Can you read music on pedal steel?

[Earnest Bovine]

... (Playing by memory is what most readers actually do, as opposed to INSTANTLY sight reading)
IMHO

Yes, the eye must be a couple of bars (depending on the music) ahead of the hands. I suppose that short term memory loss would be a great detriment. When my piano teacher used to drill me in sight reading, she would scold me for not reading far enough ahead; that is when you make mistakes.

[Dave Mudgett]

I'm one of David's 36% who can read slowly but not sight-read. I could equally well fit into the next category "long time, lot of trouble" - those categories are a bit ambiguous, IMO. For me, it depends on how much I've been doing it lately. I discussed this in more length on the original thread, but the bigger issue for me is more the translation to the guitar or pedal steel, which I think requires a significantly longer learning curve than for piano or wind/horn instruments.

If I practice reading for a while, I can read melody lines reasonably well, but I just don't have enough jobs where I have to read to stay in reasonable practice.

Let me say, this also goes back to the thread where people scoffed at the idea of having a music stand onstage - "Whassamattayou - can't you remember the songs, you lazy !@$&^%*?". This is not just a theoretical construct for me.

I agree that when I used to sight-read for piano, I was constantly being prodded by my teacher to read ahead a few bars. It's a skill that takes continuing practice to stay in shape, IMO. I'm way outta' shape, similarly to the way that I can't run the distances I did when I was 20 either.

[basilh]

In my experience I've found that good "CW Keyer" can usually make a good reader, not that it's in anyway connected, or is it ?

[Tracy Sheehan]

Back when i was in practice and still had a steel i layed sheet music on top of my steel when playing long hair violin music on my fiddle.So yes i could read music on my steel.
Was that the question?

[Mike Ester]

I couldn't read it to save my life.

[John Groover McDuffie]

One of the things that helped my reading a lot was writing music out - especially when I was studying orchestration and had to copy out a lot of parts by hand. (pre-Finale days!)

[basilh]

Tracy, very similar scenario as to when I first played on Television !!

[Jim Cohen]

Maybe they are thinking about a simple melody line, like Row Your Boat; and those of us who checked "long time and a lot of trouble" are thinking about what Night Life would look like with all the chords and harmony in standard notation.

Yah, well there's 'reading' and then there's 'Reading'. I mean, it's one thing to read a lead/melody line. Quite another to read polyphonic, chordal music, like piano music, on steel, trying to figure out if all of the notes are even available in any given position before it's too late and the band is on to the next chord. I can do the former with some success (though still not usually up to tempo) and can't do the latter much at all before getting frustrated and launching into Orange Blossom Special.

[James Harrison]

David, Did you mean to say you can read in all 12 keys, or just 11 keys?
James

[David Doggett]

Um, that would be 12 keys (I was counting steps instead of notes). But I can only handle about three, C, G (one sharp) and F (one flat). After that it begins to get kind of dicey. C#m? Fuggetaboutit.

[Rick Winfield]

I can read in every key except C. Way too many naturals. Gimmie something simple, like F#. (as if)
LOL
Rick