I can just barely read standard musical notation but it’s far from fluent. I’m wondering if, with enough practice you can look at sheet music that you have never heard or seen before and sound it out in your head before ever touching your instrument?
Yes. That is a skill that you spend around the first two years of a music degree learning and perfecting. In your solfege class you learn to read in all keys, and clefs. You learn to identify all intervals by ear and learn to sing them. You even do dictations where you have to write down music you hear.
After that study, yes you can know what the music will sound like by just looking at it.
Interesting thanks. It seems like it takes a lot of practice! It makes me wonder if it’s possible for an “earworm” song to get stuck in your head if you’ve only ever heard it with your “mind’s ear”
i learned this when i was ~8, then lost it, and now i miss it like hell
A skilled musician can convert sheet music notes to “do rey mi” type sounds almost second hand. It just takes me awhile and doesn’t come naturally to me.
For the most part yes, but everything sounds like a guitar.
Yes. And i can see the parts that will be annoying to play
Bozner Bergsteiger Marsch. Grrrr!!!
Yes. Classically trained, degrees and all. I always had good aural skills; it came naturally to me and formal training just made me better at it. Now I sing and singers absolutely have to know how to do it if they’re sight reading. No instrument to rely on. Some can’t do it; they have to hear it first. Singers get a bad rap by other musicians honestly.
Back when I sight read, I was more of an up and down sound kind of reader. Like, I wouldn’t think of the exact sound of a middle C, but I would have a sound that I called the C and go up and down from there as the piece went up and down the scale. Somewhere in there I’d also think about where the note that I’m seeing on the page would be played on the instrument.
I can read tabs or my own preferred similar notation system. I can’t “sight read”.
I get an understanding of the mood emphasis of the notes. I can also corrolate which part goes with what the music sounds like…
yes
