M Ted: "people who believe that music theory, notation, and even the idea of structured learning, with teaching and practice, are somehow or another a fascistic effort with the sole intent of supressing their God Given Right to Just Do It--"

I do have some difficulty with those who feel that there is no need for "the dots"... I do understand the difficulty in learning anything new, but still smile inside when they wish to learn a tune and have to have someone sing or play it ... whereas I need about 5 mins (a bit longer for advanced classical music stuff!) to hack the tune on the page into recognisable shape. I DO appreciate that some people will have problems we won't list as a valid reason. One of my msical strengths is sight reading, and I was always sending everybody around me crazy when I was trying to learn musical pieces for memory tests in Exams... But I can improvise endlessly, and can sometimes just play something which I have heard in the past, not necessarily played before, "out of the blue" .. often not knowing what the hell the tune is... :-) We'e all different. But I do not like the "childish-arrogant" attitude you mention.

I have a goddaughter now 5 years old who just loves music. I took an 8 bass P/A up to her, and she wanted to play it. "Just one finger at a time" I said. No, she wanted to use all the fingers of both hands at once... like I could :-)

Which reminds me... back in the late 70's early 80's I met a guy in Amateur Theatre circles who was one of those "idiot savant" piano players.

He could play ANYTHING he had SEEN - ONCE -- played on a piano in front of him - even on film. So things that cut away from the keyboard, he could only play those parts of the tune he had actually SEEN! Couldn't read music, knew NO music theory at all, couldn't play by ear, couldn't learn any piece by design or repetition. The rhythm, etc of what he played was fine. He couldn't even tell what notes he was playing, only that the pattern fitted "here" on the keyboard, by the fact that the groups of 2 and 3 black notes were relevant to where his patterns fitted on the keyboard!

He was English. His mother used to play piano in Music Hall for a living, and she took the baby basket with her, placing it where he could see the keyboard. That was the only explanation he give for his talent.

Certainly a God Given Right! :-)

I noticed a comment from someone (considered rather talented!) on another thread who admitted that because they didn't do certain technical things "correctly" from the start, but had developed their own way of playing the instrument, and that they were finding that it was now difficult to do certain techniques others easily could because of the way they held the instrument, etc.

M Ted: "Even in Turkish Classical Music, the performers set their own intervals, and different masters had different ideas about where the same pitch really was-- Difficult to explain to folks who think that there one "Just" system for tuning-- "

So I see M Ted, from your comments, I take it that you agree with me that it doesn't matter if the instrument is in tune? <:P

Robin