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Re: Sight Reading

Author: rickw48
Date: 2009-10-29 12:46

Hi Kevin

I'd just like to give a bit of reassurance to an adult learner.

I learnt music from childhood, so the reading of it has been second nature all my life. However, I have had experiences as an adult learner of other things from scratch. At one point I decided to learn how to do partner dancing. I started with salse and progressed to ballroom. How I wished I'd learnt as a child...! Affordable dance classes are all done in a group setting. This can be both reassuring ("oh look, there are other people just as bad or worse than me") and depressing ("oh look, there are other people much better than I'll ever be).

My point is: the most difficult thing about being an adult learning from scratch is the pain of being terrible at something before you get good at it. (I am something of a perfectionist and can't bear to be bad at anything I do). The more successful you are in other areas of life, the harder this dissonancecan be to tolerate.

What I found with dancing was that actually when I let myself simply enjoy the feeling of doing it rather than berating myself for forgetting instructions, it was a wonderful experience. Nothing can prepare you for the euphoria you feel when one day, after months of stumbling around, you find you can get through a whole waltz without stopping. And in that moment you stop being richard, the marketing manager and you become either fred or ginger (depending on whether you look good in chiffon with feather details) and you feel like you're floating on air.

There will come a moment with the oboe when the same thing happens. Just try to concentrate on building things up slowly, in a systematic, focused way, getting one detail right at a time. If there's something you don't "get", ask your teacher and use your adult cognitive skills to try and work out what you don't understand. It always helps me if I try to work out how I would explain something to someone else (in other words how would you teach this). Before you know it you'll find yourself being able to play one tune and then another and then another. Very best of luck with it all.

Richard

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