I play many instruments and have quite a good ear but have always had a mental block about reading music (dots) I like to use Tab but you cannot always get tunes in Tab form
I feel I am missing out by not reading. Any suggestions?
Are there computer programs that can convert ABC notation to Tab?
I got myself some really good piece of software from "Myriad" called "Melody Assistant". You can import MIDI, abc, and other kinds of files into the program, and it will give you a staff, even play it for you.
From the staff, you can program the thing to give you the tablature you want- guitar, mandolin, banjo, harmonica, and even create your own.
Without wanting to sound like some sort of advertisment here, I do have to say that this program certainly helped me make sense of staff, and it costs 20Eur only.
Here's the address: "www.myriad-online.com". You can download the demo directly from the site.
I'm not an expert, but I'd say that if you have a good ear and a good understanding of several instruments you should have no problem learning music very quickly indeed (I'm not going to go into the relative merits of "ear versus dots" as that's already been done to death several times over ).
First get yourself a good basic book on how to read music (there are loads) - it will give you a lot more info than I can in a short post, but here are a couple of useful learning tips that were passed to me a while back:
Learn the position of the notes on the stave - spaces are easy - FACE starting from the bottom, and the lines are EGBDF starting from the bottom. There are a number of mnemonics for remembering this but the one I learned (which dates me I guess ) was Every Good Boy Deserves Favour. But if you join them all up they just run alphabetically: EFGABCDEF (see the FACE lurking in there...)
Now, let's say for simplicity that your instrument is a keyless flute. All you have to do is equate the location of the dots on the stave with the position of a finger. So for example the low D (all fingers down) is a dot immediately below the bottom line; the G (holding down the top 3 fingers) is on the second line up from the bottom etc etc.
Once you have that, then it's on to an understanding of sharps and flats, key signatures etc, but I think that's too much to go into here.
Perhaps this is a bit off-beam, but I improved my ability to use printed music immeasurably by doing Music GCSE over a year in an evening class. Granted, a lot of it was about performance and listening, but that all-round approach did me a lot of good. I don't sight-read and rarely learn tunes just from dots but I can now use printed music to follow a tune, even a classical score with a lot of parts, and pick bits out of tunes that give me grief.
By the way, I was 46 when I did that and I got an A-star. How could I possibly not tell you that!
It's there... I've had to help others get past their preconceptions and mental blocks about notation... Generally I start with rhythm and later pitch... We have a lot of fun with it, stripping it of any serious take on it, and through games and lilting and slapping and the like they have always managed to break down that barrier and to in the end find enjoyment with the new language, without that taking over their soul and turning them into zombies...
There was a fun little book simply called, I think, "Reading Music"... Let's see if I can find it, one moment ~
"Learn to Read Music" ~ by Howard Shanet
Publisher: Prentice Hall & IBD (Jun 1971)
ISBN-10: 0671210270
ISBN-13: 978-0671210274
&
Read Music from Scratch ~ by Neil Sissons
Publisher: Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Ltd (Jul 2000)
ISBN-10: 0851622682
ISBN-13: 978-0851622682
Then you can swing it on your own without anyone else looking on...
As far as what some might call 'illiteracy' in this area, in a long history with music and old codgers, I never found an older musician in Eire or elsewhere who couldn't read some kind of notation, and that includes you, you can read tab... There were several systems current in Eire and I saw a lot of collections too, with the dots... There were numerous scribbled crib notes here and there and little notebooks too.
Curiously, my experience, which has its limits, I have come across more younger musicians, the 'born again', who can't read and who swear it off ~ as if it had demonic possession possibilities built in the arcane script ~ than ever in the past or with the older and more based trad musicians. Among those that read variations but not dots, I never met and older musician who didn't want to learn to read them... Again, that is my experience, on the whole, there are always exceptions...
You'll be able to find all you need on the web - including some useful programs to help 'train' your ear for identifying intervals etc. There are plenty of games for kids aimed at teaching musical notation; you may as well make it fun. They work just as well for adults.
I use both ear learning and the dots, and I would be severely restricted without the latter. Even playing in two regular sessions, I would rarely encouter new tunes. I might learn half a dozen in a year if I was lucky. By reading the dots the number of tunes available to me is virtually unlimited.
Last night I flicked through a book of '1000 English Country Dance Tunes' which I bought years ago for a song (pardon the pun). I find I can look at the dots and translate them into a good representation of the tune as it would be played, without picking up an instrument. In five minutes I could pick out a dozen tunes I wanted to try out on the box - and also identify at least twenty well known 'Irish' tunes found in English publications from the 18th century under different names... but that's a different thread I couldn't do this from the ABCs, although there are probably people on this site who could.
Yes! ~ Learn the ABCs, at least eventually... They are a great help for the memory, just jotting down quickly an opening bar/measure of music you've just gotten off of someone at the session. That's what beer matts are for... Then when you get home, sometimes that's all you need to remind you of the rest of the tune... ABC notation, in a few different guises, was one of the alternative notation systems going around Eire, that and a similar form, Solfeggio, you know, that song they sing in "The Sound of Music", on the steps ~ "Doe, a deer, a female deer ~"... Don't spread it about, but -we, my wife and I, went to those steps while in Austria recently and did a little dance on them, singing the first bit of the song very quietly...
I'm still not that great at reading music, but what's helped the most is this book of classical exercises (Wohlfarht) my teacher has me doing to improve my technique. I find that with the Irish tunes, I love them and they're easy to memorize, so I learn them right away and don't bother looking at the music again. With the classical stuff, though, it's one long page of music that I don't even like all that much so I intentionally try *not* to memorize it, which forces me to read---which has improved my reading skills.
Another thing is that with Irish tunes, I have recordings of everything before I ever look at the music so I know how it's supposed to sound, so I'm kind of depending on my ear anyway, which doesn't help the reading side of it. With the classical stuff it's all unknown and I have to figure out the melody from the notes---again, it forces me to read. Not my favorite thing to do by a long shot, but I really want to know how to read so I make myself do it.
So my advice would be to pick some brand new material that you've never heard before. And maybe find a teacher for a few lessons---teachers can be great for making you do things you might not be inclined to do on your own.
Wise words K, chasing up help, as you've started here, is always a great direction to take... The right teacher will get to know you and design lessons to meet your needs... On top of learning to 'read' the dots, you have the opportunity to also further your understanding of your instrument(s) of choice through the guidance of another... You likely even have friends that would be willing to trade tunes, ideas and skills like this...
Steve.. I'd be interested to hear what you did in music GCSE (also got an A*, but I'm a bit younger than you :P ) . I was a better musician than my classmates, and I was told to go and compose for 2 years solid (2 final pieces, 30 minutes work..). We had several people who couldn't read music, and weren't taught to..
All I can say is that being able to read music is a greatly valuable ability. I learn almost everything by ear, but being able to write down something certainly helps in remembering it down the line.
Maybe you could ask a friend who can read music to sit with you for twenty minutes and go through it- its surprisingly simple to learn.
One important advantage of the dots (possibly the most important) is that you can instantly see the shape of the tune, the rise and fall of the melodic line, and if you can do this you're less likely to be distracted by detail which can, and does, vary a lot from one printed version of the tune to another.
Reading music is one useful tool among many, but it is only a tool and as far as Irish traditional music is concerned it is not the best tool for learning to play the music as traditional music other than for getting a first overall view of the shape of the tune.
Did someone mention this already? The ABC Convert-A-Matic at http://www.concertina.net coverts abcs to a pdf of sheet music.
I like to point out to students that if you can read words on a page, you can learn to hear the music from a sheet of dots. It's really the same process--when we read a line of words, we "hear" them phonetically. So "you" and "ewe" sound the same in our heads, even though they mean different things (unless you're a lovesick shepherd). And we hear rhymes at the end of lines of poetry, etc.
Reading music works the same way--with some practice, that smudge of ink with the little flag on it, resting on the second line up from the bottom, rings a "G" note in your mind's ear. In short, once you understand what the symbols mean, you can hear the music in your head, just like hearing a voice reading when you scan these words.
ABCs and tablature work the same way, just a different set of symbols.
Ditto on what Lazyhound said, on all counts ~ and you can see the pattern that is the rhythm and flow of the tune, the phrasing the melody defines, except for a rare few 'new wave' numbers...
Yes mouser, it is a 'written language', and a visual one, more like pictographs than English, showing size and the high and low and flow of it all, beautifully...
Just got The Basic guide on How to Read Music by Helen Cooper - #she insists that you pick out the notes on your own instrument - Looks good so far.
The Basic guide on How to Read Music
ISBN 0-7119-0095-7
Like you I am confused by the ABCs and Comhaltas's different version of abc .
A lad working with me Hears the music as he reads it much lke the rest of us mortals with a good novel.
Best of luck
The best way to learn to read music is work on those tunes you already know well having first learnt them by ear. Simply get copies of the notation for those tunes you know well and work on those. You can get the notation from this and other internet sites. A book from the library or Amazon will help.
When I mostly played the guitar I never made much progress learning to read sheet music. You stare at all those dots stacked on top of one another, attempt to arrange your fingers, and then give up and just mess about strumming and trying to do fancy riffs and blues licks (this is called noodling, and is a way of idling away your time at home, but generally regarded as a criminal act at a session!) The important thing for me was a change of instrument, and to switch to mandolin was a revelation. Because I was unfamiliar with an instrument tuned in 5ths, I was able to learn from the dots, starting with simple tunes that I might not have bothered with on the guitar, and proceeding through levels of difficulty in the way that a child learns. In the early days I found polkas (played fairly slowly) were great practice pieces. The difference between dots and tabs or ABC is not just (as Lazyhound has said) that you can see the rise and fall of the melodic line but that you can see the rhythm. It's of great benefit to clap or tap out the rhythm from the dots while counting, before even attempting to play the melody. I've got a very old book on learning the piano and it begins with the stern admonishment that "a wrong note in the right place is only half wrong, but a right note in the wrong place is totally wrong!" I'm having a bash at a few strathspeys from printed sources at the moment - steepens up the learning curve! The ultimate reference is of course what you hear, or what someone can demonstrate for you, but that's always been so.
I can't play instruments from dots.
I trained as a singer, can play very well by ear, and sing the tune to myself, playing what I am singing.
It makes transposition a lot easier - just play what you are singing.
It also means I can sit and watch tele and learn tunes with a tune book on my knee without complaints about the noise.
I use abc, read music , & play by ear.
I do not use tablature so cannot comment.
Chris Walshaw has the following tab program on his site. http://www.tabledit.com/
Wish I could tell you how well it works.
Cheers
I just looked at the screen shots for tabledit &
it looks like a very busy program. I hate that.
It took me a while to find an acceptable program for converting abc to sheet music.
You have probably seen Nigel Gatherer's mandolin tab http://www.nigelgatherer.com/tunes/tab.html
His website has an email. Maybe he knows a good abc to tab converter for other instruments.
Reading Music
Reading Music
I play many instruments and have quite a good ear but have always had a mental block about reading music (dots) I like to use Tab but you cannot always get tunes in Tab form
I feel I am missing out by not reading. Any suggestions?
Are there computer programs that can convert ABC notation to Tab?
# Posted on May 3rd 2007 by hedgeman
Re: Reading Music
Hi Hedgeman,
I got myself some really good piece of software from "Myriad" called "Melody Assistant". You can import MIDI, abc, and other kinds of files into the program, and it will give you a staff, even play it for you.
From the staff, you can program the thing to give you the tablature you want- guitar, mandolin, banjo, harmonica, and even create your own.
Without wanting to sound like some sort of advertisment here, I do have to say that this program certainly helped me make sense of staff, and it costs 20Eur only.
Here's the address: "www.myriad-online.com". You can download the demo directly from the site.
Hope this is satisfactory,
Cheers,
# Posted on May 3rd 2007 by Fanning
Re: Reading Music
I'm not an expert, but I'd say that if you have a good ear and a good understanding of several instruments you should have no problem learning music very quickly indeed (I'm not going to go into the relative merits of "ear versus dots" as that's already been done to death several times over
).
First get yourself a good basic book on how to read music (there are loads) - it will give you a lot more info than I can in a short post, but here are a couple of useful learning tips that were passed to me a while back:
Learn the position of the notes on the stave - spaces are easy - FACE starting from the bottom, and the lines are EGBDF starting from the bottom. There are a number of mnemonics for remembering this but the one I learned (which dates me I guess
) was Every Good Boy Deserves Favour. But if you join them all up they just run alphabetically: EFGABCDEF (see the FACE lurking in there...)
Now, let's say for simplicity that your instrument is a keyless flute. All you have to do is equate the location of the dots on the stave with the position of a finger. So for example the low D (all fingers down) is a dot immediately below the bottom line; the G (holding down the top 3 fingers) is on the second line up from the bottom etc etc.
Once you have that, then it's on to an understanding of sharps and flats, key signatures etc, but I think that's too much to go into here.
Hope that helps a bit...
Rhod
# Posted on May 3rd 2007 by Rhod
Re: Reading Music
I used the midi files and sheet music available here on this very site to help me regain the rudimentary reading skills I learned as a child.
Pick a simple tune that you know well, play along with the midi, look at the dots as you play... and hey presto!
And yes, it's true, reading is not sufficient by itself to learn this music--not by a long shot--but it can be useful.
# Posted on May 3rd 2007 by mickray
Re: Reading Music
Perhaps this is a bit off-beam, but I improved my ability to use printed music immeasurably by doing Music GCSE over a year in an evening class. Granted, a lot of it was about performance and listening, but that all-round approach did me a lot of good. I don't sight-read and rarely learn tunes just from dots but I can now use printed music to follow a tune, even a classical score with a lot of parts, and pick bits out of tunes that give me grief.
By the way, I was 46 when I did that and I got an A-star. How could I possibly not tell you that!
# Posted on May 3rd 2007 by Steve Shaw
Re: Reading Music
Scales. Read scales and you should be grand. It's not as hard as it looks. G'Luck.
# Posted on May 3rd 2007 by Farr
Re: Reading Music
It's there... I've had to help others get past their preconceptions and mental blocks about notation... Generally I start with rhythm and later pitch... We have a lot of fun with it, stripping it of any serious take on it, and through games and lilting and slapping and the like they have always managed to break down that barrier and to in the end find enjoyment with the new language, without that taking over their soul and turning them into zombies...
There was a fun little book simply called, I think, "Reading Music"... Let's see if I can find it, one moment ~
"Learn to Read Music" ~ by Howard Shanet
Publisher: Prentice Hall & IBD (Jun 1971)
ISBN-10: 0671210270
ISBN-13: 978-0671210274
&
Read Music from Scratch ~ by Neil Sissons
Publisher: Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Ltd (Jul 2000)
ISBN-10: 0851622682
ISBN-13: 978-0851622682
Then you can swing it on your own without anyone else looking on...
As far as what some might call 'illiteracy' in this area, in a long history with music and old codgers, I never found an older musician in Eire or elsewhere who couldn't read some kind of notation, and that includes you, you can read tab... There were several systems current in Eire and I saw a lot of collections too, with the dots... There were numerous scribbled crib notes here and there and little notebooks too.
Curiously, my experience, which has its limits, I have come across more younger musicians, the 'born again', who can't read and who swear it off ~ as if it had demonic possession possibilities built in the arcane script ~ than ever in the past or with the older and more based trad musicians. Among those that read variations but not dots, I never met and older musician who didn't want to learn to read them... Again, that is my experience, on the whole, there are always exceptions...
# Posted on May 3rd 2007 by ceolachan
Re: Reading Music
Hedgeman,
You'll be able to find all you need on the web - including some useful programs to help 'train' your ear for identifying intervals etc. There are plenty of games for kids aimed at teaching musical notation; you may as well make it fun. They work just as well for adults.
I use both ear learning and the dots, and I would be severely restricted without the latter. Even playing in two regular sessions, I would rarely encouter new tunes. I might learn half a dozen in a year if I was lucky. By reading the dots the number of tunes available to me is virtually unlimited.
Last night I flicked through a book of '1000 English Country Dance Tunes' which I bought years ago for a song (pardon the pun). I find I can look at the dots and translate them into a good representation of the tune as it would be played, without picking up an instrument. In five minutes I could pick out a dozen tunes I wanted to try out on the box - and also identify at least twenty well known 'Irish' tunes found in English publications from the 18th century under different names... but that's a different thread
I couldn't do this from the ABCs, although there are probably people on this site who could.
# Posted on May 3rd 2007 by bc_box_player
Re: Reading Music
Yes! ~ Learn the ABCs, at least eventually... They are a great help for the memory, just jotting down quickly an opening bar/measure of music you've just gotten off of someone at the session. That's what beer matts are for... Then when you get home, sometimes that's all you need to remind you of the rest of the tune... ABC notation, in a few different guises, was one of the alternative notation systems going around Eire, that and a similar form, Solfeggio, you know, that song they sing in "The Sound of Music", on the steps ~ "Doe, a deer, a female deer ~"... Don't spread it about, but -we, my wife and I, went to those steps while in Austria recently and did a little dance on them, singing the first bit of the song very quietly...
# Posted on May 3rd 2007 by ceolachan
Re: Reading Music
Here's a site to get you started:
http://www.musictheory.net/
I'm still not that great at reading music, but what's helped the most is this book of classical exercises (Wohlfarht) my teacher has me doing to improve my technique. I find that with the Irish tunes, I love them and they're easy to memorize, so I learn them right away and don't bother looking at the music again. With the classical stuff, though, it's one long page of music that I don't even like all that much so I intentionally try *not* to memorize it, which forces me to read---which has improved my reading skills.
Another thing is that with Irish tunes, I have recordings of everything before I ever look at the music so I know how it's supposed to sound, so I'm kind of depending on my ear anyway, which doesn't help the reading side of it. With the classical stuff it's all unknown and I have to figure out the melody from the notes---again, it forces me to read. Not my favorite thing to do by a long shot, but I really want to know how to read so I make myself do it.
So my advice would be to pick some brand new material that you've never heard before. And maybe find a teacher for a few lessons---teachers can be great for making you do things you might not be inclined to do on your own.
# Posted on May 3rd 2007 by kennedy
Re: Reading Music
Wise words K, chasing up help, as you've started here, is always a great direction to take... The right teacher will get to know you and design lessons to meet your needs... On top of learning to 'read' the dots, you have the opportunity to also further your understanding of your instrument(s) of choice through the guidance of another... You likely even have friends that would be willing to trade tunes, ideas and skills like this...
# Posted on May 3rd 2007 by ceolachan
Re: Reading Music
Steve.. I'd be interested to hear what you did in music GCSE (also got an A*, but I'm a bit younger than you :P ) . I was a better musician than my classmates, and I was told to go and compose for 2 years solid (2 final pieces, 30 minutes work..). We had several people who couldn't read music, and weren't taught to..
All I can say is that being able to read music is a greatly valuable ability. I learn almost everything by ear, but being able to write down something certainly helps in remembering it down the line.
Maybe you could ask a friend who can read music to sit with you for twenty minutes and go through it- its surprisingly simple to learn.
# Posted on May 3rd 2007 by Sean Clery
Re: Reading Music
If you do a google for "abc2tab", you'll find a free program which converts abc to tab for guitar, hammered dulcimer or mandolin/GDAE tuned banjo.
It's a bit primitive and rather fussy about the abc it accepts - I might have a go at improving it if I get a spare hour at work.
# Posted on May 3rd 2007 by Ceratonia
Re: Reading Music
I love melody assistant
# Posted on May 3rd 2007 by RoisinB
Re: Reading Music
I was told by a man who had played music for 40 years after I had trouble reading music that it was just a matter of practice. It helped me!
# Posted on May 3rd 2007 by dancer1337
Re: Reading Music
One important advantage of the dots (possibly the most important) is that you can instantly see the shape of the tune, the rise and fall of the melodic line, and if you can do this you're less likely to be distracted by detail which can, and does, vary a lot from one printed version of the tune to another.
Reading music is one useful tool among many, but it is only a tool and as far as Irish traditional music is concerned it is not the best tool for learning to play the music as traditional music other than for getting a first overall view of the shape of the tune.
# Posted on May 3rd 2007 by lazyhound
Re: Reading Music
Did someone mention this already? The ABC Convert-A-Matic at http://www.concertina.net coverts abcs to a pdf of sheet music.
I like to point out to students that if you can read words on a page, you can learn to hear the music from a sheet of dots. It's really the same process--when we read a line of words, we "hear" them phonetically. So "you" and "ewe" sound the same in our heads, even though they mean different things (unless you're a lovesick shepherd). And we hear rhymes at the end of lines of poetry, etc.
Reading music works the same way--with some practice, that smudge of ink with the little flag on it, resting on the second line up from the bottom, rings a "G" note in your mind's ear. In short, once you understand what the symbols mean, you can hear the music in your head, just like hearing a voice reading when you scan these words.
ABCs and tablature work the same way, just a different set of symbols.
# Posted on May 3rd 2007 by Will CPT
Re: Reading Music
Ditto on what Lazyhound said, on all counts ~ and you can see the pattern that is the rhythm and flow of the tune, the phrasing the melody defines, except for a rare few 'new wave' numbers...
# Posted on May 3rd 2007 by ceolachan
Re: Reading Music
Yes mouser, it is a 'written language', and a visual one, more like pictographs than English, showing size and the high and low and flow of it all, beautifully...
# Posted on May 3rd 2007 by ceolachan
Re: Reading Music
Just got The Basic guide on How to Read Music by Helen Cooper - #she insists that you pick out the notes on your own instrument - Looks good so far.
The Basic guide on How to Read Music
ISBN 0-7119-0095-7
Like you I am confused by the ABCs and Comhaltas's different version of abc .
A lad working with me Hears the music as he reads it much lke the rest of us mortals with a good novel.
Best of luck
# Posted on May 3rd 2007 by John B
Re: Reading Music
The best way to learn to read music is work on those tunes you already know well having first learnt them by ear. Simply get copies of the notation for those tunes you know well and work on those. You can get the notation from this and other internet sites. A book from the library or Amazon will help.
# Posted on May 3rd 2007 by Jon_bailey
Re: Reading Music
When I mostly played the guitar I never made much progress learning to read sheet music. You stare at all those dots stacked on top of one another, attempt to arrange your fingers, and then give up and just mess about strumming and trying to do fancy riffs and blues licks (this is called noodling, and is a way of idling away your time at home, but generally regarded as a criminal act at a session!) The important thing for me was a change of instrument, and to switch to mandolin was a revelation. Because I was unfamiliar with an instrument tuned in 5ths, I was able to learn from the dots, starting with simple tunes that I might not have bothered with on the guitar, and proceeding through levels of difficulty in the way that a child learns. In the early days I found polkas (played fairly slowly) were great practice pieces. The difference between dots and tabs or ABC is not just (as Lazyhound has said) that you can see the rise and fall of the melodic line but that you can see the rhythm. It's of great benefit to clap or tap out the rhythm from the dots while counting, before even attempting to play the melody. I've got a very old book on learning the piano and it begins with the stern admonishment that "a wrong note in the right place is only half wrong, but a right note in the wrong place is totally wrong!" I'm having a bash at a few strathspeys from printed sources at the moment - steepens up the learning curve! The ultimate reference is of course what you hear, or what someone can demonstrate for you, but that's always been so.
# Posted on May 4th 2007 by RichardB
Re: Reading Music
I can't play instruments from dots.
I trained as a singer, can play very well by ear, and sing the tune to myself, playing what I am singing.
It makes transposition a lot easier - just play what you are singing.
It also means I can sit and watch tele and learn tunes with a tune book on my knee without complaints about the noise.
# Posted on May 4th 2007 by geoffwright
Re: Reading Music
No doubt the pirmary importance of developing that blessing, the ears... Ears first!
# Posted on May 4th 2007 by ceolachan
Re: Reading Music
I use abc, read music , & play by ear.
I do not use tablature so cannot comment.
Chris Walshaw has the following tab program on his site.
http://www.tabledit.com/
Wish I could tell you how well it works.
Cheers
# Posted on May 7th 2007 by Tonya
Re: Reading Music
I just looked at the screen shots for tabledit &
it looks like a very busy program. I hate that.
It took me a while to find an acceptable program for converting abc to sheet music.
You have probably seen Nigel Gatherer's mandolin tab
http://www.nigelgatherer.com/tunes/tab.html
His website has an email. Maybe he knows a good abc to tab converter for other instruments.
# Posted on May 7th 2007 by Tonya