Music Notation

Reading or Decoding

How many people reading music decode notes or read patterns? How many do a hybrid of the two?

Traditionally taught sight readers are generally in one of two camps. Either you are good or you can’t read music well. It’s very tedious to decode every note and definitely hinders performance flow. These people either gave up learning to play an instrument or grew a “giant” memory to enable them to play without the sheet music (and of course some had perfect pitch and played everything by ear and memory).

Opposite to the aforementioned, are the excellent music sight readers. These people have a knack when learning to sightread music and often look at patterns previously learned - such as a three note triad or a seventh chord. Alberti patterns in Sonatas were also easily learned and gave the ability to quickly form hands and fingers in the correct shape and grasp the correct notes.

Is the recognition of patterns all that is needed to become an excellent sight reader? No, there are several more factors. Technique, training and experience are part of the equation, just like any high performance skill.

What do you feel the most important thing to emphasize when learning to read music - Note Decoding or Pattern Recognition?