Learning to read music at thirty

I played piano by ear as a child and never learned to read. At thirty I found a teacher who did not laugh at me.

Now I sit with a sheet of music and work out one bar at a time. It is humiliating. A ten-year-old in the lesson before mine plays the same piece faster.

Why bother

Because the dots hold music I would never find by ear. Old hymns, a sonata, a folk song from my grandmother's village. They were waiting for me to learn the code.