This is a private note that has been shared.
Recently I found myself talking to my multi-instrumentalist high school-aged son about music notation (as one does) and I said something that I had never thought about until that moment. Music notation (or “sheet music”) isn’t music. It’s notes (🗒️ not 🎶) that allow you to reconstruct what was in someone else’s head. You’re not really meant to read it—or even think about it—while performing. It’s more like training material, to transfer the song to your mind, which is something humans evolved to do; keep music in their head. Like storytelling, memorized songs were how we conveyed history and lessons before the written word. Our memory capacity for music appears limitless.
Yes, you practice sight-reading unfamiliar music notation in music education. Pros often sight-read music. They have so much music in their minds, though, that they take note reading to another level where they’re pattern matching to what they already know, to access a level of music making that would be difficult for those who haven’t performed as much as they have. On particularly complex or lengthy pieces, the sheet music allows helps the musician keep track of where they are.
You can’t truly perform the music at the highest level until it’s coming from your mind. Only after that point can you optionally sway, move, or dance with the music (chicken meets egg). For me, once I know the music cold, then some amount of dance-like movement helps me perform it in an authentic way. My son now attempts to memorize his parts now, and his performing is improving—hard to prove causation, though.
While watching performances, I’ve never thought to watch for “dancing while sight-reading”. My guess is that when sight-reading, you see less spontaneous body moving as the players focus more on making sure they’re interpreting the notation right, and that what they are playing is working with what they’re hearing.
What do you think, musicians? Is this a crazy notion idea? An obvious, “everyone understood this before you, Brian” concept?