Reading/Misreading. Practicing ... to Unlearn.

It's a good thing that I've adopted repertoire from some of the pieces my students are currently working on.  Because once again I've mis-read the danged score and am having to unlearn and re-learn what's actually written instead of what my brain decided to interpret.  And I didn't catch my mistakes until I was working with the student who is learning (correctly) the same Chopin Nocturne.

Which brings me to my feelings about score reading.  Or rather, in my case, avoiding score reading at all costs because it's about as painful as the proverbial (and very cliched) tooth yanking.  No matter how carefully and how slowly I work through a new score, I miss something.  Not little somethings.  Big somethings.  Obvious mis-reads that spawn questions over my professional ability to play this stuff.

Ah, that scary, scary thought that always jumps to mind when I realize I've missed something obvious: if I can't read the frickin' score, then should I be in the music profession?

Listening to YouTube performances would help.  So would pulling out one of the gazillion CDs we've collected over the years.  Or even one of the vynal -- where's that dictionary -- vinyl (that one took a while to find and still doesn't look right) recordings from decades ago that we still own and use with our turntable.  It would also help if I would remember that listening and following the score is an important option that I need to incorporate into my whole practice regimen.

Except that I get too busy fighting my way through the score and wanting to own all those beautiful, brilliantly composed harmonies and melodies that I forget my options and end up drowning in a sea of notation while the life-preserver floats well within reach.  Is my blatant oversight of so obvious a tool because of my dyslexia, my age, or my lack of intelligence?

That last question is a real biter because it raises its ugly head so often.  It might sound okay to understand dyslexia, the fact that my brain works differently than non-dyslexics (notice that I'm avoiding the word "normal" like the plague), and that dyslexia doesn't affect one's level of intelligence. 

But it sure can make one feel really stupid.  It also makes for a lot of extra work when I do find mistakes that I have gone to great lengths to imprint into my head, fingers, and ear, because I thought I was learning it correctly at the time, but that now I must UNLEARN because it wasn't right.  That takes time, brain power, and the same kind of meticulous practice that I did when I thought I was learning it correctly the first time.  It also amounts to a monumental waste of time.  And I'd be lying if I didn't acknowledge that at moments like this I feel like throwing in the towel.  After all, do I really want to spend my life learning what I think I'm seeing correctly, only to discover that I was seeing it all wrong?

So the next time you have a student who is stonewalling you on learning something, before you throw a screw in frustration or throw the student out, think about what we dyslexics face over and over and over again.  Reading/misreading.  Hours of practice only to find that we must backtrack and unlearn what we thought was correct.