To read, or not to read…
Yes, that is indeed the question in this article.
I am now going to throw down an insult to guitarists everywhere. But while it’s seems an insult, it is still an indesputable fact. Guitarists are notoriously the worst sight readers on the planet. There are several reasons, note I said, “reasons”, not excuses, for this. One of the leading one’s being that the guitar is a cow of an instrument to read for. Why? Fundamentally because of the lay out of the instrument. It’s imperfect in design, but due to the tuning and harmonic requirements of the beast, we’re stuck with it. So get over it.
All the fluent guitar sight readers here will want my head on a plate for saying that. But this article is not a debate on how difficult the instrument is to read for. I read for it. It’s about us being poor sight readers, traditionally speaking, and does it in fact really matter?
For me personally, I have only ever in my 30 years playing, had to sight read two or three times. It was hard going, but mostly because sight reading is something that you need to continually practice to maintain your skill otherwise it goes to hell real fast. If you’re a classical guitarist, you are constantly sight reading, so no problem for you. I want to speak to the rock/pop guitarist here. Pick your guitar hero, and chances are they don’t read. Not can’t…DON’T.
Whether you’re in a covers band or an originals band, you are learning your material by ear. Note the word “learning”. I have played with readers, and I’ll tell you that it can be frustrating as they play more like machine than man, and they never LEARN the song. They don’t take it in and let it become part of them. They just spit out the dots. There are exceptions to this, but I am relating personal experience.
We live in an age of inexpensive home recording studios. I would rather quickly record an idea and pass it to the band to learn, rather than spend hours or days meticulously putting it all down on manuscript. I could, and have, but why? Being able to read is a wonderful skill for any guitar student, and I encourage it wholeheartedly. For when it comes to learning scales, arpegios and the like, it’s invaluable. I always like to be able to give my students runs and finger exercises for practice, and the easiest way to get those across to them is on manuscript. I’m not a TAB fan as I personally find it more cumbersome than dots. But that’s just me. However, for the working guitarist, don’t ever feel inadequate because you can’t sight read. This is the 21st century and we have the technology available to get our music across in more efficient, less time consuming ways.
February 16th, 2006 at 2:09 pm
Great article Johno. I’m going to write on a similar topic soon.
Whilst I’m very happy that I learnt to read music, I see so many people who can’t play without it and that is sad. They are nothing more than human midi players. You need to be able to read AND play by ear in my opinion.
June 14th, 2006 at 2:55 pm
[...] Mark Johnson makes a great case here for “technology over tradition” in article entitled “To read or not to read”. Sure, I know there are arguments either way but deep down I believe that most musicians would benefit by being able to read music. It is certainly not essential as there are many fine players who don’t read a note and, as Mark points out, some people never learn to play without the music in front of them and that is also a problem. Overall though I’ve found that the benefits of reading have far outweighed the effort of learning to read. “What benefits are those?” I hear you ask. Well, that depends on what you are doing with your music. I have been through many distinct “phases” in my time as a musician so I thought I’d list some of the benefits of reading music during each phase. [...]