If you play traditional music, there’s a good chance you use ABC notation. It’s simple, quick, and brilliant for learning and sharing tunes. And if you can read ABCs, you’ve already taken the first big step into music literacy. You’ve cracked the hardest part – getting started.

But here’s the thing: ABCs aren’t the finish line. They’re the training wheels of music reading.

Think about it this way:

• Would you stop learning to read once you could use picture books?
• Would you be happy to ride a bike forever with stabilisers?
• Would you settle for swimming your whole life with armbands?

Of course not. Those are stepping stones – just like ABCs.

My Own Halfway Point

I know this because I was that musician who got stuck at the halfway point. For years, I could make sense of ABCs. I knew how the lines and spaces worked. I could rhyme off “Every Good Boy Deserves Fruit” and scribble letters under the notes. Technically, I “knew” what was happening on the page.

But here’s the truth: I couldn’t actually read and play fluently. I couldn’t take a tune straight from the page and make it sound like music. I thought that ability was for “other people”, not for me.

And for a long time, I settled for that halfway house. I leaned on ABCs, memory, and faking it — anything but properly mastering the dots.

Why ABCs Are Only Half the Story

ABCs are brilliant for jotting down tunes and as a memory aid for recalling tunes. They are also great as a tool for teaching and learning tunes in group situations. But let’s be honest.  They’re limited. They don’t capture rhythm and phrasing. They don’t let you glance at a page and instantly hear the music in your head.

Standard notation, on the other hand, is a full language. It gives you rhythm, melody, structure – all at once. It lets you open a book of tunes and play them, straight away, with confidence.

And here’s the secret: if you already understand ABCs, you’ve done most of the heavy lifting. You know your note names, where they fit on your instrument – and you know your way around a tune. You are halfway there.

Don’t Stop Now

Too many musicians park the bike at this stage. They stay in the comfort zone of ABCs and never push on. But why stop halfway through the journey? Why not finish it?

ABCs are a great start, but they’re not the end game. They’ve got you moving, they’ve given you confidence, they’ve opened the door. But why stop now? Imagine what it would feel like to finish the journey – to read music fluently, to pick up a tune straight off the page and bring it to life without hesitation.

So here’s my invitation: don’t stop at ABCs. Take the next step. Finish your music literacy journey.

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