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I can sight read extremely well if I already know the tune
This is a serious point really. I can sight read as a memory aid. That is if I have gone over the piece a few times, sort of learned it but not quite then I can "read" it at tempo.
I'm not a good sight reader at all so I need to work out the part/piece quite a bit before I can read it well. But I think this's a more realistic notion of sight reading than the notion of sight reading where one is expected to perform a piece of music on the fly that they've never seen before just by reading. The good sight readers I know are classical musicians but even they all work on their parts before the actual gigs (and also do rehearsals).
Do you actually know a classical sight reader on any instrument who is so good at sight reading that you can just put Donna Lee in front of them and they can play it at tempo even though they've never even heard of the tune? Most people wouldn't be able to do it from the technical standpoint alone without working on the challenging parts.
So then what is sight reading really? How unfamiliar one needs to be with the tune they are reading so they are considered "sight reading" it?Last edited by Tal_175; 04-16-2021 at 06:49 PM.
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04-15-2021 09:33 AM
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Originally Posted by Tal_175
Frankly a lot of my gigs from the late 70's to the 90's were sight reading gigs, particularly big band and theater shows.
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Sight reading, you've never heard the tune before, you look at the tune for a minute and then play it.
I was in a Big Band competition in College (Pacific Coast Jazz Festival at UC Berkley), I think they gave us 10 minutes to look over the tune for the sight reading competition, we couldn't play our instruments during that review, mostly the Director just pointed out tempo and key changes during our review. Then we played the tune as a Band, one shot at it. Seemed to me the guitar players had the hardest time with this.
I imagine there are horn players that could sight read Donna Lee. But if they're that good they probably have heard that tune, it would have to be a different tune.
Can guitar players do that, don't know... ask Reg, maybe he could.
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My sight reading skills are quite dependent on the style of music. But it is very much a requisite of working as a professional musician in London. The working Guitarists I know are generally pretty decent readers. I sort of forget there are those who can’t read tbh as terrible as it sounds.
It is extremely common to do gigs with no rehearsals. Read charts on the gig etc esp in big bands. I do this a fair bit.
But I would certainly not say I have brilliant sight reading. But the more you do....
At the end of the day, it’s all about experience. You can’t theory your way into reading. You just have to do it.
If you out DL in front of a classical musician they would read the notes but it wouldn’t sound like jazz. OTOH jazz musicians sound like bebop when they read Bach so....
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Originally Posted by DavidKOS
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Originally Posted by fep
Guitar players are often notoriously bad sight readers, hence the common joke:
"How do you make the guitar player turn down?
Give him the chart."
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Originally Posted by Tal_175
I even got to read the bass book for Lee Castle and the "Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra"...a ghost band as Jimmy was long gone.
Mostly I saw the music at the first rehearsal for shows, and on the gig for dance bands. Once in a while I got parts for theater shows beforehand.
One of my students asked once what was the value in him learning to sight reading music, and my answer was "the value is that you can play thousands of dollars of gigs that a non-reader would never be considered for."
Of course in lots of musical groups I worked in, it was all head arrangements, by ear, no sheet music, like every rock band and country gig I ever had.
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One thing I’d say about reading is that at first it’s very hard, painful. But at some point if you keep doing it, it actually becomes really fun.
I suppose it’s a bit like exercise.
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Originally Posted by christianm77
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I guess it also depends on how high stake the gig is and who the other players are or what are the expectations of the musical director/conductor (if there is one).
I heard Bruce Foreman say in his podcast that he is a better sight reader than most guitarists but he would play the wrong notes and make mistakes occasionally but still gets away with it (paraphrasing obviously).Last edited by Tal_175; 04-15-2021 at 10:33 AM.
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All these jokes about guitars struggling with reading. How many middle Cs are on a piano? On a horn?
When a note gets played in only ONE place it sure makes things easier.
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Originally Posted by christianm77
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Originally Posted by DavidKOS
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Originally Posted by Tal_175
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Unless it’s William Leavitt in which case it’s ‘oh god it’s this one again.’
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Originally Posted by christianm77
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How do you get a mediocre lazy guitar player to turn down? PUT A CHART IN FRONT OF HIM>
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Originally Posted by DavidKOS
NB: just being able to read is no guarantee of plum reading gigs these days. But it is a prerequisite.
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If by reading charts, what's meant is only reading the chords (and not in the standard sheet music notation) on the fly, but not the head, I've done that in jam sessions and in a couple of small gigs. If a tune that I don't know is called, I can pull out my IRealPro and comp through the changes. I think that's pretty doable if you know 20 or so standards already. I don't really consider that sight reading.
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Originally Posted by Tal_175
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Originally Posted by AllanAllen
and there is no real excuse for not reading single lines on a Jazz chart
I suck at it personally though. I dont practice reading enough jazz so I struggle with the rhythms, whereas I can read renaissance CG pieces fairly easily as the rhythm and harmony is so simple, am a little worse at sight reading Sor and that is about the extent I practice.
The problem you get with classical is much of it is over-fingered so you wind up reading it as tablature, not notes
Supposedly John Williams can (could?) sight read anything - concert pieces, whatever
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Originally Posted by christianm77
I did "Me and My Girl" in a big Manhattan production, which is largely banjo, and a guy from the audience kept asking me if I tuned it in 5ths, and I just smiled and said, "Couldn't you tell?"
He wouldn't stop asking me, so I finally said, "What does it matter if you can't tell the difference?"
He just let out a big moan.
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Who tunes a banjo in 5ths?
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Originally Posted by sgcim
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Originally Posted by christianm77
Transcriber wanted
Today, 04:35 PM in Improvisation