Why Music Literacy/Musicianship Skills are Important for Singers

Occasionally a singing student asks me why they should bother to learn to read music. Certainly, if they are preparing to study music in college, they will be entirely lost if they do not know the fundamentals before they begin their courses.  Outside of the realm of academia, these skills are also very important, not only to function in the profession, but to engage in high level amateur musical pursuits.

Music literacy assists:

1) The ability to learn music accurately and independently

2) The ability to learn music efficiently and independently

3) The ability to communicate musical content to other musicians without an intermediary.

4) The ability to perform (and rehearse) music confidently as well as the ability to make changes on the fly.

5) Your aural skill. Yes, reading music makes your ear better. MUCH better. Interestingly better your ear, the easier it is to learn sight singing AND the more you sight sing, the better your ear gets. It really works both ways. Some say that musicians that read do not have as developed a musical memory as those who learn by ear.  I believe that the rote learning  (learning by repetition) that illiterate musicians must do, itself, aids in memorization.  When reading musicians repeat an equal number of  times, memorization occurs as well but so does musical accuracy.

 Learning by rote can hurt your voice and it can also interfere with developing a good technique. Learning by rote  (or singing in amateur choirs or ensembles that teach and rehearse by rote including some bands) requires repetition that wears your voice out, ingrains tensions, bad habits and the mannerisms of the singers you are mimicking.

If you have memorized music from a recording and are singing based on your memory, your focus is divided between your memory of someone else’s performance and your attention in the present to the task at hand.

If you have memorized music from a recording and are singing based on your memory, your focus is divided between your memory of someone else’s performance and your attention in the present. to the task at hand.

Learning to sight-sing or learning music fundamentals including music literacy, should not be a daunting experience. As a teacher, all I expect from a student is to learn little by little, getting a bit more proficient each time.

The frequently asked questions (or occasionally asked ones):

1) What is music literacy? 

The ability to read music notation

2) What is contained in music notation?

Music notation contains the basic information of pitch and duration, with some direction, although most notated music contains phrase markings, dynamic markings and other interpretive direction, it does not contain information  concerning  the finer points of style. A feeling for musical style is developed by analyzing the performances of fine examples of each particular musical style.

3) If  __XXX_ (insert name of famous singer/musician) does not read music why do I have to?

Some things to consider:
 a) Did XXX have the resources of an entire movie studio or record company and unlimited funds to compensate for their lack of musicianship skills? If you do not have unlimited funds and need to approach quantity of music literature at a level at a high level of quality in order to generate an income,  you should develop professional level musicianship skills.

b) Is it true that famous musician/ singer XXX really does not read music or are you  simply believing an urban legend? The frequently repeated statement that Pavarotti could not read music was the result of a something said by a former manager and then misstated and misunderstood by others.

Pavarotti’s manager said he could not read orchestral scores  (which requires reading specific clefs for cello’s, string bass,  etc. and transpositions for brass instruments, a HIGHLY complex thing). Pavarotti could read and learn music from piano vocal scores just like all opera singers , that is what his co-stars/ accompanists and conductors have told me.  That is right ,and guess what?: with almost no exceptions ALL OPERA SINGERS read music.  All professional opera singers I have ever met and heard of are musically literate!!!! ALL OF THEM!!! YEP. 100%.  They might not be excellent sight singers, but they can take their piano vocal scores home and learn all the basic notes in advance of their coaching sessions where polishing and minor corrections occur.  Many of the top and most respected rock musicians also read music.  Yes they do, even the ones who wear funny hats and glasses like Elton John. Even weirdo’s like Frank Zappa who, I believe had a doctorate in music, even Barry Manilow, who went to Julliard, even hot chicks like Pat Benetar, Even all of those famous bad boy British rockers who claim they don’t read music but were British choir boys for many years in their youth  READING music in their choirs. Maybe they are claiming they don’t read music to keep the competition out of the way or to feed the PR of their magical, amazing, unexplainable music abilities alive in their fans, the same reason why many well-known vocalists make singing teachers sign confidentiality agreements before studying with them. I make it a policy to never disclose who has studied with me without permission but charge triple scale for lessons if I am asked to sign one, believe me the issue comes up all the time.

Because I have spent my life endeavoring in music, most of the people I personally know are musicians. I would say over 90% of the musicians I personally know who derive all or a significant portion of their income from music  (including, for example a bass player with a top Van Halen Tribute band amongst others, so I am not talking about “classical musicians”) are musically literate or have an extraordinarily strong understanding of jazz harmony and theory (the complex system of chords, modes and scales). If you aspire to be a professional musician, and nobody you know personally reads music or knows a significant amount of theory on top of the basic fundamentals, you are definitely hanging with the wrong crowd.

So the next time a person with a day job that he/she hates  tell you, an aspiring pro, that you don’t need to read  and/or understand music don’t take advice from them.  If you hear a superstar entertainer say that they don’t read music or need to read it, make sure that your financial resources and you musical perception resources is on the level of that super star. They might not have to read music  (or have a good working understanding of music fundamentals and theory) but it might possibly be the case that YOU just might have to, in order to function in the profession.

c. The few musicians who operate on a high level who are not literate are musical geniuses (or near-geniuses) and have incredible ears. Don’t confuse having an ear good enough to be a musician (and not a “civilian”) with being a genius.

 Some signs that you may be a musical genius Signs include but are not limited to:

I You sing perfectly in tune, almost all the time II You play a large number of musical instruments proficiently III You can hear a song once and then sing  (and probably play it, not just the melody but all of the parts on all of the many instruments you, as a possible musical genius, probably play) it with great accuracy after one single hearing, and doing so is so easy that you can do it under pressure. (No  BS excuses such as, I can do it when no one is watching me).

* If you think you are a musical genius you can test this idea through a variety of tests including the most famous one, The Seashore test which tests : discrimination of pitches, dissonance, rhythmical figures, and intensity; as well as an ability to remember melodies and The Karma Music Test

is designed to measure auditory structuring in a way that it should minimize the effects of training and/or culture.

Just as an IQ test determines whether someone has extraordinary intelligence, there are objective tests that determine whether someone has extraordinary musical perception abilities.

Don’t be discouraged if you are not a musical genius. You don’t have to be one to be a highly skilled professional musician. Most professional musicians are people who started out with some natural ability and then developed those skills to a point where they are marketable skills. Most professional musicians are talented mortals.

 While it takes savant-like abilities to memorize an entire book (that someone else reads to you), almost anyone can learn to read a book.  If you only have to deal with one or two (or ten) pages of a book, most people who can’t read, can learn to memorize those pages, just as people who have a developed music hobby can learn a dozen songs by ear and or’ with the help of a coach. People involved in music for their own enjoyment can get away without music literacy skills.  But if you need to “learn the whole book”, or need to constantly learn new music, as professional singers do, you need literacy skills.

4) Will learning musicianship skills interfere with my creativity?

No, most literate musicians who write music,  create or  “hear” music in their musical imaginations, and after use their musicianship skills to accurately communicate what they hear in their heads to other musicians. It serves self-expression, because you are not dependent upon others to read your mind or arrange their own parts in YOUR creations. You create more of the content of your own music, when you have the needed skills.

5) Am I too young/ too old to learn?

Too young? Probably not, many of my musician friends report to me that they read music before they read English.

Too old? Not in my view, as I have witnessed many people acquire professional-level musicianship skills / music literacy well into middle age.  Acquiring these skills is a process.  Once you do the basic work, every hour your practice on your instrument (voice) not only helps you learn the piece at hand but increases and re-enforces your music skills

6) Can I just learn an instrument and will that suffice?

Probably not. Learning an instrument will help, but all instrumentalists must learn to sight sing, because that is how you connect what you see on the page with the sound you hear in your mind.  All musicians are required to train in sight singing classes  (sight SINGING) because it is possible to learn to push buttons on an instrument without hearing it in your ear. The only way to determine what a musician is actually hearing in their brain is to hear them singing it, because the brain is generating the pitch and the voice is communicating that information.

7)I don’t want to learn how to read and understand music will you still work with me?

I do work as a coach/ repetiteur and technical teacher on many different bases with singers, actors, dancers and performers of many kinds according to their needs.

When I was teaching in university music departments most singers that had access to my instruction had some basic skills and were also required to e developing them.   Although a vey strongly feel that music literacy is vital, in my private practice I am willing to assist singers any way that they think will help them best, but with the understanding that they are following their own advice and not mine.

Consider the adage: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. As a teacher if I spoon-feed the notes, I am teaching a student to sing particular song. When I teach a student music literacy, I am teaching them how to learn any song, accurately on their own.

Just as an IQ test determines whether someone has extraordinary intelligence, there are objective tests that determine whether someone has extraordinary musical perception abilities.

Don’t be discouraged if you are not a musical genius. You don’t have to be one to be a highly skilled professional musician. Most professional musicians are people who started out with some natural ability and then developed those skills to a point where they are marketable skills. Most professional musicians are talented mortals.

 While it takes savant-link abilities to memorize an entire book (that someone else reads to you), almost anyone can learn to read a book.  If you only have to deal with one or two (or ten) pages of a book, most people who can’t read, can learn to memorize those pages, just as people who have a developed music hobby can learn a dozen songs by ear and or’ with the help of a coach. People involved in music for their own enjoyment can get away without music literacy skills.  But if you need to “learn the whole book”, or need to constantly learn new music, as professional singers do, you need literacy skills.