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[Chris]

To help me with certain areas of my musical development I've been trying to learn to read music. I've been struggling though because my chosen method (learn a new instrument that doesn't use tab) was just frustrating me. After years of being able to play pretty much what I want on a guitar to suddenly have to start again is very infuriating. The instrument I chose (a tin whistle) is relatively simple but I've been struggling to learn the notes on the stave to get through the lessons quickly. The other option is to learn to play by ear, which again is quite new to me. So I did a quick search and found these two programs to help me and I thought I'd share them in case some of you found them interesting:

http://dl.filekicker.com/send/file/1.../nc_inst32.exe
http://www.solfege.org/

The first is a simple interactive quiz program to help you quickly learn to read a musical stave. Perfect for me.

The second is more in depth and designed to train the ear at recognising notes, intervals and scales.

Both are free so give them a tryif want.

Alternatively if you know of other programs that might help me please post them here as well.

[Bass Cadet]

Wow I had no idea there were such things on the internet! I've done my music theory grades so I can already read music but i found these exercises really fun. It never does any harm to brush up ( you ken fit like, you forget things over the years).
Associated Board do some fantastic workbooks, you don't even know your learning, you just do the exercises and bob's yer uncle!

[Monk Rocker]

Why not buy a guitar book in a style of music that you don't play that doesn't have any tab in it? You can get some pretty decent books on jazz improvisation that help you train your ear, and they are usually in standard notation rather than tab.

I tried dabbling with clarinet for a bit, but the fingering was a bit of a cunt and I couldn't be fucked learning to play Micheal Row The Boat Ashore.....

[Chris]

Originally Posted by Monk Rocker

Why not buy a guitar book in a style of music that you don't play that doesn't have any tab in it?

because it will just annoy the hell out of me that I can't quickly look at the book and know what to play while holding a guitar in my hand.

[Monk Rocker]

You'd be amazed at how quickly it comes to you with a wee bit of practise. Some of the books come with a CD and explain stuff really well, and you get so into learning something new and refreshing you don't notice the frustration.

I used to play violin and was pretty decent at sight reading treble clef, but after years of not playing and reading was really pretty slow. I needed to be able to read bass clef to deputy for the bass player in my fiancee's 25 piece big band, and it wasn't frustrating at all for me relearning......

[Afro Droid]

http://www.musictheory.net/ is a pretty good resource.