How I Finally Got Good at Reading Music (and how you can, too)
It’s embarrassing to admit, but I didn’t learn how to read music well until I was about 25 years old.
Sure, I could get by in my younger years. I sight read charts in big bands and played down lead sheets in smaller combos. But it wasn’t until I was in grad school during a jazz ensemble rehearsal that I realized the real secret to reading music like a pro.
You see, the director of this band was constantly putting new music in front of us, and his standards were high (like the movie Whiplash). With that kind of pressure and intensity, I needed to find a more reliable and faster way to get every note right, the first time, at full speed.
My old way of reading music was me looking at one note at a time – like a kindergartner sounding out words by examining individual letters. Truth be told, I got pretty fast at this very slow, inefficient method.
But once I realized there was a better way, everything changed...
I was able to relax and focus on making actual music instead of just worrying about screwing up the whole time.
And I did it by reading “words” instead of “letters.”
I’ll illustrate this by asking you to quickly memorize a fifteen-digit number sequence:
2-0-0-1-1-9-8-6-1-7-7-6-3-1-4
Not an easy task…unless we chunk the numbers into groups, making it much easier to digest:
2001 (A Space Odyssey)
1986 (’86 Mets)
1776 (Issuing of the Declaration of Independence)
3.14 (Pi)
Now, take a look at the first lick from Sick Licks: Modern, Level 2:
There’s a lot going on there – 14 notes, 3 accidentals…not an easy thing to sight read at a fast tempo.
That is, unless you look for the chunks:
I feel at ease when I see this. It’s so much less intimidating.
And it’s exactly what I did with the big band charts I was sight reading at age 25. Immediately after receiving new music, I’d get out my pencil and start circling and bracketing off groups of notes that made sense together.
I turned “letters” into “words.”
So, when you pick up your copy of Sick Licks today, be sure to give this method of reading the sheet music a try.
Yes, it takes a little more time and effort up front, but it makes life sooo much easier once you start playing.
Alrighty, go ahead and smash this link to get your copy of Sick Licks so you can:
Inject the highest quality licks into your solos that’ll make listeners go “Woooo!”
Get the Classic books so you can finally get that bebop and hard bop sound you’ve been after
Get the Blues books so you can play lines with so much soul you’ll give everyone in the room permanent stank face
Get the Modern books so you can add chromatic, intervallic, and “out” lines to your solos and sound hipper than ever before
Get the Level 1 books so you can sound like a pro on ii - V - I progressions in any genre, even if you’re a beginning improviser
Get the Level 2 books so you can advance your playing to a whole new level and improvise solos that sound so good you’ll make others want to transcribe YOU
Smile to yourself as friends and family ask you, “When the heck did you learn to play like that?!”
Never improvise a boring solo again. Sick Licks will give you soloing practice material for many years to come
Improvise with confidence knowing you have hundreds of licks at the ready and that you’ll never run out of things to play
Here’s the link once more:
https://go.jeffschneidermusic.com/sick-licks
Happy Shedding,
Jeff