Reading Music

I taught myself to play guitar and bass from an early age and I was surrounded by other musicians who had done the same. It took me years to see the point of music theory but I was not convinced about reading and writing music. Then I went to college to study music and I was behind everyone who could read and write music. They would talk about stuff that I couldn’t because there was this big hole in my knowledge. I had to catch up to pass the course so I tried to find out how they did it. Everyone had had a teacher and I couldn’t afford one. Then I heard one of the most important pieces of information I would ever hear.

Classical music is expected to be true to the original, it is almost demanded. The college had a huge library of manuscripts and recordings. Over the space of three months I learnt how to read music, by listening to the recordings while looking at the manuscripts. From that I began to write music.

Technology was born at this time and I invested in an Atari ST computer with Cubase software. Compared to now this computer had less capability than a calculator would now but it had a score writing part. So I would write music and then listen to it. By a process of trial and error I wrote music that I liked and knew that it would work the way I wanted it to.

So I am in the process of putting together teaching tools to help people to be able to listen and read music. The links below are from a few years ago and now I have worked out the technology so some more are coming.

Let me know what you think. Enjoy.