How to read a score quickly

Introduction

In this article on how to read a score quickly, we will discover that the understanding of musical language is often not as immediate as that of understanding words. If we wanted to measure the speed at which a pianist reads a score we should first know how quick he is to understand it. As children, we were taught to read and write letters, then to combine them in syllables, then to build words, sentences … Let's imagine for a moment, going back with the memory, how much time we spent between the desks of school: hours and hours a day, just to learn how to write simple sentences.

The art of combining letters, syllables, words, into meanings has taken us a long time, and if we are now here to read like lightning hundreds and hundreds of characters in a matter of seconds it is because we have become masters in understanding them. Reading a score quickly is the same since it is not enough to repeat mechanically hundreds of times or to know by heart all the elements of music theory: if you want to answer the question "How to read a score quickly?" it is necessary to understand the role of those elements within the context in which they are inserted. This does not mean that we should sit comfortably without practising what we read in this article: instead, we must give the right space to both method and application. Let's take repetition for example: any musician has found himself in the condition of having to, sooner or later, repeat a passage to read it better, play it better, and understand it better. Now, imagine repeating something a hundred times in the wrong way from the very beginning! We would get more harm than good. Therefore, the time spent does not count if there is no method. Vice versa: imagine spending hours and hours reading this article without applying anything that is written on it! Again, we would get more harm than good for our ability to read a score.

Method and Application

Balancing method and application is not at all simple: since both are necessary but cannot be cultivated at the same time, it is necessary to establish priorities to understand when to train one or the other. In addition to knowing how to understand a score, you must also know how to contour the elements and be able during the reading to keep your eye still on the score as little time as possible. But this aspect is not decisive because reading a score quickly means always structuring a precise awareness in the brain first.

Imagine that we have to quickly contour something whose shape is totally unknown! Unfortunately, when they teach how to read a score it still happens: many times in academies, it is taught that "it is essential to accustom the eye to look further of what you are reading"; or that "the reading eye must never stop or go back"… We must not misunderstand these teachings: it is still the brain that governs the eye, and if the eye is asked by the brain to stop or to go back it is not by mechanically accustoming it to look only "forward" that you become familiar with reading, especially because at the beginning "forward" for a neophyte can simply mean a little more to the right, on the next page… These issues are too confusing if not properly understood: introduced in this way, instead of allowing you to read a score quickly, they only accustom your body to take precedence over the mind.

The Musical Alphabet

The simple fact of being reading these lines gives us the guarantee of being able to practice the names of the notes at very high levels. These, in fact, are nothing more than words. No sounds and no rhythms, just words. The set of seven names of the notes constitutes the Musical Alphabet, which we must imagine just as it is depicted below: circularly. 

The Popular Legacy

In popular culture, notes are symbolized above all by sounds or particular graphic signs and only rarely by names: yet the latter also play an important role during reading. For this reason to answer the question "How to read a score quickly?" we must begin to discern the components of Music from their most popular symbols, which very often are simplifications.

To do this, we begin to understand what are the elements that make up the notes. Some of these will be the pillars of our reading ability, but we won't know which ones until we've mastered them all. For some people, in fact, it is enough to be familiar with the sounds to read a score; for others there is the need of knowing names and so on. Let's start our research to read a score quickly from the Musical Alphabet: it, as we can see from the graph above, does not in itself have a starting point or a direction; for the moment we decide the point or points from which we start and finish reading it. This feature makes it very different from the simple sequence of names that we know from an early age, A-B-C-D-E-F-G. These letters, which many know even without having the slightest idea of how to read a score, have a precise starting point and a precise point of arrival.

But there is only one case in which we read the Musical Alphabet as A-B-C-D-E-F-G, that is, when we start from the A and read clockwise until the G . Let's think for a moment about how different this makes the Musical Alphabet different from the simple list we have been taught since childhood, and how many other possibilities of pronouncing the names of the notes we may have overlooked.

Exercise 1

Looking at the graph, slowly pronounce three times each name of the Fundamental Scale making it follow each time by the one that is to its right. For example, starting from the do you will have to say: dò-re-dò-re-dò-re; starting from the me you will have to say: mì-fa-mì-fa-mì-fa. When you can tell by heart what is to the right of each name, start to quickly make entire turns of the Fundamental Scale as in the examples below: dò-re-rè-mi-mì-fa-fà-sol-sòl-la-là-si-sì-do, rè-mi-mì-fa-fà-sol-sòl-la-là-si-sì-do-dò-re…

From now on, even if it will not always be indicated, never practice an exercise without having first concluded with the one that precedes it: continue only when you can gain confidence both at low and high speed. For example, to advance beyond this first exercise you should be able to pronounce each grouping smoothly and by heart: first within two seconds, then within half a second of the clock. Later we will discover that the Fundamental Scale is only the first of the various components of which the notes are made: only after learning to recognize them all we will begin to connect them to each other. A note is nothing more than a complex connection of elements, for this reason in most cases it is counterproductive to try to learn to read a score by directly trying to play it.

Many children who begin to study the piano abandon it advancing with age: in some cases, the reason is that the reading difficulties have been magnified by the much, too much spontaneity with which they have been accustomed to approach the instrument. This also applies to us who did not start as children: we ardently desire to learn to read a score, but we are often introduced to this art by someone who can do nothing but put us directly in front of four notes as if it were only a trivial repetition exercise. But let's think about it: even if the notes are only four, they are composed at least of names and sounds. With a simple multiplication, we are now faced with eight different elements!

And it is good to anticipate that the number would increase whirlwind if we knew how to count all those components of reading that we have not yet been trained to recognize. To understand how counterproductive this is, let's imagine for a moment a great footballer, a striker with legendary ball control, with unparalleled physical power and speed in the race, capable of dribbling opponents in the most brilliant ways: it is certainly a phenomenon, we would say … But we wouldn't do the same if we found out that this footballer doesn't know where the goal is. With this last clarification, if before in our minds the images of the greatest footballers in history flowed, now we are probably thinking: what a waste, it would take so little to be an unforgettable athlete! In fact, in reading a score we would never want to be like this footballer who neglects only one of the totality of the characteristics he needs to be a champion, just the one that drags everything else with him. Yet in most cases we cannot read a score fluently for this very reason and not because, as some bad teachers want us to believe, we did not start as children or we lack talent. 

Exercise 2

Choose a name from the chart. Pronounce the type of Fundamental Scale that is created by reading clockwise returning to the starting point. For example, by choosing re we will get: rè-mi-fa-sol-la-si-do-re. Try to repeat this exercise starting from each of the note names, first looking at the graph, then by heart.

Some of us have probably already heard of, even just as children, in cartoons, at school, on the internet, the terms Major Scale and Minor Scale: we completely ignore these terms, for the moment! They could generate a great confusion in the much simpler concept of Fundamental Scale: a scale that cannot even be played because it is just a simple set of words.

Exercise 3

Repeat exercises 1 and 2 on the Fundamental Scale first by skipping a note name, then two, three, four, five, six, and finally seven. If we skip a note, the first part of exercise number one will be: dò-mi-mì-sol-sòl-si… While in number two we will have: re-fa-la-do-mi-sol…

When we start reading a score, it will show us all this and we will no longer decide. In the next financial year we will prepare to execute more complex orders.

Exercise 4

Repeat all the previous exercises on the Fundamental Scale following the counterclockwise direction of the chart. For example, the first exercise will no longer be do-re, re-mi, mi-fa, but do-si, si-la, la-sol and so on; in the second you will no longer have do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-si-do, but do-si-la-sol-fa-mi-re-do. And so on.

Exercise 5

Perfect all the previous exercises, clockwise and counterclockwise, performing where possible a double turn of the Fundamental Scale. For example, the number two exercise starting from the clockwise fa will become: fà-sol-la-si-do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-si-do-re-mi-fa.

Soon, with practice, we will realize that the exercises on the pronunciation of the names of the notes are absolutely necessary to learn to read a score: for this reason they are recommended by the most authoritative treatises of the past. On the contrary, few manuals among those of our day dwell so long on this aspect, already considered by Rameau an essential didactic prerequisite. In fact, the seven names of the notes that make up the Scala Fondamentale are prerequisites for the simplest compositions, such as those of the piano exercise manuals for beginners, but also for the more complex ones, such as Rachmaninov's Third Concerto for Piano and Orchestra. In other words, when we find ourselves reading a score, whatever it will be, we will not find more than seven names of notes: this applies to the simplest compositions, but also to the most complex ones.

Accidents or Signs of Alteration

Each of the seven nouns of the notes will always be associated, during the reading phase, with one of the following adjectives:

𝄪	Double Diesis
♯	Sharp
	Natural
♮	Natural
♭	Flat
𝄫	Double Flat

Although to the left of the adjectives I have already shown you, in the previous table, all the musical signs that they affix to express them, let's limit ourselves for the moment to saying that these adjectives are called accidents or signs of alteration, without worrying too much for the moment about how or where they are in the score. Let's take a few examples:

Name of the note	Adjective
DO	Natural
Ago	Natural
Yes	Flat

It will be better to reiterate: in this first phase of the work we must imagine such adjectives only as words, without asking ourselves too many questions about their musical meaning. While a person tells us what his name is, we rarely think about the thousand linguistic implications of his name. In the same way in my experience I realized that pretending to know immediately both the name and the musical meaning of these simple adjectives can prove to be strongly counterproductive in developing the ability to read a score. We will talk about it in a future article.

Exercise 6

Stores the adjectives of note nouns written in the table above.

Needless to say, many manuals of our day, even among the Best Sellers, at this point of the work on our ability to read a score, would have already presented us with an image of the piano keyboard introducing in a single jumble all the elements that we have dealt with so far, including names of notes, adjectives of the names of the notes, names of cats and dogs of the author and, why not, even a photograph of his instrument. This would have completely prevented us from isolating the elements that, consciously or not, we use to read a score and we could never have answered the question "How to read a score quickly?". For the time being, we have become agile in pronouncing the names of the notes, clockwise and counterclockwise; we have memorized the adjectives that accompany the names of the notes and we have laid some of the necessary conditions for at least three fundamental associations for the development of our ability to read a score, associations that we will deal with in the Piano Reading Method.