-
I am really interested in different approaches to playing guitar (any instrument). I know that some musicians don't read music and yet can play well, and that others seem to need to see music writ down to play. In this thread I would like to explore this, and first by asking people who are i nterested in this subject whether you consider yourself your approach to music 'left-brain' or 'right-brain'?
I dont want to make this too black and white. I know it is not as simple as that, and that the brain is more over-all involved in all activities, but it is so that some people seem to really need to see music to play and others do not.
I was inspired to start this thread after reading this great article:
PEOPLE WHO DON'T READ MUSIC
That story struck a chord with me!Let me tell you an interesting story:
In the very late 1960�s, I was a member of a Grammy-nominated group, The Box Tops. We had hit records and all that. I was only a tot. We were on the road in the Northeast somewhere. At the hotel, I met a young lady and we struck up a conversation. The conversation drifted to music, and she told me she played classical piano. I got my guitar and we found an empty ballroom with an upright piano. I started playing my guitar and invited her to play along. She said she didn�t know how to do that. Then I said �o.k. you play something and I�ll play along with you.� Then she said �I can�t do that either�. Hmmmmm�. now I�m getting suspicious. I must have looked completely dumbfounded. She laughed. I must have really looked funny. She said �I don�t have any music.� Now, I�m completely disoriented, dizzy and short of breath. My grip on reality loosened, then let go. WHAT??? This cannot be !
She said � If we can find some sheet music, I know I can play that, because I read music really well.� I was perplexed. I said �You mean you just can�t play a song of any kind without the sheet music?� She answered, her lower lip quivering, "No, I never learned to do that.� I was not aware that this was possible ! The world turned upside down. The heavens erupted in a paroxysm of cataclysmic apocalypse and stuff.
Her playing the piano evidently was a stimulus-response behavior, like typing, I surmised. Without the visual stimulus of the dots on the paper, she could not respond. To her, the music WAS the marks on the paper. To me, music was a language I had learned to speak and understand, mostly by LISTENING. We were coming from two totally different places.
I would be interested to know your thoughts about this? The author is not anti reading music, but is rather encouraging people not to think they cannot play music IF they cannot read 'it'.
-
04-12-2012 05:28 PM
-
I knew a piano player like the one described in the quote. She could read/play almost anything classical but was totally incapable of playing without sheet music. These aren't just old wives' tales. But still, I should improve my reading.
-
Yes, the guy who wrote the article above isn't saying people shouldn't learn to read music, and he says he did it himself. He is rather saying that IF you haven't and don't does not mean you cannot play music. That is the big difference.
Originally Posted by coolvinny
Django didn't read music, right yet boy could he play music? And there are other famous great musicians, especially in Jazz, who didn't, and for ages before the reading of music peoples played music. Also what about improvisation?
I sense some get threatened by saying this because they may feel they are being put-down IF they can read music, but if so think how those cant 'read music' might feel at being put down.
Its a tricky one I know lolLast edited by elixzer; 04-13-2012 at 04:02 AM.
-
This is one that gets me right where I live!!
I struggle badly with reading music; I just can't seem to pick up on written rhythm, no matter how much I practise. Yet I can hear something and generally play it back accurately as far as a melody is concerned, and can almost always pick up a rhythm thing straight away. So it's not that I have no sense of rhythm, quite the opposite in fact; I just can't seem to translate what I see on the stave into what I should be playing.
However, whereas I seem to amaze people who are clasically trained by my struggles with the written note, I am equally if not more baffled by the inabilities of people who can only read and not "get" music to hear how a song goes, feel where the changes fall, etc.; and most of all by their complete inability to know/hear/feel where they are in a song when improvising, because it's not written out for them. And believe me, in the workshop band with which I play, I hear a whole load of that, week in, week out - people losing track.
Don't get me wrong, I would love to find some way of making reading, especially sight reading, work for me, but so far it's a real battle........
-
mangotango,
It sounds like you have to build a connection between the rhythms that you can hear to the corresponding symbols on the page.
You may have tried this already, but I would suggest instead of practicing reading for a bit, try notating music that you can pick up by ear.
Also take one rhythmic phrase off of a written something and improvise exclusively with that rhythm.
Each subdivision has only so many places it can go. Eighth notes have 2 initiation points within a beat, 4 within 2 beats, 6 within 3 beats and 8 within 4 beats.
Learn these figures one at a time as a player which is your strength. Later go back to the written page and see if there is any improvement.
That's my best guess "internet analysis" which could easily be totally wrong, but then again it might also prove helpful.
-
To me the word MUSIC is made of two words MUS..( which is divine inspiration and cannot be taught) and IC..( which is an abbreviation for Instrumental Crap and is everything that can be taught). Players that have a marked imbalance between these two worlds will be held in artistic bondage so to speak( not that that is a bad thing) Players that are more to the MUS side of things inspire me players to the IC side usually leave me cold and bored after a tune or two. Players that balance the two in equal strength are the ones who I want to be like( Pat Martino, Ed Bickert, Yo Yo Ma, John Williams the guitarist,Winton Marsalis the list goes on forever). I can read and I can play by ear. It dosn't have to be one or the other it should be both.
Last edited by eddy b.; 04-13-2012 at 10:48 AM.
-
A real classical pianist would have pieces memorized. Story reeks of half truth and untruth.
Jazz is a whole brain activity. You'll get nowhere using only one or the other.
-
+1 Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
-
The example sited in that article is of very little value in that it is totally anecdotal. You could probably find some individual that had characteristics that supported any point you wanted to make.
I took piano lessons from
Fronk van Jaeryoung Lee | Track | Gratis muziek, luister nu
She is an incredible reader. She plays classical concerts in the city and jazz concerts. She's an incredible improviser, and composer. She seems to be able to play by ear any tune I can think of.
So since she's so good at reading music. What conclusions should I make regarding reading music?Last edited by fep; 04-13-2012 at 11:12 AM.
-
I don't think anyone is referring to professional classical pianists here. Obviously there are vastly differing levels of classical pianists out there, many of which mostly give it up after high school and then after a few years they can't remember how to play anything at the level they feel comfortable playing for others.
-
The distinction is a myth. Music is multi-faceted.
-
I was always told to treat music as a language. You need to be able to "read" and "speak" it to be fluent. One without the other is kinda sad. Notes- or words on a page sometimes lack context, and thusly sometimes fail to communicate the whole of what the author intended. But not being able to read- well, we don't like to see that out of our other languages, do we?
-
The guy who wrote that article sounds straight up to me, so I am not really sure where your cynicism is coming from. If I told you some story like he did, and you said it " reeked of half truth and untruth" I would feel offended. it HAPPENED to him and it was a real shock to him, because it made him realize the two VERY different worlds of music. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
As if to really stamp this in, mangotango posts saying he has experienced exactly the same thing! So this is not half truth or untruth but actual experiences you can have. It is just that maybe you have never had this experience is all.
-
You admit that there HAVE been great musicians who cannot 'read music'? Isn't even that term loaded? If I say 'can you READ music' what exactly does it mean IF you can play it? Aren't you playing music and reading as in reading meaning here being able to spontaneously understand the flow of music? Originally Posted by voxwerx
There was a time before the notation of music, right? There was a time before even writing itself, yet people could talk, sing, dance, make music, do art etc etc.
So how would you differentiate that music from the music which is read from a page?
-
First question I would ask is --understanding I am not a professional musician--HOW does it limit you NOT being able to read music? Originally Posted by mangotango
IF it is not for you why then should it be a 'demand'. Do you think this pressure per se is wrong for the people it is wrong for.
Personally the way I want to learn guitar is not to play others songs even I like songs---from a page, but say the feel of Round Midnight comes to me, I can sing it without reading any music from a page ( i LOVE that tune and song!), and to imagine singing it while looking at a sheet just leaves me cold, because a big part of the soul is lost looking at the music sheet.
So reading from me if and when I comes to it, is getting ideas of possible chords, and but from there NOT having that sheet in me face when I am actually doing it.
-
Originally Posted by elixzer
No, I've had the experience. Turned out that the underlying cause had nothing to do with being brainwashed by sheet music, and every thing to do with self-esteem/ability. Likely this woman was no a "classical pianist" but someone who had taken a few lessons at one time. We're simply dealing with someone who's not very good...and that's the kind of player who could be frozen without sheet music, or had no pieces memorized if classical was truly their thing. A not very good one. And it's easy to understand why a musician who's not very good might be reluctant to just sit down and play with a stranger.
It reeks of half truth and untruth in the article because it's being written by someone with a clear agenda. There's really no correlation between the fact that the person could read music and that they couldn't "jam" with the writer. None.
Good musicians understand that music is not an either/or proposal, it's both/and.
-
It leaves you helpless when someone puts a chart in front of you. Originally Posted by elixzer
-
Hi - If left brain does logic, facts, analysis, and right brain does connections, meaning, creativity, then I feel I am more of a left brain thinker/learner. Although I'm not a good notation reader - I can work it out, slowly, but I find it too painful (almost literally, although I believe the brain doesn't actually have any pain receptors!) to have practised enough to get good at sight-reading.
There are some facts (i.e. left brain) that I struggle with, like being able to name the VI chord in any key. I know instantly that Am7 is the VI of C, but have to pause to work out less familiar keys.
If recognising and naming chord shapes is right brain, then I've never had any problem with that. Maybe that's just down to familiarity and practice too - seeing those little chord diagrams you get above the notation.
I'm not sure which side of the brain does aural recognition - naming heard intervals whether melodically or harmonically - but that is my biggest failing. I have been on a mission for some time to solve this problem ...
This is my first post on this forum, but hopefully not a bad introduction too!
Cheers
-
Originally Posted by Mike Floorstand
I was later to find this article, The Two Sides of Music which may be able to answer some of your questions.
It is interesting what you say about pain. Remember that your not just brain but body and soul. So although 'the brain' may not feel pain, the body might and/or the mind might. What often happens to me when I am trying to remember stuff, like where the notes are in a triad, and where one is I tend to go into a trance and start hitting a note and chanting LOL. It is like the creative side of me--if you will is automatically compensating for my getting to serious in analytical thinking. HOWEVER this 'pain' will be also having fruitful results. But ALSO maybe the situation could be telling us 'this way is not for you. That IF there is an enormous often unheard of indigenous history of oral music--or music which is learnt from ear and watching others rather than reading from paper--then maybe your nature is more akin to that way, and so the pain you feel is this friction you feel of beliving you NEED to do it the accepted way?
There are some facts (i.e. left brain) that I struggle with, like being able to name the VI chord in any key. I know instantly that Am7 is the VI of C, but have to pause to work out less familiar keys.
In the artile under the chapter IV. Automaticity the author is basically saying that when we learn new things there happens a period where we have to THINK about what we are doing. A good analogy is learning to drive a car. At first it is clunky, kangeroo petrol, but after driving experience soon we can have a conversation and we are doing all the moves fluently. We are still paying attention, but it is a different attention from when we were a beginner, because our moves have become unconscious.
For example, a beginner on the piano would see the note "D" on the music and think "O.K., treble clef, fourth line from the bottom... uh... let's see... every good boy DOES... that's a "D"... uh... the white key between the 2 black keys. An experienced pianist who has never taught a beginner may laugh at my narrative of all those mental steps just to play a "D", but we all had to think each step out when we were beginners. An experienced musician does not have to consciously think about each step; the right brain ability of automaticity makes it possible to simply make the music happen; the fingers just seem to move "by themselves".VII. Improvisation
In university music schools today, jazz music, including improvisation, is taught in a very theoretical and analytical manner. This music which was born of instinct and raw emotion is now broken down into chord symbols, modal scales and rhythmic patterns, and is taught in such a sterile way that the emotional factor is often lost. I was in a college jazz improvisation class a while back where the instructor, or the textbook, was prone to say things such as: "observe how Charlie Parker skillfully utilizes the tritone substitution by playing the mixolydian mode with a flat-5 and flat-9 over the ii-V-I harmonic progression." Excuse me, but give me a break! I really don't believe that Charlie was thinking about much more than the good looking woman he was checking out across the room; he just played. Parker was well versed in the available theoretical knowledge of the day, but when he improvised, I believe that he did it by sheer instinct. I have never heard a college professor say something like: "just let yourself go, clear your mind, close your eyes, feel the music inside yourself, ride the changes like you are riding a wave, tap into your soul and let the raw emotion flow like a mighty river breaking through a dam, don't think about it, just do it..." You may think this sounds like some kind of weird zen/hippy philosophy, but it is the way real musicians improvise, at least the ones that I would want to hear. I have often heard improvisation that was flawless in every conceivable theoretical way, but that was very boring to listen to because it was totally devoid of feeling.Nice to meet you hereI'm not sure which side of the brain does aural recognition - naming heard intervals whether melodically or harmonically - but that is my biggest failing. I have been on a mission for some time to solve this problem ...
This is my first post on this forum, but hopefully not a bad introduction too!
What do I feel? Well I am not a neurosurgeon, or brain expert, so I just know bits and puieces i have read. I have read some researchers who hate this 'left brain ' 'right brain' analogy. But there ARE kind iof two brains which are like mirror images of each other with a connecting 'bridge' called the Corpus Callosum, and that there was found that when they were disonnected or throufgh stroke etc, that one part of the brain cannot know what the other part is doing etc. My main interest over the years has been mythology, and you can see this dualistic play between 'logic' and 'instinct' symbolized with ancient Greek gods Apollo (god of reason) and Dionysos (god of instinct). But any dualistic concept is usually the habit OF the logical self-appointed part of the mind which assumes dominance and then tries to suppress something it sees as inferior.
So a good example would be a 'logician' and his missionary logicians descending on a group that create a more instinctual music, and telling them they are wrong and MUST "read music". This would be of the same ilk as forcefully 'educating' people from oral cultures to read text .
So is there any good in it? It would be foolish to say there isn't, but the rub is when the IMAGE of the literate way whether with written words or notes is 'the superior way'and tries to force EVERYONE into that box, which then can disenfrachise a creative spirit.
I am learning Ear training from this good guitarist on youtube. he said it is not worthwhile to try and read music BEFORE one knows the language of the guitar. And asks this question:
"Would you ask your child to spell mommy before s/he says 'mommy'?
-
"Would you ask your child to spell mommy before s/he says 'mommy'?
In language it's much easier to say mommy than to learn to spell mommy.
In music, it's much easier to learn to read than to play by ear. The question premise of that question doesn't make sense to m, it compares learning language and learning music as though they are the same. They obviously are not. Look at all the people that speak perfectly well, but quickly give up on music.
____________________
If I had to choose I would work on ear training before learning to read music.
The thing is, you don't have to choose. You can learn both at the same time.
Reading music is so much easier than training your ear, easier than understanding theory, easier than learning the fretboard, easier than improvising, easier than composing.
It's not nearly as hard as learning a language or learning to spell and write. If one already plays guitar and already knows note names, the fretboard and chords, one could easily learn to read music in a week. (To be good enough at it to sight-read, that's another story. Nobody here as saying one has to read well enough to sight-read).
In jazz, music notation is one of the tools we use to communicate with. Why wouldn't someone serious about learning jazz guitar make the small effort required to learn to read music?Last edited by fep; 04-14-2012 at 09:39 AM.
-
Charlie Parker put it very well:
"Now, I'd been getting bored with the stereotyped changes that were being used all the time and I kept thinkg there's bound to be something else. I could hear it sometimes but I couldn't play it. Well, that night I was working over "Cherokee", and as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes I could play the thing I'd been hearing. I came alive"
This famous quote refers to a jam session at The Chili House in NY some time during 1939 when Parker was jamming with guitarist Biddy Fleet, who was pretty advanced for his time and helped Parker with some harmonic concepts. A very nice example of the usefulness of coupling instinct with formal theory.
-
It very well maybe easy for you? That is one of the points of this thread. Some people do NOT find it easy, and yet are told that it is 'easy' by those who do, or think that that is the superior way to play and understand music. What this does is enforces an opinion on possibly people who have a different take on music, and the insistence they are wrong is what causes many to get self-doubt and put their instrument down because they think their way is inferior. IMAGINE if Django had been made to believe that, and also told 'you cannot play guitar with an injured hand'. Originally Posted by fep
How do you know learning language is easier than learning music? And how do you explain that way before reading music was established that there existed musicians who played music? How did they learn to?
Here is the video in question:
Last edited by elixzer; 04-14-2012 at 10:40 AM.
-
Why would the fact that some play music without being able to read mean that you shouldn't learn to read? Wouldn't you have to learn to read for yourself to be able to make that judgement? Then if it's of no value to you, just don't do it. Originally Posted by elixzer
Why do you bring this argument to a jazz forum, if you are so unwilling to consider what people say here. Jeez, I'd think more than 90% here probably read, that's the way it is with jazz. It's like your saying, all you that read music, you are wrong. Seems like you're trolling.
It appears to me that your mind is completely made up. If that is so, why the discussion. You jump on any point that supports your side. You dismiss anything by those that is in conflict with your point, even though those with these points have more experience than you in both playing by ear and reading music.
You site Django as an example, but fail to discuss all the jazz guitarists that do read. How about a random group, other than Django those musicians pictured at the top of this page read music. Why is Django the only one you discuss and consider?
And speaking of Django, from here:
Django Reinhardt
Perhaps he would have been better off if he did learn to read music.However, Django could not read or write musical notation and he was at the mercy of others that could to get his ideas down on paper.
You won't accept that I said reading music is easier than learning to write in a language. Don't ask me to prove it, you prove that writing is easier. Wouldn't that be more fair as you are the one who started this?
I've learned both. Reading music is a simple system with notes running right up a staff, easier than learning the alphabet. Then there are rhythmic values, starting with the whole note and then subdivisions of that. That's about all there is. It could all be explained in less than 10 pages of text to get you to what would be the equivalent of high school English, if I can make that comparison.
Compare that to learning the English language. How many words are there? How many grammatical rules? How many exceptions? How many words pronounced the same but mean different things? Etc.
The level of complexity between the two is so vastly different. I feel silly even discussing it.Last edited by fep; 04-14-2012 at 10:41 AM.
-
That's a really useful article thanks! Originally Posted by elixzer
> "Would you ask your child to spell mommy before s/he says 'mommy'?"
That's interesting too. I think I'd argue that you can't have a very interesting conversation with a child until they are able to read and write
.
But the analogy I'd like to focus on is when the baby is learning how to make different noises "Umma umma DahDah googoogaga" and blowing raspberries. The baby is teaching itself that making its mouth and tongue into lots of different shapes, it can control the sort of sound that comes out. Some or maybe most of this is unconscious, the brain is not willing each muscle into place (as the above article says too). But the baby is learning how to make all the different noises that are needed for language.
If you ask me to play a GM7 my hand will more or less automatically go into the grip and I'll play it.
If you play a GM7 (without telling me what it is) and ask me to copy it, It will take me a several guesses to get anywhere near. I'm like a baby, hearing the word "Mommy" and trying to imitate it by blowing a raspberry!
Anyway I shall use my leftbrain logic to escape this predicament:
- There are lots of ways to learn music and I have been practising only some of them
- I am not very good at music
- therefore, I must have been practising the wrong stuff!
CheersLast edited by Mike Floorstand; 04-14-2012 at 10:54 AM. Reason: typos
-
I don't see it that way at all. To me this is a question of whether learning to read music is beneficial to a jazz guitarist. It's not better than developing your ear, it's just another good tool. Originally Posted by elixzer
Superior, inferior? Those are your words and ideas, not mine. You are the only one that has brought that idea up. Just because you write it doesn't make it true.
Reply With Quote
Pickup Suggestions For Blonde 89 Emperor
Yesterday, 07:27 PM in Guitar, Amps & Gizmos