Are you a left-brain or right-brain guitar musician?

[oldane]

You all agree that musicians HAVE played music yet not reading music. That this was both anciently and in Jazz, and Blues cetra?

How then could they play together and share ideas if this is so?

They can but some things in some settings goes smoother and easier with more planning in advance. Here the notation comes in.

That guitar player who is said above to have had big ears. WHY was he humiliated? Could he not have absorbed what was being played, and blended in?

No he couldn't. It was not a jam session. It was not a live jazz gig. It was a studio session. He was humiliated because he couldn't deliver what was required and didn't realize it in time. At studio sessions, the arrangements were usually written in advance and the musicians were required to sight read their parts in order to save expensive studio time. Professional studio musicians were supposed to play all styles of music, not just jazz. Being a studio musician was not great art. It was workmanship and loads of it - but not much else.

(Note that I write "were" and "was". These days, most of the arrangements in popular music are recorded using computer technology and not studio musicians. But it as just as deliberate and preplanned as before - if not more.)

As you can see, I don't buy your reasoning. I accept that you don't want to learn to read music. It's your choice just as it was mine for many years. But you must accept that written music is there for some reason. You can't expect everyone who does read music to stop doing so because you don't want to learn to read. Inability to read need not be a problem for you if you are not a professional and you play with kindred souls. Provided you have big ears and big talent you may even create great music. But there are some things you will be excluded from - just like Tal Farlow who was one of the greatest jazz guitarists ever. He wanted to try his luck as as a studio musician but he never made it past the first attempt and had to make his living as a sign painter for a great part of his life. He simply didn't have the needed qualifications for that particular job - studio musician.

Music reading is not a repulsive task per se. It's a useful tool. I admit it may be boring to practice it for the time it takes. But then, even the greatest art is made up of 15% inspiration and 85% transpiration.

[Bigmagic]

I think the point of agreement is you can practice scales and theory but when you play you better connect to the groove and not be thinking about theory. Joe Pass,Django,Wes and many many others didn't read. Information wasn't available then as much as now. More and more guitarists are reading music. But when your improvising your not thinking your feeling.
Victor Wooten has a great video on this stuff. He says learn it all but realize theory is not more important then groove or vice versa. Wooten rightly points out that a missed note is often not noticed but lose the groove and you lose the audience. I highly recommend his DVD to anyone regardless of instrument.



BB. King when jamming with Guns and Roses said "I don't play chords".

[coolvinny]

I still firmly believe that reading is my absolute lowest priority as an aspiring non-pro jazz guitar player with a demanding day job, but to be safe I spent about 45 minutes reading today. Normally I'd spend way less...more like 15 minutes...but I haven't done much reading in about 2 months.

Regarding the point above about losing the groove - that totally applies to reading. My biggest reading weakness is that I lose the rhythm if I misplay a note - I need to be able to just keep on going like nothing happened.

[elixzer]

I think the point of agreement is you can practice scales and theory but when you play you better connect to the groove and not be thinking about theory. Joe Pass,Django,Wes and many many others didn't read. Information wasn't available then as much as now. More and more guitarists are reading music. But when your improvising your not thinking your feeling.
Victor Wooten has a great video on this stuff. He says learn it all but realize theory is not more important then groove or vice versa. Wooten rightly points out that a missed note is often not noticed but lose the groove and you lose the audience. I highly recommend his DVD to anyone regardless of instrument.



BB. King when jamming with Guns and Roses said "I don't play chords".

Wooten rightly points out that a missed note is often not noticed but lose the groove and you lose the audience. I highly recommend his DVD to anyone regardless of instrument.

I really LOVE that! it also reminds me of this video guitar teacher I sometimes follow (I linked his video about Ear training above in this thread) who said that when--as beginner--you are struggling to find chords in a rhythm, do not suddenly start fukin up the tempo to get the fingering right, but keep the rhythm and eventually your fingers will find the shapes. That means a lot to me because I very much feel that rhythm, which is flow, is essential---is the magic of music.

What you say Wooten is saying means the same in a more advanced way. IE, you HAVE the chords down, but don't allow yourself to 'stutter' and/or become mechanical too much, worrying about 'perfection', let yourself go and the rhythm, improvisation, and feeling is the key.
I must check this guy out

[Philco]

Allan Holdsworth is a musician who can't read or write music.

You have to give credit to a guitar player who comes to a session and gets the band to write out their own charts.

Slightly different to what happened to Tal Farlow.

I had heard that Allan had no concept of written music but knew exactly how long chords should be held in a given piece...never veering from this "length". Then the the guys in the band make charts so they can play along with him.

He touches on it in this video.

Not sure what that adds to the discussion but there you have it.

There's a great way to get out of having to read.
Simply create your own world and let other people figure it out.

I mean it's music, you can do anything you want.

[pauln]

The whole question of time in music opens a long path of mysteries and paradoxes.

If a scientist was examining the situation on stage with some measuring devices she might have these observations and questions:

There is a time lag between the musician's mental command to play a note and the sounding of that note.
There is a time lag between what the instruments play and what the musicians hear because of the finite propagation of sound through air at about 1100 ft per second.
Now since the bass and drums are attempting to synchronize, but each are listening to the others' compound series of delays, and their own delays, and since the horn and guitar and piano are compounding their mutual series delays on top of that... how is it possible for them to play in rhythm together?

Adding up the various delays - the original delayed execution of a note, the delayed response of the instrument, the delay for the note to make it to another musician, that musician's delays in producing his note, the delay of that later note making back to the original musician hearing delayed sounds of others... how do they stay in time?

Note: The total of the delays is substantial - any listener to garage bands and amateur jams will confirm the principles in force. But what about pro level performing musicians? They seem to be able to synch as perfectly as one could ask in spite of the clear physical limitations of playing execution, sound distribution, and auditory processing of that sound.

Do they have to play ahead in anticipation so the actual sound is on time?
Do they have to wait to hear the other's?
How is it that in the mind of the musicians, they are NOT deliberately noticing and adjusting their timing ahead to synch with each other, but feel that they are playing and hearing everything in sych without effort or compensation?

And if they are hearing and playing in rhythm without conscious adjustment, how is that done when it is clear that in order for the sounds to be in rhythm they MUST be making some adjustment to the delays?

I myself have thought about this mystery. It is not sufficient to just believe that all the musicians are independently playing in parallel synched timing - the perceptual and execution and propagation delays are still in place to confound what they hear. In fact those things would always be in conflict with their own independent timing.

If you take an intuitive look at your own perception of timing and rhythm when playing with others it is quite clear that phenomenologically you feel that you are hearing everyone, including yourself, all together and in time; without perceptible adjustment or compensation.

There is something very strange going on here. It almost seems like one feels there are two different layers to the time - the formal synched public time, and a private "time" that one uses to map out and apply rhythmic patterns into the public time. In a way it seems like one can "look ahead" into the public time in order to anticipate, evaluate, formulate, and execute in synchrony a planned rhythm in the public time... all while continuing to play in the public time while planning ahead in private time.

This still does not answer how the public time is synched in performance, but the separate layer of private time does kind of lend a clue as to how that might work. If the private time can be "loose" and still map synched into the public time when executed, it may be that our existential perception of what we hear as the leading edge of time in music is also somehow "loose" in terms of our auditory and perceptual processing - that what we hear is not strictly what the real physical timing would imply, but that what we hear is a processed and prepared internal presentation of what it "should" be to be in time. This possible "looseness" in up front perception processing might allow for natural corresponding kinds of adjustments in actual execution to what "should" be the right timing, in ways that actually do result in synched public timing, all while making it feel like this is being done "in time" without any conscious adjustments.

Maybe...

[elixzer]

LOL thats quite a left brain analysis going on there. It went over my head a bit, but this is my view. My view is more accepting the mystery right away. mystery to me is not something necessarily something to be eventually 'found out', but rather something which is so deep that it can never be grasped. It is always beyond grasp because the part that is trying to grasp it comes out of it. In mythology this is the metaphor of light coming from darkness, and of course darkness is a mystery.

In Flamenco music they have a term called 'Duende'

"
Duende like art itself has faces that are both appealing and dangerous. It can be dark and hard to pin down.

Coming from southern Spain, "Duende" has only recently migrated to English. Dictionaries give meanings sometimes at odds with each other.
The New Oxford English Dictionary gives:

1. A ghost, an evil spirit; 2. Inspiration, magic, fire.

The Random House Dictionary gives:

1. A goblin, demon, spirit; 2. Charm, magnetism.

The Larousse Spanish-English Dictionary translates duende as Goblin, elf, imp/Magic. It gives the usages: los duendes del Flamenco, the Magic of Flamenco; tener duende, to have a certain magic.
We take our cue from the great Spanish poet, Federico Garcia Lorca. He gave a famous lecture on La Teoria y Juego del Duende – The Theory and Function of Duende. Lorca says:

"All through Andalusia . . . people speak constantly of duende, and recognize it with unfailing instinct when it appears. The wonderful flamenco singer El Lebrijano said: ‘When I sing with duende, no one can equal me.’ . . . Manuel Torres, a man with more culture in his veins than anybody I have known, when listening to Falla play his own ‘Nocturno del Genaralife,’ made his splendid pronouncement: ‘All that has dark sounds has duende.’ And there is no greater truth.
"These dark sounds are the mystery, the roots thrusting into the fertile loam known to all of us, ignored by all of us, but from which we get what is real in art. . . .
"Thus duende is a power and not a behavior, it is a struggle and not a concept. I have heard an old master guitarist say: ‘Duende is not in the throat; duende surges up from the soles of the feet.’ Which means it is not a matter of ability, but of real live form; of blood; of ancient culture; of creative action."


So we have taken the name DUENDE in order to honor Lorca’s dark creative force. Duende is there to challenge us to keep our ears open to the ‘dark sounds,’ to keep our touch with the earth and with the ghosts of those who have come before, to never refuse the struggle which is needed to keep the spirits working on the side of truth."


So I would see this the same with any musician or musicians which share this mysterious musical communion which is a combination of rational knowledge of note structures, and rhythm, etc, but also feeling, and all of this is depth less. The more feeling, soul, involved the more deep it goes for those playing and those hearing~~~who are receptive that is.

[pauln]

"...something which is so deep that it can never be grasped. It is always beyond grasp because the part that is trying to grasp it comes out of it."

Elixzer, that is a beautiful and profound expression for the oldest and most fundamental existential mystery.

The snake swallowing his own tail...
The masks behind the mask...
The beat goes on...

[pingu]

Speaking personally, I have been through many phases like that where I have put the guitar down. Often I have been self-conscious of people hearing me cause I feel I should be 'more advanced by now' but I am starting to see thru this trip. It is the feeling which is important I reckon. The emotion is impossible to teach. And you can express that in subtle ways. EVEN with one note, one string.

Right on ,I'm into that now too, the feeling is the thing

"These dark sounds are the mystery, the roots thrusting into the fertile loam known to all of us, ignored by all of us, but from which we get what is real in art. . . .

talking about the Blues here (too) the Muse

This thread is coming up with some great insights for me

Re The Time and multiple delays reaction time thing .........
Love the dividing up the Public time thing , and the delays
yeah ,
I got that 'hearing' stuff isn't done instant by instant now,now,now, etc
like a computer , but in phrases overlapping like playing cards overlap
layed out on a table

You're lying in bed with a tune going in your head ,you know
It all kinda overlaps sometimes dunnit ? slabs of tune floating about

It's fundermentally different perceptually from seeing things
where a still photo can have lots of meaning

If you freeze music at any point you don't get much out of it
Its got to be heard in phrases

[elixzer]

This thread is coming up with some great insights for me

That is great to hear, and very important

It's fundermentally different perceptually from seeing things
where a still photo can have lots of meaning

If you freeze music at any point you don't get much out of it
Its got to be heard in phrases

Yeah that is a great insight. HOW can you freeze music? You freeze it you kill it because its meaning is flowing.
Does this mean music or hearing is better than perception? Of course not (by the way I am not saying you mean that, I am wondering as I type ). No of course not. I see all the senses as in continuum. hence when you listen to music you may also see flowing images. Music is amazing how it can bring you deep into reveries.

Nothing really is static. When we look at a 'still image' our feelings are always flowing as we look, and also 'matter' itself is always active, never static. So like music 'it' is flowing and not really frozen...