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My granddaughter, age 12, sent this to me today. It comes from a long set of attachments being forwarded only if the recipient can read it. I'm happy to say, suprisingly, I could read it! The explanation about it written within the contents is very interesting!

i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs forwrad it

I hpoe you enojyed it!

Btety

LOL yeah I've seen that before. Quite amazing

I forwarded that one. Boy did my spell check hate it!

Waht fun. I vtoe all our ptsos be slepled jsut so!

keyboardklutz: you didn't do it right.

Dluy eitded.

That't pretty amazing! For a moment I thought I was dyslexic

Mnay of thme arleady aer!

When students are concerned about being able to read music, which most are, I have them read that scrambled paragraph to illustrate that people read patterns rather than phonetically, and that they will read the language of music notation in much the same way when they learn it.

Many people express relief upon hearing this, and it seems to help them in their progress.

The only caveat is that some younger people cannot read the "Cambridge University" because they have never seen those exact words before, and thus do not yet have that exact pattern in their memory.

Reading music is very different though. The order of stuff is what it's about.

Good point rocket. I'm afraid of trams because I don't know what they look like (so I can't see them coming). In Brussels I kept nearly walking in front of them. I'm sure that's how the first fatal train casualty happened.

Betty’s Cambridge example demonstrates the extent to which the inner letters of a word can be scrambled and still be intelligible ... albeit with some bat-eyed compensating cerebral effort ... like cvs cycles, my dyslexia-barren spell-check had a red-letter day.

Care should be exercised in wrongly equating the mumbo jumbo to the sight-reading of music ... words are read with a sequential alphabetic
sweep of the eye ... it’s a different kettle of fish with keyboard music ... the sweep of the eye is now asked to create “order” (thanks your Majesty) SIMULTANEOUSLY out of perhaps 10 symbolic bits of information (2 hands =10 fingers) .

But tipping a hat to the extraordinary genius of our phonetic word application ... here’s a nice little teaser which the brilliant Frenchman
Champollion deciphered ... (100-day Napoleon at the time, liked the fact that they shared half a name) ... having discovered a cartouche (an oval ring around hieroglyphic symbols) representing the Pharoah PTOLEMY ... what is the name the Frog deciphered on the second cartouche?

The prize is a ski-run down Mount Everest ... however, you have to get to the top under your own steam ... break a leg!!

web page

ribbit?

If it looks like a frog and croaks like a frog ... Bon jour... A votre sante.

I was referring to the reading of patterns that is similar when reading words as it is in reading notation, i.e. a root chord in notation has a pattern...glancing at it, and identifying a single note of it, such as the root note, allows the mind to know the other two notes without having to "phonetically" spell out each note individually. It is this reading of patterns that is similar, but yes, there is more to it, as you say.

Only if you're an improviser. Otherwise you need to 'clock' exactly where things are vertically.

Ok, my experience decades ago when I wasn't reading because I didn't know note names - I played a lot of Clementi and he seems to use predictable patterns which I got used to. You glance at the Alberti bass and in one swoop of the eye you see where the notes are going and can hear them. The fingers group themselves into the familiar grooves on the familiar keys with the familiar sound and for the most part you're off and ready. The progression suggests itself, and sure enough, it's there. You do end up playing exactly. What I'm learning to do now - and that is a deliberate choice - is to also read the notes individually, know what they are, so that I'm not playing what I assume is there, but what is there. But often the appearnce of the note groupings already indicates that: there are different notes so the pattern is broken, alerting the eye. That's a very subjective description of reading.

The same for a run: It's a straight line of notes, it begins with G, ends with G, and with the melody in your head a certain succession of notes is already plausible and anticipated (which again can be a trap, with accidental improvisation if you're not alert and actually reading). But to some degree the mechanism that lets you read hte as the holds true - except that the correct notes are there within the anticipated shape. Does this hold true, or does it not? Is anticipation, familiarity, and a sense of how things are composed a friend, foe, or both?

I'd like to provide a different thought here:

If the brain (some can, some can't)sees this mish mash of letters and can treat it like perfectly spelled words allowing you to read this example fairly easily - isn't the brain absolutely capable of accurately learning to reach music both vertically and horizontally without trouble - along with coordination of hand shapes (vertically) and in movement between beats.

Last week Danny Niklas said something about finding notes without using a hand shape to block them with - I totally disagree and have taught my students to prepare their hand shape for a handful of notes that create a string that will break down into being played one at a time in selected fingering order.

For me, this may be an outcome of having accompanied choral and vocal solo performers at a young age - starting at 12 - giving out notes, following parts, playing the accompaniment. Knowing the shapes of the moving parts. Perhaps those who accompany have learned to do this with their hands and fingers automatically to keep track of 4 moving parts.

I like the way I sightread, it works quickly and efficiently for me, and my students can do it too, with a little hand and eye training. It's all about intervals and moving parts.

Betty

No, this is the opposite of improvising. It is being able to identify written patterns of notes in written music.

I am talking about reading a vertical line of written music, and being able to quickly identify a pattern in that vertical line such as a chord that is played with one hand, and then reading the other note(s) in that vertical line without having to spell out the chord note for note because you have identified the pattern.

With respect Rocket88,

I know what you are putting over ... that identifying the outer notes of a chord help in providing a "shorthand" identification of the
requisite interval span ... but notation is so fraught with variations of, what amount to the same note patterns, to undo the prospect of an off-the-cuff chord sight-reading shortcut.

To make the point here are four measures from Jerome Kern’s "All the Things You Are" in Ab to test the shortcut theory .

Are you really able to snap up the hand shape for the chords under
"You ... are ... the... promised ... kiss of ... spring ... time" ...
or did you have to carefully identify the notes and the hand-shape initially ... while obviously chiming in the role of the left hand ... and hoping with a re-run of the 4 measures that you will have remembered the chord hand shapes?

My finding is that these hand shapes only come
with dutiful practice when muscle and aural memory
help in meeting the requisite tempo.

web page

Just tried it. The only handicap was that I've been back at the piano only a few months, did not read notes 30 years ago, and the Ab key signature is still unfamiliar. So I had to take a moment to know which four notes get flatted. I expected it to be hard. It wasn't. My main need now is to add the notes to the shape which is backward.