Reading vs. Memorization

Sounds about right.

What happens is that as you repeat play the piece to get it up to a reasonable performance level, a mixture of muscle memory and familiarity all combine and it gets to the stage where you use the written down sheet music as a prompt to play certain phrases in certain places rather than as a set of instructions for what to play next.

I have the same result with my orchestral work. I cannot for the life of me remember the whole of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik but put the music in front of me with another 19 guitars doing their thing and I'm fine. I've no doubt my solo work reaches performance level in exactly the same way, although I am always working the solo performance set with a view to committing it to memory.

I like the new avatar, btw.

A :-)

Thanks Alan!

I'm finding that reading music isn't nearly as scary as it looks. There are a couple things that make me scratch my head, but after some thought I generally figure it out.

The only thing I am intimidated by is those super fast runs in alot of Dowland's works.

I also checked out a couple of those composer from the other thread (Robert Johnson, Daniel Bacheler, etc) and found this site:

http://creativeguitar.org/

Thanks for the heas up on those, lots of good music here!

Oh, thanks for the comment on the avatar, lue32 created it for me, I'm lovin' it!

When you become familiar with a piece, there is something that is somewhere between reading and memorization.

The song is mostly memorized, but the cues of glancing at the music are needed to stimulate the muscle memory.

You will find this especially noticeable when you first learn to read, because it takes so many repetitions to get the music under your fingers.

For me, as long as the music is in front of me, I never fully memorize the song, although I don't really read it if I have been playing it long enough.

If I've read a piece of music long enough, and I take the music away, I'll make quite a few mistakes at first, but after I work them out, I'll find the song really is memorized.

Insights and incites by Notes

Same here (although I can't read treble clef, just bass). I can't sight read as I'm playing, but I recognize the patterns, which reminds me which phrase is coming up.

I played bass for a while but never learned to read bass music. It was mostly knowing the music theory from other instruments I play and memorizing where the notes on the neck were (well most of them) and the patterns needed. As a sax player the treble clef was my home, and anything else I figured was a "trouble" clef ;)

Eventually I learned to read bass clef as well since that is necessary for keyboards. But I haven't played the bass in many years. Too bad, because I really enjoy the bass - but in a duo, the drums and bass are the first lines I put in my backing tracks. I do my own backing tracks, but most of the music I need to play I learn by ear as the sheet music is rarely available for the songs I need. It's just as well because that keeps my ears sharp.

Learning to read on the guitar can be frustrating. Mel Bay and I don't always get along. But it's worth the effort because in the long run, reading music make a player better, plus I can pick up most fake books and play the melody lines to songs I've never heard before. Most melody lines in the fake books are in the first or second position, so those are the ones I know the best.

Insights and incites by Notes

I had just picked up a Hal Leonard 24 Classical Guitar Pieces in Standard Notation, and it came with a CD for $10.

Covers a variety of time periods and styles, and for the most part they look like they are all in either C or G with a couple of pieces thrown in in A or D. It's got everything from Dowland to Scarborough Fair, and some Spanish stuff as well. I listened to the CD and most of them are about :45-1:00 in length.

I know the big thing I'm going to have trouble with is Tempo. I can discern the tempo from the time signature, so it's something that I need to work on. I know what it means, just haven't transferred that to my brain and fingers yet.