be like trying to read Akkadian music notation from 2500 BCE!

But you whippersnappers might like it.:D
 
James Hill's 'The Ukulele Way' and 'Ukulele in the Classroom' are both great resources for learning to read music.
 
It is totally worth the effort to learn to read music. I started about six months ago and have found that it has unlocked so many more musical options than if I only played chords or tab. Stay with it!
 
I've got a yard of music books including Baritone Aerobics and a standard Baritone book so I'll use what I have to teach these old fingers to do music. I've got a lot of books I bought to teach myself guitar back in the late 60's and I think if I could have gotten a Snark then I might have gone farther.

I'm not lacking for Scores to attempt and it's the practice and doing that holds me back so maybe I ought to get with it and stop reading.
 
For those who can write computer code, starting with ABC notation is a way of moving into Standard Music Notation. When you write out a piece in ABC notation it is effectively a computer program to drive a sound generator (you and you ukulele in this case). The program has all the attributes and parts of Standard Notation in a computer code format, so you can then look at the Standard Notation and see the parts and the headers for what they are, instead of just seeing confusing graphical symbols.

If you have never coded a computer, this post wont be any help to you.

Being an "ex-coder", albeit mostly amateur, I found the use of ABC to be significantly helpful on my learning curve. Being able to take a sheet of staff notation, in ANY key and convert it into a piece of "uke-friendly" music with accompanying MIDI (if required) became the work of a few minutes!

Being able to take a duet (or more parts), set the whole thing into a ukulele-friendly key and produce one or more parts in MIDI whilst playing the other part myself (then swapping positions) is great fun and very satisfying ;)

YMMV :music:
 
I have always learned how to read standard notation with classical guitar, flute, recorders and keyboard or accordion. Also chords in them, blowing instruments excluded.
I always find it hard to read the subtleties in melody reading regarding pauses and difficult stuff regarding rhythm. Youtube helps a a lot in that.

What is also a difficult thing regarding our re-entrant middle C being the lowest note, is playing lower notes unless transposed an octave higher, or all the tune. Not always, but it is a bother I say.

Another bother is the re-entrant tuning regarding playing the high G when playing the standard notation and I must say i much prefer the tabs with chord arrangements, when the notes are same time given in standard notation.

Despite these inconveniences I really say that all should learn to play with standard music also with our ukes. From low G upwards at least.
 
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As luck would have it, I've been reading music my whole life. My advice would be not to dive in too deeply. It is easy to get overwhelmed with all the minutiae such as the rests and the caesurae and dynamics such as Pianississimo or Sforzando. To be honest, 95% of the time all I want from standard notation is the notes. With the notes and hearing the piece of music of question, I can play it. Once you hear the piece, you know internally the timing, the rests, the dynamics...so all you need to do is play the notes and make them match what you've heard.

The one thing that gave me trouble, as a reader of music, was the fact that stringed instruments have more than one way to play a particular note. So I would say beware of that
 
When I was in fourth grade we all learned to play the tonette in music class. I thought for a long time that everyone in the world learned to play the tonette in fourth grade music and I was surprised to learn later in life that not everyone in the world even had music in fourth grade. In fourth grade we learned the basics of reading music. Every Good Boy Does Fine and FACE. I thought that anyone who couldn't read music must have flunked out of fourth grade music. So when I took up playing the ukulele reading music came back to me like it was last year, not fifty years ago, and figuring out what frets and strings corresponded to the notes was no problem. Just like playing a tonette. Learning to hit those frets without looking at them was and is a different story. Anyway I played around with plucking out melodies, but that isn't what I wanted to do, I wanted to sing and accompany myself with the ukulele so chords were my thing. But after a few years I wanted to do chord melody and I found a bunch of resources with the tablature, the four lines representing the strings, and numbers representing the frets in the place of notes. So instead of reading the notes above, I read the tablature below and now I've been doing that for so long that I don't read music anymore. It isn't that I can't read music, it is that reading tablature is so much easier. A few weeks ago I got a whole stack of Christmas music that I have to pluck out the melodies for a Madrigal dinner that I'm going to participate in at Christmas time. I'm cast as a troubadour. And most of them have the tablature with them, but a few don't. I put the ones that don't in a separate pile and haven't even looked at them because I'm too lazy to read the music. I'm just afraid that the ones without tablature will end up not being in my Madrigal repertoire because of that.
 
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I have posted before on this topic; I have played guitar for 47 years,then ukuklele for 11 years,and still can't read music. My brother in law has tried to teach me countless times,but it simply does not go in! I play 'by ear' and always have. I can transpose keys to play along with others, and I understand the relationship of each key to the next.I can read tablature,(slowly!) but the actual process of standard notation, just will not find a way into my brain.
Somewhere along the line,the teaching just turns to white noise in my head. But I am happy in my untutored state,and play the music I love, to my hearts content. And surely, enjoying what you do, is why we all do it,yes?
 
Quite so, TopDog, those that are lucky enough to be able to play by ear don't have to worry, but folks like us who can't need some help, be that tab or notation.

Notation has the advantage of being transposable to other instruments, if you happen to play them, whilst tab doesn't. :)


P.S. ....& yes the long words could be a problem, kypfer. ;)
 
When there is a piece of music, written both in tab and standard. I'd use the tab to learn only, but the regular notation to play afterwards along. Tabs are just numbers and strings, so in that is their shortcoming too.
 
The nice thing about reading music is that if one has a song that they've never heard they can play the melody and figure out how it goes. I've gotten a sheet of music before and not recognized the title of the song. I pick out a piece of the melody and many times recognize the song, if not, I can figure it out. So it comes in handy in some cases. I can also search the songs in youtube if I really want to get a feel for something I'm not familiar with, so there are ways around reading music.
 
Well I'm making progress, I've got Middle C to High G down but still make some mistakes reading, it's the fingers that need education, Stupid fingers.:confused:

Back to practice.:D
 
Screenshot from 2019-11-03 01-57-05.jpg

you guys should check this out for some good practice. It is Bach and it can be played even on a re-entrant tuned uke. Of course that low B at the end is something we'll have to deal with.
 
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