Is music-reading an important skill?

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: s&r
Date: 12 Oct 11 - 10:17 AM

"Is starting a thread to publicise your own blog a useful activity?

Stu

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 11 Oct 11 - 02:14 PM

Big Al Whittle mentioned learning from a Ralph McTell song book and it put in mind of the following Tv sketch. It's quite apt, really.

The Trial of Ralph McTell

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: tonyteach1
Date: 11 Oct 11 - 10:41 AM

I do not mind people who say I do my thing and perform but I have met guitarists who decry one genre or another because they use different skills Its boring

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 11 Oct 11 - 09:57 AM

Maybe, but not for the whole song, I lose interest and put other bits in - certainly when I'm playing well. i tend to award myself twiddly bits of indeterminate length at the end of every line.

Anyway - I get in the studio and the proper guys say, piss off Whittle - we'll play it properly and quicker! And anyway my website is one thing. When I pay two hundred quid for a a day in a studio - I want to come out with product - stuff that I can hawk around to record companies and publishers.

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: Will Fly
Date: 11 Oct 11 - 09:09 AM

I have never played four beats to the bar in my life - ever. Not because I can't, but that's not the way it is in my head and fingers.

Ahem... Al... do my old ears deceive me or are there not four beats to the bar in very many of your own songs? Your own website testifies to a regular rhythmic pulse of 4-to-the-bar which often underpins the rhythm of those twinkling fingers?

Eh? :-)

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 10 Oct 11 - 08:06 PM

Look Mick, you have your back story.I have mine.

I've seen my music ignored by the establishment and the only time they take it seriously is when expensive session musicians play it in four beats to the bar chunks. My creative peak probably came in the 1980's when programmable drum machines ruled -okay! I have never played four beats to the bar in my life - ever. Not because I can't, but that's not the way it is in my head and fingers.

I don't hate the establishment. But I resent its power over my life.

I respect your background of a decent musical education. But its not mine. Anow I'm over sixty, and I'm starting to dare to be the person I probably always should have been. My own person.

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: Mick Pearce (MCP)
Date: 10 Oct 11 - 05:36 PM

Al - according to this transcript of Django talking about his mass (an organ mass at that) Django's Mass (transcript about 2/3 down), he dictated (presumably played on the guitar or sang) and Gerard Leveque (his clarinettist) took it down. So Django had neither to read nor write to do it (a technique used by Sir Paul McCartney more recently if I recall).

Whether he should have devoted the time to the project is a different matter. He obviously thought it was a good idea (perhaps, as suggested on that thread, without appreciating what was involved). But he wasn't the first musician to want to expand his musical horizons. George Gershwin (rather more schooled I admit) went from song writing and musicals to opera and orchestral works. John McLaughlin wrote a guitar concerto. Yehudi Menuin jammed with Steph. Sting played the lute (as I was reminded on another thread). Musicians often want to do more than they are expected (as in known for) to do. (And if Django's mass was a failure - it was unfinished, perhaps another of Django's whimsies -, we can see the other side of the coin with Menhuin and Grappelly: "Which one's Grappelly - the one who swings" I seem to recall an announcer saying before playing a track).

A brilliant musician won't stop making brilliant music just because he learns to read music (in the 1740s - exact year escapes me now - Bach and the lutenist Silvius Weiss, then living not so far apart, met and competed in an improvisation contest!). But being a brilliant musician won't necessarily stop you doing things you shouldn't (any more than it does for any of us!). It hasn't been enough to keep many brilliant musicians from going to an early grave.


Mick

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 10 Oct 11 - 04:11 PM

Not at all Mick. Reading works fine for some people Tal Farlow, John Williams, lots more. I've used notation and tab myself to get to grips with a piece. i even bought Ralph McTells book for £25 for one single piece (The setting).

But for some people, it doesn't suit them at all. In fact, reading seems to mess things up. just an observation, that's all. Think of django in Paris 1939 session with Larry Adler. They do Gershwins Lover Come back to me. You can hear django singing along in joy, and laying sown the best most breathtaking solo in history.

Then think of Django sat at home struggling with notation trying to write his Roman Cayholic mass for gypsies. failing.

Ask ourself, what do you think God meant him to do. Bugger reading. Leave it to bums like me, who need to told where to put our fingers.

we don't all bring the same talents to the table. We all worship at the altar in our own way. Its obvious.

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: ripov
Date: 10 Oct 11 - 03:58 PM

Important?
So why didn't Cecil Sharp just learn the songs he collected by ear, and then perform them at folk clubs for others to learn?

Whether it's words or tunes, it's a great benefit that people can not only read words and music, but WRITE DOWN what they hear or make up themselves.

Those of you who do write know that it's very hard to get your exact intentions down on paper, it sounds right when you play it, but get someone else to play it - "How's this bit meant to go?"

We're all musicians, but we all have different skills. It's good that we use them and develop them, whichever branch of the Great Universal Music we play.

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: olddude
Date: 10 Oct 11 - 03:53 PM

such as it is anyway
olddude

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: olddude
Date: 10 Oct 11 - 03:47 PM

Too darn dyslectic can't read a note. taught myself to play guitar and banjo never had lessons. A few people think I play alright so if it works for you that is great. If it doesn't that is ok too

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: Mick Pearce (MCP)
Date: 10 Oct 11 - 03:43 PM

Al you say you have no great opinions about reading music, yet every word you write seems to be against it. Bix's unhappiness and short life had nothing to do with his ability to read or not. He'd have died short whether he read or not = reading music wasn't his demon. (You can also dismiss the X was a brilliant player and he didn't read music argument. It's a logical fallacy; as would it be to say that X was a good player because he could read music).

I wasn't going to get involved in this thread (apart from the Bix refs). But now I'm here, I'll make a few observations:

I can't for the life of me understand why people seem to think that being able to read music precludes other skills - learning by ear and improvisation have both been cited above. But (as josepp pointed out with some examples above) they are not exclusive. Reading music is a skill you can learn, just as playing a song by ear is or improvisation is. You can learn to do all of them and knowledge of one does not exclude any or all of the others. You might as easily say you can't sing or speak properly because you learned to read.

I don't think anyone has ever suggested that written music tells you everything. In any idiom - and that includes jazz and classical music, not just folk or blues - the player needs to be aware of the stylistic conventions too. From the earliest times, written music was an aid. What written music does do is let someone who is distant in time or place play something he might not otherwise have been able to play; and if he understands the conventions of the style he'll do a reasonable job of making it sound like it should. You can't hope to hear anything like as many pieces of music as you are able to read.

My guitar sight-reading is pretty good (I'm a licenciate level classical guitarist). On the other hand, I used to play a lot of tin-whistle and almost all the tunes were learned in sessions by ear. In younger days playing along to Bob Dylan records made me a reasonable improviser. I can busk along to most songs from the folk or standards repertoire. Being able to read music hasn't stopped me doing any of those things, nor have they stopped me reading.

My own position is that if you can learn to read music you should - it can only make you a better developed musician, not a worse one. There are a million songs and tunes out there to explore if you can read them; why not give it a try.

It seems the only people who claim that reading would spoil their/others music are those who can't or won't learn. It's an excuse, not an argument against reading.


Mick

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 10 Oct 11 - 02:32 PM

I hold no great opinions about reading music - the benefits or the pitfalls.

I merely onserve that its not for everybody. I think if Bix had managed to stay in environments were his reading wasn't an issue - he might have lived longer and happier.

Similarly I think theres probably damn all you can express on the written page about Bert Jansch's technique which was so much about knowingthe idioms that various guitar keys suggest and individual touch. I think he moved effortlessly from the Piedmont picking in C and G, to using those big open strings in E and A (broonzy style all slams and pulling off) Davy Grahams jazz voicings - all effortlessly - all with a faultless touch. Never descending to that awful clockwork guitar sound that bedevils so many classical guitarists.

Imagine a guitarist who knows intimately Davy Grahams Tristano, Broonzy's Key to the Highway, Rev Gary Davis's entire catalogue and can switch betweem them within two bars and you've got Bert.

Write it down on five lines! Don't make me laugh. Don't make me despair at the sheer arrogance and human foolishness of the belief that anyone could.

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: Mick Pearce (MCP)
Date: 10 Oct 11 - 01:57 PM

BAW (09 Oct 2:15pm) - you may not like Bix after he played with Whiteman, but it had nothing to do with whether he could read music or not.

If I remember Sudhalter et al's biography correctly, Bix could read but wasn't very good at it. When he played with Whiteman he learned his written part mostly by ear on run throughs. I seem to remember that he himself felt bad about not being able to read better - others could read the parts and improvise. So reading/not-reading didn't really come into how he played. (And, whatever you may think about Whiteman, he kept a chair for Bix as much as he could).

(And wasn't it a musical pedant who he'd gone to to learn proper technique who told Bix not to bother because it would alter his unique tone?)


Mick

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: John P
Date: 10 Oct 11 - 10:36 AM

Some classically trained can't play folk music or improvise. Some can. Some folk musicians and improvisers can read music. Some can't. Some music readers can barely play, some play beautifully. Some non-readers can barely play, some play beautifully.

Trying to say that one way is better or more musical than the other is silliness. The real answer is that some musicians are pretty good and some are pretty bad. Whether or not they can read has nothing to do with it.

As a side note, the ability to memorize music may be a more useful skill for folk musicians.

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Oct 11 - 08:46 AM

just as an experiment, why not try asking this question on the irish site session.org? actually, if you do, you'll soon find out why not.
Greg

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 10 Oct 11 - 07:38 AM

You know where you are in a session - generally D.

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: Will Fly
Date: 10 Oct 11 - 06:09 AM

Learning stuff through session playing can be great fun - and very interesting! Many a time I've picked up something at a session, gone away home to look at the dots and/or chords - and found something very different! Even the title can be unknown or wrong - none of which detracts from the fun of the chase.

Sometimes you just have to follow local variants if you want to participate in the session - dots or not. Down here in Sussex we play "The Sweetness Of Mary" a very nice strathspey, in D (to appease the free redd players and the amateur fiddlers). It's really in A and sounds more vibrant in that key - but it would be pointless of me to start it off in the written key of A at a session here when the accepted local version is in D.

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: GUEST,PeterG
Date: 10 Oct 11 - 06:03 AM

I have been playing traditional Celtic music for many years and I have learnt almost all of it by ear. when one of our session players has a new tune we sit together and play it to each other and work it out. Having said that I have made determined effort to understand how to sight read and I use it as a guide if I am on my own and stuck with a small passage.
With a lot of traditional music, it is passed on by ear and therefore you do get many many versions of the same tune. Looking the dots on many of the sites available on the net you will certainly come across many variations.
So I suppose it is down to the individual to make up his own mind if reading music is an advantage.
Myself, I love to learn all my tunes through the process of passing it on from another musician, but certainly recognize the advantage of learning how to read music in certain circumstances and it just adds another string to your bow ( pardon the pun)
Slante
PeterG

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: andrew e
Date: 10 Oct 11 - 04:23 AM

Obviously it depends what you're playing or singing, and what you want to play and sing.
Try singing William Byrd, or playing 1st violin in a Beethoven symphony without any reading skills!

Is there really anyone here who doesn't read any music, who doesn't wish they had some music reading skills.
Anyone who can read music who wishes they couldn't!

Published sheet music is often wrong if you're comparing it to original recordings.

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 08:44 PM

I think its nice when people sing your songs and do them differently. Session musician and classical musicians and I suppose formal set-ups need it. But theres lots of good music to be made without it.

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 06:51 PM

The ability to pick up a tune by ear is great IF ITS ACCURATE

With folk, even that probably depends and can depend even when people are playing together.

In a session, while there may be versions of tunes that are so far away from each other they do not fit I don't think too many would consider an odd note here or there (if noticed) of much importance - after all, we may all try to play our own twiddly bits putting in what we can or omitting depending on what we feel capable of, how the tune is going at the time, etc.

What IMO, is more important is the ability to fit in with time and hit the beat when others are and, at least in the ones I go to, to be flexible with that so you can follow (and keep to) the tune how whoever started it is accenting it. (I suppose like a jazz "swing it" but rather than having a set "swing rule" it's set by the starter or perhaps in some cases could be refined by a style, eg. Claire - although with as an I suppose "generic Irish session player", these finer points are beyond me).

Lots of different ways and rules, perhaps some more suited to dots than others? As I said in my first post, I do believe that ideally one can do both.
But I wonder whether some of the sort of can't do without dont's are really loking at things from an only been taught/; only have learned a from of music through dots perspective?

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: Mark Ross
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 06:35 PM

I could sight read when I was younger and played the clarinet. When I gave that up at 14 to teach myself guitar, I forgot everything I knew about reading music. I probably understand more now (and better) how music is put together.

I once was once hired to play guitar, banjo, and harmonica in a pit orchestra for a children's Christmas musical in Montana. At the 1st rehearsal the young girl playing baritone sax proceeded to play in the most godawful fashion on one of the carols. It seems the tenor player had transcribed her part in the wrong direction, and it sounded pluperfect awful. She could hear how bad it sounded, but she kept playing because that's how it was written on the page.

Mark Ross

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 05:18 PM

straw man...?

just my country roots! probably sugar beet, I'm from Lincolnshire.

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: Don Firth
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 03:55 PM

"….classically trained musos cannot improvise."

I went to the University of Washington School of Music for two years and the Cornish School of the Arts music conservatory for another two years. And I can improvise.

Some of my classmates were jazz musicians, read music quite fluently, and were studying music theory, harmony, and music history. They can improvise.

Wynton Marsalis, one of the finest jazz musicians (trumpet) in the country, was not only classically trained, but he teaches music at the Juilliard School. In addition to his jazz performances, he has done some fine recordings of classical trumpet concertos (concerti).

Classically trained musos cannot improvise???????

(Where does this stuff come from??)

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: GUEST,josepp
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 03:28 PM

//// Also classically trained musos cannot improvise.////

I'm sure Charles Mingus and Paul Chambers will be interested to know that. Both were classically trained. Chambers was educated on the bass by a bassist in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and played classical music for years before turning his attention to jazz where he quickly established himself as perhaps the greatest improvisational bass-player ever.

Mingus was educated by Henry Reinshagen who also taught Fred Zimmerman--considered the greatest bass pedagogue in the US--and Zimmerman taught Robert Gladstone who became first chair bassist of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Gladstone taught Linton Bodwin who is the DSO's current principal bassist and my instructor who is considered one of the best jazz bassists in this state who both reads and improvises on a level I can currently only dream of.

And you may as well know that all those string sections you dance to on those old Motown recordings were ALL DSO musicians.

////And if Robert Johnson wasn't a musician - your God is too small.////

But Johnson had teachers. When I learned blues guitar, I had no teacher. I had books. I had to play what was in these books to learn blues. Johnson couldn't have done that. He may have been a great musician as he was but it wouldn't have killed him to learn to read and he just might have been able to to some degree--I didn't know that man and I doubt you did either. Everything else in your post was the worst straw man I ever saw anyone set up.

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 02:15 PM

give me Bix before his time in outfits like Whitemans. And django before he bothered his pretty little head with writinga gypsy mass and playing an electric geetar and Renbourn before he had that bloody silly midi machine that turned his and Jansch's noodlings into notation.

Probably a milllion others, whose lives have attentuated and whose enthusiasm for playing has been quenched by some dopey pedant with 'a musical education'.

And anyway, have you ever had your music published and turned into flyshit - its flattering? But its nonsense - let yhose who would know the secrets bloody well watch me, it wouldn't kill them.

Look! if you need it fair enough. But its not for everyone. And if Robert Johnson wasn't a musician - your God is too small.

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: tonyteach1
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 01:35 PM

There seems to be the view that it is either - or. Most classical musicians who do exams and indeed the electric guitarists have to do ear tests of increasing difficulty The ability to pick up a tune by ear is great IF ITS ACCURATE . I teach X factor type singers who learn the song from a track of their favourite artist which may be different from another artists. There may be different versions of a song whatever the genre. Not having both skills limits you Great artists like Martin Carthy rearrange songs and melodies to suit their style You need to read to do that fully

I have to read and to transpose for singers and rearrange. I can read at sight and also busk from the chords and melody Why because I need to and because I make my living from doing so. Also classically trained musos cannot improvise. I used to be an opera singer yet can improv blues or jazz or whatever

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 12:27 PM

"And I don't buy bs that someone was a better musician in a "pre-literate" stage--that's just a matter of opinion and certainly not one that is going to be true in more than one instance in a million."

Studies have found that 97.31% of people who use statistics in arguments make them up as they go along. FWIW.

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: GUEST,josepp
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 12:13 PM

////Reading music is a great AID to learning tunes but I have found a tendency among players who learn from the dots that if you take their dots away they're struck dumb, even if they know the tune. Relying on the dots can be a hindrance too.////

No. If they can't play without reading then they wouldn't be musicians at all. Reading allows them to be musicians. Your argument is backwards.

I also agree that nobody who reads ever wishes they never learned but many who never did wish they had. Imagine Mozart or Bach lamenting that they received far too thorough of a musical education. Then you had great musicians and composers as Louis Chauvin for whom only three pieces of his music survive today because he couldn't read and needed others to write the stuff down. One of those pieces is "Heliotrope Bouquet" which he co-wrote with Scott Joplin. Imagine if Joplin couldn't read either--this marvelous piece of music would have been lost. In fact, we would probably not more than three or four Joplin rags today. You think there were times, especially when he lay dying of siphylis, that Chauvin wished he had learned to read?

And I don't buy bs that someone was a better musician in a "pre-literate" stage--that's just a matter of opinion and certainly not one that is going to be true in more than one instance in a million.

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: banjoman
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 12:02 PM

I wold love to be able to read music but alas its probably too late now. However, I have been playing guitar/banjo.mandolin/etc for over 50 years and admit that I can sort of understand when dots mean up or down. I recall a music teacher (Christian Brother) thrashing the whole class because we could not understand his attempts to teach us to read the dots. I now hold as one of my most treasured possesions his end of term report for me where under music he wrote -Musically speaking this pupil is dead from the neck up - and thats perhaps why I have never learnt to read music and took to playing banjo at an early age - he also advised me that the banjo was the instrument of the Devil - but why should he have all the best tunes.

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: DrugCrazed
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 11:42 AM

I can read music but prefer to learn tunes by ear. Learning by ear means that I can mess with the tune a bit more, and I'm certain it stays in my head for longer.

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 11:13 AM

Maybe so Tug, but you don't have to look far to see musicians who produced their best work in their pre-literate stage. It certainly seems to bugger up some people.

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 09:29 AM

Jack Campin: You might want to give a listen to 'The Ballad of Ira Hayes' which was also written by LaFarge. Great song and basically true story. I first heard it from Pat(rick) Sky, another wonderful writer from outta the US. Neat guy and a mentor to me when I was a kid in the Big Apple.

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: Tug the Cox
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 08:52 AM

I've met loads of musicians who wished that they could read music. I yet to meet someone who can read it who wishes they hadn't bothered learning.

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: GUEST,Richard Robinson
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 08:46 AM

I find reading & writing the dots a great aid to memory. I can't hold all the tunes I've ever known how to play in my head at the same time, so getting them onto a piece of paper / hard-disk / whatever, means I can dig them up and jog my "live" memory with them at a later date.

And also communicate with people out of earshot, of course - to some extent; as with reading them myself, it works best as a reminder for one you're already familiar with.

To pick up tunes you've never heard, off the paper ? Well, yes, fantastic. But, it can be odd. Many of them, it's fairly straightforward, but others, I look at the dots, I play them, nothing special, just another tune like so many others. And it can stay like that for years. And then - some little twist, a different thought, or hear someone else play it with a different slant, and suddenly, the pitches are the same, the timing's the same, but the sense is different, I realise it wasn't 'just ordinary' after all.

I think it was a Dave Swarbrick tunebook (which I lost, ages ago) where I first saw the recommendation to regard notation as a road-map of the tune. You can see the shape all at once, what's round all the corners; but don't confuse it with being there.

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: GUEST,Strad
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 08:18 AM

Reading music is a great AID to learning tunes but I have found a tendency among players who learn from the dots that if you take their dots away they're struck dumb, even if they know the tune. Relying on the dots can be a hindrance too.

Also ,if you find yourself humming a new tune you have thought of, how are you going to record it for posterity. Using the dots can be more than useful then. There's two sides to every argument.

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 07:14 AM

Tunesmith - THANK you for the pointer to Peter La Farge. I'd never heard of him before (or "White Girl", for that matter). That was wonderful.

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 07:04 AM

Earlier in this thread I implied that the title was/is a stupid question. I should have said it's a poorly phrased question. Yes, being able to read music is an important skill, just as being able to read printed text is an important skill. However, people can get along without it.

If you have no recording equipment and you have just composed a symphony, you will likely either learn the skill of writing some sort of music notation to preserve the symphony or you will have to keep it in your memory until such time you meet someone who can get it onto paper or a more permanent record of your accomplishment.

So, my apology to the op, and to answer the question 'Is music-reading an important skill?': Yes. If you need it.

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: Johnny J
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 06:42 AM

"None of them can read music... "

Do any of you really believe that musicians such as Paul McCartney, Clapton and many other "ear" players and singers have NEVER bothered to learn anything related to musical theory?

After all, the first thing you learn when you play guitar is what the basic chords are. You'll probably also learn which notes make these up and various sequences etc. A little later on, you will(I know I did)be able to transpose songs etc into different keys even if it's just by using a capo. I can't believe that there can be many strummers out there who use a capo and not know which key they are playing in.

Also, most players will be able to locate where the notes are on their instruments at the very least.

Of course, if you have a very good ear, you'll not necessarily need to know that much about musical theory. In the case of these musicians, they have managed without it very well but I'm sure they all(at some stage) looked into various aspects of it to a greater or lesser extent.

I know of one very good accordion player who wanted to learn to read music and went to classes where the tunes were being taught this way. He found it very difficult to do this as by the time he'd worked out the music, he'd already picked up the tune by ear from the tutor and other students!
So, I'd suggest that this is a reason why the musicians mentioned above never actually progressed either..... they had been so accomplished in playing by ear that they didn't really need it.

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: Mark Ross
Date: 08 Oct 11 - 10:35 PM

Pete Seeger once asked his father Charles, the eminent composer and ethno-proctologist, when someone should learn to read music. Charles Seeger replied, "When they know what kind of music they want to play."


Mark Ross

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 08 Oct 11 - 07:36 PM

If its important to you - its important. If its not, its not. We're all different.

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: GUEST,josepp
Date: 08 Oct 11 - 07:34 PM

I disagree that Paul and Clapton were mere merely front men (don't really know who the other two are). They were very talented guys but, see, that's kind of the point: Using them to justify not learning to read music is pointless because these guys had a lot innate telent anyway,

I mean, if I could churn out songs like Paul did, I wouldn't need to learn to read it either but the sad truth is that I don't churn out songs like he did either in quantity or quality. It's not like I've had hit records. I can't even find a single person who even wants to cover a song I've written even when I tell them they can rewite it any way they want to. Paul wrote a song that is one of the most covered songs in music history.

Most people are in my category even though a great many are FAR more talented than me. I mean, how many of us have been as successful as Paul? So, yeah, Paul got away with not needing to learn to read. Does that mean it's ok for you not to learn to read? And to say you know musicians who were trained to play off the page but can't play anything by ear has nothing to do with their reading ability because if you can play by ear, you will. So, if anything, if it weren't for their reading abilities, they probably wouldn't even be musicians. So, again, it's better to know how to read than not.

Another example is Kurt Cobain. I don't brag about my own talent because I'd get killed the first time I tried it but I WILL say that I am better than Cobain ever was. But he made quite a niche for himself in music and I've made none but does that justify not learning to play guitar well? I certainly hope not. "Why should I learn to play well? Kurt Cobain sucked and look how far he went!" Silly argument, isn't it? It's the same when justifying not learning to read. Those people are justifying ignorance and only the ignorant do that.

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Oct 11 - 07:03 PM

RE: What do Sir Paul McCartney, Andy Cutting, Damien Barber and Eric Clapton have in common?

They were all "Front Men" for very talented MUSICIANS.

They caught a free ride on a Monday morning fast train.

Thank God - the backs of the private labels have been broken.

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: GUEST,josepp
Date: 08 Oct 11 - 01:30 PM

Most people who are self-taught play by ear. I'm self-taught on guitar and play virtually everything by ear. I use tabs and the chord frames but not notes very much. The chords are essential to me for playing the uke since I don't know my way around that instrument too well.

Bass is different because I'm learning from a university-trained teacher who learned from the first chair bassist in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (Robert Gladstone). Now the emphasis is on learning from the page. I get drilled and drilled and drilled. Consequently, I can play the music from the page without a problem. I doubt seriously I would be that good at it without an instructor to drill me like the guy on "Full Metal Jacket." He said that's how Gladstone taught him-drill drill drill drill practice practice practice practice. He said Gladstone was like Zen monk when it came to bass-playing--a very rigid, thorough work ethic.

So if you want to get good at reading music, get an instructor. They push you harder than you would normally push yourself. And that's how you learn. Few people have that kind of resolve on their own. But a teacher gives you pieces and knows when to move onto harder ones and how hard they should be. I think it works better.

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: GUEST,josepp
Date: 08 Oct 11 - 01:12 PM

What is on the written page is an approximation. This is really true of jazz. My instructor gives me jazz pieces to learn but won't tell me anything about them--just take them home and learn them. When I come back, I'm full of questions. One was a pattern that didn't really sound like anything. "You have to swing it," he said and played it the way a jazz bassist would play it. Smae notes but it sounded totally different and very jazzy. There's no real way to notate that. But now, whenever I see that pattern of notes, I know I have to swing it.

This thing I did at the coffeehouse, I was playing bass notes written for piano chords. I had to add in stuff that sounded double bassy because the straight notes off the page were too mechanical sounding. What was cool was that I could choose to play any note from a chord--not just the tonic. I could play a third or a fifth or a seventh which sounded very cool as long as I didn't overdo it and it gave the bass line some liveliness. Again, without the sheet music, I couldn't have done that.

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 08 Oct 11 - 01:00 PM

Back in the 60s, I used to do a few Woody Guthrie songs that I learnt from his song book. To this day, I've never heard Woody - or anyone else - perform them.
I also used to get songs from Sing Out magazine. I remember learning "White Girl" by Peter LaFarge, and there was no metronome indication and so I decided that it should be done quite slowly,
Years later, I heard Johnny Cash's version and I was flabbercasted at - what seemed to me - the breakneck speed at which he performed it.
Just a few minutes ago, I looked it up on Youtube and - for the first time - listened to Peter LaFarge singing the song.

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: Musket
Date: 08 Oct 11 - 11:03 AM

When I played violin in youth orchestras, reading music was vital. When I played rock in a band it wasn't, When I play folk, it isn't either, although if somebody gets a score of an old tune, I can pick it up quicker than without.

Even if sight reading a score is too much to have to learn, I would always commend learning about chord structuring and cadence recognition. That way, accompanying others is much easier. If you are good at picking up accompaniment and have never read about the fundamentals of music, you might be pleasantly surprised to see the theory around what you can do naturally.

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 08 Oct 11 - 09:54 AM

Evelyn Glennie: How to listen--the video is 34 minutes long.

Subject: RE: Is music-reading an important skill?
From: GUEST,kenny
Date: 08 Oct 11 - 09:42 AM

No. Can be useful, but not important.