This Month's Topic: Reading Music

You might have noticed that I didn't get a newsletter out to you in February.....it was a busy crazy month for me (I played and hosted the nightly jam sessions on the 2007 All Star Smooth Jazz Cruise which was a blast, but I got way off schedule when I got back). My apologies to you all, but....

Hey Hey Hey Kids ......Here we go again...... In this newsletter I want to go over something I touched on early in these newsletters. I recently received an email from a guitar student who wanted to know if he should learn to read music or.... was knowing how to read tabs enough. Again I will say to you that although tabs can be a cool thing, it is not, I repeat, is not reading music. If you have a teacher and and all he teaches you is tabs, then you and your parents should have a talk with this person. Tabs will not prepare you for doing sessions or any other situation where you have to read music. The whole concept behind tabs is to show where things are played and how they are played. When you are in a professional situation where people are reading the music as they go along (sight reading), you cannot sit there and try to look at the bottom of the page to see where you should put your fingers and on what string you should be playing. These things you have to know, and how you know it comes from learning to read music and where the dots are on the lines and spaces. Don't get me wrong... I have nothing against tabs - they can be useful; but ,as I said... that is not reading music.

My advice to you all is to learn to read the notes and know the note value. It is wonderful to be able to play music you have never heard and you cannot do this with tabs, as you have no idea of what the note values are. I know it seems like tabs make life easy, and it can when it is a song you are familiar with, but if you never heard it before then what? You just play it like you want it to go?

Okay, I think I have made my point here.... so to move on. I have only received a couple of requests about different subjects to speak on and tabs was one of them. So, help me out here, please send me some questions and let's keep the ball rolling. You can e-mail me at jazz@nickcolionne.com. I try to cover as many things as I can in this newsletter, but I need your help. In order for me to really be a help to you, I need to know what it is you want to talk about. Until then I will keep trying to come up with things that I think you need to know.

For all the non-guitar players signed up to this newsletter, let me say that although my comments were mostly to the guitarists, I want to emphasize to all of you that learning to read music will serve you well as you grow in your musical endeavors. Playing by ear is cool, and you need to develop that ear - but if you can't read music, you are going to miss out on a lot of great opportunities in the future where reading is a necessity (such as playing in the theater or for a movie score, doing commercials, and playing with the "big guys" who all have charts for you to read!).

So, until next time... you guys practice and... let the music play..

MUCH, MUCH LOVE TO YOU ALL

Peace, Nick

P.S. Forward this newsletter to your friends or sign them up yourself by sending an email to jazz@nickcolionne.com. Adults welcome, too, but they need to ask to be added to the list!!!