Should Singers Read Music?

A few years ago, I thought that was a given; something so basic that it shouldn't even come up in any conversation. Turns out I was mistaken. (On it not needing to come up in conversation, not on reading music.)

I try to be polite. I try to guard my tongue. It doesn't always work.
(Yesterday is for listening while you read on. It will become clear later.) (And by the way, Yesterday is the most recorded song in the world.)

While we were living in Germany, I had quite a few students. One was a young woman who sang in a band. Or wanted to. I was never quite clear on that. She was told by the band that she needed to take voice lessons before they's consider keeping her. So, she came to me.

Now, I don't require all of my students to become fluent in reading music, unless they are serious singers. What makes you a serious singer? Are you auditioning for All-State, college scholarships, Broadway or an opera company? If the answer is "Yes," then you are a serious singer. You need to be fluent in the language of music. If you sing in a church choir, with no real interest in solos, or sing at the nearest karoake bar, then a nodding acquaintance with the language will do. Meaning: I expect you to learn whether the notes are going up or down, how long to hold them out, and to have a pretty good idea of where each note falls in your voice. 

So, back to my young rock-star wanna-be. I tried to explain the importance of this to her. How could she expect to learn the songs for her band if when she looked at a piece of music all she saw were funny little dots and squiggles? One of her guitarists like to compose. She and I were spending a lot of time with me trying to teach her where the notes were.

I explained to her that the staff is like a ladder. When the notes are at the bottom of the ladder, they are lower than the notes at the middle of the ladder. The higher the notes on the ladder, the higher they were in her voice. You can easily learn to gauge how far a jump it is from one note to another by where it is on the ladder in comparison to the last one. Then, it is "simply" a matter of learning where these notes fall in your voice. I put simply in quotation marks, because where these notes are in your voice can change from one day to the next. Factors that can affect this include the weather, how well you slept the night before, what you had for breakfast; anything that affects you will affect your voice.

She resisted every effort I made in this direction. Out of an hour lesson, 10 minutes are devoted to warm-up. Ideally, the student has been practicing properly (See How Long To Practice, my post on proper practicing,) and we can spend most of the remaining 50 minutes on technique and interpretation. That time can fly and often feels like we've barely scratched the surface. 

Lessons for this problem student took a completely different track. Out of an hour lessons, 10 minutes were devoted to warm-up. Normally, I like to let a student song through a song once before interrupting them. Unless it's really a train wreck.  She never sang anything all the way through. I'd have to stop her, not only to correct the same mistakes from the week before, but the new ones she'd managed to acquire. The law of averages would lead one to believe that occasionally a person will sing the correct note, if only by chance. One would be wrong. It seemed that she was just singing notes at random with absolutely no idea of whether the notes were even going up or down.

So, most of the remaining 50 minutes were spent with me pounding out her notes on the piano. And I do mean pounding. I couldn't play anything else - no part of the accompaniment - nothing other than her notes, or it confused her.

Had her attitude been better, I like to think I would not have said what I did. I've had other students with problems with pitch, breathing, stance, focus, artistry, everything. But, usually when people have vocal problems they are aware of at least a few of them. Usually. Why else take lessons? And usually, they are not trying to sing with a band. And usually, they don't yell at me when the band is on the verge of kicking them out because they cannot carry a tune in a bucket. She did.

I suggested that if she would just spend a little time learning to read music, then we could spend more time in each lesson on technique; how to sing. I offered that going on the way we were was just wasting my time and her money.

And then she said it. I can still hear her arrogant tone. "Paul McCartney doesn't read music. And if Paul McCartney doesn't need to read music, neither do I!" 

I stared at her, stunned. She had just put herself at the same level as Paul McCartney, a musical legend, a musical genius, a Beatle, a god. And that did it. The words came tripping out before I even knew what I was saying. "Honey, if you had a fraction of Paul McCartney's talent, that would be fine. As it is, let's sit down and work on reading music."

Odd thing. I never saw her after that. I do hope she kept on singing. In my own past is the music professor who told me I had no talent and should get out of music. In my youth and arrogance, I had a lot of probably inflated ideas of my own worth. I felt that all I needed was for a teacher to have the ears to hear what I could become. Maybe I didn't have the right ears for her. And that does make me sad. 

Should singers read music? YES! I know there are lots of stories of amazing musicians who cannot read music. I always wonder what more they could have accomplished had they also possessed that skill. Even Paul McCartney.