Hello,

I'm an adult self-taught piano beginner and I'm a bit stuck when it comes to playing piano by sight reading pieces written in keys that have flats or sharps in their signature. Since sight reading is focused more on playing by reading the distance between two notes rather than identifying each individual note on the staff, I find it impossible playing without manually writing the sharps and flats across the whole staff beforehand.

For example, if a piece is written in, let's say, D major which has two sharps (F# & C#), I have the tendency to play the A to C# interval as if it was A to C natural, because I do not see the #, so I would greatly appreciate if someone could give me some tips and pointers on how to correct this.

I think it just takes time. I used to get kind of freaked out when I saw something with four or five sharps in the key signature too, but now I just play it.

One thing that it took me a while to realize (and that is useful to know) is that the sharps and flats work up and down on the black keys. What I mean by that is that one sharp is the black key on the left of the groups of three. One flat is the black key on the right of the groups of three. Two sharps are the black keys on the left of both the groups of three and the group of two. And three sharps are the two black keys on the groups of three and one on the groups of two. And so on. Sharps work up from the left and flats work down from the right; both sharps and flats use the same pattern but starting from the opposite ends of the black key groups.

I'm sure that this is screamingly obvious to people who know something about music theory but it took me a while to notice that and I never ran across anything that explicitly pointed it out in that way. But after you understand the pattern key signatures aren't nearly as intimidating as they were before.

Hi Elian,

This is a perfect example of why you should learn the scales so thoroughly that you just "know", without having to stop and think about it, that in D maj a third above "A" is "C#". Really all I can suggest is practise, practise, practise those scales until it becomes "muscle memory" rather than conscious thought.

+1. Try playing the scale before every piece that you read.

How long have you been playing? How many pieces have you played with sharps or flats in the key signature? Sight reading is all about recognizing patterns - which includes scales and chords in a particular key - but if you haven't learned a lot of pieces in those keys, then sight reading them will be very difficult.

Sight reading is one of those things that I think many adult students obsess about unnecessarily. It is far more important in the first few years to learn lots of music on a deep level. Then the sight reading will be much easier to work on because it becomes a matter of recalling what you've already played somewhere else.

Elian:

Yes, indeed. Moreover, writing in the sharps and/or flats for every note that is so affected is a waste of time and a crutch that seriously delays your ability to learn to play in keys with sharps and flats.

Learn your scales individually and thoroughly. Then, when one scale becomes (more or less) second nature, practice/play several pieces in that key.

Mastering key signatures should be, also, just a matter of conscientious thought: "This piece is in D major; therefore every F on the staff I see is an F-sharp, and every C is a C-sharp." Slow, methodical and thoughtful practice is the way out of your dilemma.

Regards,

Becoming very familiar with the scale for the piece will definitely help, because when you incorrectly strike a natural instead of the sharp or flat, your ear will tell you immediately of your error. Once you train your ear on what the particular scale should sound like, it will help you to automatically use the appropriate sharp or flat note for pieces written using that key. Playing the scale not only trains your hands in the right fingering, it also trains your ear, which helps a lot.

This is true most of the time, anyway- you’ll later come to pieces which have some intentional dissonance, but by then, this will be less of an issue.

If possible I would recommend getting a teacher.

But as well as the advise already given, I would take this opportunity to learn to practise.

When you recognise you have made a mistake stop. Replay from shortly before the mistake and do your best to fix the mistake. Then repeat the same sequence without error multiple times before moving on. Honestly the process is slow.

It is sad but true that it is slow. I have a problem where I have been ignoring a tie between notes. My teacher keeps pointing it out, I keep fixing the problem, but I can quickly relapse and the only thing I can do is to continually be aware that I do this and do my best from now on to stop it happening. But it takes a conscious effort when playing and when I recognise I have made the mistake all I can do is take my own advise above.

One day in the future I will no longer have to keep making this conscious effort and I will be able to play new pieces without leaving out this detail. That day is not today.

What I find helps is to play the scale and arpeggio in the key of the piece before actually playing it. I think it's something a lot of us go through, and I found introducing the keys gradually to be helpful - kind of get reasonably comfortable with one before moving on. Effectively, for the sharps, start with one (G), get used to that, then go to 2 sharps (D) and so on, (also learning the scales and arpeggios as part of learning the key!). Similarly with the flats, starting with one (F) then two (Bb) etc. I found that progress was initially slow because it is good to become thoroughly familiar with the key, but it sped up later - I don't think I ever completed the entire process in that manner, just got used to the idea if you see what I mean....
The 'shapes' of chords can of course have different notes - sharps or flats added, but you get used to that by playing for a while in the key.
My thoughts anyway. May help, but I expect you will get good advice here....

Of couse, if you do that … you are not sight-reading.

Sight-Reading is playing something you have never seen before …..completely through without stopping.

I was assuming with a self taught learner the OP was probably just thinking of sight reading as learning to play a piece by reading the sheet music. I could well be wrong with my assumption.

You are probably right.

I just sometimes jump in and point out the meaning of Sight-Reading in my tiny effort to maintain the actual meaning of that term.

There is a tendency for players to use the word Sight-Reading when they really mean reading the sheet music.

So …. I try to stem the tide a bit.

So far …. I have been basically unsuccessful. LOL …

Nevertheless, some of us appreciate your efforts. I'm with you; keep it up!

Cheers!

I’ll add to the chorus that playing a few octaves of the scale in the key of the piece before reading has been a huge help for me with that same issue.

I'm with Chrispy here. Unless I'm purely sight-reading, before I start playing a new piece, and if it is in one of the major scales, I almost always play the two octave scale beforehand to get my fingers accustomed to reaching for the right black keys.

I'd do it for all keys, but I haven't learned all of the minor keys yet, but as I am going along with the minor keys, I am learning each in all 3 modes, so I think in a few weeks, when I get all my minor key scales down, I will be figuring out the key and mode a new piece is in and playing a two octave scale of that too before starting in on the piece.

Thank You

Yes, based on context, I also just assumed the OP accidentally misused the term "sight-reading" and was only referring to "reading."

+1 play the scales and play the chord progressions for that key before playing the piece. It gets you to automatically play the appropriate sharps or flats for the key signature.

I guess chord progressions could be useful when you are playing some music. For the classical music I'm playing, there are definitely some chords, but maybe not enough that I find playing chord progressions helps my reading. But perhaps this is also because I can play the chord progressions in the keys I know, but I probably haven't fully internalized them, and once I internalize them, maybe I will find it more helpful to play the chord progressions too before starting on a piece.

nope, I literally meant like playing a piece I've never seen before.

So you are only counting the first time you try the piece and not any subsequent attempts? Well then, indeed that is sight-reading!

As some others have said, if you're a beginner, there's no need to worry about sight-reading too much. That will improve with developing reading skills. Incidentally, it's not just intervals, you also need to recognise actual individual notes on the staves and know where they are on the keyboard without having to 'count notes'.

But again, that comes with familiarity - with the topography of the keyboard as well as the location of notes on the staves, and the location of accidentals. Get used to playing in the easy keys (no more than one accidental) first, including their scales.

Incidentally, if you look at the ABRSM syllabus (https://gb.abrsm.org/fileadmin/user_upload/PDFs/Piano_Syllabus_2019___2020_complete.pdf ), you'll see that at Grade 1 (which takes the average student one year to achieve), the pieces and sight-reading tests only require one accidental. And the pieces are mostly single notes in each hand. Only at Grade 2 is D major included.

So, I think you're also suffering from the common adult malady of expecting too much of yourself, far too soon.

I play in the music group. The group leader makes us play the scale of the piece we're working on with our instruments. When we're doing a piece in D with 2 sharps, we'd run the scale a few times to get the notes in our heads.

Once you get the F# & C# in your head, every time you come across the F or C with nothing beside it, you automatically play a black key. Part of it is ear training too. The first thing I'd read is the Key Signature so I have an idea which notes should be played with a black key. You run the piece enough times you get the tune in your head and you know when you played a white key that is supposed to be a black key. You just don't get the right sound. The end of the day ear training is as important as sight. When I play a chord I know right away if it doesn't sound right 1 of the notes must be wrong. In the beginning practically everybody write in names of notes or finger numbers. I still circle notes and write in # & b for jazzy pieces that has a few sharps & flats added in. If you know a piece well you can just fill-in the notes off your head without doing much reading.

This is my favorite post ever about sight reading!

Sight Reading is just one of those things that takes lots of DAILY practice. I doing lots of reading you develop the skill of keep the key signature in the background of your mind. Sight Reading also is more about training your eyes to see and recognize rhythmic patterns, chords, arpeggios, scale fragments, intervals and to do that is a matter of reading a lot. Good sight reader are reading measures ahead of where they are playing so to do that you have be able to see and recognize common rhythms and etc I mentioned. You basically learn to scan music recognizing common things so you can spot the unusual and give it some time to mentally work it out. You got to a studio session, band, and I imagine a orchestra is the same when music is passed out you hear silence as everyone starts scanning the music for the minute(s) they have looking for those unusual bits. Once again that is skill you develop from reading a lot of music and reading daily.

My old buddy from my working days as a guitar played in Don Ellis Jazz big band which mainly did very complex polyrhythmic music and it was all written. He buddy after he left Don Ellis got into doing studio work and even after Don Ellis he would still practice sight reading everyday even if only for a a little bit. Sight reading is one of those skills that if you don't use it you start losing it.

I'm still a beginner on piano, but on guitar and bass I can say practicing sight reading not only developed that skill, but I learn so much about my instrument and its layout. Because when you're sight reading you can't be looking at the piano in this case and be looking at the music, you have to one learn to use the piano in your head and to keep track of where you are and develop you subconscious ability to know where you are on the fretboard or keyboard so you only have to peek for big movements.

So practice sight reading daily and remember it mainly about training your eyes.

+1
Imo, practicing sight reading without an understanding of music is similar to trying to fluently read aloud a book written in an unknown foreign language. If a reader knows the graphical symbols, he would be able spell out individual letters, then syllables and, with experience, maybe even read aloud individual words in a convincing way. However, the reader will never be able to automatically identify and predict words, outline whole sentences and the logical structures behind them. The worst part of it s that the reader would not understand the underlying meaning of what he is reading and will have major issues articulating and intonating the spoken text in a convincing way. This applies from reading aloud a children's book to a poetry book. So, unless the results are supposed to sound like a cold and robotic interpretation, I believe that there are plenty of requirements for playing music prima vista that need to be deeply learned first...

That's certainly what the ABRSM exams mean by "sight reading"! You get 30 seconds to look at the music, and then you have to play it.

So practice is key. OK, got it, so an honest thanks to all those of you who tried to help and formulated your answers in order to be as complete and friendly as possible.

I kinda suspected patience-practice-perseverance was the holy trinity here, but wasn't sure if that's how piano pros do it in order to be able to sit at the piano and play something they've never seen in their lives or if it's some sort of technique they teach you in music school.

Oh, and for those of you who mentioned having music theory knowledge, 'walk before you run' type of thing, I do have a good grasp on music theory (studied it for almost 12 years) and most certainly know how to read notes when I see them. I just needed some guidance applying music theory to playing an instrument, that's all.

Those 'piano pros' who can sit down and just play whatever someone plonks down on the music rest have had years and years of reading unfamiliar music. BTW, not just pros, but most amateurs who love to play through music they've never seen or heard before (and have played through lots and lots of it, over years and years) can also do it.

Just like you can plonk a volume of Anna Karenina on your music rest and read it straight off (assuming you've never read it before) - because you've had years and years of practice at reading English.


I hate to say it, but deep knowledge of music theory won't help you with sight-reading, except possibly with playing from lead sheets, where you're actually reading chord indications, not actual notes on staves - and even that relies on complete familiarity with the keyboard's topography.

Every time you read through a new piece (whether easy or hard), you improve your sight-reading skills, because you gain a little more familiarity at transferring squiggles on paper to keys on piano keyboard.

Yes, that is exactly what I wanted to find out, if it's the years of reading music or if they have certain shortcuts or trade secrets so to speak.
It is now very clear to me that it is indeed how I suspected and those people have been reading sheet music and playing piano for many years.



Yep, that I know. However, I consider music theory (at least at a basic level) to be the building block for playing any instrument. The only reason I mentioned music theory was because I noticed some replies hinted towards it and I wanted to be clear for everyone I do have a good grasp on music theory, so the lack of it isn't what's hindering my progress.

The theory in itself is not necessary helpful but what is, is the anticipation of harmonies and chords or even melodic movements. The prior acquaintance with the style of a composer helps as well as it reduces the number of "surprises". The cadential movements follow usual patterns in a given period/composer. So obviously in classic music you would expect some form of II-V-I to appear when performing a PAC. Similarly for half cadences and so on. That is also part of experience and years of practice.

First thing I'd recommend is to find a good teacher. Even if you only see him/her once a month they could offer some good guidance and help steer you toward pieces and exercises best suited to your needs.
If this isn't an option, then I second what many people have already suggested: practice the scales and get comfortable with them. Another thing that might help is to follow the circle of fifths with the pieces you learn (i.e. one piece in C major, next in G, next in D, etc.). This type of thing just takes time. Keep at it and you'll eventually get it. Good luck!

I agree with the idea of finding a teacher, although I don’t know how easy it will be to find one for only once a month. I found a teacher who will see me twice a month. After my first lesson, I can say that I’m glad I spent only a few months trying to teach myself and not longer, as it is clear that I have no idea what I’m doing and have already picked up bad habits.

I highly doubt one could find a teacher who is not themselves a student (say at the conservatory) who would agree to just one day a month. That would entirely trash the schedule of most anyone who is teaching professionally and earning their primary income from teaching piano.

I disagree. My teacher teaches kids at a music school but also has a private studio at home and it's obvious his schedule is not packed. There are no students before or after me. He easily accomodates schedule changes and, although I have weekly lessons, I'm pretty sure he would agree to less regular arrangements.

If you live in a decent-sized city there are many possibilities for having a teacher once a month. There might be semi-retired professors, or artists teaching as a side job, or conservatory students as you noted. Those are not bad options.

I guess it all depends on the teacher and how much they value a steady cash-flow. My classical guitar teacher is very flexible and sees some advanced students every few months. He’s a great player and a graduate of Juilliard. After about nine years of weekly lessons, we’ve recent switches to having lessons every other week.

Of course, what happens between lsssons is the most important part of the learning process. I’m as likely to skip a day of practice as I am to skip brushing my teeth. Even with that, I’m not a virtuoso guitar player but I am always moving forward, even if it’s only a few inches a week.

Travel can mess up consistent practice which is why I have a cheap guitar stashed in the places where I usually end up, at my mom’s, my in-laws, and I have a travel guitar. I’m new to studying piano so I don’t have a backup plan for that yet when I travel. I suppose a little Yamaha Reface CP would do the trick.

There's a rule of thumb that you should be able to sight read material two levels below your current grade. So, if you're at level 3, you should be able to read level 1 material. By my arithmetic, if you're at level 1 or 2, you shouldn't stress out about sight reading. You'll get to it later on. It's just not something to begin with.

Travel is the killer. I visited my Mum to take her to an appointment and that meant I missed two evening practises and one morning practise this week, and I will be away from home for the next weeks so April is going to be poor. Little progress will be made.

Actually it is not even the progress, I almost don’t care, I just miss playing and practising.

I agree with the advice to regularly practice scales. I do so in 3 octaves. With my lessons on hold, I thought I'd challenge myself to use a metronome. I increase the speed by 2 each day. After a few weeks, my proficiency between the major scales with sharps vs. with flats are nearly equal.

I also found great value in participating in the 40 Piece a Year Challenge. If you have the opportunity, I highly recommend getting into that type of program.

Practice every day with a specific goal in mind for the week and you'll see improvements. Have fun!

I had exactly the same experience. I thought that I was doing quite reasonably going through "Albert's Adult Piano Course" on my own, but in my first lesson, my teacher pointed out major flaws in the technique I'd developed on my own. In particular, I wasn't playing with a smooth legato style. Now that I'm doing so my playing sounds 1000x better! I think that being entirely self-taught as a complete beginner is a recipe for disaster. A teacher is essential.

The 61-key version of the Roland "GO:PIANO" is a nice travel piano for practising while away on trips. It's lightweight and small enough to easily carry around in a carrying bag.

That’s not a bad idea but I’m afraid it is still too big to be accepted by my wife for traveling on planes. We almost lost my Soloette travel guitar when she left it on a TGV in France. She had one job, which was to carry the lightweight Soloette, while I had all of the suitcases. She made a mad dash up a set of stairs and a managed to get back on the train to retrieve the travel guitar.

I got the idea for the Yamaha Reface CP from the excellent videos created by Nahre Sol:

https://youtu.be/gMIxMxDMOXM

She travels around with her Reface and does all kinds of cool things with it, including composing.

Yes, I was thinking more of cars than planes. I'm about to buy a GO:PIANO myself for when I'm away on business trips, but that's always driving rather than flying. It weighs only 4kg, and 61 keys is enough to play "real" piano music on. The Yamaha Reface CP does seems perfect if you need something that'll fit in a suitcase.

I may have an unusual way of tackling reading (not sight reading ) piano music . I open the page without any knowledge of the piece , say a Bach Well Tempered piece,. I look at the key signature and physically check the black notes indicated. There are no key signatures that mix flats and sharps in the key signature ( for those who may not realise that ). So mentally I prepare to play flat notes to the left of the C major notes and for sharp keys I prepare to play sharp notes to the right of the C major notes .
Remembering that there are only 5 black notes in an octave , how hard can that be ? That`s the attitude .
When the music starts ,the first note may not be the first note of that scale . But if the notes are rising (going right ) it`s not a mortal sin to begin with the thumb on the first note .
If there are no continuous scale passages in that music then the fingers have to be used in patterns that suit the musical phrases and that are physically possible .Often the fingering is written on the page which helps a great deal .
I find Chopin great fun when he throws in plenty of double sharps and uses white notes as temporary black notes (so to speak ).
Learning the numbering of fingers is important for a series of double chords and learning finger independance and combination . This is where the printed numbers are valuable .
Teachers have always emphasised scale practice for children partly because their hands need to develop physically . The hands are so closely related to our brains that this scale practice is like laying foundations under a building .
So I can ask now , what do teachers advise for all the situations where the hands are used in completely different positions than scale practice dictates . Do you keep searching for a chance to get the thumb under or over ?
I`m 76 and began violin at ten years of age. After 60 I began classical guitar . I helped my daughter to master Honky Tonk Train Blues ( Meade Lux Lewis ) just in a musical sense without being able to play piano at all .I helped with the contrasting rhythms by talking , not playing . She was good !
I also remember buying a book of Beethoven`s violin sonatas and sight reading through most of them when I got home . Very similar to a book of Irish traditional tunes with the little bow tricks that sound just right . Bowing , to me , was never a problem . It just took care of itself .
So that`s my combination .

Well here we are , back again after two minutes . I have just seen advice from a piano teacher site telling us not to use thumbs on the black notes . So how do you play octave pairs of notes on the black keys ? How can advice like that help a newcomer ?

Well here we are , back again after two minutes . I have just seen advice from a piano teacher site telling us not to use thumbs on the black notes . So how do you play octave pairs of notes on the black keys ? How can advice like that help a newcomer ?

Like so much to do with music, that advice applies mostly, but there are exceptions. Thing number one to tell any beginner on any instrument is that almost everything you'll ever learn about music applies mostly, but there are exceptions.

Not to use thumbs on black keys is a rule of the old days (classical era and before). Just like playing with coins on your hands There's plenty of music where this is not even possible. Usually the hand is in better position if you can play the white note with the thumb and the black notes with the long fingers. Scale fingering are also created so that the thumb can be kept on white notes for this reason. But it is no fixed rule.

Thumbs are short and black keys are short. So, most of the time getting the one onto the other requires curling the rest of the fingers, and isn't a good fingering choice. Sometimes, however, like octaves, ninths, and tenths, thumb on black can be the best -- or only practical -- choice. Always try a variety of fingerings and see what works best for you.

Yes quite right . I over reacted to the thumbs advice .It`s on Pianoscales . They don`t spell out the no thumbs rigidly as I first read it .
The penny just dropped for me though . If you work out the scale fingering patterns , the easiest (physically) way would be clear right away . So for any beginners there are sites that show the finger sequences for all the scales . We just need to keep looking them up and using them and remember they are there to help .

OK, so something I should have mentioned from the start is that it is not my goal to become a virtuoso concert piano player. That ship has sailed long time ago. I just want to be a decent one, be able to play modern tunes, perhaps delve into composing my own tracks later on. Also, I'm not interested in playing classical music because, honestly, no one cares for that in this day and age (sorry if I just offended some people, but it's the truth).

About the teacher thing... If I've learned something about myself is I learn faster when I do it on my own. All the creative skills I have up to this point in life are self-taught. Now I might just look into getting a piano teacher simply because I see a lot of you stressing that out and I also happen to live next to a music school. Thing is I completely resent the academic environment and don't want to run into a teacher that's heck bent on old-school techniques and classical stuff. Also, I'm the type of student that needs to always understand the WHY behind everything, I cannot learn something just because someone tells me to, so I'd probably annoy the crap out of that teacher. Anyway, I dunno, we'll see. Maybe I'll look into it.

For now, I'm sticking to practicing the scales and reading sheet music as best as I can. I found that visualising the key a piece is in (like literally looking at the keyboard and mind-mapping the notes of the scale) makes it really easy to read it. I think someone mentioned here it's useful learning and practicing scales in the order they go on the wheel of fifths and that's exactly what I was planning to do.

To say that "no one cares" dismisses the opinions of many people in the world who actually do care. Why not just say *you* don't care and leave it at that?


Best of luck on your journey

I haven't had a chance to read the thread as a whole yet. A small observation.

Beginning of thread:


That is sort of what one gets when studying with a decent teacher. The adjective is important though.

(will catch up to thread and question later)

This not caring comes from not hearing. The problem is that Chopin doesn't have a publicist. Nobody's out there pushing the music. A great many would love Chopin if they ever heard his music. But they don't.

And as time goes by it only gets worse. There are people now who've never heard of Cole Porter, let alone Chopin. More and more recent composers fall into the forgotten category.

No, it's a demonstrably false statement. Many people enjoy classical music. If you don't personally like it then fine, that's your choice, but please don't project your personal likes and dislikes as universal truths!



Learning to play the piano shouldn't be a race. Do you want to learn quickly or do you want to learn properly? There's not a lesson goes by in which my teacher doesn't correct errors in my playing technique. How are you going to know what's wrong with your technique unless you have a teacher to tell you?

Ok. THAT takes the cake for the silliest/funniest thing I’ve read on this forum yet.

+1

And yet, it is a common refrain among young people.

Don't worry about it. Even young people become old people eventually :-)

That supposed common refrain was quickly debunked in that thread.

Most people, young or old, are plebs with no taste.

+2

You may or may not have offended some; that is not the issue. The issue is that your statement is false.

Starting with a small group of around 30 amateur musicians with whom I am involved; we are passionate about classical music and perform regularly in monthly recitals.
Continuing: in our mid-sized city on the western edge of the North American continent - and far from the major "artistic" centres of North America, our city boasts a well-funded and well-attended opera company (five performances of three operas each season) and a fine symphony orchestra that has a full and lengthy season playing to full houses.
You don't have to go even that far; look at the number of participants in the Pianist Corner of PW who are passionate about classical piano music in particular and in classical music in general.

Each of us is free to like what we like, and you certainly may like whatever music you like. While statistics may show a decline in attendance at classical music functions, classical music is far from dead. Therefore, I do have to take issue with the statement that "... no one cares for [classical music] in this day and age...." It's just not true.

OK, perhaps it would be too elitist for me to or to +1 or to in response, so instead I will just

Oh my, you people are touchy AF lol :))))

What I meant was the main reason I'm learning to play the piano is to be able to play and write modern music, because whether you elitist bunch like it or not, that's what people stream and listen to on the radio nowadays if you haven't noticed. I have nothing against classical music. I enjoy it as well. I grew up with it, I go to the opera as often as I can (out of sheer pleasure, not snobbism), many operas I've seen twice or multiple times and I am familiar with all the big composers' works, from Strauss to Rachmaninoff and beyond.

It's just that I do not want to waste my time learning piano for playing something only a select few like myself and, as I've well noticed, like you enjoy. I also belong to a different, younger generation so instead of being stuck in old ways (nothing wrong with that if that's what floats your boat), I am open to adapting to the now and what comes next.

Oh, and if you think you're better than everybody else for liking classical music, please take several seats. Everything's a matter of taste and if you have good advice, good. If not, just click away from this thread. Starting forum drama and kindling your personal frustrations ain't the reason I'm here.

Heavens, Elian. Insulting people really isn’t a very sensible strategy if you’re asking for help. I’ll leave you to it!

+1. Agree completely.

No one posted anything about classical music being superior to anything else. The only one who presented any snobbery was you, so it appears you're the one starting forum drama. I really don't know who you are arguing against since it was your first post that started with the insults.

Why not just be respectful of others and get to know the people here and not make assumptions about us?