Unfortunately, most people start and end their musical lives by being taught the abstract, left-brain subject of music notation without ever experiencing the concrete right-brain reality of music.
While it is possible to become very skilled at translating music symbols into correct answers on tests and digital gymnastics at the piano, it is possible to do so without any musical understanding whatsoever.
Learning and performing music this way is like “reading” a foreign language phonetically or like painting by number… and is unsatisfying for several reasons…
- It erects a barrier between you and the true essence of the music.
- It limits your appreciation and enjoyment of the music to its most superficial aspects.
- It makes sight-reading slow, laborious, and exhausting.
- It makes you dependent on brute force memorization.
- It cultivates performances that are robotic and uninspiring.