How many San Francsicans can read sheet music? I am also interested in other demographics on SF musicians, such as how many san franciscans can play instruments and what genres of music are most popular in this city?

-- Sarah O'Neil (oneilie@hotmail.com), March 27, 2003

Answers

I think that you can only make an approximation but it should be within the neighborhood.

What you would need to do is take all the schools and colleges in San Francisco and their music programs and average people per class. Then over a certain number of years, you would have to calculate how many of high school and college students remain in San Francisco and how many move out. There are statistics for that. Then take the percentage of those people per year out of the entire population of San Francisco plus add the same percentage stats on all the new people who move to San Francisco who read sheet music/play musical instruments and add it to those already in San Francisco and you can then get a rough estimate. And by the way, if you think that there might be only a few thousand who can read sheet music in San Francisco, think again. I would take a guess that at least 30,000 people in this city can read sheet music in one form or another. And at least 30,000 people in this city can play a musical instrument.

As far as the most popular music. The answer is easy. It has to be the latest hits. But I still say that many of the rock songs of the 60s and 70s totally dominate over today's music. And if you don't believe me, just look at the many TV commercials and what songs they are playing -- 60s and 70s music. And it's also amazing to me that most department stores still play mostly 60s and 70s music.

-- Harry Murphy (harrymurphy*@bigmailbox.net), March 28, 2003.

Actually, we all sightread sheet music, though most of us, out of consideration for others, do not do so in public. Or the shower.

Many of our best musicians cannot read a score -- but they're the ones doing a lot of the commercial jingle work.

As for what's most popular here, we have EVERYTHING. Just pick up one of the free weekly entertainment papers and start hunting.

-- Rosa (rosadebon@yahoo.com), March 28, 2003.

I read music. Rosa, are you a musician?

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My favorite song: Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding
By Elton John and Bernie Taupin

-- SFHE editor (chunkylover53@sfhe.tk), March 29, 2003.