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Take a simple 8 bar phrase of mixed quarter, eighth, and half notes, with no dynamic markings and play them on any instrument.....guitar, piano, bassoon, or whatever, and you have a purely mathematical sequence of pitches (frequencies); a computer could do this just fine - just feed in the MIDI info and push the button. To me, you really don't get any music out of that excercise, just an infinite number of different arrangements of pitches. Where the music comes in is the FEELING invoked by the player. For instance, classical guitar players study a piece intensely to determine the best way to perform that string of frequecies to relate their feelings and emotions to the listener. Listen to a MIDI file of any classical piece, then listen to Christopher Parkening play it.....you'll definitely hear (and feel) a difference. That's why I don't like the, what I like to call, 'mindless improvisation' performed by many modern jazz artists. It seems that they've forgotten to put any emotion into their playing. I have a good friend locally who's a very accomplished (even college trained, partially) guitarist who spends hours playing scales, arpeggios, modes, amd dissecting chords and he can play you any scale you could imagine off the top of his head without thinking twice, BUT, when he plays with a group, even though he knows all the licks and hooks to all the tunes, his playing is sterile and uninteresting and to make it worse, he uses a compressor to maintain an even volume level - no feeling, no emotion, no dynamics...no nothin'. Personally, I'd rather hear a player play with some passion and fire and hit a clam every now and then than to just hear a string of mathematically perfect notes. I think Chet Atkins once said that if you hit a wrong note or make a mistake, do it again and people will think you did it on purpose!
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10-23-2014 01:18 PM
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Anyone read this? (Joseph Alexander's "Sight Reading Mastery for Guitar.")
Sight Reading Mastery for Guitar (Sight Reading for Modern Instruments) (Volume 1): Mr Joseph Alexander: 9781499579079: Amazon.com: Books
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Once again I'm talking reading music. But then again you're avoiding my example of DOG, which I believe is the same thing. DOG is dog, just like pitch is pitch, in other languages. We have different symbols to conceptualize each.
Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
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This is it. There's a lot of value in working rote repetition and familiar tunes at the beginning of learning to read. It's very basic pedagogy on all instruments. The problem comes when we talk about learning to "sight read" when what's really needed are basic reading skills regardless of familiarity or repetition. Originally Posted by cosmic gumbo
"Sight" reading is a more advanced skill and assumes basic reading competency. When learning new skills (fingerings, rhythms, keys or positions etc.) repetition and familiarity are actually extremely helpful for reinforcing the new and unfamiliar. It's common practice in all basic music pedagogy, whether for adults or children.
Also, learning to read jazz on guitar from a fake book or whatever can be very problematic even if you already read at some of level on guitar. Guitar in the classical tradition, is a transposed instrument, whereas i think jazzers tend to read things from charts at concert pitch. With classical, everything is kind of an extension of open position. If you're used to that you're almost starting over.
If you're starting from scratch in that sense, I'd think it would be helpful to look at pedagogy for beginning readers. If you look at beginner materials, they begin simply and gradually add complexity.
To start: limit pitch to mostly one key, one position, simple rhythms, and for God's sake, practice the stuff repeatedly. Memorization isn't a "problem" unless you're practicing actual "sight" reading. Cosmic's novel analogy is great. Reading in F or Bb is much easier when you can read in C. People that talk about the "waste" of playing things you've played before are talking about pure sight reading. That's a different beast.
Learning to read in all keys and positions at once is the opposite of helpful at the beginning. You'll get further faster working from a basic foundation. You can see patterns like sentences only in the context of that with which you are FAMILIAR. If it's all unfamiliar you're not going to see the patterns.Last edited by matt.guitarteacher; 10-23-2014 at 03:28 PM.
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Henry, Mark,
excuse me interference, but since I initiated this 'off-top' comparison with language, I feel a bit responsible for it...
When we translate we do not translate signs as they are, we translate meanings. We do not translate letters but words, so it is not middle C what is important , it is important in which context we find it, what relations it makes with other sound -and how these relations are understood?
The problem is that we are used to verbal language bacuase as Mark truly said it is communicative and we often take it as a final reality... though actually it is only a matter of conviction (Bill Evans))) and convention... yes, we just maid a sort of agreement in certain community that the set of sounds 'dog' mean a certain animal... but we go deeper into perception of language we will see that even with dog each of us means something different actually (even when we know that we speak about the same dog we take it differently) - look around, we actully need translations within our native languge between native speakers, because people all the way just dio not understand each other... and when they consider language to be final reality, that words are exactly wnat they mean then we have social problems... I believe the only possibility to use communicative language fruitfully is toremember that is is just a matter of conviction and convention, just a relative tool to support communication between persons...
But in art it is a bit different, in art there is no defined convention, only conviction.... not translation actually is possible because it is either you understand or not.... BUT before you ounch me back))) - there is a possibility to use our communicative langiage and to describe to another person how it works in your perception and may be the other one also sees it...
So I think we should compare directly language of art with your communicative language... take writers they use words but they actually create their own language of art of it. Maybe there is civilization somewhere that uses pitches as communication language also?
After all there are some oriental languages where pitch makes difference in meaning... of course it is not music.
In musica there are meanings for sure that work in a culture, if you belong to teh culture you can more or less feel it... it is very complex subject and may take pages to go therough...
Just thisnk of the simplest sample that dissonance had to be resolved for many years and now we can easily leave it unresolved... so now we lose the meaning of what was called lamento in European tradinion?
and that triplets were immediately understood as movement of devilish powers? Or do we immediately identify 'motive of cross' in baroque music? And does this motive make sence when it occasionally comes up in Montgomery's improvisassion? What is occasional? After all he might hear it?
To undertand all this and to aovoid creating a mess of it we have to study musical language of culture, how music works, what make tences, realeases, feel of time and eterninty, sence of calm and passion...
But writing is just writing as I said sometimes it is important also in a retrospective way but in general... so this all language stuff turned out to be off-top here
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Yes. Well I may differ in some opinions because I believe thinking uses words and language but is not language. I don't think in words for example. Mostly I think in concepts. Sometimes there's a lag trying to find the correct word that fits the concept. It's the same for me with music. Music = concepts of space, time, sound, rhythms, emotions, colors, imagined space and dimension. It's not C or 16th notes. But those are symbols used to convey those musical concepts to others, or to tuck away for myself for future reference.
Communication is the sending concepts across a distance of time and space to another or oneself. Or it is receiving concepts from another or even some thing. I might not have a real conversation with my dog but I certainly can communicate with him. I can communicate with my music and not even be there, no words. But if I want someone to read some music I wrote we must agree on the symbology. That's a language that uses crotchets, rests, measures, staves, time signatures, dynamic markings, keys, etc. And the more those symbols are understood the better one can communicate. You can hear it but you cannot read it. You cannot communicate with that staff paper.
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Moving this back on topic and less in the philosophical realm, that's why it's so important to KNOW the symbols and what those symbols mean. They define the concepts. If they are loosely known or understood, it will create confusion and lead to more mistakes in your reading. The FIRST step I do when I teach students to read is to thoroughly go over the page an make sure every symbol is fully understood.
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I'm not avoiding 'dog,' Henry. As I learned as a kid; "Dog is a noun. His nose is round. His tail sticks up. His, er, ears hang down." Originally Posted by henryrobinett
"Dog" is not a musical pitch. A musical pitch is not a word. The difference is one reason why Shakespeare plays may be (and have been) translated into Chinese, Italian, Spanish, and many other languages but the musical compositions of Mozart and Bach cannot be translated because they aren't in that kind of language, period.
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EXACTLY!!! It's a different KIND of language!!!
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Look Mark a language contains symbols that are used to communicate ideas and concepts. The verbal languages of English and German use word symbols. A PITCH is a symbol. It is a THING that is defined by a sound and a word, a noun, that can be indentified in an verbal language. MUSIC is a language that uses symbols to convey musical concepts.
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That was always my point, and it is a language without words and it is a language in which the notion of translation is inappropriate.. (You can't translate numbers either. Math isn't that kind of language.) Originally Posted by henryrobinett
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This thread could use a quick primer on use/mention distinction.
Use scare quotes "X" when you want to talk about a word as a symbol.
Do not use scare quotes when you want to talk about the meaning of a word.
For example:
"Dog" has three letters.
A dog is a faithful friend.
So, Mark is saying that middle C is the same pitch no matter what. Henry is saying that "middle C" may be written in many different ways. I am contending that sight reading is dependent on both quickly understanding "middle C" and being able to find middle C quickly and in a convenient location on the guitar.
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