Don, specifically, my advice to people new to any particular kind of music who already have knowledge of another and can read music is that they should do their best to familiarise themselves with this new music before learning anything of it from notation. And the only way to familiarise themselves is aurally. Listen to lots and lots of it and then begin to play it from only listening,

And here's why.

Music notation is visual symbols that represent sounds. And for it to be an effective means of communicating sound, you first have to be familiar with what sound each symbol represents. So, for example, someone familiar with Beethoven's style can take a piece of his manuscript written in common time and reproduce the music which, with skill and judgement, would hopefully be recognised by Beethoven himself as an accurate rendition . Or if not Beethoven himself, at least the general population of Beethoven admirers around today. (not with standing the performers own input, of course).

However. common time, as written by Beethoven means something very very different to a player of Irish reels. And yet the two are written identically.

And if you play a reel in the rhythm of Beethoven's common time it will be wrong. Not just different, or the players interpretation, or an example of the performers own input, but just wrong. Plain and simply.

And this applies to lots of the symbols. Another example is the one I looked at earlier where half a bar of 6/8 of three notes the same can mean a slow roll to an Irish player (not with standing the silly and irrelevant aside of a minority who don't play rolls of course). But if the player did that during a piece of Beethoven in 6/8 they'd be wrong, not just different, or the players interpretation, or an example of the performers own input, but just wrong. Plain and simply.



And it's important to note that this is not just theory. I'm not saying this could happen, or there is a danger of it happening. I'm saying that it happens a lot. A heck of a lot. All the bloody time. If you are not familiar with how reels go and you are familiar with common time in the Classical and Romantic sense and you read a reel off notation you "will" play it wrong. All wrong. As in "Sheesh, oh no no no no no ... that was bloody awful ... you've got it all wrong."