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Spencer Battraw
Prof. Song
English 101
9/22/2016
The Sight of Music
When most people think of music, they generally tend to imagine the sounds being made
by the instruments and/or the musicians. These range from the hushed melody of a flute being
played in the distance to the screech of a guitar not 20 feet away on the stage of a rock concert.
What people dont realize is how these sounds are actually created. Hardly anyone can pick up
an instrument and play truly great music with only their imagination. Most require a written
account of music that can be read and interpreted for their instrument, otherwise known as sheet
music. Sheet music itself is a complex form of literacy; it requires a great deal of time and study
to completely comprehend the music that has been recorded, it is different for each instrument
even for the same song, and it is a rigorous task to take a written account of arguably one of the
greatest forms of art that humans have ever created.
The effort required to learn how to interpret sheet music can take years to master. I have
been studying sheet music for about 7 years now, and though I am nowhere close to fully
grasping everything there is to know about it, I do have a fairly in-depth understanding of it. In
middle school, where I first encountered sheet music, I found it unpleasant because I had never
encountered anything like it beforehand. I was dumbfounded as to what the bars and notes even
were, let alone what they represented. All throughout that first year of middle school I squared
off against my newest foe every day we had band class. I loathed coming to that class just to
stare blankly at papers. I could never really understand what all of the symbols on the sheet
music really meant, but slowly I started learning. After the first month or so I was able to
interpret what notes were meant to be played, but that was about it. As time wore on I was

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learning more and more, until one day, it all just clicked. I began to understand what the notes
were supposed to be, how they should sound, how long to hold them, and even how loudly to
play them. I was amazed at what I was able to do, and immediately rushed over to my instructor
hoping he would praise me for my newfound awareness of music. While I tried to speak to him
through my excitement, he told me verbatim, Excellent, it looks like youre ready to move on to
the fun stuff. Right there in the middle of my rambling he began to give a long lecture about
elements of sheet music that soared over my young mind. After he finished, he asked me what I
thought about his little one-on-one lesson with me, and I could only reply with question upon
question. He told me that perhaps it was too much for one sitting and sent me off on my merry
way. For the rest of my middle school, and then my high school career, I would be enthralled
with my music teachers as they told us more and more about the wonderful world of music, and
how it is miraculously captured on paper through sheet music. Mine truly was a long and
arduous journey, but I do not regret the years I have spent learning sheet music.
While the foundations of sheet music are universal, the application is drastically different
depending on the instrument. For every song that has sheet music, the score (a record of all parts
of the song) will indicate what each separate instrument is supposed to provide to the song, be it
the low swings of the Bari sax or the high shrill of the alto saxes and clarinets. Generally, there
are three parts every instrument must be assigned to in a piece of music; the melody (main part),
countermelody (support of main part) and the bassline (low part). All instruments usually tend to
stay within one part, since it can be incredibly difficult to, say, make a trumpet the bassline and
the tuba the melody. I myself play flute, so I never really got any bassline parts. I was intrigued
due to the fact that playing the same part for several years can get somewhat boring, so I tried to
look off of a tenor saxs sheet music. The owner of this specific piece of music asked me What

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do you think youre doing? Take a second look at your instrument man. Looking at his music
brought immediate confusion to me, since all the notes sounded off when I played them
according to the paper in front of me. After a few minutes of mudding my way through what can
be called a song, I went over to my current music instructor to ask why this happened. She
explained to me how different instruments are generally meant for different parts, since the
standard sounds of each instrument can be grouped into the category that fits them best. Learning
this, I was still intrigued about the bassline parts of music that I had previously learned, but was
disheartened to learn that if I truly wanted to play them I had to practically learn a new
instrument. It took me roughly a year and a half to play my instrument well enough to have
confidence in my skill, but I didnt have the time I did back then to practice a new instrument, let
alone my current one. Sadly, sheet music isnt simple enough to be able to be played the same
way by all instruments.
Human emotion is something that is quite difficult to express with words, verbal or
written, but music is able to bring out that emotion within us all through the seemingly magically
scribed sheet music. Some people can look at art and say they feel something, but others simply
stare blankly at it without a single thought. Music, however, can practically touch anyones very
soul with its warm, melodic embrace. Its nothing short of a miracle how someone can put to
paper something as beautiful and fulfilling as music, but it is possible. During my last year of
high school, still strongly involved in the band program, we were assigned to write our own sheet
music for an original song. As you can probably tell this was a difficult task from the get-go, but
one we all had to do. I was stumped with how to write sheet music, since I have spent all of my
time reading it. My band instructor couldnt help me this time, since we were supposed to do it
on our own. The only thing I could think to do was to listen to music off of YouTube. Im not

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talking about Taylor Swift or Panic at the Disco or any of those bands, Im talking about true
music, orchestral. It took probably thirty minutes for me to find something that inspired me, but
when I did, it was absolutely wonderful. The song I found was Starchild by Two Steps from
Hell, and it almost brought me to my knees and made me weep with its brilliance. The soft
chords of the piano starting off the song, the silent entrance of the winds inching their way
towards the main melody, the sneaky strings creeping behind them, all to finally meld together in
an absolutely angelic unison of sound and beauty. I now knew the sound I wanted, but still was
concerned about how to approach it without plagiarizing these masters of music. Shortly after
worrying about my assignment, which was due later that week, I fell asleep. Thus brought about
one of the greatest dreams I have ever dreamt. I could hear music, not the song I had listened to
earlier to that night, but it had that same passion, evoked that same feeling within me. As the
music grew louder and louder I became mesmerized, motionless to the power those majestic
notes had over me. Before I knew it, my alarm blared on my desk, startling me awake. I was
incredibly upset that I couldnt enjoy my wonderful dream anymore, but the song still stuck with
me. Luckily, my pen and paper were still on the same desk as the alarm, so I jumped out of bed
and instantly began to transcribe my dream song onto the paper. In reality it took me only about
3 hours to finish, but to my still waking mind it was an eternity. Every stroke I made with the pen
held onto me as I recalled that sweet song. While I was vigorously writing what I thought was a
masterpiece, one of my fellow band members asked me Are you okay? Youre smiling like the
Joker right now. Handing in that assignment was probably one of the most satisfying moments
of my schooling career. Music is something that can indescribably move a person, so capturing
that and writing it down can seem downright impossible.

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Sheet music is something that the populous doesnt see as terribly important, but it is an
amazing expression of ones soul that everyone should be able to have access to. While it may be
daunting to learn how to interpret sheet music due to the sheer amount of investment it takes to
learn, cause you to be restricted to one instrument without having to learn a completely new one,
and require the seemingly impossible process of capturing the beauty and raw emotion that
music can evoke from a person and putting it to paper. I have absolutely no regrets about
learning the literacy of sheet music, as it has given me an insight to a beautiful and heartwrenching world that was previously closed off to me.