Reading music has really opened up my life.
I made a concerted effort to start reading more music. Playing the drums primarily (where you don't really need to worry about keys, sharps, etc) and guitar (tabulature) and bass (ditto) for years, I skated by on MINIMAL knowledge - enough to get through music classes. I'd see real sheet music and just about crap myself.
So I decided last year, late last year, to get up to speed. Jazz is a musician's music, and I wanted to go beyond drums in the jazz idiom.
So I bought Jazzology, Mark Levine's Jazz Theory book, some intro piano stuff and went to town. I'm learning the Moonlight Sonata now, one of my fave pieces, and can pretty much pick up a book and so long as there isn't too many ledger lines, work it out reasonably well on the 1st or 2nd try.
It's brought a great deal of fun into my life. I was trolling bulk bins of cheap/expired music and got some great bargains. Liszt? Heck, throw it on the stand and give it a go.
Only other thing that pisses me off is concert vs non concert pitch, but that's another blog.
I made a concerted effort to start reading more music. Playing the drums primarily (where you don't really need to worry about keys, sharps, etc) and guitar (tabulature) and bass (ditto) for years, I skated by on MINIMAL knowledge - enough to get through music classes. I'd see real sheet music and just about crap myself.
So I decided last year, late last year, to get up to speed. Jazz is a musician's music, and I wanted to go beyond drums in the jazz idiom.
So I bought Jazzology, Mark Levine's Jazz Theory book, some intro piano stuff and went to town. I'm learning the Moonlight Sonata now, one of my fave pieces, and can pretty much pick up a book and so long as there isn't too many ledger lines, work it out reasonably well on the 1st or 2nd try.
It's brought a great deal of fun into my life. I was trolling bulk bins of cheap/expired music and got some great bargains. Liszt? Heck, throw it on the stand and give it a go.
Only other thing that pisses me off is concert vs non concert pitch, but that's another blog.