hi, im new to the forum, and i would like to say that this is a very nice website, ok i've been playing for about 2 years, the problem i have is that i have trouble reading music, i can read it but if it's not that hard so my question is how can i improve my reading skills, and yes i've searched

The only real way is to just do it.

Stock up on music, books, etc. And Just Sit down and Play.

There are no real tricks to it, just practice.

agreed Bochez

www.vicfirth.com and go to the media vault and take cyber lessons with one of those dudes....you'll figure it out its pretty self explanatory.....but just sit down and play different music a lot and you'll get better at you're sight reading...

ok, i asked my band director if he had any books that can help me and he gave me two, im gonna take ur advice and just read, some of the stuff in the books i can't read but practice makes perfect.

When all else fails...just practice.

That's how everyone should look at life...you don't need a girlfriend, just everytime you get urge for some action, play Bucks for the next 2 hours....or Ditty?

*May or may not work in every case.

Yeah, what everyone else said, just practice. I wasn't such a good reader myself about two years ago but I practiced and practiced and I got better. You'll see improvement.

Its a lot like learning math. You've got to start of repeating a lot of the easier stuff. You'll eventually notice some patterns and commit them to memory as if it was second nature to you (such as 2 + 2 = 4 ). Through more practice (dreaded homework), you'll be able to read the basic stuff like cake and will be able to stumble your way through some more advanced stuff. Then you practice those problems until you understand the concepts and recognize patterns...
wash, rinse, repeat.

Thats all that there is to it. Its time consuming, but if you take it one step at a time, you'll be fine.

Put every single mesure "under a microscope". Meaning play every measure say, 4 times in a loop after that it will get easy. Use the music as note cards not an essay, meaning that you shouldn't need to look at every note of every measure when you play it, you recognize patterns after playing it enough.