Diabolical sheet music like this is
enough to scare anybody away from wanting
to learn how to read sheet music. One
look at it and you're like, "I think I'll
pass
I'll just learn how to play by ear
instead." That's quite understandable
because sheet music can be very
intimidating. But there are those who
just play by sheet music and those
just play by ear.
That's kind of like choosing between
your two hands. Which one do you want to
live without.  I think they both work together
Hi everybody,
CJ here, and today we're talking about
sheet music. Reading sheet music versus
playing by ear.
And really to me there shouldn't be any
comparison. The two are complimentary.
They're both learnable skills and they're both really
important. Now I can understand that
sheet music is very intimidating but
reading sheet music and understanding
music theory are not the same thing. Yeah
you need to understand some music theory
in order to read sheet music but you
don't need to be proficient at reading
sheet music in order to understand music
theory. Music theory is used also for
improvisation and playing by ear so no
matter which way you go you're gonna
need to use music theory. But another way
of looking at this is like understanding
that music is a language. So you wouldn't
learn a language without learning how to
read and write in that language. You can
go visit a different country but with a
different language and you can find your
way around and order food at a
restaurant and that's all good and well
but if you live there you've got to do
mundane things like read your mail, fill
out forms, that sort of thing and you
definitely want to know how to read 
and write in order to be able to do
those things in that language. So you
wouldn't willingly learn to speak a
language without learning how to read
and write in that language. Of course
some people can have a preference. You
can have a preference to what kind of
music you want to play that requires
more improvisation or more reading. For
example if you want to play Bach and
Chopin and Listz and the rest of them then
you probably want to focus on getting
your sheet you're reading skill really up to
speed.
Focus on that but you don't want to
leave your ear training out either.
You might want to play something a
little more modern, in which case there's
sheet music for that as well, you know.
And the sheet music for modern music is
you know can be made a lot simpler
than traditional notated music. For
example, this song here, What A Wonderful World.
You can look at it this way and
it's written like yeah just too many No
- that's that's intimidating! Now, what
musicians nowadays prefer, we prefer a
lead sheet which looks like this. As you
can see the melody is a lot simpler
there's only one line one note at a time
that has to be read. Very simple
And then we're allowed to improvise on
that.
And so on and so forth. We can improvise
on that but on that improvisation; where'd
we get those notes from? We get those
notes from chords which are written with
these chord symbols. Now in order to
improvise you actually need to
understand enough music theory to know
what these chord symbols mean and how
to interpret them. Music theory is both
for improvisation and for reading sheet
music. 
Both of these skills are learnable,
you don't need to have extra special talent
or extra special genius to do both of
them. You might favour one over the other
that's okay as long as you do both
combine your ear training with your with
your reading as well to be a
well-rounded musician. So I hope you
enjoyed this video I hope you learned
something if so please click like and
subscribe and I'll see you next time. Thanks
