TravellingPants
VIP Member
I did GCSE music in 2005 and we had to be grade 5 standard on our selected instruments. I was learning my grade 5 piano at the time and that was sufficient. I think they generally expected people to already know how to read music if they were doing it at GCSE level. I was doing my grade 5 in singing at the time which allowed me sing on another students composition. Sometimes I think Carrie is lying about not being able to read music- I think she probably can but she can’t sight sing- it’s incredibly difficult, tbh not many people can actually do it. People have thought I could sight sing before, I can’t, I just know how to read music. Reading music isn’t just about knowing the notes, it’s learning about how recognise intervals, key changes, rests etc. Give a piece of sheet music and I could teach myself to play it because I can read it. An exceptional sightreader doesn’t need to practice, they can just play it with the music in front of them, or sing it in the correct key at the correct pacing with no accompaniment. The fact that she had a twitter argument with a graduate questioning why some professionals don’t know how to read music was a massive face palm moment for me and probably the whole theatre industry. A professional musical actress in the West End fighting *with a drama school graduate* on TWITTER about not being able to read music! Does that not scream MAJOR RED FLAG!
Pretty much my exact take on this! I’m around your age too and can’t see how she would have done GCSE music without even a basic understanding of notation...? You have to compose pieces as part of the coursework!
I learnt to read music very young as I’m from a musical family so maybe I am biased, but if you have even the most vague interest in music, the curriculum even before GCSE includes learning to identify pitch, rests, time signatures, note values, incidentals (flats and sharps) etc... you’d have to be actively trying NOT to take it in to not retain the knowledge, especially if you were having any additional music lessons (including singing) on the side.
I agree that Carrie is most likely equating ‘reading music’ with being able to sight-read it, which are not the same thing and I don’t think even the graduate whose sweeping statement tweet set all this off was implying that was his expectation of all performers!