Dysmusia... musical dyslexia

[OhCrumbsWhereNow]

Just wondering if anyone has experience of this - especially in children who are exceptionally musical.

DD 14 has severe dyslexia - reading is laborious, spelling is entirely phonetic and punctuation a mystery, but is very good with creative language and writes very well (once you have decoded the spelling!)

Her main focus is music and she's managed to get to a high level in both performance and composition without anyone realising that she actually can't read musical notation. Literally found out 2 weeks ago by accident.

If she's given sheet music and asked to say what a note is etc then she can tell you as she has the time to look and consider that exact bit. But says that when she plays her ability to translate the blobs on the page into what she should play is totally impossible - her playing goes way faster than her ability to decode. (Overlays etc make no difference to her and eyesight is perfect... btdt).

She's spent 8 years pretending to read scores - and it's come as a bit of a shock to all her teachers to find out that she doesn't.

It seems that as long as she's not planning on doing sight reading exams or very theoretical music studies that she can probably get away with continuing to ignore it - I have met a scary number of musicians who have successful careers and avoid sheet music at all costs.

However I'm wondering if it's covered by a normal dyslexia diagnosis or if she would need a separate one. She's applying to music colleges for sixth form and I'd like to make sure she has the right access arrangements.

I don’t know much about this I’m afraid. Son is a musician - don’t grading exams include sight reading as standard? How will she/ has she managed that part of assessments?
Catboy tends to learn music by heart and then dispense with the sheet music.
i can imagine before printing presses that was how most musicians learned - by playing and practice - like you would learn long poems recited out loud rather than read in private.

She's never really had to do sight-reading as we don't do exams in her main or 3rd studies. If she's learning new material she just gets someone to play it through once or twice and that's generally enough for her to have it.

She's done the lower grades for her second study (piano) and managed the sight reading there - but it's not been where she gets the high marks and at the lower grades it also hasn't been difficult. She's now opting to do the current one as a performance exam (so just 4 pieces) and then moving to just working with the teacher on her own material and things of interest.

She's managed this long without so I don't see it as a problem for what she wants to do musically - she can instantly transpose, improvise etc and has a very good ear, but I am concerned it could affect things like GCSE music or music college entrance.

She gets extra time, laptop etc but that doesn't take into account potential issues with musical notation, just spelling and slower processing/working memory issues.

Interesting that your DS gets rid of the sheet music too. I assumed she was using that plus the hearing it played.

Spoke to DS about this today and he reckons all music GSCE would require music reading and writing. (He’s just sat it).
However we’re not professionals or anything - I guess you need professional advice or to talk to the conservatoire admissions. Perhaps they can adapt requirements and courses? Your DD sounds like a very able musician - just not with a relationship to the sheet notes.
(DS says he gets rid of the music to focus more on expression, after he has learned the actual notes. A bit like learning a speech and then delivering it without notes).
Good luck OP - I imagine your DD can’t be the only one - with any luck music schools have come across this before.

Thank you - and big thank you to Cat Boy!

It's really thrown us all - we know she's very able, but all of us were convinced she read the sheet music while knowing she preferred to learn by ear (bar her 3rd study teacher who doesn't use sheet music at all - which was fine as not her main instrument).

I've found there are a few people at the dyslexia association with a specialist interest so I will contact them to see what the research is, but I guess I am going to have to go round the colleges and see what they say.

Part of me wonders if we should just keep quiet - if she's got away with faking it this long maybe they won't notice either - but then I worry it could all come out in assessments.

Given the situation with normal spelling it won't be a matter of teaching her to read it either - it will need alternative options. And I'm the last person who will have a clue.

Well it's been a long long time since I was at school and learning instruments. But!... Things can't have changed too much!

In my day, to progress beyond grade 6 in an instrument, you had to sit grade 5 theory. I also seem to remember sight reading forming part of grade 5, 6 and 7 exams.

In my local orchestra,we had to read the scores and play from sight.

What instrument does your DC play? Do they want to do grading exams? Play in an orchestra? I'd have thought these would be prerequisites for music college?

Hope all turns out well and best of luck to your DC and for her future

Im really interested in this although im afraid i have nothing usefull to contribute. I am musical in that i sing well and i did piano up to grade 5 but i did it by learning pieces off by heart then failed all sight reading because even though i can read music when i have lots of time to analyse it, when required to do it at pace the notes always moved around in front of my eyes.

not a big deal i suppose in the grand scheme
of life, but definitely curtailed any musical education. I always wondered if it was “a thing” because i read that people with dyslexia find the letters jump about on the page like the notes did for me

DD has 4 instruments, none of which are orchestral. She's very much a soloist and has absolutely no interest in playing in an orchestra, studying classical music or taking music exams.

She was G8 level at 12 in her first study,(She does all the scales and exercises used for exams as part of ongoing lessons, so there's no corner cutting), and having tried exams in the 2nd we are now completely avoiding them.

It's only the old style ABRSM exams that even ask for music theory these days.

Her interests are in composition, music production and her main study.

None of the colleges I spoke to had any issues with no exam grades (the UK is unusual for having music grades as a kind of default - many international students don't have any either), they were interested in what she can do performance wise and what she is composing.

I just hadn't even thought about issues with musical notation - so will need to go back round again! It just feels a bit pathetic explaining that they literally can't rather than just finding it tricky!

I suspect it would be a major issue for something like a degree in music where you were studying historic scores or very classical music, and I can totally see it's a major problem if you are aiming for a career as a classical musician where you will need to sight read well enough for a orchestra to accept you! Happily her path is neither of those so I am hopeful there may be a solution.

This sounds absolutely identical!

Apparently if she has to look at a couple of bars and say what the notes are, and has plenty of time to work it all out, then she can do it. But she can't play from music or follow a score because it all moves and becomes one big blob, and the music moves along twenty times faster than she can read the notes.

Since she found she didn't need to as she can do it by ear, she stopped even attempting years ago and just props the music up for "decorative purposes".

The small amount of research I have seen suggested that a significant proportion of dyslexics have this issue with music and a large number give music up because of it. Weirdly DD doesn't have an issue with words and letters jumping about - she just can't assign the sound with the phoneme correctly.

I will let you know if I find out anything useful! I had no idea it even existed until this month!