Reading dots

Subject: Reading dots
From: Tangledwood
Date: 12 Jun 08 - 05:49 AM

My sight reading of music for guitar is adequate for working out the melody but not fast enough to reliably play at normal speed. I've just bought a mandolin so need to learn some melodies for that. Do multi-instrumentalists consider that learning to read dots for the mando would be likely to create confusion with the guitar? Would it be better to use only TAB to get familiar with the instrument?

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Paul Burke
Date: 12 Jun 08 - 05:53 AM

Do what I do; my music reading is poor, and resists so far attempts to improve it, so I learn it, slowly, from the music a line or a phrase at a time. By the time I can play it all, I know it and don't need the dots any more.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Zen
Date: 12 Jun 08 - 06:37 AM

I learn almost exclusively by ear resorting to the dots only extremely rarely if a difficult and resistant phrase needs a little further analysis (my dot reading is rather poor anyway). I've also never really warmed to tablature either.

Zen

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: mattkeen
Date: 12 Jun 08 - 06:49 AM

I am pretty much with Paul Burke on this

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 12 Jun 08 - 08:16 AM

Tangledwood wrote:
"My sight reading of music for guitar is adequate for working out the melody but not fast enough to reliably play at normal speed."

If you mean sight-reading at speed, this is very difficult and must be practiced specially (by most people). It's the sort of thing studio musicians need to be able to do. Also useful for accompanists, etc. Otherwise, it's a nice skill to have, but not necessary for music-making. I do practice sight-reading occasionally, but I certainly don't try to play at speed.

Tangledwood wrote:
"[...] Do multi-instrumentalists consider that learning to read dots for the mando would be likely to create confusion with the guitar? Would it be better to use only TAB to get familiar with the instrument?"

In my opinion, "no" to the first question and "definitely not" to the second.

Reading music is a valuable skill and it's not that difficult. On the other hand, it's not that easy, either. I would say it is of moderate difficulty, especially when one learns as an adult.

I think the confusing part would be the different tunings, assuming the mandoline is tuned differently from 4 adjacent guitar strings. I don't play the mandoline (although I would buy one if I could afford one), but the problem is similar just with the guitar, if one uses scordature ("non-standard tunings"). Yes, it's confusing, but manageable.

I have nothing against tablature and it has its uses. Lute music was written in tablature (using several different systems), so it's not just a modern crutch. However, most music isn't published in tablature so learning to read music well opens up a huge repertoire that is closed as long as one relies on tablature.

Much piano music can be adapted for the guitar, or just played, if one can recognize the chords or write them in. I do the latter, since I can't recognize harmonies at speed. This is another reason for practicing reading music.

There are so many brilliant musicians and people with unusual skills and even musical geniuses that it can be disheartening when one compares oneself to them. However, I don't think this is really the point and there's much to be said for hard slog.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 12 Jun 08 - 08:18 AM

Oh, yes. With respect to becoming familiar with the instrument, I think the best way to do that would be to practice playing by ear, in combination with playing scales and arpeggios.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 12 Jun 08 - 08:29 AM

Using dots or tab to learn/play tunes on the mando should not affect using dots or tabs to learn/play tunes on the guitar.

The question is about like asking "would it be okay to use a hammer to drive screws instead of a screwdriver - I'm afraid using a screwdriver would make it harder to go back to driving nails again with a hammer."

If you're looking for someone to encourage you to avoid "doing it the hard way" when you think another way will be easier for you - I'd say do what works best for you, for the task immediately at hand; and you won't suffer when you go back to other tools for other tasks, or when you use the same tools (appropriately) to do other things.

If you find tab easier to learn from, then by all means use tab for both instruments. You shouldn't have any real problem "shifting gears" when you swap from one to the other. If dots are sufficient, for one or both instruments, then use dots where they work best for you.

By the time you've learned to play a tune on either instrument you'll be using mostly "muscle memory" and the muscles will swap to the appropriate "other set" as soon as you get a grip on the "other instrument." That swap includes the muscles in your headbone just as it does the muscles in your hands.

Worry more about the calouses you need for the mando being just very slightly in a different place than for the guitar - and don't hurt yourself.

John

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Tangledwood
Date: 12 Jun 08 - 06:45 PM

Thank you very much for the helpful advice. I'm not worried about putting the hard yards in on the mandolin as long as the process isn't detrimental to the guitar. You've reassured me there. As for learning by ear - after only a week on the mando it seems a lot more intuative than it is on the guitar. Good times ahead I think!

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: GUEST,Jonny Sunshine
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 03:07 PM

I'd say go for it and learn to read the dots- it's a useful, and transferable skill. If anything it's less likely to cause confusion than learning just from tab, because the dots relate to the actual notes you hear, which helps to develop your ear. That way your head thinks what note you're playing, and your fingers remember where it is!

The nice thing about mandolin compared to the guitar, is that the tuning is completely logical and consistent, which makes it really easy to pick out tunes by ear once you know how to play a scale.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Mrs Scarecrow
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 04:17 PM

I play both guitar and violin which is the same tuning as a mandolin I agree completely with Johnny Sunshine persevering with the dots is worthwhile

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Tangledwood
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 06:36 PM

Thank you, dots it is then. . . oh, and learning some more scales.

"That way your head thinks what note you're playing, and your fingers remember where it is"

So far with the guitar the head has been left out of the action. The eyes see the dot and the fingers remember where to go. I hope that bringing the brain into play doesn't slow the process down too much. :)

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 09:57 PM

JiK says it all well and before I could... :-P Love the hammer analogy... :-)

"I'm not worried about putting the hard yards in on the mandolin as long as the process isn't detrimental to the guitar."

As someone who can play many instruments fake it well enough to fool many into thinking that I can play better than I think I can :-) on several instruments, learning any new skill will never cause old ones to detoriate (unless you refuse to keep up a degree of practice on the old ones!!!) - old muscle music skills don't fall out of one ear as you jam new ones into the other... :-)

The more instruments you learn, the better the musician you will be on ALL of them... the more musical skills, such as reading dots, the better.


"If you mean sight-reading at speed, this is very difficult and must be practiced specially (by most people). It's the sort of thing studio musicians need to be able to do."

Sight reading is considered such an important skill in music exams, that there is a whole section devoted to it. Other essential skills are simple tune memory, playing pieces from memory, transposition on paper, putting (acceptable!!! chord progressions to a given tune), composing a simple tune, as well as the basic 'dot reading skills'.

Speed is achieved thru prcatice.

I was sufficiently good at sight reading that I was able to 'fake' some degree of lack of practice... ;-) and I find I can play much better - more expressively, for instance - if I have the dots in front of me - or the words and basic chord structurejust as a 'fail-safe' - even though I CAN play some things purely by memory.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Rapparee
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 10:20 PM

Being a trumpeter I can't help much with stringed instruments. But I also fool around (very much fooling around) with a keyboard. And while I can read treble clef without much problem at all, bass clef is an entirely different matter.

But I'm going to learn bass clef before I die.

What I do with the trumpet is to simply take it slowly at first, sight reading the dots, and not worrying about whether it's in 6/8 or 4/4 or 9/7 or whatever. After a while I find that I'm playing at the correct speed.

Learning to read music was a whole lot easier when I started trumpet at 10 years old!

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 14 Jun 08 - 07:56 AM

Bass clef is learnt at the same time as treble for keyboardists, normally. Funnily enough Piano Accordionists have their OWN system that appears to use the bass clef, but is slightly different.

Part of the process of my music tuition was to learn all 4 clefs, who knows the other two? :-)

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 14 Jun 08 - 09:38 AM

I wrote:
"If you mean sight-reading at speed, this is very difficult and must be practiced specially (by most people). It's the sort of thing studio musicians need to be able to do."

Foolestroupe wrote:
"Sight reading is considered such an important skill in music exams, that there is a whole section devoted to it."

Quite. There are many things that are considered important in exams that I'm not that bothered about. In fact, I'm not bothered about exams at all and, in fact, loathe them, just as I loathe music contests. Just my opinion, offered for what it's worth, and with no wish to force it on other people.

After my posting, I thought I should have added that sight-reading is important for orchestral musicians, too. I think of it more as a technical rather than a musical skill. I like doing it (especially on the piano) and it's worth practicing. I'm just not bothered about being able to do it at speed. There are other things I think are more important, such as playing by ear.

Foolestroupe wrote:
"Other essential skills are simple tune memory, playing pieces from memory, transposition on paper, putting (acceptable!!! chord progressions to a given tune), composing a simple tune, as well as the basic 'dot reading skills'."

All nice things. I was making the point that reading music is a valuable skill. Is there any particular difficulty with transposition on paper? What I struggle with is transposition in my head while playing. However, none of these things are nice if they're shoved down one's throat.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 14 Jun 08 - 09:54 AM

Jonny Sunshine wrote:

"The nice thing about mandolin compared to the guitar, is that the tuning is completely logical and consistent, which makes it really easy to pick out tunes by ear once you know how to play a scale."

Oh, I disagree about the tuning of the guitar being illogical, if you mean standard tuning. It makes good sense. For every position, it provides a reasonably large range requiring no shifts of more than a single semi-tone. One thing I miss on the guitar a lot is a low D, but I don't really like drop D tuning because of the "gap" that results.

The logic of standard tuning really becomes clear when one starts to look at the inner voices when finger-picking (and/or playing polyphonically, which is very nearly the same thing). It is very nice to have Tonic - 5th - Tonic or especially 5th - Tonic - 5th on the low strings of a given chord.

And isn't it amazing that seven basic patterns (with the appropriate variations) suffice to make it possible to play most chords, scales and arpeggio in every key all over the guitar? Somebody, or more likely a number of people over a period of time, had to work this out.

The only other tuning I use regularly is Renaissance tuning, with the G string tuned down to F#, so the third is now between the 4th and 3rd string. It's really six of one, half-a-dozen of the other. I have little trouble reading music for this tuning (and there's a lot of wonderful music for it, with John Dowland being one of my favorites), but I find it confusing when I try to improvise and/or play by ear using it. One of these days I should bite the bullet and really learn it.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 15 Jun 08 - 04:06 AM

"Quite. There are many things that are considered important in exams that I'm not that bothered about. "

Hmmmm.... :-)

Fair enough...

I was involved in Motor Sport when younger. I learnt how to control a skid (front and rear), control hard braking on wet and other slippery surfaces, sideways 4 wheel drift - both rear wheel drive and front wheel drive, handbrake turns, clutchless gear changes, and a lot of other such skills, considered sufficently unimportant when most people get their road licence (what I call a licence to kill and maim!).

Nobody 'forces such stuff down anybodies throat'.

But I have walked away from sudden unexpected circumstances (caused by the environment and other untrained panicking drivers) on the normal road in which such skills kept me alive - and the same circumstances other people without such training get killed 'by accident'...

Enjoy your music the way you want to, but never try to stop others from learning real music technical skills and theory.

"What I struggle with is transposition in my head while playing"

Yeah - it takes a lot of practice to handle that. I found I improved massively with that when I started playing whistles! But the other week I found at the local tip shop a Yamaha PS35 keyboard with a transposing switch! Second best lot of fun I ever had for $40! :-)

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: The Sandman
Date: 15 Jun 08 - 04:18 AM

I am glad to see that so far on this thread,tolerance is shown to musicians who wish to use dots or who wish to play by ear.
both disciplines are in my opinion useful.
The most important thing is:enjoyment.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Tangledwood
Date: 15 Jun 08 - 07:29 PM

"I am glad to see that so far on this thread,tolerance is shown to musicians who wish to use dots or who wish to play by ear."

Yes, there have been some very helpful suggestions and opinions expressed. I guess the good thing about dots and ears are that the two aren't mutually exclusive.

Enjoyment comes with success in what a person is trying to achieve. I suppose to that end whatever is quickest and easiest gives instant gratification (almost), but taking more effort to refine the performance keeps that enjoyment going.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Mooh
Date: 15 Jun 08 - 07:46 PM

Both reading on piano and sight singing seem more intuitive to me. I read okay on guitar (I make my living teaching it) though I wouldn't describe myself as fast. Mandolin is slower for me simply because I spend way less time reading with it. It does seem considerable more intuitive than guitar however, due to the very finger friendly and logical tuning (in 5ths) and comfortable scale length.

Reading on one or the other doesn't seem to me to be a factor in reading on one or the other. One won't hurt the other. Whatever confusion is brief and easily overcome, besides the fact that the ears and eyes eventually guide the fingers to the right place based on interval recognition and repetition.

My two cents.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: GUEST,Dave MacKenzie
Date: 15 Jun 08 - 08:02 PM

Personally I find it difficult to sight read and play an instrument.

The main problem with transcriptions (whether dots or tab) is that they'll only give the notes, not the tune. (look at St Anne's Reel if you want to know what I mean).

They're both useful, and are good learning tools, but ultimately if you don't have the ear you'll end up in the Hedgehog Song (You know all the words and you sang all the notes but you never quite learned the song, she sang)

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Rapparee
Date: 15 Jun 08 - 10:18 PM

There's Alto and Tenor Clefs....

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Ron Davies
Date: 15 Jun 08 - 11:02 PM

It's true--and in the alto clef, as I recall, middle C is the middle line. A real joy. That's the viola clef, and I can read it--but only with the instrument in my hand. Probably can't even do that now--been playing bluegrass and country viola --and that just requires you to make up a harmony that compliments the melody--no dots involved. And I've been doing that far more years than I played in orchestras.

But reading music is definitely worthwhile even if you never use it in non-classical music at all--which I don't. (Except piano--you need it to play rags, etc.)

Fortunately for most instruments the only clefs you'd have to consider are the treble and bass. And there are fairly easy ways to remember the lines and spaces in those--e.g. the spaces in the treble clef are F A C E.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 16 Jun 08 - 02:50 AM

I wrote:
"Quite. There are many things that are considered important in exams that I'm not that bothered about. "


Foolestroupe wrote;
"I was involved in Motor Sport when younger. I learnt how to control a skid (front and rear), control hard braking on wet and other slippery surfaces, sideways 4 wheel drift - both rear wheel drive and front wheel drive, handbrake turns, clutchless gear changes, and a lot of other such skills, considered sufficently unimportant when most people get their road licence (what I call a licence to kill and maim!)."

One nice thing about music is that it usually isn't life-threatening and it won't cause injury or death of someone plays a dotted eighth note and a sixteenth note as the first and third triplet in a a group of three triplets. One of the most damaging things in music instruction, I believe, is discouraging children from playing by ear because "it will get you into bad habits". There is no better habit than learning to use one's ears, even if they are not 100% accurate.

Foolestroupe wrote;
"Nobody 'forces such stuff down anybodies throat'."

I'm afraid I disagree with you about this. When I was a young teenager, I stopped taking "classical" piano lessons and went to a studio with an undeserved good reputation to learn jazz piano. The person who owned it had invented a method which used visualization. My teacher (not the boss) gave me one of the single worst pieces of advice I ever got: "Don't use your ears, your ears are too good." (!) I don't particularly like visualization as a means of learning anything, so this method was completely unsuited to me. I eventually lost interest and stopped going. I also felt guilty and that it was my fault for practicing and sticking with it.

Much later, after having been playing the guitar (self-taught) for ten years or so, I went to a teacher who practiced The Cult of the Fingernail. I was suppposed to entirely stop playing what I was doing and only practice what he said. No songs, the right-hand exercises from the Carlevarlo (?) method, and easy etudes by Sor, damping the strings that vibrated sympathetically. He showed me the "optimal" way of filing one's fingernails, using special extremely fine metal-working sandpaper. I quit fairly quickly, but for other reasons.

I could continue on this subject but I have to start work soon.

Foolestroupe wrote;
"Enjoy your music the way you want to, but never try to stop others from learning real music technical skills and theory."

Thank you, I will. I'm not trying to stop anybody from learning anything. I was trying to provide the OP and anyone else who's interested with information based on my own experience. If they're interested, I hope they will check the facts and make up their own minds. I never expect anyone to accept what I say just because I say it.

I think my musical skills, such as they are, are real. If I had the means to do it, I would post videos of myself playing and possibly singing. If people think it's rubbish, that's their privilege. I play music because I enjoy it, not to prove a point.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 16 Jun 08 - 02:57 AM

Tangledwood wrote:

"Yes, there have been some very helpful suggestions and opinions expressed. I guess the good thing about dots and ears are that the two aren't mutually exclusive."

But it's much more than that! There's a kind of synthesis and improving your abilities in the one area will help in the other, too. Nothing wrong with tablature, either. A disadvantage of modern tablature (unlike Renaissance tablature) is that the rhythm isn't indicated. (I'm pretty sure tablature was used for Baroque lute and guitar music, but I'd have to check this to be absolutely sure.)

I think there's often too much of an emphasis on reading music, especially in conventional musical education. It certainly was in mine. However, it's really the sounds that count in music, and the other aspects are secondary.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 16 Jun 08 - 03:29 AM

"Foolestroupe wrote;
"Nobody 'forces such stuff down anybodies throat'."

I'm afraid I disagree with you about this."

I was talking about advanced driving...


As to being 'forced to learn music a certain way'...


All Music Teachers are Human Beings.

Some Human Beings are just W*****s.

Thus some Music Teachers are just ...

:-)

They aren't necessaarily Good Musos either...

As they say, "Those who Can - Do: Those who can't - Teach"...

:-)

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 16 Jun 08 - 06:30 AM

Foolestroupe wrote;
"I was talking about advanced driving..."

I'm not quite sure what your point is. I have no ambitions to be considered an "advanced" musician. I believe it's important to try to maintain the attitude of a beginner even if one has been doing something for a long time. An "expert" is someone who's stopped learning. Sometimes I will say that some is "a real expert", but I mean that as a compliment.

I took singing lessons for a couple of years as an adult and I liked my teacher very much. In retrospect, I don't think her approach was the best for me. I've found that most teachers have their way of doing things and are not very flexible about using different approaches according to the needs, talents, etc., of the student. I find that education in general is usually not individual enough.

I'm very glad that I'm self-taught on the guitar, because there are a lot of things I don't like when I see how a lot of people play. I'm also fairly familiar with educational materials for the guitar, because I have bought books in the past and I look through them when I go to the sheet music store. My opinions are not just made up out of whole cloth; they're based on my experiences of taking lessons, playing, practicing, listening to music and reading about it. Other people may well have formed other opinions; that's what makes ball-games.

As far as educational materials for the guitar are concerned, the one I use most of the time is a book of scales by Leigh Powers and ones that I treasure and go back to fairly frequently, but have never worked through from beginning to end, are the books by the late Ted Greene. Most of the others I'd be glad to give away.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 16 Jun 08 - 08:02 PM

"Foolestroupe wrote;
"I was talking about advanced driving..."

I'm not quite sure what your point is. I have no ambitions to be considered an "advanced" musician. "

I not sure that you're not deliberatly misunderstanding my drift, but it's not a hanging offence... :-)


"My opinions are not just made up out of whole cloth; they're based on my experiences of taking lessons, playing, practicing, listening to music and reading about it."

Ditto. I too am 'self taught' on most of my instruments... I had many years of piano prac & theory training, then a year of prac pipe organ. The rest were all just personal hard work... :-)

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 16 Jun 08 - 08:50 PM

dots are tab for keyboard instruments. The nicest thing about useng them is that they make it easy to "see" what the tune will sound like.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 07:49 AM

"dots are tab for keyboard instruments"

Well actually, even more than that... as a conductor with his umpteen part sheet music (for full symphony orchestra - a full page per line of the whole shebang) will tell you... :-)

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Mooh
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 08:48 AM

"dots are tab for keyboard instruments"...And any other instrument, especially including voice, that most primitive and instinctive of instruments.

In my locale where music education in the elementary schools is sadly ignored and gets little more than lip service, I would love to see sight singing, rhythm training, and elementary harmony taught to all ages. It would require little or no investment in materials and equipment (and much of that could be donated by interested parties). The school board doesn't appear to see the value in it.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: jeffp
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 09:23 AM

A bit of wisdom (imperfectly rendered) from the Olympic Training Center. It's intended for sport, but it can apply to music.

"Practice like a beginner, play like a champion"

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: PoppaGator
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 01:09 PM

"A disadvantage of modern tablature (unlike Renaissance tablature) is that the rhythm isn't indicated."

I beg to differ. The first guitar tablature that I ever encountered, and which was extremely helpful to my education in fingerpicking and other such "folk" techniques, employed the exact same method for indicating musical time as does standard notation: measures, time-signatures, whole/half/quarter/eighth notes and rests, etc.

This kind of "high-concept" tablature differs from standard sheet music only in how notes are indicated: instead of five lines and four spaces, six lines corresponding to the strings of the guitar are used, with the spaces being ignored, and a numeral indicating where the string is to be fretted takes the place of a plain "dot" for each note.

This kind of full-featured guitar tablature was commonly available in the mid-to-late 1960s in the books of Stephan Grossman and Happy Traum, in a large selection of folk-guitar books put out by Oak Publications, and (if I'm not mistaken) in periodicals like Sing Out! as well. You can still find this type of tab if you look hard enough, but not everything billed as "tab" is this well-crafted.

Much contemporary "internet tab" is considerably inferior, generally failing to provide any indicatation of timing and rhythm. I feel sure that the reason is that the writers/suppliers of this substandard product do not themselves understand anything about standard notation, including the manner in which rhythm/time is indicated.

(Also, for that matter, an awful lot of the the "tab" found on the World Wide Web is not tablature at all, but simply chords ~ and an awful lot of it is just plain incorrect, too, for that matter.)

I might add that the best way to understand the timing of any given piece to first listen to it, if at all possible, and to have the desired "sound" in mind as you tackle the written form, dots or tab, to work out a method by which you can learn to play it.

"dots are tab for keyboard instruments"

Absolutely true! The notes indicated in standard notation ("dots") each correspond to a key on the piano, in a simple and completely unambiguous one-to-one relationship. On a keyboard instrument, a sheet-music "dot" represents one and only one key. Fingerings still need to be decided upon, which may be more problematic in some cases than in others, but the places on the instruments upon which fingers must be pressed are clearly indicated by the dots.

Not so for stringed instruments (and perhaps for other other non-keyboard instruments), where there is more than one way, more than one place, to play any given note. Tablature for these intruments provides more information than standard notation; for each note, it shows which string to play and where to fret it. Standard notation does not provide this information for the string player, although for keyboard players, the "dots" do show which key to play on their instruments.

****************************

Different people have different learning styles, as well as different objectives or levels of ambition. I have no desire to stop or prevent any other person from learning anything; when I argue in favor of tablature for the guitar, or for toleration of learning-by-ear as opposed to more formal styles of instruction, I mean only to advocate for those who will be best able to learn through the methods that worked best for me.

Surely, as has been mentioned above, everyone should be open to any and every way to learn. It's wrong for proponents of "folky" and informal music-education styles to advise aganist standard notation and formal instruction, but it is every bit as wrong for the more academic types to advise against learning/playing by ear, or indeed to try to prevent students from exploring any form of musical expression, formal or informal, folk or classical, etc.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 07:25 PM

My dad was a good violin player - "the places on the instruments upon which fingers must be pressed are clearly indicated by the dots. Not so for stringed instruments (and perhaps for other other non-keyboard instruments), where there is more than one way, more than one place, to play any given note."

Well, that was part of the technique of learning to play the instrument. Things like 'first, second, etc position' can be vitally important to the ease of playing particular passages (and like the 'ground' of early music, do not need to be written on the score!). Most 'folk-fiddlers' are immune to and ignorant of such niceities, because that has never been part of their 'training method'.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 07:48 PM

On another topic, my 'those that can - do: those that can't - teach' seems to have ruffled a few feathers.

I was not intending to attack anyone who 'teaches' - in what ever way they do it.

I have no formal teaching qualifications, but HAVE taught many to play and sing ... after a fashion... :-)

However, it is something that I HAVE noticed, that many who ARE full of 'it' (advice, I meant!) often seem to lack adequate performance ability/skill to DEMONSTRATE what they say. However, unless they reveal themselves as General BS artists on all subjects, I am prepared to give them respect and listen to their suggestions. Advice can always be ignored, anyway... :-)


While this really should be another whole thread - such a statement is a 'generalisation' and all generalisations are wrong, well, except THIS one... :-)

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: wysiwyg
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 07:56 PM

Reading dots in order to play them is very different from reading them to get a sense of what the tune is. Transferring the dots' meaning to a non-keyboard instrument seems to me to be the hard way to go. I'd suggest keyboard-playing them first and then try to fit them to fingerboard.

~S~

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 08:01 PM

"Transferring the dots' meaning to a non-keyboard instrument seems to me to be the hard way to go"

That's the only way I can do it. Training.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 08:06 PM

It should perhaps be pointed out that 'dot notation' originally was intended for choral music, rather than keyboards, but that's just being historically pedantic... :-)

:-P

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 18 Jun 08 - 02:46 AM

I wrote:
"A disadvantage of modern tablature (unlike Renaissance tablature) is that the rhythm isn't indicated."

PoppaGator wrote:
"I beg to differ. The first guitar tablature that I ever encountered, and which was extremely helpful to my education in fingerpicking and other such "folk" techniques, employed the exact same method for indicating musical time as does standard notation: measures, time-signatures, whole/half/quarter/eighth notes and rests, etc.
[...]
This kind of full-featured guitar tablature was commonly available in the mid-to-late 1960s in the books of Stephan Grossman and Happy Traum, in a large selection of folk-guitar books put out by Oak Publications, and (if I'm not mistaken) in periodicals like Sing Out!
as well."

I have one book by Happy and Artie Traum (I believe the title is _Rock Guitar_) and one book by one of them (can't remember which one), which is, I believe, called _Finger-Picking Styles for the Guitar_. I know that the latter book is published by Oak Publications. Both books have both conventional notation and tab. I think the tab is divided up by measures and it might include a time signature, but I don't remember. I am fairly sure that no indication of the rhythm is given, but one can always refer to the conventional notation above.

I use the fingerpicking book fairly often and I sometimes do refer to the tab.

I'm not familiar with the kind of more elaborate tablature that you refer to, but I can see where it could be useful. I was born in 1963 and started playing the guitar when I was 20, so I'm not likely to have seen many books published in the 1960s, unless they've been reissued, I get them out of the library, or buy them used. This method, though I can see its advantages, doesn't seem to have caught on. The Traum Brothers' _Rock Guitar_ book was first published in 1967, I believe, and I bought it in about 1983. I happened to be looking at it the other day and checked when it was first published.

I agree with you completely about not being dogmatic about methods of teaching and learning. However, my personal opinion is that while tablature isn't in itself a crutch, it is used as such by many people. It is worth biting the bullet and learning to read standard notation because of the advantages listed by myself and others above. If someone doesn't want to, that's okay, too. It's not going to run away and if a person decides to learn it at some later date, it will still be there.

A serious disadvantage of tab is that it's not easy to use it to transpose, at least downwards. Not that it's easy to transpose using conventional notation, but I imagine it's easier (I've never tried with tab).

After all, both are just means to an end.

I have never bothered to look at or download tab from the internet. I have looked up lyrics and chords, though.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Mooh
Date: 18 Jun 08 - 09:32 AM

Pop music internet tab can be very bad. It's generally poorly written, inaccurate, incomplete, and without standards of either tab or standard notation. This is the vast majority of the tab brought to me by students, usually in frustration. I will do brief searches for the best of a bad lot for students, during lessons even, but prefer to be better prepped than that. The tab assumption is that the player will be able to handle the timing if they know what it sounds like.

[The first tab I ever saw was in 1975 (I was 17) of Stairway To Heaven, from a book which is still in print. It includes the timing and correct fingering but leaves out the solo and some fills. There are several other tabs of the same tune, some without standard notation. No, I am not interested in introducing the tune to students but they are interested in learning it, and therefore it represents a sizable percent of my income.]

Some instructional material and publications include timing in the tab, like Mel Bay and Oak, some do not. I can say without reservation that tab oriented students, self taught and otherwise, learn timing better when it is included.

Reading dots is important. I encourage everyone to learn reading standard notation, and I insist on it with younger students. Not everyone's brains work the same and some find it easy and intuitive while others do not. Some find it easy to transfer from instrument to instrument, others do not. No matter, it is the understanding of concepts which is more important, like the rising and falling of pitch, the during of notes, rhythmic elements, keys (with scales and note groups), intervals, dynamics, etc. Being able to speak and understand the language of music is very important if one wishes to communicate musical ideas effectively, research music, transcribe, compose, improvise, etc. There are exceptions, but there's little percentage in limiting one's self.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 18 Jun 08 - 10:18 AM

Mooh wrote:
"Reading dots is important. I encourage everyone to learn reading standard notation, and I insist on it with younger students. [...] Being able to speak and understand the language of music is very important if one wishes to communicate musical ideas effectively [...]"

I think you put this wery well. If I was a teacher (I'm not), I probably would also insist on it. On another internet forum, a couple of mothers asked about buying guitars for their teenage offspring. In both cases I recommended buying a classical guitar, but said offspring only wanted electric ones. If I was a teacher, I might insist on students having a classical guitar, even if they had a steel-string and/or an electric as well.

The music lessons I had (except for singing lessons) emphasized reading music and I was not encouraged _at all_ to play by ear. I don't remember if this was ever explicitly stated, but I believe there was an attitude of "Don't play by ear, it will get you into bad habits!" I'm glad I learned to read music and count and the basics of music, but the methods used were one-sided and I lost interest in music lessons when I was a young teenager.

Even though I can read music well from having had piano lessons and playing the piano, I did find it rather difficult to learn to read on the guitar and I had to make a concentrated effort to learn the upper positions. The problem wasn't the music, which I could read, it was learning where the notes are on the fingerboard. A couple of years ago, I started practicing chord melodies a lot, and that has helped diminish my tendency to dive down to first position at the earliest opportunity.

My biggest problem now is playing too many wrong notes when improvising, and that's something that requires an approach that involves more listening. Through playing more by ear, I've started to be able to figure out chords for songs instead of just melodies. This in turn helps written music to make more sense to me.

I can take or leave modern tablature, but if it helps someone to make good music, great. If music sounds good, it is good. There's no such thing as good music that sounds bad or bad music that sounds good. (Of course, it's arguable what "good" and "bad" mean, and there is a lot of music that I love now that I didn't like on the first hearing, like Mahler.)

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 18 Jun 08 - 10:38 AM

Tab's great disadvantage, of course, is that it's limited to one particular instrument in one particular tuning.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: PoppaGator
Date: 18 Jun 08 - 01:02 PM

"Tab's great disadvantage, of course, is that it's limited to one particular instrument in one particular tuning."

Good point, although I don't consider that a "disadvantage" so much as a "feature." Tablature exists to shows you how to play a particular arrangement of a piece of music on a particular instrument.

Most of us who like using tab are interested in exactly that goal, and could care less about written notation as a more abstract entity that can be transposed, is equally applicable to any instrument, and includes the "top line" melody which (in most folk and pop music) is generally sung rather than played, and which is often already well-known by the tab-user who wants only to learn how to play a sophisticated accompaniment to a familar song.

**************

"...Both books have both conventional notation and tab. I think the tab is divided up by measures and it might include a time signature, but I don't remember. I am fairly sure that no indication of the rhythm is given, but one can always refer to the conventional notation above."

Piers, you're probably right in that the lines of tablature don't include absolutely every feature of standard notation when it comes to indicating time/rhythm ~ except insofar as each line of tab is printed directly above or below the corresponding line of "dots," and indeed each note is directly parallel to the corresponding standard-notation note.

It's been years since I made daily use of those books, so my memory may be less than perfect, but I recall the tab-lines as corresponding so precisely to the dots-lines, measure by measure and note by note, that all necessary timing information is available either on the line of tablature itself, or (by simple inference) by reference to the parallel line of standard notation.

Whether or not a time signature is printed at the left-hand end of the first line of tab, it's always clearly visible at the start of the "dots" and therefore easily seen as applicable to the tab as well, and most half-decent tablature is marked off into measures whether or not it is printed along with standard notation also marked off into measures.

The system of representing whole and half notes by open circles, and quarter, eighth, and sixteen notes (etc.) by filled-in black dots cannot, of course, be directly reflected in tablature because a numeral needs to be printed where an open or closed "dot" would otherwise appear. However, the presence or absense of a "flag" can clearly differentiate between quarter and eighth notes, and the number of flags can distinguish eighths from sixteenths and so on. Horizontal spacing of the notes, especially when displayed parallel to and exactly above or below standard notation, is also a great big hint for determining timing.

Even the symbols used for rests in standard notation sometimes appear in tablature. However, when tab is presented along with dots, those who are more-or-less dot-literate can look at the standard notation for some of the refinements not available on the lines of tablature ~ and those who are completely unfamiliar with standard notation wouldn't be able to interpret all those symbols even if they were to appear as part of the tab, and not only as part of the dots displayed along with the tab.

I have a little bit of musical education, and I'm able to play (e.g., to pick out unfamiliar melodies) from standard notation only very slowly and painstakingly ~ can't sight-read. Hell, I can't sight-read from tablature, either, but I can get results much more quickly from tab than from dots. My knowledge of regular musical notation is just enough that I can understand the meaning of any standard-notation feature than can be used when writing/printing tab, or that appears in standard notation printed in close proximity to tab.

This discussion is making me think about Randytab, a freeware program that allows you to write tab that provides MIDI playback, and to "play" any piece transcribed into this tablature and hear it in MIDI form. When writing tab in this program, you have the option to mark off measures or not, and you determine the duration of notes by their horizontal position ~ eighth notes are twice as close together as quarter notes, etc. You are also able to set up tab for any number of strings (for different instruments) and for any standard, open, or alternative tuning. You can get to the download site from Frank Delaney's Mississippi John Hurt Museum site (which you can easly Google if so motivated).

Incidentally, I've posted a couple of my own Randy-transcriptions of MJH pieces on the museum site, and another couple of other songs on the freeware publisher's site.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Mooh
Date: 18 Jun 08 - 01:34 PM

One can imagine how, historically, tabulature-like notation and drawings were the answers for folks who were largely illiterate but knew (very well) numbers, diagrams, and maps for trade and travel. This would be true especially without standardized tunings and instrument design, limited writing materials, and limited transmission possibilities. Beyond the ear, repetition, cultural transmission and the folk process, what was there until music was written?

Fwiw, I often get students to transfer tab to standard notation and vice versa. Nothing much better for learning note location, and efficient fingering. This can sometimes involve moving a melody an octave two ways (along the strings or across the strings), or transposition.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Don Firth
Date: 18 Jun 08 - 02:00 PM

The problem--the limitation--of tablature is that it works only for the instrument for which the tablature is written. "Dots" are not just "tablature for keyboard instruments," they apply to any and all instruments.

I first became acquainted with dots when I took some singing lessons as a teenager, before I got interested in folk music. A somewhat older friend (by a couple of years) who was a music major at the University of Washington explained how written music works, along with some information about scale structure, which enabled me to "one finger" tunes on a piano.

When I started taking classic guitar lessons, I set about learning to read music in earnest. I learned directly on the guitar fingerboard, so even when I'm learning a new song from a songbook, I tend to relate the notes written for the voice with specific frets and strings.

But I find that, given a few minutes to mess a bit with an instrument I'm not familiar with, I can transfer written music to it as well. Haltingly at first, of course, but it does transer.

I would consider the inability to read music a crippling limitation for anyone serious about music--including folk music. Of course, for a very narrow view of folk music, not being able to read music would limit you to learning only songs that you hear someone else sing (aural/oral transmission), and not being able to learn songs from songbooks.

Don Firth

P. S. By the way, it's not a matter of dots OR tablature. I can read both. no problem.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 18 Jun 08 - 02:16 PM

Another analogy is learning a foreign language: you can't do that without practice either. And if you learn it when you're very young, as I did, it's so much easier: you almost absorb it through the pores, and your brain's a lot quicker!
However, it had the effect that when I first started playing a traditional melody instrument other than the piano (my first instrument), I couldn't do it without the dots in front of me. Hopefully I'm now acquiring the skill of playing by ear, without having to translate in my "brain's eye", what I've heard into dots before I can play the music.
And I agree that the mandolin, in standard tuning, is the most logical instrument I've encountered/tried yet (except maybe the piano!)

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: GUEST,Aeola
Date: 18 Jun 08 - 03:41 PM

reading the dots for some people is easier than playing by ear and vice versa,but,in the end you can do both if you really want to. As the saying goes'how do you get to carnegie hall....practice man ,practice.'

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: PoppaGator
Date: 18 Jun 08 - 03:54 PM

""Dots" are not just "tablature for keyboard instruments," they apply to any and all instruments." [Emphasis mine.]

Aha! Now I understand why people sometimes object to that statement. When I (and others) describe standard notation as "tab for keyboards," we don't mean to imply that it's "nothing more" than that. On the contrary; the implication is that, for keyboard players, standard notation provides all the information that tab conveys to a guitar player. There's no such thing as "piano tab" that could conceivably be provided alongside regular sheet music, because there is no additional information that could possibly be provided that's not already there in the "dots."

Before I had any music education at all, I had access to a piano and was able to pick out familar melodies by ear, with one finger. I would later be expoed to a fair amount of music theory, including the rudiments of written music, in Catholic grade school, and I also took piano lessons briefly ~ not long enough to learn to play much of anything I wasn't already able to play, certainly not to use both hands, etc.

I'm very aware of my limitations as a musician: I can't sight-read, I can only play one instrument, and I'm not exactly a master of even that one. On the other hand, I'm able to improvise a bit, at least within certain simple and well-defined chordal structures, I've developed a respectable level of technique on my lone instrument, and I'm a passable singer, able to harmonize when called upon.

There are certainly very many accomplished musicians who can do everything I can do and do it better, and who are also much better able to put written notation to use, who can play multiple instruments, compose for orchestras, etc. I admire such artists and have no hopes or ambitions for matching their accomplishments.

On the other hand, I occasionally encounter folks who can demonstrate a much higher level of musical education than can I, who can sight-read on multiple instruments and vocals, but are pififully incompetant at some of the basic musical skills that I take for granted: can't sing a simple improvised harmony, can't play along with the simplest unfamiliar song, can't sing or play anything that's not written down.

Not every muscially-educated individual falls into this category, of course, but I am always surprised at how many do. I find it hard to understand how any person with any interest in music ~ let along a fairly extensive education in music ~ can possibly lack the very basic skills that are instinctive for so many less-educated music lovers, including virtually all of the revered "source" singers and players of folk-music history.

And in fact, I do NOT believe that people like this started off without the rudimentary musical talent and sensibility that has become so apparently lacking. I can only conclude that their iron-handed teachers were so intent upon persuing a pre-set curriculum and agenda that they killed much of a young student's original inborn musicality. It doesn't always happen ~ music education does not, ipso facto, have to operate in direct opposition to musical instinct ~ but the fact that it happens at all is obvious and undeniable, and occurs often enough to cause a general prejudice against formal musical education on the part of many self-taught music enthusiasts. What a shame.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Don Firth
Date: 18 Jun 08 - 06:37 PM

I have a guitar student right now who had years of piano lessons when she was younger from teacher who wouldn't let her depart from written music. She wanted to learn to play the guitar so she could accompany herself singing.

I started her out by giving her a sheet of chord diagrams and showing her some basic strums. She just couldn't grasp either the chord the diagrams or the right hand patterns (simple "Burl Ives basic") at all, so I started her on a classic guitar technique book that gets into chords right away (one of the ones based on Matteo Carcassi's method). The problem we are having right now is that she can't seem to learn chords—retain them—just as finger-shapes. She has to have the dots in front of her, and her brain just doesn't seem to be able to translate them into finger positions that she can remember. If I close the technique book and say, "Okay, play a C chord," she simply doesn't know where to put her fingers without the dots to tell her.

I got her working on a couple of fairly easy classic guitar pieces, which she can play reasonably well—if she has the music in front of her. I've been urging her to try to memorize them in the hope of weaning her away from the dots, but so far, no go.

I think it's doing a student a real disservice not to allow them, or even encourage them, to learn to play by ear as well as to read the music. When they do that, they're not teaching them music, they're just teaching them to read notes. Imagine, if you will, someone who can pick up a book or a newspaper and read it aloud, but who can't talk.

I'm afraid my student may be stuck in a rut I can't get her out of.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 18 Jun 08 - 06:59 PM

Blind Blake, Rev. Gary Davis, Doc Watson, the three greatest guitarists in the history of folk music, not one of them ever learned to read dots ...

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Tangledwood
Date: 18 Jun 08 - 07:10 PM

Thank you all for continuing with this thread. I don't have any comments to add or additional questions yet but I'm getting a lot out of the discussion.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: GUEST,passin'thro'
Date: 18 Jun 08 - 07:20 PM

"The main problem with transcriptions (whether dots or tab) is that they'll only give the notes, not the tune. (look at St Anne's Reel if you want to know what I mean)."

.............from a wise man above.

Absorb.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 18 Jun 08 - 09:45 PM

Poppagator & Don Firth of 18 Jun 08 - 03:54 PM & 18 Jun 08 - 06:37 PM

Both say much of what I agree with. I was not discouraged to play by ear and indeed was expected to learn certain pieces off so that I could play from memory (a very important skill for 'Classical Music'), but it's kinda funny. Some pieces I seem only to be only able to 'easily' play with the dots in front of me - EVEN IF I NEVER LOOK AT THEM! :-)

Other pieces I can play from memory having learnt them from the dots, and other pieces, I have never seen the the dots, but can play 'by ear'. I don't claim to be of excellent standard in any or all three, but I CAN do them.

Another skill - that of transposing 'on the fly' either from ear or from the score - I found difficult untill I began to play whistles. Then the idea became much easier.

"I think it's doing a student a real disservice not to allow them, or even encourage them, to learn to play by ear as well as to read the music. When they do that, they're not teaching them music, they're just teaching them to read notes. Imagine, if you will, someone who can pick up a book or a newspaper and read it aloud, but who can't talk."

This sort of thing applies to many fields - of Science, Computing, Literature, as well as music.

"can only conclude that their iron-handed teachers were so intent upon persuing a pre-set curriculum and agenda that they killed much of a young student's original inborn musicality."

I had a piano teacher who used to crack me across the knuckles with a ruler - which my dad did not appreciate. Fortunately, perhaps from him, I had influences which did not totally cripple my talents. These days such behaviour would rightfully be called 'child abuse'.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Ron Davies
Date: 18 Jun 08 - 10:24 PM

Don--

If you just want her to get away from reading music as an indispensable crutch, couldn't you just have her play chords to some folk or country songs? I suspect any classical piece is more difficult than most folk and country--which after all can often be fit into 3 or 4 chords. If she doesn't sing, you could sing. At least she'd prove to herself you don't need to read music for everything.

Or is that what you already tried with "Burl Ives chords"?

I totally agree it's wonderful to be able to read music---but not have to do it all the time. Far better in non-classical music to rely on your ear.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 19 Jun 08 - 02:40 AM

Cor blimey, you're right, PoppaGator! I checked through my books of music and found 5 that are easily accessible and contained tab along with conventional notation. I might have a couple of others, but certainly not many and none with only tab. All were divided into measures and all had a time signature. Three had vertical strokes, flags, rests, etc. The others just had the numbers on the horizontal lines representing the strings.

On the fancier kind, the rhythmic notation was nearly identical to the conventional kind, with the note heads replaced by the fret numbers. The difference was that the half-notes had no vertical stroke and whole notes were written with two tied half-notes (sorry, I don't know off-hand what values quavers, semi-quavers, etc., have).

Happy Traum's _Finger-Picking Styles for Guitar_, published by Oak Publications, was one of the ones with the fancier kind of tab. Excellent book, by the way (and I don't know, have never met nor have
any connection at all with Happy Traum or the publisher).

I use a couple of these books fairly frequently. It's funny that one can have something right in front of one's nose and still not notice it. Thanks for mentioning this.

As far as reading music slowly, so what? There's absolutely nothing wrong with reading music slowly.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 19 Jun 08 - 04:46 AM

"There's absolutely nothing wrong with reading music slowly. "

As long as you're not playing it faster than that :-p

Sounds a bit Irish to me... :-)

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 19 Jun 08 - 06:20 AM

Don, what about just melodies, if she's having trouble with chords?

I'm becoming increasingly annoyed by my mistakes when trying to play by ear and improvising and am now tackling this problem seriously. I've also been having increasing pain in my left thumb, so I've been trying to play without using barre chords for awhile to see if the pain goes away. It seems like a good time to practice single-line melodies and bass patterns.

PoppaGator, I agree with what you've written. In addition, I always had problems trying to learn to improvise. After many years of struggling, I feel like I'm getting there. I had the information, scales, books on soloing, transcriptions of solos, etc., but I couldn't make the leap to playing an improvised solo. I never wanted to memorize riffs or learn other people's solos by heart, although I know this approach works for others. I'm now glad I didn't and have tried to learn to do this my own way, even though it's taken a long time.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Marje
Date: 19 Jun 08 - 06:26 AM

Sight-reading (playing or singing a score at sight, unseen and at full tempo) is quite a skill, and one that's not particularly useful in folk music.

But simply reading (in your own time) music in staff notation is enormously useful and I'd recommend any musician or singer to learn it. Apart from anything else, how else could you keep a record of tunes and remind yourself how a melody goes? If you can read music, a quick glance at the score will remind you how the tune goes, or what happens in the "b" music. It also give you a common vocabulary to discuss tunes with others without always having to play or listen to examples of what you're talking about - you can discuss things like metronome speeds or time signatures or key-changes more easily once you understand the conventions of how it's all written down. Reading tabs for your own instrument is useful too, but it won't do all the things that reading staff notation will do.

None of this means that you should play from a written score or that you have to stop playing by ear - being able to read just gives you an extra way of learning, remembering, discussing and understanding music.

Marje

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: PoppaGator
Date: 19 Jun 08 - 10:02 AM

I've encountered the term " 'b' music" more than once in this thread, but never saw or heard it before and would like to know what it means.

Help?

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: GUEST,Neil D
Date: 19 Jun 08 - 10:36 AM

Can't learn to play without the dots.The Trial of Ralph Mctell
:^)

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 19 Jun 08 - 10:49 AM

Tattie Bogle wrote:
"And I agree that the mandolin, in standard tuning, is the most logical instrument I've encountered/tried yet (except maybe the piano!)"

I just want to break another lance for the beauty and logic of standard tuning on the guitar:

It wouldn't work well to tune the guitar in fifths because of the scale length and the consequent distance between the frets in the lower positions. I think most people would agree that it's rather convenient to have the two outer strings both tuned to E (two octaves apart). This would be impossible if the guitar was tuned in fifths. Starting at low E, this would be E, B, F#, C#, G#, D#.

If, on the other hand, we said, "tune 'em all in fourths", we would have E, A, D, G, C, F. Not too bad, but if we want to "come out even", we need a 3rd in there somewhere. If it's between the 4th and 3rd string, we have E, A, D, F#, B, E, which is the Renaissance tuning. If it's between the 3rd and the 2nd string, we have E, A, D, G, B, E, standard tuning.

It would certainly be easier if the intervals between adjacent strings were all fourths (ascending), but it's impossible, if the top string is to be two octaves above the bottom string. This would require twelve strings and probably not be very conducive to playing:

E A D G C F Bb Eb Ab Db Gb Cb (== B) Fb (== E)

Major thirds probably wouldn't work well either, although that would make it possible to play the chromatic scale without shifts.

E, G#, C (== B#), E, G#, C. Hmmmm. That doesn't look good to me at all.

It is really quite remarkable that so many complex chords can be played reasonably easily using standard tuning; all kinds of seventh chords with alterations. And then there are a fair number of other tunings that are in common use.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 19 Jun 08 - 11:03 AM

I wrote:

"It would certainly be easier if the intervals between adjacent strings were all fourths (ascending), but it's impossible, if the top string is to be two octaves above the bottom string. This would require twelve strings and probably not be very conducive to playing:"

Sorry, this is an error! In this case, the high E would be 5 octaves higher than the low E! Watch out for snapping first strings! (Or very, very low low E strings.)

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Mooh
Date: 19 Jun 08 - 11:06 AM

The best character of standard tuning intervals is the ease of many barre chords, in my humble opinion.

Tuning in fifths is only stretchy in the open position, ie it gets easier up the fingerboard. I like Robert Fripp's New Standard (CGDAEG), though the first string requires a little getting used to.

Better for me, a number of what I call 4/5 (DGDGDG, CFCFCF) and 5/4 (GDGDGD) tunings which I prefer for the one finger "power chords" on any pair or more strings, suitability to slide, the ease of chord extensions, and the way melodies appear with very mandolin like fingerings. Like many tunings, they require some string guage experiments.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: manitas_at_work
Date: 19 Jun 08 - 11:12 AM

Re 'b' music"

In much British Isles traditional music and traditions derived from it tunes are in 2 or more parts, a 8 bar part which is repeated and then moving on to another 8 bar part which is repeated etc. The first is referred to as the A part, the second as the B part. Further parts are C, D etc. In more traditional parlance the first part is often called the tune with the second being the turn or bridge.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: PoppaGator
Date: 19 Jun 08 - 12:23 PM

Thanks for the explanation. I would usually use the term "bridge" for such sections of songs, which are by no means unique to British Isles traditional music, but very common in all kinds of popular music.

Now, I don't know whether or not Brit folksong is the only earlier context in which such "bridges" are part of a customary song structure, and that every context in which they appear is derived from British-Isles folk, making that one musical tradition the sole source for this songwrinting technique. But I doubt it. ;^)

Of course, it may be that the terminology " 'b' music" is more-or-less unique to that one tradition...

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Don Firth
Date: 19 Jun 08 - 02:18 PM

Yeah, we've tried standard first position chords along with very simple right hand patterns, playing just the melody line, all of that. She does sing (very nice voice, in fact), but when we try to put it all together, it comes unglued in the first verse. Oddly enough, she seems to do better with simple classical pieces—as long as she has the music in front of her.

I've even thought of writing out an accompaniment for her to see if she can manage to sing while playing the guitar off the music. At least that would get her going, but I'd sure like to get her away from the written music.

By the way, what I refer to as "Burl Ives basic" is:   thumb plays a bass string, index, middle, and ring fingers play the top three strings—2/4 would be thumb-fingers, thumb-fingers and ¾ would be thumb-fingers-fingers, thumb-fingers-fingers. Burl Ives made a career out of doing little else on the guitar. Simple, but effective.

It seems like a memory problem, although if that's what it is, it's limited to just this and apparently doesn't affect other things. For example, when reaching for a C chord, she almost always has to grope for it, sometimes even when reading the music. Sometimes she hits it, but sometimes her 3rd finger winds up on the 4th string 3rd fret and her 2nd finger on the 3rd string 2nd fret (reversed from what they should be). It seems to be a lack "muscle memory."

She's aware of the problem and she's commented that she thinks she may have something like dyslexia, although she has no problem reading (reversing letters, that sort of thing).

It's certainly not all, but part of it may be lack of practice time, something she can't help. She's in her fifties and she's a home health-care worker, working for some public agency. She does chores for people who can't do them for themselves, and the job doesn't pay very much, so she also works as a clerk in a drugstore. Sometimes when she gets home, she's just too beat to pull out the guitar.

She seems to enjoy the lessons even if she isn't making much progress. I'm not charging her, but when she comes for a lesson, she brings fixin's for lunch, and about the time we get through with the lesson, my wife gets home from a class she's taking, so we all eat lunch together. I'm afraid her Carnegie Hall debut is a way off yet, but we'll keep pluggin' away.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Manitas_at_home
Date: 19 Jun 08 - 02:47 PM

I should have said traditional DANCE music.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 20 Jun 08 - 02:52 AM

Mooh wrote:
"I like Robert Fripp's New Standard (CGDAEG), though the first string requires a little getting used to."

Why do you like it? I'm not questioning it, just wondering what its advantages are. I suppose one would need a combination of strings with different tensions?

Mooh wrote:
"Better for me, a number of what I call 4/5 (DGDGDG, CFCFCF) and 5/4 (GDGDGD) tunings which I prefer for the one finger "power chords" on any pair or more strings, suitability to slide, the ease of chord extensions, and the way melodies appear with very mandolin like fingerings. Like many tunings, they require some string guage experiments."

I understand about wanting to have a tuning that's identical or similar to that of an instrument one already plays. It seems there are 6-string banjos that can be tuned like guitars.

Tunings are certainly a subject where one can never reach the bottom. I recently looked up pedal-steel guitars and tunings and systems of how the pedals work ("copedents") can get quite complicated. Apart from getting a low D, it seems the main use is what you say; making it possible to slide (and making it possible to play a chord on the open strings, which is another way of saying the same thing). From what I've read and heard and the printed music I've seen, this works best on music that doesn't use too many chords. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing. I've improved quite a bit in the past year or so and I now find that I can do more with fewer chords.

Non-standard tunings, don't really suit the way I like to play most of the time. I only practice the Renaissance tuning because of the written music that uses it. What I'd really like is more instruments.

Several years ago, I bought some harmonicas; a chromatic and several diatonics. I've started playing them again after not having touched them for years. I find the diatonics frustrating because of the missing notes, but it is possible to play them at the same time as the guitar (only one at a time though!). I'm finding that it's not that easy to play single-note passages this way (which is what I want to play), but it's quite addictive. Anyone else do this?

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Jack Campin
Date: 20 Jun 08 - 04:51 AM

: If, on the other hand, we said, "tune 'em all in fourths", we would have E, A, D, G, C, F.
: Not too bad, but if we want to "come out even", we need a 3rd in there somewhere."

Why would you want this? The ud is often tuned in straight fourths (C# F# B e a d' in Turkish tuning, a tone lower in Arabic), so is the Puerto Rican cuatro (B, E A d g). Much more logical for reading melodies.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 20 Jun 08 - 05:52 AM

not about Berkshire then......

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 20 Jun 08 - 06:18 AM

I wrote:
': If, on the other hand, we said, "tune 'em all in fourths", we would have E, A, D, G, C, F.
: Not too bad, but if we want to "come out even", we need a 3rd in there somewhere.'

Jack Campin wrote:
"Why would you want this? The ud is often tuned in straight fourths (C# F# B e a d' in Turkish tuning, a tone lower in Arabic), so is the Puerto Rican cuatro (B, E A d g). Much more logical for reading melodies."

To the best of my knowledge, the oud is not designed for playing chords, as it has no frets. Nor does traditional Arabic, Persian or Indian music have harmony in the Western sense. On the other hand, one of the main purposes of the guitar is to play chords, and it is rather convenient to have the same note (two octaves apart) on the outer strings. I don't know anything about the cuatro.

Of course, one can tune anything any way one likes. I was merely trying to explain the beauty and logic of standard tuning as I see it.

Yes, it would be easier in some ways if the pattern was consistent and the interval between each pair of adjacent strings was a fourth. However, the way it is has advantages, as does every other tuning that people use. I find the tuning of the diatonic harmonica confusing and the pattern on the chromatic is easier. However, one gets used to it.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 20 Jun 08 - 06:40 AM

Don Firth wrote:

"Yeah, we've tried standard first position chords along with very simple right hand patterns, playing just the melody line, all of that. She does sing (very nice voice, in fact), but when we try to put it all together, it comes unglued in the first verse. Oddly enough, she seems to do better with simple classical pieces—as long as she has the music in front of her."

Well, it sounds like she's in good hands, so I don't know how much use my suggestions will be. However, for what it's worth, you wrote "it comes unglued in the first verse". Where exactly? If she gets through a measure, maybe it would work to take it measure-by-measure. In other words, my suggestion would be to slow way down.

If I did give music lessons, and I have given some thought to what I would do, I wouldn't expect people to practice. That was one of the things that spoiled music lessons for me. Lessons that were good were often more like practicing with the teacher. I would say that if the student doesn't practice at all, he or she will probably eventually lose interest and quit. In the past, even when I was practicing on my own and not taking lessons (most of my adult life), I practiced too much and played too little.

Do you think she would be blocked in the same way with an apparently simpler instrument like a harmonica, a recorder, or one of those children's xylophones? (I used to have one of those and lots of other percussion instruments. I wish I had them now!)

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Mooh
Date: 20 Jun 08 - 07:35 AM

Piers...I like "new standard" (not that I use it very much) for its range of C to G, the mandolin like fingerings for single note melodic stuff, the fifth tuning for double-stops, and best of all because like other non-standard tunings, IT'S NOT STANDARD! One of the chief reasons for exploring alternate tunings is to find alternate phrasing, expressions, cool chordal passages, etc which might not be as obvious, or as easily fingered, in standard. I am not a convert to new standard, just a fan.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 20 Jun 08 - 07:53 AM

Mooh wrote:
"Piers...I like "new standard" (not that I use it very much) for its range of C to G, the mandolin like fingerings for single note melodic stuff, the fifth tuning for double-stops, and best of all because like other non-standard tunings, IT'S NOT STANDARD! One of the chief reasons for exploring alternate tunings is to find alternate phrasing, expressions, cool chordal passages, etc which might not be as obvious, or as easily fingered, in standard. I am not a convert to new standard, just a fan."

Thank you for your explanation. I can see that the increased range would be nice. Maybe I should try alternative tunings a bit more. It is very true that one can easily get stuck in a rut playing one's "beef stew", as one book I had out of the library put it.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: semi-submersible
Date: 20 Jun 08 - 08:23 AM

Don Firth:

Maybe it'll come later for your student. I'm an amateur like her. I learned flute and Grade 1 Music Theory in high school, and for years after could play for my own pleasure - but only from sheet music or what I'd learned by heart. I tried to "play by ear" off and on over the years, but couldn't find the tunes that way. Then one fine day, I took a whack at it again... and suddenly I could pick out a recognisable facsimile by ear after all. Go figure! This ability never left, though like all my music skills it is very rusty at present.

No-one ever tried to discourage me from playing by ear. It's just that (with practice) I could play a recognisable tune by following the music, and couldn't without, so I stuck with what gave the best results.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 20 Jun 08 - 11:19 AM

Don, if your pupil is trying to play AND sing at the same time, that requires DOUBLE brain power! On a blown instrument she woudn't be able to sing simultaneously. A local guitar teacher gets her pupil to just play the accompaniment, while she(the teacher) sings the song.
I found when learning button accordion, that there is so much to think about in terms of what the left and right hands are doing and whether you're pulling or pushing that all thought of singing along even with very well-known songs, went out the window! Or if anyone tried to talk to me while I was playing, I coudn't continue playing AND talk!
Eventually patterns emerge with practice, just as in learning guitar chord shapes. And even later it gets like driving a car, e.g. when you stop thinking about when to barke or change gear, etc.
Also if she finds C chords difficult, why not try A/E/D combination?

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Marje
Date: 20 Jun 08 - 12:32 PM

Poppagator: Yes, Manitas has explained exactly what I meant by "B" music (and I'm sorry I assumed everyone would recognise the term) but as he says later, it applies only in dance music. It's widely used and understood by UK session and dance musicians, by dance callers, and sometimes by dancers. I don't think we'd ever call the "A" music the "tune", because the "B" is of equal length and importance, and usually comes around just as frequently, sometimes more so (eg in some morris dances).

The corresponding sections in a song - well, I don't think I have a name for that. I think it's what John Lennon (and no doubt others) called "the middle eight", or it could in some cases simply be a chorus.

Marje

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: PoppaGator
Date: 20 Jun 08 - 01:39 PM

I've often heard the term "middle eight" as well as "bridge."

Another characteristic section of a song, common in early-to-mid 20th century musical-theater compositions (Gershwin, Cole Porter, etc.) is the introductory "verse," sung only once as an introduction and very often omitted when the song is performed outside the original context of the show.

I always found this usage of the term "verse" very confusing, because in my experience the word "verse" is usually applied to the "main" and most-often-repeated part of a composition, as in verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-verse. I still don't know what word is used for that most basic part of a song in contexts where the word "verse" is used to describe the obscure and often forgotten introduction.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Don Firth
Date: 20 Jun 08 - 02:26 PM

She can already play piano, organ (well enough to have played in church when she was younger), and a bit of recorder. And she sings in the church choir. I thought her problem was trying to translate her knowledge of music to the guitar (which is a fairly logically laid out instrument, but the logic is not immediately obvious), and that may actually be it, but there seems to be some other component to it.

I don't want to try to shift her off to some other instrument because she bought a fairly nice guitar early on (an Alvarez AC60S), not very expensive as good classics go, but it was a fair investment for her. And she is determined to learn.

We do take it very slowly, a measure or a phrase at a time, and we've tried a number of different approaches, but so far, we haven't hit the right combination.

She can actually play a couple of fairly simple classic guitar pieces, ("Pezzo Tedesco," a sixteenth century lute piece transcribed for guitar, and the little "Minuet in G" from the notebook of Anna Magdelena Bach) a bit haltingly, perhaps—as long as she has the music in front of her.

Also, we'll play simple accompaniment-type stuff ("Burl Ives basic" and standard first position chords) together from a song sheet—not from dots, and without singing—but when it comes time to change from, say, a C to a G7, she hesitates and has to sort of grope for it. Therein lies the problem. It's as if she has to figure out where to put her fingers every time. It isn't that Cs, G7s, and such are difficult for her to reach, it's as if they are difficult to remember ("Let's see, the C is here, the E is here, the G is an open string so I don't have to finger it, this is another C. . . ."). Same thing with other chords.

But we're both determined, so come hell or high water, we'll get it eventually.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Tangledwood
Date: 20 Jun 08 - 06:00 PM

Don't know if I'm on the wrong track here Don, but as your student already has good musical knowledge could it be that she is trying too hard to identify individual notes instead of simply remembering shapes? Or could it be that she has an issue with recognising/remembering shapes that has nothing to do with music?

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Don Firth
Date: 20 Jun 08 - 08:49 PM

Yeah, Tanglewood, I'm pretty certain it is the matter of recognizing/remembering shapes, and it may indeed be apart from the music itself. And I'm not quite sure how I can test it. Or, if possible, get around it.

I use one of two approaches with new students, depending on what their goal is. If they're primarily interested in classic, it's pretty straightforward. I usually start them off with Aaron Shearer's "Classic Guitar Technique, Vol. I" or Frederick Noad's "Solo Guitar Playing." I'd say either of these books is a good starting point. They both do a good job of covering basic classic technique and they can get a student playing easy solos fairly quickly.

If the student is primarily interested in song accompaniment, I want to get them started having fun with it right away, so I use chord diagrams (I figure if they're at all interested, we can go back later and pick up some classic stuff, reading music for the guitar, and such). I think the easiest two chords to learn first are D and A (I save the A7 'til a bit later). Equally easy are A and E. Then I teach them "Burl Ives basic" (as described above), and let them pick a couple of familiar songs that can be accompanied with just two chords and the tunes of which almost everyone already knows, like "Down in the Valley" or "Go Tell Aunt Rhody," give them song sheets (words with the letter chords written above them—I have a bunch of these already printed up), then we go through the songs together until they have them down well enough to practice them on their own. Usually, when they come the following week, they can do them, and we move on to another chord or two and more songs, maybe with three chords this time. And soon, such things as bass runs, more complicated picking patterns, etc.

I've taught groups of ten or twelve at a shot this way, and it's pretty rare when even one of the group doesn't come back the following week able to sing the songs that I pass out. Some, now knowing how it works, even learn a few songs on their own. I've actually had a number of class students go on to where a year or two later, they're singing in coffeehouses and such. The late John Dwyer, one of this area's more prominent folk singers, got started in one of my classes in 1960.

Anyway, that's how I started this student out. But she just didn't seem to be able to get the hang of it from the chord diagrams. Even three or four weeks later, she had to study a chord diagram and then put her fingers on the strings very carefully, one at a time. So I figured that since she already knew how to read music and she could play keyboard instruments, we'd try the classical approach and move to song accompaniment from there, but then she wound up glued to the written music, with the same problem as far as the chords were concerned.

That, I think, is the crux of the problem right there: she can't seem to recognize or remember the shapes, either as chord diagrams or written music. Hence, as she said herself, she may have a touch of something like dyslexia.

I'd really like to work it out. She's a good friend of my wife's and mine, a member of our writers' group (mutual criticism and support), we socialize a lot (party), and spend holidays and such together, and she seems to really enjoy the lessons and the practice (when she gets the chance), so I'd like to see her be able to be haul off and have fun with the guitar rather than it being such hard work for her.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 21 Jun 08 - 01:03 AM

Don, I gave up on the guitar, and went on to be pretty reasonable on the piano accordion. Of couse, that was only the beginning of my downward slide.. can you spare a dime?


:-P

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 22 Jun 08 - 01:48 PM

Don Firth wrote:
"Anyway, that's how I started this student out. But she just didn't seem to be able to get the hang of it from the chord diagrams. Even three or four weeks later, she had to study a chord diagram and then put her fingers on the strings very carefully, one at a time. So I figured that since she already knew how to read music and she could play keyboard instruments, we'd try the classical approach and move to song accompaniment from there, but then she wound up glued to the written music, with the same problem as far as the chords were concerned."

When I read this, I thought maybe what she's doing isn't such a bad thing. When I first started learning to play the guitar, I practiced chords a lot. I knew the notes in the chords, but it was years later that I started to learn which note was on which string.

Have you had her try playing arpeggios, saying the names of the notes out loud, and having her leave her finger on the string to make the chord (where this is possible)? Perhaps it will help her if she learns the correspondences among some chords, scales and arpeggios.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 22 Jun 08 - 02:10 PM

PoppaGator wrote:
"[...] I still don't know what word is used for that most basic part of a song in contexts where the word "verse" is used to describe the obscure and often forgotten introduction."

This is a bit of a sore point with me, as someone who will sing verses, even though they are often somewhat banal. The verses were not meant to be cut and the songs were meant to be sung the way they were written. Sure, many jazz musicians have played and sung wonderful versions, but the songs (and the musicals) are works of art in their own right and deserve to be sung as they were meant to be sung. Not that they always have to be sung this way, of course.

(Popular music of this era, in English and German, is a big part of my repertoire.)

Often, there is more than one verse (and sometimes choruses with different words). Fake books often leave out the verses and jazz musicians often don't play them. Even sheet music and song books of composers and lyricists such as Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Noel Coward, the Gershwins, Irving Berlin, etc., don't always include the complete lyrics. For some of them, there are books containing just the lyrics. Often the lyrics differ from what was actually sung in the theater or in the movie. One example is Dubin and Warren's "Shuffle Off to Buffalo" from the film "52nd Street", which was fairly elaborate production number (directed by Busby Berkeley), though not one of the more spectacular ones (no waterfalls). This is one reason why I don't like fakebooks (even the legal ones).

I will go to some trouble to find the original, correct and complete lyrics of popular songs.

One reason verses are often left out may be that they were, as I said, often somewhat banal. Another was probably the limit of about 3 min. for one side of a 78 record. On recordings of, say, Fats Waller or Teddy Wilson, there might be two or three instrumental solos, so the song couldn't be sung complete. If I'm just playing and not singing, I will sometimes leave out the verse.

Incidentally, Kurt Weill's verses are seldom if ever banal.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 22 Jun 08 - 02:15 PM

Apropos verses, the following is a quote from the first (?) verse (of two) of Cole Porter's "De-Lovely". I'm quoting from memory, so it might be a little different.

This verse you've started seems to me,
The tin-pan-tithesis of melody.
So, to save us all the pain,
Just skip the darn thing and sing the refrain!

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 22 Jun 08 - 02:16 PM

I wrote:
"Incidentally, Kurt Weill's verses are seldom if ever banal."

Which is partly due to his music, but also to the lyricists, of course. He invariably worked with excellent lyricists.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Tangledwood
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 01:14 AM

Don, I have a friend, Andrea, who is a psychologist as well as being a great performer. These are her thoughts on your students learning difficulty.

"Sadly, I don't have any suggestions to help with this issue. I suspect some people struggle more than others with chord shapes - personally I'm fine with the first few I learnt 20 years ago, but have a lot of trouble getting comfortable with new ones (eg. new jazz chord shapes I've been learning).

Probably her best best would be to experiment with various ways of helping the person explore how their memory works, and see what they found useful eg.

coloured stickers on the guitar neck
the student writing the chord shapes down on a TAB diagram
"games" where she says a shape and the student has to make that shape quickly - or where she makes a sound (eg. beeping a horn, ringing a bell) to indicate each shape - some aural learners may find it useful to think of an aural cue like a bell rather than a verbal cue like the name of the chord, or a visual cue like seeing "Emin" written down
the student concentrates on learning the notes of the chord, then finding lots of ways to make the same chord all over the fretboard
the student mentally associates each chord with an image, eg. a "place", where they imagine that chord belongs (highly personal, but for example someone might think of Am as a chord that belongs on a windy beach on a rainy day, while Dm belongs standing beside a highway at night, and G belongs sitting at the breakfast table in a cottage in a valley on a sunny morning - etc. Then they practice summoning up the chord and the image or place at the same time, and changing to another using the same technique)

Those are just a few ideas off the top of my head - they may sound wacky but people are so different, they learn and remember in all sorts of different ways. A starting point is to see if the person considers themselves a visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learner, and then explore strategies that fit those larger orientations."

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: PoppaGator
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 02:08 PM

I lost track of this discussion after posting my message on 22 Jun, and so missed (until today) Piers Plowman's answer to my question/comment about those introductory "verses" to an entire genre of 20th-century popular songs.

I appreciate PP's scholarly approach to preservation of these oft-forgotten parts of songs, and am glad he makes every effort to find and perform them whenever he can. If I am about to "disagree" or take issue, please understand that it is not offered as personal criticism, only as an alternate viewpoint...

Piers wrote:

"This is a bit of a sore point with me, as someone who will sing verses, even though they are often somewhat banal. The verses were not meant to be cut and the songs were meant to be sung the way they were written."

I would submit that these songs were written as parts of musical plays, and that the "verses" in question were meant to provide transitions from conventional non-musical play-acting to singing-and-dancing musical numbers. Many of these "show tunes" became popular in their own right outside the context of the musical comedies for which they were written, and in this new setting, standing on their own, the songs do not always necessarily require the same kind of introduction.

Outside the context of the show, there is some question as to whether the "verse" is indeed part of the song at all, or whether it's part of the play, as the play moves from one form of expression to another. If these songs were arias in operas, where everything is sung, rather than set-pieces or "numbers" in musical plays, each introductory bit would probably not be considered an essential part of the aria, but rather part of the script or libretto leading up to it.

I'd say, include the verse in your performance if you feel it contributes to the overall feeling and meaning of the song, and/or when it is memorable/funny/touching in its own right, like that wonderful bit of self-parody you quote from Cole Porter's "De-Lovely."

On the other hand, if even you, champion of the forgotten verse, feel that a particular intro-verse to a particular song is "banal," mightn't you consider omitting it, at least in certain contexts for certain audiences? Or, at the very least, understand/forgive jazz artists for not including the verse along with the "body" of the songs as basis for their improvisation?

End (?) of thread drift...

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 02:53 AM

PoppaGator wrote:

"I appreciate PP's scholarly approach to preservation of these oft-forgotten parts of songs, and am glad he makes every effort to find and perform them whenever he can. If I am about to "disagree" or take issue, please understand that it is not offered as personal criticism, only as an alternate viewpoint..."

Of course, and don't worry, I'm not that sensitive. Besides, you wrote nothing that was offensive in the least and I'm quite happy to argue with people in a civil manner.

In this spirit, I would just like to mention that not many of the songs of the era in question aren't show tunes, but rather popular songs. Not all of the songwriters of that era wrote shows. For example, to the best of my knowledge, Rodgers and Hart's "Blue Moon" was not from a show. Some songs were later "interpolated" into shows.    I could easily come up with example of songs that I don't associate with any show, but I'd have to check whether they were from a show, after all. Songs from revues are something else again, since there was no plot.

Many, even most, operas are not through-composed, but have recitatives and some even have spoken dialogue, like Weber's _Der Freischuetz_, and, I believe, Mozart's _The Magic Flute_. Of course, one could argue that _The Magic Flute_ is a "Singspiel" rather than an opera, and I think "Der Freischuetz" was also called something else, but that's a whole other can of worms.

It seems to me this is an area where one could split hairs endlessly and there's no real "right" answer.

I skip the verses if I don't feel like playing or singing them, and I think that's a reasonable approach. When I have my "Champion of the Forgotten Verse" hat on, I will sing them, banal or not, and woe betide the listener who nods off. I do often skip them when improvising because they often don't seem interesting as a basis for improvisation, so I do understand why jazz musicians don't play them in instrumentals.

However, nothing can assuage my hatred of medlies.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: PoppaGator
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 11:54 AM

Shame on anyone who would nod off during performance of any of those verses ~ the one characteristic all of them seem to share, the cleverest as well as the most banal, is that they are brief.

I didn't relaize that Rodgers and Hart did any songwriting except for musical-comedy-type shows. Of course, they're most famous for their many theatrical efforts. Shows how little I know about the subject ~ of course, even an old sixty-something like me wasn't alive yet during their heyday.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 12:23 PM

I only know about "Blue Moon" because I have a book of Rodgers and Hart songs. They are listed according to show in the contents, and "Blue Moon" is listed separately. It's the only one.

The relationship of songs to shows is often somewhat tenuous and good songs from shows that flopped were sometimes "recycled". No different from opera, or any other form of musical theater, probably.

There are lots of songs that don't advance the plot or even have much to do with it. In "Showboat", for instance, the song "Bill" is sung by a character playing an entertainer who sings a song. I don't remember, but it might be in a scene of her rehearsing. There is no "Bill" in the show. I've only seen the movie, but I think it was the same in the original. In "42nd Street", which was a movie musical not based on a stage musical, the song "You're Getting to be a Habit With Me" is also sung by a character who's a singer and it's sung on a stage.

They weren't stupid; people were supposed to leave the theater whistling the big numbers and then buy the sheet music and perhaps the player piano rolls. Back in those days, people made their own fun, not like kids today (etc., etc.). The output in that era was huge and there are lots of good songs that aren't that well-known; often the ones that can't be "cut loose" from the plot so easily.

It's not so easy to get hold of a lot of this music, especially in Germany.

Subject: RE: Reading dots
From: M.Ted
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 01:32 PM

Rogers and Hart wrote a lot of songs for movies, and "Blue Moon", with very different lyrics, was written as "Prayer" for MGM's "Hollywood Party", but never used. It was used as the title song for "Manhattan Melodrama", and was used another time,with yet another set of words, in the film.

The head of MGM publishing liked the melody, and offered to publish and promote it, if Hart would write some more commercial words, which he did.

As to selling the music, in the 19th century, lyric sheets and music were generally sold in the theatre during and after the show. It was not uncommon for the audiences to sing along with the performers.