Some Good News, Some Bad News

First the bad news: Music is a complete and complex language. It has a vocabulary — both written and aural — with syntax, grammar, and everything else you find in any verbal language.

Worse, it uses an alphabet all its own. Most of us had at least a minimal introduction to the written alphabet of music in childhood ("This is a note, this is a staff, blah, blah, blah"), but if this is your first exposure to it, then you have a significant task ahead.

Worst of all, the musical language is loaded with illogical twists that seem designed to frustrate any intelligent person.

(Ah well, what did you expect – SCIENCE?)

The good news is that the hard part of the learning can be knocked down in an obscenely short time.

After only two weeks of solid work (longer if you also have other things to do), you will know enough of the language to consider yourself literate.

No, you will not be ready for Carnegie Hall, but you will have the fundamentals of music notation fully under your control.

(Let the fiddling angel take you to the next page.)