Why People Say That They Can’t Read Music

So many people say that they can’t read music. This is probably true because there are many, many people that do not play a musical instrument and therefore have no need for being able to read musical notation.

There are also many people who are musical but have never really tried to read music and because they have heard that a lot of people think it is hard or impossible, presume that they wouldn’t be able to learn to read the musical notation. This group of people say that they can’t read music because they have never really tried.

Let me repeat myself, the vast of majority of people that it would be useful that they could read music, claim that they can’t read music because they have never really tried. It is not because it is too complicated or too hard, its because they have not put in enough effort. Like many things in life, it takes time and effort to learn new skills or to learn new information. When you start to learn something new, you start with the basics and gradually over time, you build on that knowledge or skill level. It is exactly the same with learning to read music – you must start with the basics and once that is known well, you can expand your understand gradually and you could keep going until you reach the point where you could read any piece of music (and I do mean any piece of music).

Some people seem to have the misconception that reading music is hard because it involves a lot of dots, dashes and squiggles. Just because the symbols that are used are not like numbers or letters of the alphabet, does not mean that learning to read music is going to be hard. I would actually argue that because all of those dots, dashes and squiggles have meaning, structure and logic to them, makes them easier to learn. Musical notation has a lot more structure and logic built into it and because it is this way, I would argue is easier to learn than reading the English language, because as we know the English language has so many ‘exceptions to the rule’.

In the hundreds and hundreds of piano students that I have taught over the years, there have been absolutely no students that have not learned to read music to the level that they can play at. Everyone has been successful at learning to read music. Also, I have never met anyone that has genuinely tried to learn to read music and failed.

While I’ve never met a person that genuinely can’t read music, there might be people who can’t read music because they might have what scientists suspect exists, though there is no scientific consensus at this point in time, is a condition that is being called dysmusia, which is like dyslexia. I personally think that the condition could very well exist and just like dyslexia, the person who has it could overcome their difficulties with extra assistance.