Can you read music? It's possible that someone tried to teach you when you were in elementary school or middle school in music class. You can probably recognize a sheet of music if you saw one with the bars and music notes. You might even remember being taught acronyms to remember the letter names of the little notes.

Now you have decided you love to sing and you want to go further with it, or you want to learn the guitar or the piano. They are all beautiful instruments, but do you have to be able to read music in order to play them? First, ask yourself a few questions. Can you sing 'Mary had a Little Lamb' right now? Your answer is probably yes, and if your answer is no because you don't know the song, I'm sure could sing another song you do know. Now, go to your piano if you have one, or just think, if you went up to a piano, could you play something? You probably could come up with a fun little tune after a little fooling around. If you had a guitar, could you strum the strings? Could you make it sound pretty?

You can probably answer yes to all of these questions which pose another question, if you can play music without using sheet music and reading it, why should you learn to read music? If you can read music, you can advance much farther in music and be a much better musician. It's that simple. You could make up all the music you want, but if you can't read music, you're making it much harder on yourself.

If you want to learn the piano, reading music is almost a must. You can't play classical pieces if you can't read them. You could listen to them on a recording and try to mimic them, but it would be so much easier to spend the little time it takes to learn to read music in order to learn hundreds of songs. Even if you aren't interested in classical music, being able to read music allows you to play along with other people and other instruments more easily and effectively, and you can pick things up faster. If you are into composing, it makes it much easier for people to follow you if you have it written down in music format.

If you sing, reading music might not seem like a big deal. It actually makes a big difference. If you want to be a professional, you must be able to read music. It's basically a given if you ever want to work with other people such as music executives and other musicians.

The honest fact is that reading music is not hard at all. It's no where near as hard as learning to read words for the first time. You get the hang of it and then practice along the way.
If you are interested in music and want to learn to read music go to BeginningInMusic.com/ for more information.