Reading music notation does not necessarily or specifically mean reading and playing the music simultaneously as it’s read. A literal term for that ability could be called sightreading.
But the term “sightreading” is often used to mean the sheer ability to read music notation at all, without the implication that one should be able to play the music simultaneously as it’s read.
Mark Smith uses the term this way in his “Simple Steps to Sightreading” courses. Never during his lessons does he state or imply that one needs to be able to play the notes upon reading the notes on the page/screen.
My 2 cents - it depends on what your goals or needs are. Do you need to be able to read sheet music for a band you play in? Do you want to be able to look at a piece of sheet music and understand it?
I used to be able to read sheet music when I played piano when I was younger, but when I quit piano around 6th grade I forgot how to do it. At least with bass, I don’t think you need to read sheet music to play well. Since we are one note at a time (usually) I find tabs way easier to read and as long as you know the groove of the song it’s much more straightforward.
That being said I think it’s a nice skill to have and is definitely worthwhile, especially if you’re playing different instruments.
It’s badly/confusingly typeset… this happens sometimes when entering/editing notes in notation software and should have been corrected “manually”.
You can’t remove the rest, it’s essential. You play a C on beat 1 and then you have rests on beats 2, 3, and 4, and play a C on “2 and”, "3 and " and “4 and”.
Sorry, I don’t have any notation software available right now, but, depending on whether note length is clearly indicated or not, one could have notated your example probably better like this:
Not sure I entirely understand your question, but please see my two previous comments.
It’s not “wrong”, but not very clearly notated. Unless the muscial context absolutely requires it to be written as all eighth notes, I might notate it as I did above for easier readability.
Perhaps, we should let @markjsmith chime in (as the originator of this example)
I would say that the bar over the final two notes and rest is misleading but not actually incorrect. I have usually only seen it written that way when it is a triplet with a rest in the middle but that is not the case here. I would suggest the key thing here is getting your muting right.
It’s not an error, but a slight oversight in terms of consistency on my part. The exercise is one of many dealing with 8th note rhythms. I would normally avoid the beam over the top of the rest but it’s not wrong. Many notation packages do this by default and in some ways it’s actually a much better way of keeping your bearings in the bar. But for consistency I should have beamed over the first half of the bar too.
In terms of alternate ways of writing, yes there are much easier ways to show that rhythm. BUT, the lesson is specifically intended to provide practice in a diverse range of scenarios. The rhythm might be confusing from a rest perspectice but it forces you to look deeper at the beat divisions.
^^^ This. @joergkutter , in your example, I would have notated the first 3 notes as staccato, and maybe the 4th, depending on how the next bar starts (note or rest).
Of course, @markjsmith is the authority and he explained the situation.
That said, what I did with this example was to totally ignore the bar at the end of the measure, and played the eighth notes and rests as they are written, in sequence. Ignoring the bar works perfectly well.
Just sharing how I handled this measure when I took the course.
I’ve also seen technically correct but still awkward notation like this in large scores before. The solution for me has always been to count the total beats (notes and rests) in the measure to confirm that they are correct. If they were. I would simply cross out the bar connecting the note stems to make it simpler to read the measure as I played.
