Learning how to read music is a must for anyone wanting to learn how to play a musical instrument or take singing lessons.

Its true that some people are indeed gifted with a very good ear to music. For them, its easy to translate the music they hear to the piano, guitar,violin or other musical instrument. Natural players or signers can learn to play the piano and the guitar just by watching performing artists. In contrast, learned players have to take up lessons under a teahcer who, in turn, stresses the importance of the scales and the notes.

When these two kinds of players meet, expect fireworks from diverse attitudes. Natural players tends to scoff at the tedious lessons of learning how to read music, while learned players have a certain bourgeois outlook about natural players who cannot read free guitar sheet music. Unfortunately, the two differing beliefs slow down their development as musicians.

Learning music also has its shortcuts. Online gurus will dispose of the tedious approaches to learn how to play the guitar. They promise starry-eyed aspirants that they will be able to play the guitar in just a day with no guitar music sheets from the maestros. With the abundance of free guitar sheet music online, what can one do if one does not know how to read music?

Learning how to read music can also be educational for young children. Several studies have reported positive associations between music education and increased abilities in non-musical (eg, linguistic, mathematical, and spatial) domains in children. The authors say there are similarities in the way that individuals interpret music and language and “because neural response to music is a widely distributed system within the brain…. it would not be unreasonable to expect that some processing networks for music and language behaviors, namely reading, located in both hemispheres of the brain would overlap.”

Sight reading music is one of the most important things you need to know to be any good at your instrument of choice, only beaten by the importance of learning how to actually play the instrument itself. Almost every audition you will ever take part in will include some form or another of sight reading. Most of this sight reading, though, is not really sight reading in its purest form -- looking at the music for the very first time while you are playing or singing the notes. (Sight singing music requires quite a different set of skills in addition to being able to note read). For the vast majority of required sight reading, you are allowed to look at the music for a given amount of time between thirty seconds and ten minutes. The method to proper sight reading is not entirely complex, and, assuming you have time for each step, is a skill you can master.