Originally Posted By: Janice & Bud
Janice played clarinet in HS but hasn't read since.


And let me tell ya brother, you lose it FAST when you don't use it. 40 years ago I was a sight reading fool. Now I have lost the sight reading part of that description....

I am sitting here looking at a fairly complex chart and to play those minor 7th flat 5 add 9 without stopping to think about them is difficult, and I can't do it by nature anymore. One change here is so strangely voiced with suspended chords and all that I had to sit at the piano and literally "spell" out how I could play it like when a kid learning how to spell hears a word and has to sound it out. And it "walks a note" through the chord as well. Those kind of chords that sound awful when you play it and hold it but sound just great as chords that pass you from one spot to the next. Then add in the tied notes, a quarter tied to a dotted quarter and a rest after, but is it an eighth note rest or a quarter note rest, etc....

And THIS is what I love about music. To look at this thing and know that somebody, somewhere wrote this out of their own personal brain!!

Put me in flatted keys with a lot of suspended 4 and chords over bass lines that are not the root note and I have to sit and think. And you can't think. You have to just play.