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How do!

Title is the topic, and the topic is the title.

I’ve never learned to play any instrument, and I’m fairly sure my “singing” is in contravention of numerous international laws. But I’m kinda fascinated as to how music is written on the page.

Presumably, any trained musician must learn at least the basics early on. Because the alternative is it’s just a bunch of squiggles and everyone just pretends, then wings it.

Any pointers to absolute beginner sources?

There are probably a few different ways to learn the basics now, but there are a lot of beginners tutorials on YouTube now.

Piano is a great starting point as well, as it’s fairly set. You can begin with a piano app on a phone or tablet.

There is probably lessons that are run that you could take as well near you. Is there a particular instrument you wanted to try your hand at ? The type of music you play and how you learn will be different.

But if you want to start at home, on your own I would say a piano rental is a great start. At least from a super beginner point.

Given I’ve limited feeling and mobility in my left hand, whilst being left handed? I genuinely feel limited in learning an instrument. So with genuine respect to Bassists everywhere, I think the Bass Guitar is the one for me.

I can feel when my fingers are touching something, but not texture as such. So, left handed bass, where the right hand fingers are the necessary touchy feely ones seems about right.

You can also play the drums one handed, if that’s an option.
There are even add ons for classic string instruments for one handed play.

I still remember the practice from the drums, and piano I did 25 years ago.

But even if you wanted to learn the bass, you should start with basics on the piano.
Try a basic App, so you can hear the notes, get time down.
Also piano lessons are usually cheaper.

Rhythm games may also help you with time. Just learning how to time yourself will be a huge start before learning how to read music.

My daughter has had great success with Simply Piano to self-learn music.

Even if your left hand is impacted, learning piano is likely to help expand flexibility and strength. You might not be able to advance to mega-complex pieces on your left hand, but it would still bea great stepping stone to other instruments. I guess it helps that with piano you need to handle treble and bass clefs at the same time.

If you want to go full mental, go straight to hurdy-gurdy. Just need to be able to wind the handle Its a bit harder to find trainer equipment though

The best way to learn to read music is to start learning a musical instrument, (he says with great insight). If you're not going to get a tutor or join a class then hit the online tutorials, although there's no substitute for a real, right-in-front-of-you musician coaching you.

As you are looking at bass then your focus should be on Bass Clef (because the dots and circles in/on the lines mean different notes depending on the squiggle on the far left. There others are right that knowing your way around a piano keyboard will help.

I learned by playing the piano. You have less to worry about the angle of the bow, how hard to blow, and tricky finger positions. (That’s what she said) just read the music, press the key, sound comes out. So you can focus on reading the music and less with wrestling with the instrument to make it work.

There are multiple apps out there to help with reading music. Simply Piano has been mentioned, and there are others depending on the instrument. Learning to read music is best done in conjunction with playing an instrument. You can theoretically learn to read music without playing it, but it's not really very efficient, or useful because there's a correlation between the way you read music and how it interacts with a given instrument.

For example, I play guitar and can read music (not as well as I used to be able to, mind). A bit like reading words, you eventually stop reading individual notes for chords and just get used to knowing "that's a G major", which translates to a specific shape on the fretboard (or keys on a keyboard, etc). The same applies to individual notes, where it's a combination of the specific notes and the intervals that helps you read them.

That said, if you plan to play bass guitar you don't actually need to learn to read music. Guitar and bass both use TAB, which is a notation that's much easier to read than actual music. Learning to read music can still be important if you want to dive into the theory side, but for getting started and actually playing something recognisable, TAB is really good.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Given I’ve limited feeling and mobility in my left hand, whilst being left handed? I genuinely feel limited in learning an instrument. So with genuine respect to Bassists everywhere, I think the Bass Guitar is the one for me.

I can feel when my fingers are touching something, but not texture as such. So, left handed bass, where the right hand fingers are the necessary touchy feely ones seems about right.

Go for trumpet. Left hand just holds it, right hand moves the valves.

Also builds up lung capacity.

Plus, you can start by learning bugle calls, which only use four or five notes. Super-easy.

DM'd you Doc