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    Now, memorizing is good, but I couldn't play without the music.  My eye understood and my hand knew.  But the trouble was, none of this made sense to  my ears.  It seemed simple to memorize the two-octave fingering pattern for any one key.  However, memorizing twelve different fingering patterns and harder yet, the Double French Horn with its twenty-four plus fingering patterns overwhelmed me.

    In college, I learned my "A,B,C's" all over again.  Studying Walter Piston, we took the musical spelling game to its extreme until the whole notion of key just fell apart.  In my ear training class, I was taught yet another way in which to read music using what they called "intervals."


    An interval is the distance between any two pitches, something like inches on a carpenter's ruler.  A scale is just a pattern of intervals.  Most 7-note scales are made up from two 1/2 steps and five 2/2 (whole) steps arranged in a pattern.                           


Major [2/2, 2/2, 1/2, 2/2, 2/2, 2/2, 1/2]
Minor [2/2, 1/2, 2/2, 2/2, 2/2, 1/2, 2/2]


     Intervals worked very much like my French Horn fingering patterns.  Everything was measured in 1/2 steps with twelve divisions of the octave (chromatic scale.)  Learning intervals was great, but major, minor, augmented, and diminished intervals were too difficult for my ear to understand.  Now, the diatonic scale only uses seven divisions of the octave.  This  scale is the one which most people sing or whistle.   So, I learned, "LESS IS MORE !!!"


    Now I knew four different ways to read music.  Each one had its advantages, but I felt they all lacked something.  The main purpose of the reading process, it seems to me, is the intellectual integration of our three senses with a common basis of knowledge.  Numbers make sense and help to explain all types of musical patterns.  The eye can see an interval distance while the ear can hear an interval distance and the hand can move that distance, just as a carpenter can accurately mark off an inch by eye.

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