Do I "NEED" To Learn To How To read Music In Order To Learn The Piano?

[nyiregyhazi]

Secondly, this analogy holds true in many ways; have you ever tried learning a new language?

If your vocabulary is limited in a language, then your speech will also be limited.

Also, you won't be able to write anything down.

I didn't deny that. I pointed out that the analogy doesn't work when it comes to learning pieces. Would you learn a new language by having to memorise stories and poems, before writing anything down (or even understanding what the individual words mean- just as people using tutorials rarely even know how to spot a simple major chord)? No. You'd learn vocabulary and learn to formulate your own sentences. That's analagous to improvisation. It is not analagous to going to youtube and learning to copy someone playing the moonlight sonata. When we're talking about serious musical compositons that are parroted without recourse to learning to read scores, the only relevant analogy is learning a language by memorising literature without understanding how to read words (and probably without knowing what the words mean). Language is about knowing individual words and being able to make your own combinations with intelligence. You neither learn to read words nor to be conversant in a language by simply learning to recite a large string of words in a specific order by copying someone else.

Again, you can start banging on the piano, just like you can start yelling jibberish and call it Spanish, but the analogy works.

Who said banging? That's a strawman. The analogy would be to understand scales and harmonies and to construct your own combinations- just as people learning language learn words and put them in their own orders. They don't recite Shakespeare by memory from listening to someone else over and over, before they learn to read words. It would a ridiculous approach for any intelligent person to consider that more "natural"- just as it's ridiculous to be cheating your way into faking advanced repertoire without learning how to read music.

Plus, "improvising on a high level" doesn't mean anything.

It means doing it well- ie. not banging random notes. I'm not sure why you thought I might have been alluding to that- as it is not analagous to the way people construct their own sentences from smaller formalised units.

[keypeg]

I've been thinking about how reading music might be the same as, and different  from, reading language.  I have experienced reading music two ways.  The early way of reading was closely tied to movable do solfege, which I learned very early.  When I encountered my first written music, I sang my way up and down, and then found those sounds on the piano.  What developed was that I "heard" a melody that was written down, in the same way that I "hear" written words.  It didn't matter what instrument - I played what I heard on the page.  All of it was in relative pitch and it worked fine for music that was in majors and minors.  For piano music I was used to common chord progressions and especially Alberti bass.

I thought everybody read music this way.  I was puzzled when I brought my then-teacher an old songbook, with a song I had loved as a child, and he brought it to the piano.  Why didn't he just read the melody (which I heard in my head)?  Why the piano?

There is a totally different way of reading music.  You have a note on the page, and you have a place on the piano.  There is an instant link between that note on the page and the piano key, so that when you see the written note, your hand goes to that key.  It is fused.  The combination of these two things each get the name "E".  It is a physical reflex.  Right now I am learning with someone who tries to get this thing going as directly as possible.  But all teachers try to strive for the same thing one way or another --- notes on page, notes on the keys, name, intervals etc.

I switched over to this second way of reading music, because I needed it, and am still in training.  The other thing that I have isn't garbage, and that kind of thing kicks in after a while too - it's useful.  But this second way is not the same as reading language.  You are training physical reflexes in real time and involving the senses.  It is very useful to be able to do this.  It means you can go to any written music anywhere and it is open for you to explore.

[agajewski]

Once you learn scales and circle of fifth, it is quite easy to pick up the chords needed to be played and melody for any tune. This ofcourse if we are talking about pop music. In classical it is quite hard to play any piece if you don't know how to read music.

My father has been a musician (drummer, guitarist and soloist) throughout his whole life and he explained to me that he never actually had a need to read notes. He listens to a tune, figures out the chord progression based on ear and comes up with melody with no effort at all.

Reading sheet music is valuable talent and I would go ahead and study as much as possible, it is quite nice feeling to pick up a sheet music and start playing based on it.

[chopin2015]

Also, it is pretty easy to start off reading music that you have heard before. You can linksymbols to what you remember hearing...its fun!

[oxy60]

Written music is the only way we have to give others exactly what we have in mind and to precisely reproduce a musical idea.

Yes we can listen to recordings and try to get it right but there will be errors. Depending on how many steps/people it passes errors will increase. I get a lot of static for trying to get the original sheet music for any new song. It never fails that I discover that what everybody thought was a certain chord in root position turns out to be an inversion. Or worse minor instead of major.