Author: Dutchy
Date: 2006-04-23 19:50
It doesn't take some vaguely defined, mysterious musical "talent" in order to learn to play a musical instrument. Please accept my condolences on having had the bad luck in your life to have had a trumpet teacher, a bass teacher, and a piano teacher who weren't interested in teaching. Dunno what the odds are against any one person getting three bad teachers in a row, but they must be pretty high.
A good teacher doesn't wait for the pupil to demonstrate musical "talent"; part of the teacher's job IS to teach someone to play the instrument who does not [quote unquote] "simply pick it up as they go along" because they have some ill-defined musical "talent". That's what teaching IS.
So, YES, you can play the oboe, and NO, you don't have to have any mystical sort of musical "talent" in order to do so.
And I know a way to fix your "vestigial" music-reading skills: go get any beginner level children's piano book and work your way through it, by yourself, not with a formal teacher. I don't mean an adult book, I mean a children's book, like John Thompson or Schaum. Sit down at the piano and go through it one lesson at a time, making sure you comprehend each one before you go on to the next one. To check yourself, ask someone you know and trust not to mock you who does play an instrument to listen to you play each lesson, to make sure you're "getting" it.
By the time you've worked your way through to the end of the book, with all the "Birthday Party" and "Little Happy Dinosaur" songs, you WILL be reading music. Because if you can play "Popcorn Man", you can play anything. It's all the same skill. And by the time you can play "Popcorn Man", you won't even be noticing the whole "read vertically and play horizontally" thing anymore, it'll be second nature to you.
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