How To Read Music: For Beginners - Nicolas Carter

Author: Nicolas Carter

Series: Music Theory Mastery, #2

Genre: Nonfiction, Music

Rating: 4.25 stars.

In a Nutshell: A much, much better experience this time around. A part of it could be because of my familiarity with the topic. But this book is much more reader-friendly than its partner volume.

The reason why any trained musician from across the world can play a piece the exact same way is credit to the standard way of writing music. (This is specifically for Western music, though we can use the same ‘language’ to write any music.) Thus reading music is a skill that every musician (whether instrumentalist or cantor or conductor or composer) ought to have, and this in turn requires knowledge of both music theory and musical notations. These two topics are in turn co-dependent; you can't understand musical theory without knowing musical notations and vice versa.

I had read the first book of this series, Music Theory: From Beginner to Expert, a few days ago and come away with mixed feelings. While the content was mind-blowing, the approach was too technical to be beginner-friendly. This book is much, much better in comparison.

Like all languages, music has rules, and knowing how (and how long) to play both sounds and silence are important. Sheet music doesn't just reveal the notes but also their length, their pitch, the volume at which to play them, their accidentals, their pulse,... Reading this book will ensure that you get a basic familiarity with these concepts, if not a complete understanding thereof.

The content covers every element important to sight-reading: scales & notes, notations for music and rests, chords, clefs & bars, nomenclature and explanation for tempo and volume, and so on. Basically, whatever information you need to read sheet music is provided herein. As my instrument of choice is the keyboard, having the information presented through keyboard/piano friendly examples is always to my advantage. But the author does cover other instruments and clefs as well.

In many ways, this is a less ambitious book than the first one and therein lies its advantage. Rather than trying to include everything under the sun, it sticks to its focus on “reading music” and doesn’t divert into complicated information. That said, a basic familiarity with musical concepts would still be helpful to you if you have to get the best out of this book. A rank newcomer will also find it helpful but a tad complicated.

I found this book a lot easier on the mind than the first one. Then again, I'm not sure if it's because of my greater familiarity with the content. As a self-taught musician, I wanted to streamline what I know and refine the concepts I was unfamiliar with, and this book served my purpose well. I also learned two amazing tricks of how to read key signatures quickly and how to use the solfege scale to practice pitch.

Definitely recommended to anyone interested in honing their sight-reading skills.

This book is available on KU.

The book uses the American musical notations for its purpose, though it does specify the relevant British term for the same notation in one section.