Musical illiteracy is growing everyday. While the literacy rate of the US is 95%, the musical illiteracy rate is also around 95%. As many people can’t read music as can read literature.
Music is a dead language. It is the most commonly spoken language on Earth, yet has the highest illiteracy rates. No one reads it. No one writes it. Notation is strictly for Classical geeks and Jazz hands. Where have Rhythm, Melody, and Harmony gone from Pop Music? Music is dead, because no one can visualize it.
Notation is the written form of the musical language; a method of seeing. There are only a handful of dialects; treble clef, bass clef, and other clefs less common. There are just twelve letters compared to twice that many in English. In a week’s time, you can be fluent in most songs. Most writers stick to the same seven letters anyway.
Part of the problem lies with the teaching of notation. The musical language needs to be sounded out while read. The best way to do this, is to use sound-activated widgets.
When we read, we sound out the words in our head. Notation can also be sounded out while read with the aid of widgets. This makes the written language of music come to life.
Los Doggies promotes musical literacy through an ongoing web-based encyclopedia of musical words and widgets that take a joyous and playful approach to musical education. Thanks all y’all, whosoever y’are!
It’s a made-up statistic, a scare tactic used to drum up controversy, a false parallel to make an exaggerated point. I’m not sure of the real figure but it is definitely much lower than literacy literacy rates.
Since this is purely made up, it is completely inappropriate to present it as statistical data. Please, please rewrite or take this down. This sort of false information does tremendous damage to legitimate research and statistics of all kinds. You’re doing yourself and others a tremendous disservice by taking this approach.
Thank you for your comment; it gives me a lot to think about in my approach.
However, the above is not presented as legit statistical data and is clearly satirical along with most of the articles on this site. My only purpose here is to encourage musical literacy, as well as creative musical thinking and visualization, especially in professional rock musicians.
I can’t find any accurate figures on the rates of musical literacy in America, but the point is, it’s much lower than book literacy rates.