the thing that puzzled me was that they needed the music at all. Do some people really have that hard a time memorizing simple tunes? I've always had an excellent memory so it's hard for me to relate to people who don't.
Now before the flamers get going on this thread, please try to take the question seriously. Personally, I would love to be more skilled at reading music. I think my memory might get in the way of that because by the time I've played through the tune a few times, I have it memorized and don't need the music any more---which means I don't get a lot of practice at sightreading. Not that I need to be good at sightreading for this kind of music, but it would still be nice.
Sheet music is just an aid to picking up a new tune like a recording. The tunes should be committed to memory as soon as possible and the dots dispensed with as it's only then that the player can put some expression and feeling into the music which is absolutely essential for trad. Kennedy, you're approach is perfect in that you only use the music until you've memorised the tune - whoever was playing Father Kelly should not really have been giving a performance if they relied on the dots to get through the tune!
I don't have a good memory so it does take me a lot of reading/listening to learn tunes - but I wouldn't play a piece out with music. If you don't know a piece well enough to play wihout music I don't htink you know it well enough to perform. There is a stage beyond knowing the notes.
I have the opposite problem to Kennedy, I sightread tunes and then decide what I want to learn! However, it's useful when I'm sitting at work to be able to read the tunes being posted and print off the ones I want to learn!!
As a mainline musician in my non-ITM life, reading the spots is a fact of life an a necessity.
However, as I have made my way through ITM in the past few years (being a relative late-comer to seriously playing Trational music) the spots are a problem for me because they are a crutch.
Whle the spots help learn a tune's "bones" with some precision, I find myself having difficulty getting into tunes I have just learned. My teacher who teaches 85% by ear acknowledges the need to read the spots-grudgingly. ( He calls it "paper-training".
With tunes learned 'by ear' it takes a bit longer to get the details right, particularly on more complicated pieces, or passages with quirky parts. But I think I focus much harder when learning 'by ear'.
On balance, many players don't have access to the quality of teacher I am lucky to have. So the spots really become the big part of learning a repertoire of tunes.
I had the odd experience once at a music-for-dancing workshop, where it was necessary for the organisers to provide the dots and for participants to be able to read them, that when I had in front of me the printed music for a tune I already had in my head (about 3/4 of them) it confused me and slowed me down. I had to push the music stand away out of focus for those tunes in order to play them fluently.
Oh good... more dots vs. ear debate. You know, I was just thinking we needed to revisit this subject! LOL
FWIW, my guess is that the woman in the video is an accomplished violin player that is used to playing classical with sheet music for a reference. I don't have much experience in classical music (beyond 2 years of orchestra when I was 10 years old...), but classical musicians generally "know" the pieces they're playing, and just have the music as a reference, don't they? I can't imagine that they are out performing stuff completely cold and sight reading... or am I way off base on this?
I also think memory is something that you can often improve with practice. So is listening. Those are two things that we don't generally think of needing to practice to make better. It's similar to reading music, in that regard. You have to practice it to get good at it. But you're less likely to make improvement if you believe that you "don't have a good memory"
I'm not that great at reading music... I need to have heard the tune before I can read the music.
I mainly get taught by ear and if I do learn a tune from the dots I try to have it off by heart as soon as possible! I find I can play it better when I'm not looking at the notes and know it just by memory.
"FWIW, my guess is that the woman in the video is an accomplished violin player that is used to playing classical with sheet music for a reference"
That's what was puzzling me---why anyone would need a reference for such a simple, easily-memorized tune, especially if they'd played/practiced it before. And it looked to me like they were using it for more than the occasional reference---they're looking at it almost the whole time. And yet the playing is polished, so it's obviously not the first time they're looking at it.
I'm much more like Trevor---if I know the tune, the music just confuses me.
Yeah, but nervousness can make you fall back on something familiar.
I'm not really one to talk much in this debate... I can't read music (well, I *can*, but only at about 4-5 dots per minute, because I have to look closely and think "ok, that note is three lines above the bottom...")
I wouldn't necessarily blame the playing in that clip on the sheet music, although the dots aren't helping matters. (I can imagine that she has the cute little triplet run in the B part notated just so, and faithfully plays it every damn time through the "song.")
No, the trouble here is that she's playing trad tunes while bringing to bear every single ounce of baggage from her classical training--vibrato on every note, sacrificing pulse for tone production, phrasing as if this is a sound track to a romance movie. In short, ladeling on the syrup instead of letting the tune speak for itself.
And it kills it. If that's not muzak, I don't know what is.
Musicians who use the dots a lot (i.e., classical players) tend to devleop a dependency on them. Even if they have a piece memorized, many still prefer to have the dots in front of them, "just in case." For two-hour far-ranging concertos I can understand that. But if you can't trust yourself to make it through 16 or 32 bars of a simple tune without a written reference, then you're not really inside the music, eh?
"But if you can't trust yourself to make it through 16 or 32 bars of a simple tune without a written reference, then you're not really inside the music, eh?"
I love reading sheet music. It's like a magical language. Give out sheet music to a competent choir or orchestra and you have instant good music. Maybe they're not suitable for ITM, but for much else they're great and I won't hear anybody diss them. DOTS FTW!
"Do some people really have that hard a time memorizing simple tunes?"
I have a number of friends who play classical violin, and all of them (except for one, who plays some Irish tunes and makes a point of learning them by ear) are positively *blown away* by the fact that I learn by ear! and know dozens of tunes by heart! These violinists all play in orchestras, and they play music that is melodically more complex than what we play, and it makes sense for them to rely on sheet music. But for many of them it's gotten to the point that they cannot fathom *not* using sheet music, even for highly repetitive 32-bar tunes.
The first decade of my musical education was classical, and I relied heavily on sheet music during that time, to the point that if you took my sheet music away, I could do nothing with the instrument I played (recorder, then piano). And some of the music I played, on recorder anyway, was quite simple, but I still didn't memorize it because I could always rely on the sheet music. Although it's possibly (and quite easy) to feel out patterns and structures from sheet music, you quite easily get away with not identifying patterns in music if you can consult a page for the next note; on the other hand, feeling out patterns and structures in music is unavoidable. I can't memorize an arbitrary sequence of 256 notes, but I can memorize a 32 bar reel without much difficulty at all, because I can break the 256 notes (give or take) into chunks that make sense. I routinely see classical players whose technical skills far, far surpass mine, but who don't have my ability to listen for patterns and structure in music, and that deficiency turns a 32-bar reel into an arbitrary sequence of 256 notes (albeit perhaps one that is quite pleasant to the ear). Witness this thread - http://www.violinist.com/discussion/response.cfm?ID=11734 - in which a classically trained violinist/violist with 15 or so years experience declares that she just can't learn by ear, end of story, and then struggles mightily through an exercise of figuring out how to play Happy Birthday without sheet music. (I figured that tune out in a minute or so, after 8 months on the fiddle, and I'm no prodigy.)
As others have said, the violinist in the youtube clip is obviously classically trained, and doesn't seem to have a feel for the highly repetitive structure of the reel she's playing.
Question for those of you who have had the, er, pleasure of attending beginners' trad sessions in which everyone's playing from sheet music: who attends these sessions? Beginners on their instruments? Classically-trained crossover folks? Both?
(I just remembered my second fiddle lesson: my teacher had taught me a simple polka, by ear, during my first lesson. He then gave me sheet music as a reference. At the second lesson, he asked me to play it, and I reached for the sheet music. "Put that away," he told me, and we played the tune together. I got through it just fine - oh, my technique was crap, of course, but I knew all the notes. It's the "just in case" use of sheet music that Will mentioned.)
YES people really do have a hard time memorising simple tunes.
My dad took up the guitar when he was 26. The fact that he was 26 when he took it up and the fact that the guitar (the way he plays it) is not really that melodic an instrument makes it very difficult for him to remember tunes. Also, he finds it difficult to remember the chords to a tune when i play with him! Like tune that need A, G and Em in...he can never remember the order, bless him.
Also, I tend to make a distinction between memorizing and learning. I memorize phone numbers, which are sequences of numbers cobbled together more or less arbitrarily. I learn tunes, which have structures. I can tell you what the seventh digit in my workplace's phone number is. I can't tell you what the seventh note in Drowsy Maggie is, nor do I find that question particularly useful (or even necessarily well-defined, as I might toss in a triplet or a roll here or there), but I can play the tune.
D.J.F.'s father "doesn't remember" chords of tunes, and I think that that's the problem there - knowing is a more sophisticated cognitive function than remembering. I play with some excellent guitarists on occasion, and I doubt that a single one of them can rattle of the chord sequence of this tune or that one. It's not something they store as-is in memory. They just learn the music inside and out so that they can play chords instinctively.
When I used sheet music on piano and recorder, I'd occasionally have to commit a piece to memory. It was always a struggle, because I didn't have a good enough feel for the music to truly learn it rather than just commit a sequence of notes (and timing, and dynamics) to memory. Using sheet music allowed me to play without ever developing that feel. Learning by ear, I have no choice.
I still like Alistair Andersons comment on 'written music'
"I can read music but it helps if I know the tune"...
If you're old and grey like me they're at best an aid memoire and at worst a way to completely muck up a perfectly good tune. I pity anyone who has to rely totally on the dots; if you can whistle, sing or hum the tune why read dots?
There is absolutely no virtue in playing music from memory vs playing from sheet music. Nor is there any reason to believe that music committed to memory is better, more organic, or anything else one can dream up to make a case for memorization.
I personally prefer to memorize simply because it frees me up physically, and because I have a good memory.
Bear in mind that the skilled sight-reader can add ornaments that give the music character. The written music simply helps to ground those that prefer to use it.
I think the confusion that can arise when playing from the dots a tune that you already know is that the brain is is trying to cope with two slightly different inputs, a problem that is made worse if the printed tune differs in little details from the tune in one's head. This was happening at the workshop I mentioned above.
The reason for printed music being provided at that workshop was very simple. It was a workshop for playing music for Irish set dancing (and dancers were there for us to play for at the end of the afternoon). With a couple of dozen musicians, most of them English folk musicians, from all over the West Country, it wasn't practicable to expect everyone to know those 90-odd tunes beforehand; hence the printed A4 booklet.
Ailin's post completey misses the many disadvantages of playing from the dots that are posted throughout this thread (including the youtube clip at the start).
Like TDM, I don't think "memorizing" the tune is the right term of art for what actually happens when we assimilate a tune. We may memorize the overall contour of a tune, and a few bits that frame the tune's essence, but the whole tune unfolds itself anew each time we play it. So it changes each time we play it because we're not following some script.
Actors may memorize their lines for a play, but oral storytellers just capture the main theme (contour) and essential bits of plot. The rest is effectively ad libbed, within the bounds of the particular story.
As trad musicians, we're storytellers, not actors held verbatim to a script.
Of course, some musicians *do* merely memorize a tune, maybe even a setting of a tune three times around complete with "variations." But that's just memory and regurgitation. Might as well be using sheet music. But that's not genuinely playing the music, not *this* music, anyway.
"Do some people really have that hard a time memorizing simple tunes?"
Nope. They just think they do. All of them can sing every stupid catchy commercial jingle they've seen on TV, plus the theme songs to their favorite TV shows, ten million little kids' songs, popular music, remember ATM PIN numbers, birthdays, anniversaries, where they left their keys, (well, not so much that last one) and so on. People have acres upon acres of useless junk in their heads. There's plenty of room up there.
Sorry Ailin, I'd rather hear someone play from their heads and hearts than from a piece of paper. Even my classical music teacher made me memorize my solos when I was a child, and that's just total regurgitation, no assimilation or digestion of the music at all, like Will's talking about.
A few years ago, I was teaching college-level math, and I'd always have some students tell me that they struggled with the material, because there was "just so much to memorize". I always responded in the same way: that mine should be my students' least memorization-heavy couse. Not necessarily their easiest, but the one with the least amount of facts to store in their brains and recall. I told my students that if they found that they were memorizing heavily for my course, then they were missing something important and should come to my office to discuss.
One student did. I asked her to give me an example of the sort of thing she was memorizing for my course.
"Well," she said, "For example, say you have x+12=17. Then you do 17 minus 12 to get x. But then say that you have x-12=17. Well, this time, to get x, you do 17 PLUS 12."
Yes, this was a college course.
Anyway, this student had sailed through high school with A's and B's in math, because she memorized enough math facts to answer the questions that were on the test (all of which were identical to ones that she'd seen in class or on the homework). But no part of the subject had ever become natural to her. No part of the subject had ever been digested or assimilated. She'd fail my tests because every now and again I would change a question in the most insignificant way imaginable, and memorizing the homework questions didn't help her confront new, slightly different ones.
I don't want to do music the way that this former student of mine did math.
Good one, TDM. Yep, playing this music from the heart means understanding (explicitly or inuitively) the music's inner logic.
I think that's true of any genre. But the beauty of Irish trad (and most other folk music) is that the thousands of themes built on that inner logic are all fairly simple.
Reminds me of Feynman: "Algebra is a system for getting the answer even though you don't know what you're trying to do."
When most people first start learning this music, they want to know "how the tune goes". That's an OK way to start out, but it's analogous to your math student, and ultimately, you should move on from that. If you understand the structure of the music, and know your way around your instrument, the notes stop being the most important thing, and the shape and feel of the tune become more important. It's like not being able to read poetry because you're too stuck on looking at the individual letters.
Will's example of people that play the same variations in the same places in the tune is another example of being too rigid - or memorizing the tune.
The coolest thing about this music, for me, is that awakening within myself. I'm not saying that I'm a master of variation, or anything, but my playing took a huge leap when I stopped worrying about having a specific setting for every tune. I let the tunes flow, and occasionally I'll take a strange path to where I'm going, but sometimes, that path can be wonderful. For me, this is a reason that dots can't be more than a guide to help me learn the shape of a tune.
You know some of us who have sheet music in front of us aren't necessarily "reading" it note-for-note. Sometimes it's semi-memorized and we just kind of following the patterns of notes as a memory aid. THIS doesn't effect a person's ability to play with expression or feeling. I understand how reading it note-for-note -- like when you're first learning the tune -- would not sound good. But as described above, I don't think everyone sounds as bad as you all are making them out to be. Just my opinion against the millions of others. All I can tell you is -- If you finish a tune and say "That was fun" or "I love that tune", you probably played it pretty well.
"Sometimes it's semi-memorized and we just kind of following the patterns of notes as a memory aid."
*That* is what I don't understand---semi-memorizing a tune. I know some people like this---they say they know a tune, but when you say "okay, let's play it", they say "oh, I have to get the music first". I don't understand why they don't just go ahead and commit the tune to memory in the first place. Can you explain that?
Maybe my problem is I have loads more tunes in my head than I have the ability to play. Memorizing is not the issue---it's getting them to come out right on the instrument!
Sometimes I'm playng with my wife -both beginners- and I say something like 'let's play Paddy's Return'. She said:
- I can't play that tune.
- Yes, you can. It's the one which goes (I play the first two bars)
- What's the first note?
- B
- Ah, Ok!
And there she goes through the tune.
You two are speaking from personal prejudice, which is fine, but don't confuse with being anything other than an opinion. The statements you make are only valid to you. If a person does well with written music, you can protest until you are blue in the face, but it won't make a bit of difference to the musician or his/her audience. If he/she is good, that's all there is to it. You may claim that they can't be good if they read, but there's absolutely no way to substantiate that opinion, so I leave you to it.
Mind you, I am not advocating anything - I'm simply responding to the OP.
Justwhistle, I know that it's entirely possible to play a tune from sheet music and play it with pulse and life. All it takes is being quick with the sheet music (or abc notation), and playing from a thorough immersion in the genre of music you're playing. Yep, it can be fun to surf through written collections of tunes, playing away. It's even possible to do this with tunes that *aren't* "semi-memorized."
But that still isn't *having* the tune, or living inside the tune. It may be one way to get the tune (particularly if you don't have any aural source for that tune). But if it's a tune you want to be able to play at sessions, then you have to assimilate it, know it inside and out.
And I've heard plenty of people congratulate themselves on the tune they just played who weren't playing anything close to "pretty well."
Ailin, I've hung with some giants of classical music who are brilliant musicians. But their talent and skill isn't because they read the dots.
Nobody here is saying "you can't be a good musician if you read." That's absurd, and I can't imagine where you got that idea.
And no, thank you, it's not my "prejudice." I've been reading sheet music for 42 years. It can be a very handy tool. But it's *not* the music any more than a written biography is someone's life.
My point is, music is aural, not visual (synesthesia aside). It's laughable to say that playing aurally--from aural assimilation of the music--somehow has no advantages over playing by translating visual cues off a page. Again, that's like saying living your life has no advantages over reading a book about your life.
"Hey hon, let's go hike up that mountain."
"Why bother? I've got the trail guidebook right here. Let's just read about it...."
Eh?
And you're misunderstanding how sheet music works--it's not meant to be "read." The inky lines and splotches are meant to be ***heard.*** Which comes in handy when you have to play a piece of music but don't have time to assimilate it. If you can sight hear well and you're understand the genre, then you can play from the page, sure. But that's a poor cousin to fully assimilating the music.
I recently had to compose accompaniment for a friend who was singing a song. I had a week to come up with the instrumental, rehearse and revise it a few times, and then perform in front of 400 people. Given my day job, family, and another song accompaniment to learn, etc., I didn't have time to assimilate that piece of music (though the song certainly got stuck in my head). So I had the sheet music on the floor at my feet when we went on stage. Worked quite well. Given more time, I would've just learned the accompaniment and played from within.
Yes, if you are a really good trad player and a really good sight reader, it is entirely possible to play a tune from sheet music and play it with pulse and life and even a rake of "authentic" sounding twiddley bits, ie, all the stuff that's not in the sheet music that you have to add.
But what you can't get is the way someone else gets it. Which is the whole point of traditional music. If at the end of a session, you give a few people the dots to a tune they have never heard, then next week, get everyone to play it together for the first time, all you are going to get is a right bloody racket.
I'm with mehitabel 23. I love reading music too. Its the written form of the musical language. Its challenging , fun and rewarding when you can look at the dots and go "oh yeah, I've heard that one, I like that one." I'm not saying that I can sightread anything but I can sightread Irish tunes reasonably well (for a guitar picker), which brings me to another take on the subject. If you don't know already ,sight reading tunes is the best way in my opinion to develop sight reading skills in general . I once read a book by Howard Roberts and he talked about the key to successful sight reading ie. the instantaneous recognition of the rhythm and sequence of
notes,and keeping that recognition ahead of the played notes.
What better genre to develop that in than Irish music where
nearly every stringed instrument has the tunes range in the
first position, you can practice reading 4/4's 3/4's 6/8's ,swingy things like horpipes etc. etc. etc. A lot of the basic arpeggios, runs occur repeatedly and you get used to seeing them. I'm not going to stop reading music because
someone insists its an aural tradition. I think people generalise about it. People forget that there are great sightreaders around. My mate and sometime musical partner
is a Irish flute player who sight reads . adds ornaments and interprets new tunes on the fly from dots sometimes when we practise. He is so experienced in the genre that I wouldn't pick the difference. I'd like to work towards that.
Besides that music in print is an elegant and lovely visual art form in itself. Get into it.
"There is absolutely no virtue in playing music from memory vs playing from sheet music. Nor is there any reason to believe that music committed to memory is better, more organic, or anything else one can dream up to make a case for memorization."
I disagree. Reading music requires you to use your eyes and process visual input, which takes mental resources away from playing and listening.
When you play from memory, what do you see? For the most part probably nothing, because you naturally shut down the processing of visual information to concentrate on playing and listening.
Try playing something from memory with your eyes unfocused, and then play the same thing while reading something (text will work if you don't read music). See which way you play better.
Even in classical playing, soloists don't play from sheet music for this reason. The rest of the orchestra uses sheet music because it is a convenient way to get a large group of people to play the same thing in the same way, and even then it's mostly just a crutch so you don't forget which part is coming up or miss a key change.
"I once read a book by Howard Roberts and he talked about the key to successful sight reading ie. the instantaneous recognition of the rhythm..."
Show me a piece of sheet music that notates the rhythm of a trad tune in any kind of an accurate way.
The only people who can look at a piece of sheet music for a trad tune and instantly get the rhythm are people who have been playing trad for so long that they can interpret the important aspects of rhythm that AREN'T IN THE SHEET MUSIC.
O.K. Screetch " instantaneous recognition of the ' core '
rhythmic arrangement of the notes.
I agree with you're second point entirely and I basically said that in my third last sentence referring to the flute player if you care to sight read it properly.
"My mate and sometime musical partner
is a Irish flute player who sight reads . adds ornaments and interprets new tunes on the fly from dots sometimes when we practise. He is so experienced in the genre that I wouldn't pick the difference. I'd like to work towards that."
Do you think you can get there by sight reading tunes? Do you think your friend got there that way? You can only work towards that by using your ears to learn tunes.
I have shocking memory - the worst - I forget the endings of all the books I read so I can still read agatha christie books over and over and never remember who done it. Same goes with movies. If I meet a person - I'll have forgotten their name in 2 minutes. But I still manage to remember the tunes I have learnt.
That girl in the clip is obviously classical and has not bothered trying to learn to do it without music. It is hard - but its just worth it in the end.
There's a difference of when the dots are in use. If you use them as an aid along with your ears to learn the tunes that's fine, I think. Once you've learned the tune, you're not still using them, right? To anyone, I guess. I mean, that's the whole point, yes? Why would you want to or have to, unless [ahem] you haven't played it in a while and forgot how that one part goes there, not that it's ever happened to me, of course. [cough]
Well sure SWFL, there's nothing wrong with glancing at dots or ABC to figure out the basic intervals when learning a new tune, to help you figure out something that you are really learning to play through listening.
But that's not playing from dots. When you actually *perform* with sheet music, or even practice with it after getting the very basic intervals down, then you should be putting the paper away and using your ears.
Looking at sheet music won't steal your nyah, but actually *playing from* it will.
I think chuneboi and Ailin's responses reveal part of what Kennedy is on about--why do some people choose to play from the sheet music?
And part of the answer seems to be that some people were taught to play that way--that sheet music is integral to the experience of playing music. My brother is certainly that way--played piano for 51 years so far, music degree from Carnegie Mellon, worked with Leonard Bernstein for 15 years scoring his music for various orchestras around the world, is now an orchestra librarian (responsible for managing and arranging scores for a major symphony orchestra). For him, sheet music is a vital part of *music.*
So much so that he can't really play more than a few pieces from memory. Despite half a century of playing music at a very high level.
So for him, that visual aspect is important, critical even. So is a highly sophisticated intellectual understanding of every aspect of the music. His ability to "hear" a score from the page--with concurrent parts for maybe a dozen instruments, in different clefs, all on the same page--is astounding.
But my brother, as talented as he is, would never be able to play music by the seat of his pants, on the fly, in a session. So all of his skills and abilites don't help much--really aren't even relevant--for playing Irish trad (or any other aural genre).
I'm sure if he ever got a wild hair and decided to start playing Father Kelly's in a string band, he'd *need* the sheet music. And it would sound a lot like the Black and Tans....
(And I'd fare just as badly trying to assimilate and play a Pagannini caprice....)
The point is that you shouldn't be sightreading tunes at all, until you've played by listening for long enough that you can interpret a tune on the page. Glancing at sheet music is one thing, but sightreading is something else.
Sightreading is a very specific skill in classical music that stresses playing what is on the page *exactly as it is on the page*. You obviously can't play trad that way.
Why is sightreading your goal if you play trad? Do you play classical as well?
This 10-minute video* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkmFgQ9fM94&feature=related shows one of the world's great classical musicians (Itzhak Perlman) learning Klezmer music at sessions - entirely by ear, and not a scrap of sheet music in sight. Klezmer is primarily an aural tradition like ITM.
" Why is sightreading your goal if you play trad "
Screetch. Good question. It is a tool to develop my own versions of tunes without the influence of someone else's version.
"classical music .... stresses playing what is on the page *exactly as it is on the page*"
Screetch, I don't think that is accurate. Anyone who gets well into a classical piece and thinks about, or plays in an orchestra under a good conductor, will know that the printed music is only a guide, and that there are infinite possibilities of interpretation within the ambit of the printed dots (and even the dots can get changed if necessary!). Such a musician would perform a Beethoven sonata in a dozen concerts, and each performance would be different as the player explores the depths of the music, just as in ITM and other aural-based genres when they are played well.
If you go back to the source music scores (the "Urtext") of the Baroque there is rarely much in the way dynamic markings, phrasing, or accentuation, and speeds are usually little more than broad suggestions (the metronome hadn't been invented). The player is expected to use his own judgment and ideas when playing the music, and, especially in slow movements, to put in his own elaborate improvised ornamentation. Very like ITM today.
You're splitting hairs, lazyhound. You know that sightreading in classical music means a much more literal interpretation of what's on the page than what you would do if reading a trad tune from dots.
Well, keep in mind that I'm talking about sightreading. That's not a skill that you use when taking a conductor's cues into your playing, it's a skill that you use in an audition room when you have a piece put in front of you that you've never played before.
Steve Shaw. Sure. Play on my own or in a duet where it doesn't matter about being in sync with another interpretation. I do like the odd session though and will be partaking this afternoon.
Screetch. Its only strictly an aural tradition in some peoples minds. It ceased to be an aural tradition the moment
Chief O'Neill picked up the clutch pencil at scribbled his first quaver. Or the fist ABC was scrawled for that matter.
Point taken Sir Dungsmere. Having acknowledged that. Some people are serious about Irish melodies for different reasons other than fitting in at a session or being part of a tradition, although good luck to all who are of that inkling. My personal view is that the music is there to make what you want of it.
Very true Screetch. I suppose the word "tradition " is the key.
I suppose what I aspire to is not 'trad' in that sense.
Not that I really lose sleep over it, but I might have to come up with a title for a sub - genre. ( sound of can opener in background).
"It is a tool to develop my own versions of tunes without the influence of someone else's version"
See, this is another thing that fascinates me that seems to also come from the classical approach---the idea that you can't develop your own approach to a piece if you've heard someone else play it because their interpretation will influence and contaminate your own understanding of it. And I hear of many many teachers who refuse to play for their students or let them listen to recordings for just that reason. The students have to contend with the printed page and create the music from that.
I'm not saying that's a bad approach, but I'm very glad I don't have to learn music that way. I can listen to Bobby Casey play the Bank of Ireland a dozen times and then sit down and pick apart the different phrases from it, try them out and see what I like, and then eventually put everything back together as it suits me. I certainly don't sound like Bobby Casey, but I would never have any ideas about the kinds of rhythms or variations he used if I were only looking at notes on a page.
But I said at the beginning of this thread, and I still say that I would love to be a better sight reader. I think the fact that I'm not is a reflection of laziness more than anything else. When you can pick up tunes by ear and memorize easily, there's not much motivation to do it the other way. Maybe that's why people with classical training lean on sheet music so much---reading is easy and they can't be bothered to learn by ear?
Kennedy, in classical music the sheet music is the source material, because except for the most recent stuff there aren't any recordings of the music conducted by the composer, and there's no aural tradition that has passed it down to the modern time. So the written music is all we have to go on to figure out how the composer meant it to be played. Interpretation is involved, of course, but the score is sacred.
So classical musicians might prefer to learn from the historical written music before hearing someone else play it, because the written music is the closest link to the original music.
But for folk music, the source material is the generation of musicians who came before you. This music isn't passed down on paper, it has been passed down for centuries through listening and imitation.
That's a huge difference between the classical and folk traditions.
Screetch, Screetch, Screetch, people have been diversifying since time began, there are no rules. If someone wants to do something related musically , do they have to completely understand the influential genre? Who makes these rules. People use influences to create music, you don't have to be a virtuoso within that influential genre to go out and make your own music. That would just lead to a life of misery, chasing the unachievable.
Kennedy, being able to play tunes from the page at a good clip is a wonderful skill to have, even if you prefer learning by ear. Again, that's why I think of it as sight hearing, not sight reading--you learn to hear the tune just by seeing the dots or abcs on the page.
A great way to improve your sight hearing abilities is to look at notation for tunes you already know. Play from the dots or abcs, then find another printed version that's different from how you play the tune.
I wouldn't spend a lot of time doing this, but a little every week will soon build into a solid understanding of the dots and abcs. Then it's easy to play unfamiliar tunes from notation, and eventually simply hear (in your mind) the music from the ink.
Another way to improve these skills is to transcribe tunes you play. Write them out in abcs. Then as dots on staves. This forces you to deal with all the conventions of each notation system and understand their proper use and meaning.
But don't lose sleep over it. Just take it on board as it comes.
And it strikes me as really odd to think that learning from an aural source might influence you to mimic someone else's playing or style, but learning from the page won't. The degree of influence depends on what you take from either approach (and what's offered). A bare bone sketch of the tune either way leaves room open for personalizing it. A highly nuanced, individual approach to a tune might sway you toward hearing that as the "definitive" version--but that can happen aurally or visually. And the classical players I've heard work from the dots are far more likely to get entrenched in the written setting of the tune than if they pick it up aurally.
Slim, no one has to follow tradition, anyone is free to experiment and explore. But people immersed in the tradition don't have to accept your playing, either.
Depends on who you hope to play with--by yourself, with others of an experimenting mind, or with people who play within the (somewhat fuzzy) bounds of a particular genre.
Not surprisingly, though, the most compelling experimentation almost always comes from people who have a good grasp of the context and history preceding their innovations.
Will. The "sight hearing ' is a good description. I know an old violinist who used to hum off the sheet while he played. He would swear by it .
I take your points and they are nicely put.
And you're right, I wouldn't expect a traditionalist to accept my playing or my viewpoint, but there are a lot of musicians who share it, and trust each other to come up with something worthwhile.
Lilting from the page is a good way to learn to hear the dots, with or without your instrument in hand.
Yes, musicians are a creative lot, and there's no shortage of opportunities to cut loose and really play with the sounds you can produce. My own approach to this is to keep some things separate, though. I enjoy playing lots of other styles of music on a variety of instruments, but when it comes to Irish trad, I pretty much stick to the tradition. Simply because that appeals to me.
But that doesn't stop me from playing punk tunes with my son or improving to Folsom Prison Blues with a local Johnny Cash sound-a-like, or plugging in my electric fiddle, cranking the gain, and wailing away.
Even though McAuley has been mixing the styles for years, he understands why most musicians find it difficult. “You’ll often find classical players trying to pick up traditional music because they get interested in it and some of them, whether they want to give up on classical music or they just want to try new things, they then try world music, jazz, Celtic music or whatever it is and they find themselves lost very quickly,” he explains. “Even though they’re very accomplished in classical music, they’re not able to pick up music by ear very well and their technique tends to be very rigid. It doesn’t lend itself to some of the faster playing that you need for traditional music. But then again you often find traditional musicians sitting in on a gig where there’s maybe a singer and it’s a little more middle of the road and they find themselves absolutely lost; maybe unpolished; out of tune. Each background has a part of the jigsaw in my opinion.”
As a non-orchestral player, I saw another point for classical orchestras to use sheet music. Just like your local session version of a tune, every conductor has HIS own interpretation of dynamics etc of a tune, and during rehersals they will all sit down with a pencil and jot down notes of the conductors wishes, quite understandable that they won't memorize every twist of a symphony-score.
Anyway I always felt sheet music restrained me. Fine for learning our session repertoire, but I have to dispense as soon as possible because the version I play might adapt, or change, and it will actually cause conflicting input that is not necessary.
What I find interesting is the qoute about an unbiased written version. It always struck me that the only sheet music you can get for trad are solely based on someones playing. You might cut out a century by learning from o'neill's, but then he also wrote how he played it, and you can't be sure that a tune by a certain title is what you're looking for, so that doesn't help much either.
Just to put things in perspective - I've played at the same session as chuneboi on many occasions, and far from holding him back his guitar playing is truly exceptional. He sometimes leaves me in the dust, and I'm playing a box for goodness' sake. He's well versed in the tradition, including the element of it that involves winding up people who climb up on their soap boxes...
I understand his desire to be able to sight read sheet music at a reasonable speed. It's a skill I've acquired due to years of piano playing, and it allows me to skim through a book of eighty Australian Bush Tunes and pick out the twenty which are really poorly remembered Scots songs, and the twelve I actually like and want to memorise.
Whilst I CAN read sheet music and add lilt and rhythm at full speed, I don't do it in sessions for one obvious reason - it blinds me to what the other players are doing (as I think Screetch pointed out). If anything I would consider it rude to play from a book, except in the rare case where someone has learned a tune which no-one else knows and wants someone to play along with them as they lack confidence, which has happened a couple of times.
To return to the original post, I don't think the Black and Tan Band's problem is reading from the dots, but the fact they have come to this music from the dots without ever hearing it played well. The very name of their band tells you that before you hear the first note, surely?
Q: Why would anyone NOT want EVERY available tool for assimilating more new music? Any debate of that point simply boggles my mind, so I hope that is not the case here.
My twa farthings, IMHO, my own experience only:
Common sense would state that anything can be a crutch if taken to extremes, so just do what works, right? Carbon-copies and clones are just that - do we want to play someone else's music, or make our own? What is there to debate?
That said, still I would tell any musician (who asked me, first!) that if opportuntiy presents itself:
DO be as adept as possible at sight-reading. It is handy, especially for hiring out with strangers for pay, different subject I know. (There are too many tunes out there to hear them all at a session at your convenience, direct from the well. It seems only logical to also have the dots to reference. But a tool, nothing more.) i would tell kennedy, if asked , that it is like any muscle, exercise it and you may be surprised by how well you can master it. Like the memory muscle, BTW. Just keep working it.
DO learn sight-reading for voice as well (good supplemental for sight-reading with the instrument as you can better anticipate what the tune sounds like, improves your sense of pitch when you pull notes out of the air instead of off of a pitchpipe or other instrument).
DO practice memorization for most of the practical reasons above stated by others (spontaneous and from the dots as an aid to memory. Just remember that perhaps it is bare bones at best, or else, with additional pages of commentary and ornamentation noted, someone else's version).
Re. That youtube link: I am not enough of the scholar to be passing judgement. I remember the tune differently, but that is just me.
My personal taste?
Yecch.
It made a better reel.
I suppose the reason some ITM fake books only have two or four bars is that you're expected to think "oh, yeah... THAT tune". The dots are useful as you learn more (and more) tunes, and some start to get crowded out of your cranium. Tune books are a basis upon which you can extrapolate and breathe life into what is printed. Perhaps if some adherents to the great religions of planet Earth could view their relgious books with the same perspective, there could be more acceptance of living, breathing variations of their faiths. Just a thought.
Quote: For every good busker ( who is usually born with a real musical gift and a wonderful ear) there are thousands who churn out the same old monotonous corn with very little idea of phrasing, fingering, or musicianship. In most cases they can be improved 100% by the simple process of learning to read music.......I read that in a music book in the early sixties and it stuck with me. I still know accordion players who haven't an idea what notes are on their box and that, in this day and age, is sad. On the other hand I know a lot of lovely people who couldn't play the simplest of tunes without the dots in front of them, and that is even sadder. I'm blessed with good retention, and can play all night without referring to music, however shoud the need arise, it's still great to be able to read a few dots to enable you to start a tune.
I think, in our modern society, that the act of memorization tends to be looked down upon, not just in music, but in many areas. We tend to let our computers and calculators keep our facts straight for us, and in teaching tend to focus on the rules and the logic of it all, and not on rote memorization.
More's the pity. When you memorize a tune, or the words to a song, or a poem, it becomes part of you. The music or song or words remain in your memory for years and years, and the phrases become part of your vocabulary.
When I was first exposed to this music, I marvelled at the memorization needed, and never thought I could get very far in that department. But the more you memorize, the more you learn how to memorize, and the easier it gets. And you are richer because of it.
Whether it is the aural tradition of learning music by ear, or the oral tradition of passing on stories by telling them, we are part of a tradition that is very important to what it means to be human.
It is not difficult to memorize this music. Anyone who thinks it is is either kidding themselves or lazy. If you have taken music to a session be honest with yourself. You CAN NOT do the music justice while reading it. Like a lot of folk I can sight read and learn by ear - nobody I know would consider playing trad in front of anyone with the music in front of them. Put in the time necessary to learn the tunes. Can you remember the first bar? Why don't you try to remember the second bar? What about the first four? See, your quarter way there. Bad memory is not an excuse it's a cop-out
To get back to the original question........
.....if you follow the links to other videos made by this band, the young lady doesn't use music all the time, but she obviously doesn't know Father Kelly well, hence the need for the dots.
I certainly don't think this is the worst example of a classically-trained musician ruining ITM on youtube.
Come on, let's have a few more contenders - name and shame !
Although I would never use sheet music at a real session, I practice with it at home, especially if it's a tune I don't know. i'll sight read it until i get the notes in my fingers, then i'll listen to someone who knows the tune to learn what it really sounds like.
that being said, for all that kennedy wonders why anybody would bother, please remember that, while some people sneer at crutches, some of us really do only have one leg. It takes us a little longer, while we're waiting for our prosthesis to be made, to limp along with those who run. i'll use whatever crutch i can find in order to begin to play what this music is all about.
Reading music
Reading music
As I was watching a clip from another thread of someone playing Father Kelly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiLUINd1y4c
the thing that puzzled me was that they needed the music at all. Do some people really have that hard a time memorizing simple tunes? I've always had an excellent memory so it's hard for me to relate to people who don't.
Now before the flamers get going on this thread, please try to take the question seriously. Personally, I would love to be more skilled at reading music. I think my memory might get in the way of that because by the time I've played through the tune a few times, I have it memorized and don't need the music any more---which means I don't get a lot of practice at sightreading. Not that I need to be good at sightreading for this kind of music, but it would still be nice.
# Posted on May 30th 2008 by kennedy
Re: Reading music
Sheet music is just an aid to picking up a new tune like a recording. The tunes should be committed to memory as soon as possible and the dots dispensed with as it's only then that the player can put some expression and feeling into the music which is absolutely essential for trad. Kennedy, you're approach is perfect in that you only use the music until you've memorised the tune - whoever was playing Father Kelly should not really have been giving a performance if they relied on the dots to get through the tune!
# Posted on May 30th 2008 by Bannerman
Re: Reading music
I don't have a good memory so it does take me a lot of reading/listening to learn tunes - but I wouldn't play a piece out with music. If you don't know a piece well enough to play wihout music I don't htink you know it well enough to perform. There is a stage beyond knowing the notes.
I have the opposite problem to Kennedy, I sightread tunes and then decide what I want to learn! However, it's useful when I'm sitting at work to be able to read the tunes being posted and print off the ones I want to learn!!
# Posted on May 30th 2008 by Tarrantella
Re: Reading music
As a mainline musician in my non-ITM life, reading the spots is a fact of life an a necessity.
However, as I have made my way through ITM in the past few years (being a relative late-comer to seriously playing Trational music) the spots are a problem for me because they are a crutch.
Whle the spots help learn a tune's "bones" with some precision, I find myself having difficulty getting into tunes I have just learned. My teacher who teaches 85% by ear acknowledges the need to read the spots-grudgingly. ( He calls it "paper-training".
With tunes learned 'by ear' it takes a bit longer to get the details right, particularly on more complicated pieces, or passages with quirky parts. But I think I focus much harder when learning 'by ear'.
On balance, many players don't have access to the quality of teacher I am lucky to have. So the spots really become the big part of learning a repertoire of tunes.
# Posted on May 30th 2008 by zippydw
Re: Reading music
I had the odd experience once at a music-for-dancing workshop, where it was necessary for the organisers to provide the dots and for participants to be able to read them, that when I had in front of me the printed music for a tune I already had in my head (about 3/4 of them) it confused me and slowed me down. I had to push the music stand away out of focus for those tunes in order to play them fluently.
# Posted on May 30th 2008 by lazyhound
Re: Reading music
Oh good... more dots vs. ear debate. You know, I was just thinking we needed to revisit this subject! LOL
FWIW, my guess is that the woman in the video is an accomplished violin player that is used to playing classical with sheet music for a reference. I don't have much experience in classical music (beyond 2 years of orchestra when I was 10 years old...), but classical musicians generally "know" the pieces they're playing, and just have the music as a reference, don't they? I can't imagine that they are out performing stuff completely cold and sight reading... or am I way off base on this?
I also think memory is something that you can often improve with practice. So is listening. Those are two things that we don't generally think of needing to practice to make better. It's similar to reading music, in that regard. You have to practice it to get good at it. But you're less likely to make improvement if you believe that you "don't have a good memory"
# Posted on May 30th 2008 by Reverend
Re: Reading music
I'm not that great at reading music... I need to have heard the tune before I can read the music.
I mainly get taught by ear and if I do learn a tune from the dots I try to have it off by heart as soon as possible! I find I can play it better when I'm not looking at the notes and know it just by memory.
# Posted on May 30th 2008 by ajh92
Re: Reading music
"FWIW, my guess is that the woman in the video is an accomplished violin player that is used to playing classical with sheet music for a reference"
That's what was puzzling me---why anyone would need a reference for such a simple, easily-memorized tune, especially if they'd played/practiced it before. And it looked to me like they were using it for more than the occasional reference---they're looking at it almost the whole time. And yet the playing is polished, so it's obviously not the first time they're looking at it.
I'm much more like Trevor---if I know the tune, the music just confuses me.
# Posted on May 30th 2008 by kennedy
Re: Reading music
Yeah, but nervousness can make you fall back on something familiar.
I'm not really one to talk much in this debate... I can't read music (well, I *can*, but only at about 4-5 dots per minute, because I have to look closely and think "ok, that note is three lines above the bottom...")
# Posted on May 30th 2008 by Reverend
Re: Reading music
I wouldn't necessarily blame the playing in that clip on the sheet music, although the dots aren't helping matters. (I can imagine that she has the cute little triplet run in the B part notated just so, and faithfully plays it every damn time through the "song.")
No, the trouble here is that she's playing trad tunes while bringing to bear every single ounce of baggage from her classical training--vibrato on every note, sacrificing pulse for tone production, phrasing as if this is a sound track to a romance movie. In short, ladeling on the syrup instead of letting the tune speak for itself.
And it kills it. If that's not muzak, I don't know what is.
Musicians who use the dots a lot (i.e., classical players) tend to devleop a dependency on them. Even if they have a piece memorized, many still prefer to have the dots in front of them, "just in case." For two-hour far-ranging concertos I can understand that. But if you can't trust yourself to make it through 16 or 32 bars of a simple tune without a written reference, then you're not really inside the music, eh?
# Posted on May 30th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: Reading music
"But if you can't trust yourself to make it through 16 or 32 bars of a simple tune without a written reference, then you're not really inside the music, eh?"
Spot on, Will.
# Posted on May 30th 2008 by crazy_fingerz
Re: Reading music
I love reading sheet music. It's like a magical language. Give out sheet music to a competent choir or orchestra and you have instant good music. Maybe they're not suitable for ITM, but for much else they're great and I won't hear anybody diss them. DOTS FTW!
# Posted on May 30th 2008 by mehitabel23
Re: Reading music
"Do some people really have that hard a time memorizing simple tunes?"
I have a number of friends who play classical violin, and all of them (except for one, who plays some Irish tunes and makes a point of learning them by ear) are positively *blown away* by the fact that I learn by ear! and know dozens of tunes by heart! These violinists all play in orchestras, and they play music that is melodically more complex than what we play, and it makes sense for them to rely on sheet music. But for many of them it's gotten to the point that they cannot fathom *not* using sheet music, even for highly repetitive 32-bar tunes.
The first decade of my musical education was classical, and I relied heavily on sheet music during that time, to the point that if you took my sheet music away, I could do nothing with the instrument I played (recorder, then piano). And some of the music I played, on recorder anyway, was quite simple, but I still didn't memorize it because I could always rely on the sheet music. Although it's possibly (and quite easy) to feel out patterns and structures from sheet music, you quite easily get away with not identifying patterns in music if you can consult a page for the next note; on the other hand, feeling out patterns and structures in music is unavoidable. I can't memorize an arbitrary sequence of 256 notes, but I can memorize a 32 bar reel without much difficulty at all, because I can break the 256 notes (give or take) into chunks that make sense. I routinely see classical players whose technical skills far, far surpass mine, but who don't have my ability to listen for patterns and structure in music, and that deficiency turns a 32-bar reel into an arbitrary sequence of 256 notes (albeit perhaps one that is quite pleasant to the ear). Witness this thread - http://www.violinist.com/discussion/response.cfm?ID=11734 - in which a classically trained violinist/violist with 15 or so years experience declares that she just can't learn by ear, end of story, and then struggles mightily through an exercise of figuring out how to play Happy Birthday without sheet music. (I figured that tune out in a minute or so, after 8 months on the fiddle, and I'm no prodigy.)
As others have said, the violinist in the youtube clip is obviously classically trained, and doesn't seem to have a feel for the highly repetitive structure of the reel she's playing.
Question for those of you who have had the, er, pleasure of attending beginners' trad sessions in which everyone's playing from sheet music: who attends these sessions? Beginners on their instruments? Classically-trained crossover folks? Both?
(I just remembered my second fiddle lesson: my teacher had taught me a simple polka, by ear, during my first lesson. He then gave me sheet music as a reference. At the second lesson, he asked me to play it, and I reached for the sheet music. "Put that away," he told me, and we played the tune together. I got through it just fine - oh, my technique was crap, of course, but I knew all the notes. It's the "just in case" use of sheet music that Will mentioned.)
# Posted on May 30th 2008 by Tall, Dark, and Mysterious
Re: Reading music
"on the other hand, feeling out patterns and structures in music is unavoidable"
er, I mean, "on the other hand, feeling out patterns and structures in music *when you learn by ear* is unavoidable"
# Posted on May 30th 2008 by Tall, Dark, and Mysterious
Re: Reading music
In answer to your question, kennedy.
YES people really do have a hard time memorising simple tunes.
My dad took up the guitar when he was 26. The fact that he was 26 when he took it up and the fact that the guitar (the way he plays it) is not really that melodic an instrument makes it very difficult for him to remember tunes. Also, he finds it difficult to remember the chords to a tune when i play with him! Like tune that need A, G and Em in...he can never remember the order, bless him.
# Posted on May 30th 2008 by D.J.F.
Re: Reading music
Also, I tend to make a distinction between memorizing and learning. I memorize phone numbers, which are sequences of numbers cobbled together more or less arbitrarily. I learn tunes, which have structures. I can tell you what the seventh digit in my workplace's phone number is. I can't tell you what the seventh note in Drowsy Maggie is, nor do I find that question particularly useful (or even necessarily well-defined, as I might toss in a triplet or a roll here or there), but I can play the tune.
D.J.F.'s father "doesn't remember" chords of tunes, and I think that that's the problem there - knowing is a more sophisticated cognitive function than remembering. I play with some excellent guitarists on occasion, and I doubt that a single one of them can rattle of the chord sequence of this tune or that one. It's not something they store as-is in memory. They just learn the music inside and out so that they can play chords instinctively.
When I used sheet music on piano and recorder, I'd occasionally have to commit a piece to memory. It was always a struggle, because I didn't have a good enough feel for the music to truly learn it rather than just commit a sequence of notes (and timing, and dynamics) to memory. Using sheet music allowed me to play without ever developing that feel. Learning by ear, I have no choice.
# Posted on May 30th 2008 by Tall, Dark, and Mysterious
Re: Reading music
I still like Alistair Andersons comment on 'written music'
"I can read music but it helps if I know the tune"...
If you're old and grey like me they're at best an aid memoire and at worst a way to completely muck up a perfectly good tune. I pity anyone who has to rely totally on the dots; if you can whistle, sing or hum the tune why read dots?
# Posted on May 30th 2008 by john knoss
Re: Reading music
There is absolutely no virtue in playing music from memory vs playing from sheet music. Nor is there any reason to believe that music committed to memory is better, more organic, or anything else one can dream up to make a case for memorization.
I personally prefer to memorize simply because it frees me up physically, and because I have a good memory.
Bear in mind that the skilled sight-reader can add ornaments that give the music character. The written music simply helps to ground those that prefer to use it.
# Posted on May 30th 2008 by Ailin
Re: Reading music
I think the confusion that can arise when playing from the dots a tune that you already know is that the brain is is trying to cope with two slightly different inputs, a problem that is made worse if the printed tune differs in little details from the tune in one's head. This was happening at the workshop I mentioned above.
The reason for printed music being provided at that workshop was very simple. It was a workshop for playing music for Irish set dancing (and dancers were there for us to play for at the end of the afternoon). With a couple of dozen musicians, most of them English folk musicians, from all over the West Country, it wasn't practicable to expect everyone to know those 90-odd tunes beforehand; hence the printed A4 booklet.
# Posted on May 30th 2008 by lazyhound
Re: Reading music
Ailin's post completey misses the many disadvantages of playing from the dots that are posted throughout this thread (including the youtube clip at the start).
Like TDM, I don't think "memorizing" the tune is the right term of art for what actually happens when we assimilate a tune. We may memorize the overall contour of a tune, and a few bits that frame the tune's essence, but the whole tune unfolds itself anew each time we play it. So it changes each time we play it because we're not following some script.
Actors may memorize their lines for a play, but oral storytellers just capture the main theme (contour) and essential bits of plot. The rest is effectively ad libbed, within the bounds of the particular story.
As trad musicians, we're storytellers, not actors held verbatim to a script.
Of course, some musicians *do* merely memorize a tune, maybe even a setting of a tune three times around complete with "variations." But that's just memory and regurgitation. Might as well be using sheet music. But that's not genuinely playing the music, not *this* music, anyway.
# Posted on May 30th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: Reading music
"Do some people really have that hard a time memorizing simple tunes?"
Nope. They just think they do. All of them can sing every stupid catchy commercial jingle they've seen on TV, plus the theme songs to their favorite TV shows, ten million little kids' songs, popular music, remember ATM PIN numbers, birthdays, anniversaries, where they left their keys, (well, not so much that last one) and so on. People have acres upon acres of useless junk in their heads. There's plenty of room up there.
# Posted on May 30th 2008 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Reading music
Sorry Ailin, I'd rather hear someone play from their heads and hearts than from a piece of paper. Even my classical music teacher made me memorize my solos when I was a child, and that's just total regurgitation, no assimilation or digestion of the music at all, like Will's talking about.
# Posted on May 30th 2008 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Reading music
One of the great advantages of playing tunes from the heart is that the tunes are with you wherever you go. No need to lug around sheet music.
# Posted on May 30th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: Reading music
I just thought of an analogy:
A few years ago, I was teaching college-level math, and I'd always have some students tell me that they struggled with the material, because there was "just so much to memorize". I always responded in the same way: that mine should be my students' least memorization-heavy couse. Not necessarily their easiest, but the one with the least amount of facts to store in their brains and recall. I told my students that if they found that they were memorizing heavily for my course, then they were missing something important and should come to my office to discuss.
One student did. I asked her to give me an example of the sort of thing she was memorizing for my course.
"Well," she said, "For example, say you have x+12=17. Then you do 17 minus 12 to get x. But then say that you have x-12=17. Well, this time, to get x, you do 17 PLUS 12."
Yes, this was a college course.
Anyway, this student had sailed through high school with A's and B's in math, because she memorized enough math facts to answer the questions that were on the test (all of which were identical to ones that she'd seen in class or on the homework). But no part of the subject had ever become natural to her. No part of the subject had ever been digested or assimilated. She'd fail my tests because every now and again I would change a question in the most insignificant way imaginable, and memorizing the homework questions didn't help her confront new, slightly different ones.
I don't want to do music the way that this former student of mine did math.
# Posted on May 30th 2008 by Tall, Dark, and Mysterious
Re: Reading music
Good one, TDM. Yep, playing this music from the heart means understanding (explicitly or inuitively) the music's inner logic.
I think that's true of any genre. But the beauty of Irish trad (and most other folk music) is that the thousands of themes built on that inner logic are all fairly simple.
Reminds me of Feynman: "Algebra is a system for getting the answer even though you don't know what you're trying to do."
# Posted on May 30th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: Reading music
LOL TDM. Great story!
When most people first start learning this music, they want to know "how the tune goes". That's an OK way to start out, but it's analogous to your math student, and ultimately, you should move on from that. If you understand the structure of the music, and know your way around your instrument, the notes stop being the most important thing, and the shape and feel of the tune become more important. It's like not being able to read poetry because you're too stuck on looking at the individual letters.
Will's example of people that play the same variations in the same places in the tune is another example of being too rigid - or memorizing the tune.
The coolest thing about this music, for me, is that awakening within myself. I'm not saying that I'm a master of variation, or anything, but my playing took a huge leap when I stopped worrying about having a specific setting for every tune. I let the tunes flow, and occasionally I'll take a strange path to where I'm going, but sometimes, that path can be wonderful. For me, this is a reason that dots can't be more than a guide to help me learn the shape of a tune.
# Posted on May 30th 2008 by Reverend
Re: Reading music
You know some of us who have sheet music in front of us aren't necessarily "reading" it note-for-note. Sometimes it's semi-memorized and we just kind of following the patterns of notes as a memory aid. THIS doesn't effect a person's ability to play with expression or feeling. I understand how reading it note-for-note -- like when you're first learning the tune -- would not sound good. But as described above, I don't think everyone sounds as bad as you all are making them out to be. Just my opinion against the millions of others. All I can tell you is -- If you finish a tune and say "That was fun" or "I love that tune", you probably played it pretty well.
# Posted on May 30th 2008 by justwhistle
Re: Reading music
"Sometimes it's semi-memorized and we just kind of following the patterns of notes as a memory aid."
*That* is what I don't understand---semi-memorizing a tune. I know some people like this---they say they know a tune, but when you say "okay, let's play it", they say "oh, I have to get the music first". I don't understand why they don't just go ahead and commit the tune to memory in the first place. Can you explain that?
Maybe my problem is I have loads more tunes in my head than I have the ability to play. Memorizing is not the issue---it's getting them to come out right on the instrument!
# Posted on May 30th 2008 by kennedy
Re: Reading music
Sometimes I'm playng with my wife -both beginners- and I say something like 'let's play Paddy's Return'. She said:
- I can't play that tune.
- Yes, you can. It's the one which goes (I play the first two bars)
- What's the first note?
- B
- Ah, Ok!
And there she goes through the tune.
So, she had it memorized, just had to find it.
# Posted on May 30th 2008 by Ramiro
Re: Reading music
To SWFL Fiddler and Will CPT:
You two are speaking from personal prejudice, which is fine, but don't confuse with being anything other than an opinion. The statements you make are only valid to you. If a person does well with written music, you can protest until you are blue in the face, but it won't make a bit of difference to the musician or his/her audience. If he/she is good, that's all there is to it. You may claim that they can't be good if they read, but there's absolutely no way to substantiate that opinion, so I leave you to it.
Mind you, I am not advocating anything - I'm simply responding to the OP.
# Posted on May 30th 2008 by Ailin
Re: Reading music
Justwhistle, I know that it's entirely possible to play a tune from sheet music and play it with pulse and life. All it takes is being quick with the sheet music (or abc notation), and playing from a thorough immersion in the genre of music you're playing. Yep, it can be fun to surf through written collections of tunes, playing away. It's even possible to do this with tunes that *aren't* "semi-memorized."
But that still isn't *having* the tune, or living inside the tune. It may be one way to get the tune (particularly if you don't have any aural source for that tune). But if it's a tune you want to be able to play at sessions, then you have to assimilate it, know it inside and out.
And I've heard plenty of people congratulate themselves on the tune they just played who weren't playing anything close to "pretty well."
# Posted on May 30th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: Reading music
Ailin, I've hung with some giants of classical music who are brilliant musicians. But their talent and skill isn't because they read the dots.
Nobody here is saying "you can't be a good musician if you read." That's absurd, and I can't imagine where you got that idea.
And no, thank you, it's not my "prejudice." I've been reading sheet music for 42 years. It can be a very handy tool. But it's *not* the music any more than a written biography is someone's life.
My point is, music is aural, not visual (synesthesia aside). It's laughable to say that playing aurally--from aural assimilation of the music--somehow has no advantages over playing by translating visual cues off a page. Again, that's like saying living your life has no advantages over reading a book about your life.
"Hey hon, let's go hike up that mountain."
"Why bother? I've got the trail guidebook right here. Let's just read about it...."
Eh?
And you're misunderstanding how sheet music works--it's not meant to be "read." The inky lines and splotches are meant to be ***heard.*** Which comes in handy when you have to play a piece of music but don't have time to assimilate it. If you can sight hear well and you're understand the genre, then you can play from the page, sure. But that's a poor cousin to fully assimilating the music.
I recently had to compose accompaniment for a friend who was singing a song. I had a week to come up with the instrumental, rehearse and revise it a few times, and then perform in front of 400 people. Given my day job, family, and another song accompaniment to learn, etc., I didn't have time to assimilate that piece of music (though the song certainly got stuck in my head). So I had the sheet music on the floor at my feet when we went on stage. Worked quite well. Given more time, I would've just learned the accompaniment and played from within.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by Will CPT
Re: Reading music
Yes, if you are a really good trad player and a really good sight reader, it is entirely possible to play a tune from sheet music and play it with pulse and life and even a rake of "authentic" sounding twiddley bits, ie, all the stuff that's not in the sheet music that you have to add.
But what you can't get is the way someone else gets it. Which is the whole point of traditional music. If at the end of a session, you give a few people the dots to a tune they have never heard, then next week, get everyone to play it together for the first time, all you are going to get is a right bloody racket.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by llig leahcim
Re: Reading music
I'm with mehitabel 23. I love reading music too. Its the written form of the musical language. Its challenging , fun and rewarding when you can look at the dots and go "oh yeah, I've heard that one, I like that one." I'm not saying that I can sightread anything but I can sightread Irish tunes reasonably well (for a guitar picker), which brings me to another take on the subject. If you don't know already ,sight reading tunes is the best way in my opinion to develop sight reading skills in general . I once read a book by Howard Roberts and he talked about the key to successful sight reading ie. the instantaneous recognition of the rhythm and sequence of
notes,and keeping that recognition ahead of the played notes.
What better genre to develop that in than Irish music where
nearly every stringed instrument has the tunes range in the
first position, you can practice reading 4/4's 3/4's 6/8's ,swingy things like horpipes etc. etc. etc. A lot of the basic arpeggios, runs occur repeatedly and you get used to seeing them. I'm not going to stop reading music because
someone insists its an aural tradition. I think people generalise about it. People forget that there are great sightreaders around. My mate and sometime musical partner
is a Irish flute player who sight reads . adds ornaments and interprets new tunes on the fly from dots sometimes when we practise. He is so experienced in the genre that I wouldn't pick the difference. I'd like to work towards that.
Besides that music in print is an elegant and lovely visual art form in itself. Get into it.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by chuneboi slim
Re: Reading music
"There is absolutely no virtue in playing music from memory vs playing from sheet music. Nor is there any reason to believe that music committed to memory is better, more organic, or anything else one can dream up to make a case for memorization."
I disagree. Reading music requires you to use your eyes and process visual input, which takes mental resources away from playing and listening.
When you play from memory, what do you see? For the most part probably nothing, because you naturally shut down the processing of visual information to concentrate on playing and listening.
Try playing something from memory with your eyes unfocused, and then play the same thing while reading something (text will work if you don't read music). See which way you play better.
Even in classical playing, soloists don't play from sheet music for this reason. The rest of the orchestra uses sheet music because it is a convenient way to get a large group of people to play the same thing in the same way, and even then it's mostly just a crutch so you don't forget which part is coming up or miss a key change.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by Marklar
Re: Reading music
"I once read a book by Howard Roberts and he talked about the key to successful sight reading ie. the instantaneous recognition of the rhythm..."
Show me a piece of sheet music that notates the rhythm of a trad tune in any kind of an accurate way.
The only people who can look at a piece of sheet music for a trad tune and instantly get the rhythm are people who have been playing trad for so long that they can interpret the important aspects of rhythm that AREN'T IN THE SHEET MUSIC.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by Marklar
Re: Reading music
O.K. Screetch " instantaneous recognition of the ' core '
rhythmic arrangement of the notes.
I agree with you're second point entirely and I basically said that in my third last sentence referring to the flute player if you care to sight read it properly.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by chuneboi slim
Re: Reading music
Show me a piece of sheet music that notates the notes of a trad tune in any kind of accurate way.
chuneboi slim is handicapped anyway by trying to play the tunes on a guitar, so he won't be noticing all those extra notes that should be going in.
"... because someone insists its an aural tradition."
You must be very far removed from the music to enable you to come up with a sentence like that.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by llig leahcim
Re: Reading music
chuneboi slim, what you said was:
"My mate and sometime musical partner
is a Irish flute player who sight reads . adds ornaments and interprets new tunes on the fly from dots sometimes when we practise. He is so experienced in the genre that I wouldn't pick the difference. I'd like to work towards that."
Do you think you can get there by sight reading tunes? Do you think your friend got there that way? You can only work towards that by using your ears to learn tunes.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by Marklar
Re: Reading music
I have shocking memory - the worst - I forget the endings of all the books I read so I can still read agatha christie books over and over and never remember who done it. Same goes with movies. If I meet a person - I'll have forgotten their name in 2 minutes. But I still manage to remember the tunes I have learnt.
That girl in the clip is obviously classical and has not bothered trying to learn to do it without music. It is hard - but its just worth it in the end.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by bb
Re: Reading music
There's a difference of when the dots are in use. If you use them as an aid along with your ears to learn the tunes that's fine, I think. Once you've learned the tune, you're not still using them, right? To anyone, I guess. I mean, that's the whole point, yes? Why would you want to or have to, unless [ahem] you haven't played it in a while and forgot how that one part goes there, not that it's ever happened to me, of course. [cough]
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Reading music
The extra notes don't matter anyway.
Far removed from what music? Can we be a little specific here. Ta . Regards Slim.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by chuneboi slim
Re: Reading music
Well sure SWFL, there's nothing wrong with glancing at dots or ABC to figure out the basic intervals when learning a new tune, to help you figure out something that you are really learning to play through listening.
But that's not playing from dots. When you actually *perform* with sheet music, or even practice with it after getting the very basic intervals down, then you should be putting the paper away and using your ears.
Looking at sheet music won't steal your nyah, but actually *playing from* it will.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by Marklar
Re: Reading music
Screetch. Nowhere in my post did I suggest that I was going to get there by sightreading alone.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by chuneboi slim
Re: Reading music
I think chuneboi and Ailin's responses reveal part of what Kennedy is on about--why do some people choose to play from the sheet music?
And part of the answer seems to be that some people were taught to play that way--that sheet music is integral to the experience of playing music. My brother is certainly that way--played piano for 51 years so far, music degree from Carnegie Mellon, worked with Leonard Bernstein for 15 years scoring his music for various orchestras around the world, is now an orchestra librarian (responsible for managing and arranging scores for a major symphony orchestra). For him, sheet music is a vital part of *music.*
So much so that he can't really play more than a few pieces from memory. Despite half a century of playing music at a very high level.
So for him, that visual aspect is important, critical even. So is a highly sophisticated intellectual understanding of every aspect of the music. His ability to "hear" a score from the page--with concurrent parts for maybe a dozen instruments, in different clefs, all on the same page--is astounding.
But my brother, as talented as he is, would never be able to play music by the seat of his pants, on the fly, in a session. So all of his skills and abilites don't help much--really aren't even relevant--for playing Irish trad (or any other aural genre).
I'm sure if he ever got a wild hair and decided to start playing Father Kelly's in a string band, he'd *need* the sheet music. And it would sound a lot like the Black and Tans....
(And I'd fare just as badly trying to assimilate and play a Pagannini caprice....)
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by Will CPT
Re: Reading music
The point is that you shouldn't be sightreading tunes at all, until you've played by listening for long enough that you can interpret a tune on the page. Glancing at sheet music is one thing, but sightreading is something else.
Sightreading is a very specific skill in classical music that stresses playing what is on the page *exactly as it is on the page*. You obviously can't play trad that way.
Why is sightreading your goal if you play trad? Do you play classical as well?
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by Marklar
Re: Reading music
"The extra notes don't matter anyway."
LOL, I think I hear veins popping on Michael's forehead just now....
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by Will CPT
Re: Reading music
And in addition Sreetch I don't believe there's any restrictions
on what tools you use to make yourself happy in the type of music you enjoy.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by chuneboi slim
Re: Reading music
There are no restrictions and I'm not really trying to get in a fight with you, I'm just offering opinion and advice, which you're free to discard.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by Marklar
Re: Reading music
This 10-minute video* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkmFgQ9fM94&feature=related shows one of the world's great classical musicians (Itzhak Perlman) learning Klezmer music at sessions - entirely by ear, and not a scrap of sheet music in sight. Klezmer is primarily an aural tradition like ITM.
*The video is the subject of discussion #17892
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by lazyhound
Re: Reading music
" Why is sightreading your goal if you play trad "
Screetch. Good question. It is a tool to develop my own versions of tunes without the influence of someone else's version.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by chuneboi slim
Re: Reading music
I don't understand that. What is the connection between sightreading and the improvisation/composition of tunes?
And, influence? Why would you avoid influence? It's an aural tradition, you're *supposed* to imitate others.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by Marklar
Re: Reading music
So basically you just want to play on your own.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by Steve Shaw
Re: Reading music
I was referring to the post above the one above this.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by Steve Shaw
Re: Reading music
Or even the one above that. Two o'bloody clock in the morning and you still can't post on your own in peace.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by Steve Shaw
Re: Reading music
"classical music .... stresses playing what is on the page *exactly as it is on the page*"
Screetch, I don't think that is accurate. Anyone who gets well into a classical piece and thinks about, or plays in an orchestra under a good conductor, will know that the printed music is only a guide, and that there are infinite possibilities of interpretation within the ambit of the printed dots (and even the dots can get changed if necessary!). Such a musician would perform a Beethoven sonata in a dozen concerts, and each performance would be different as the player explores the depths of the music, just as in ITM and other aural-based genres when they are played well.
If you go back to the source music scores (the "Urtext") of the Baroque there is rarely much in the way dynamic markings, phrasing, or accentuation, and speeds are usually little more than broad suggestions (the metronome hadn't been invented). The player is expected to use his own judgment and ideas when playing the music, and, especially in slow movements, to put in his own elaborate improvised ornamentation. Very like ITM today.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by lazyhound
Re: Reading music
You're splitting hairs, lazyhound. You know that sightreading in classical music means a much more literal interpretation of what's on the page than what you would do if reading a trad tune from dots.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by Marklar
Re: Reading music
You haven't heard my classical sight-reading, then
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by lazyhound
Re: Reading music
Well, keep in mind that I'm talking about sightreading. That's not a skill that you use when taking a conductor's cues into your playing, it's a skill that you use in an audition room when you have a piece put in front of you that you've never played before.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by Marklar
Re: Reading music
And, at 2:14 am, good-night all!
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by lazyhound
Re: Reading music
Steve Shaw. Sure. Play on my own or in a duet where it doesn't matter about being in sync with another interpretation. I do like the odd session though and will be partaking this afternoon.
Screetch. Its only strictly an aural tradition in some peoples minds. It ceased to be an aural tradition the moment
Chief O'Neill picked up the clutch pencil at scribbled his first quaver. Or the fist ABC was scrawled for that matter.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by chuneboi slim
Re: Reading music
Some people don't take it as seriously as others do.
Would you like that in writting?
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by Bodhi
Re: Reading music
Point taken Sir Dungsmere. Having acknowledged that. Some people are serious about Irish melodies for different reasons other than fitting in at a session or being part of a tradition, although good luck to all who are of that inkling. My personal view is that the music is there to make what you want of it.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by chuneboi slim
Re: Reading music
You can do what you want with it, but you can't call it Irish trad if you throw out the tradition.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by Marklar
Re: Reading music
Very true Screetch. I suppose the word "tradition " is the key.
I suppose what I aspire to is not 'trad' in that sense.
Not that I really lose sleep over it, but I might have to come up with a title for a sub - genre. ( sound of can opener in background).
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by chuneboi slim
Re: Reading music
How can you develop a sub-genre before you understand the genre?
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by Marklar
Re: Reading music
"It is a tool to develop my own versions of tunes without the influence of someone else's version"
See, this is another thing that fascinates me that seems to also come from the classical approach---the idea that you can't develop your own approach to a piece if you've heard someone else play it because their interpretation will influence and contaminate your own understanding of it. And I hear of many many teachers who refuse to play for their students or let them listen to recordings for just that reason. The students have to contend with the printed page and create the music from that.
I'm not saying that's a bad approach, but I'm very glad I don't have to learn music that way. I can listen to Bobby Casey play the Bank of Ireland a dozen times and then sit down and pick apart the different phrases from it, try them out and see what I like, and then eventually put everything back together as it suits me. I certainly don't sound like Bobby Casey, but I would never have any ideas about the kinds of rhythms or variations he used if I were only looking at notes on a page.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by kennedy
Re: Reading music
But I said at the beginning of this thread, and I still say that I would love to be a better sight reader. I think the fact that I'm not is a reflection of laziness more than anything else. When you can pick up tunes by ear and memorize easily, there's not much motivation to do it the other way. Maybe that's why people with classical training lean on sheet music so much---reading is easy and they can't be bothered to learn by ear?
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by kennedy
Re: Reading music
Kennedy, in classical music the sheet music is the source material, because except for the most recent stuff there aren't any recordings of the music conducted by the composer, and there's no aural tradition that has passed it down to the modern time. So the written music is all we have to go on to figure out how the composer meant it to be played. Interpretation is involved, of course, but the score is sacred.
So classical musicians might prefer to learn from the historical written music before hearing someone else play it, because the written music is the closest link to the original music.
But for folk music, the source material is the generation of musicians who came before you. This music isn't passed down on paper, it has been passed down for centuries through listening and imitation.
That's a huge difference between the classical and folk traditions.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by Marklar
Re: Reading music
Screetch, Screetch, Screetch, people have been diversifying since time began, there are no rules. If someone wants to do something related musically , do they have to completely understand the influential genre? Who makes these rules. People use influences to create music, you don't have to be a virtuoso within that influential genre to go out and make your own music. That would just lead to a life of misery, chasing the unachievable.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by chuneboi slim
Re: Reading music
Kennedy, being able to play tunes from the page at a good clip is a wonderful skill to have, even if you prefer learning by ear. Again, that's why I think of it as sight hearing, not sight reading--you learn to hear the tune just by seeing the dots or abcs on the page.
A great way to improve your sight hearing abilities is to look at notation for tunes you already know. Play from the dots or abcs, then find another printed version that's different from how you play the tune.
I wouldn't spend a lot of time doing this, but a little every week will soon build into a solid understanding of the dots and abcs. Then it's easy to play unfamiliar tunes from notation, and eventually simply hear (in your mind) the music from the ink.
Another way to improve these skills is to transcribe tunes you play. Write them out in abcs. Then as dots on staves. This forces you to deal with all the conventions of each notation system and understand their proper use and meaning.
But don't lose sleep over it. Just take it on board as it comes.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by Will CPT
Re: Reading music
And it strikes me as really odd to think that learning from an aural source might influence you to mimic someone else's playing or style, but learning from the page won't. The degree of influence depends on what you take from either approach (and what's offered). A bare bone sketch of the tune either way leaves room open for personalizing it. A highly nuanced, individual approach to a tune might sway you toward hearing that as the "definitive" version--but that can happen aurally or visually. And the classical players I've heard work from the dots are far more likely to get entrenched in the written setting of the tune than if they pick it up aurally.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by Will CPT
Re: Reading music
Slim, no one has to follow tradition, anyone is free to experiment and explore. But people immersed in the tradition don't have to accept your playing, either.
Depends on who you hope to play with--by yourself, with others of an experimenting mind, or with people who play within the (somewhat fuzzy) bounds of a particular genre.
Not surprisingly, though, the most compelling experimentation almost always comes from people who have a good grasp of the context and history preceding their innovations.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by Will CPT
Re: Reading music
Will. The "sight hearing ' is a good description. I know an old violinist who used to hum off the sheet while he played. He would swear by it .
I take your points and they are nicely put.
And you're right, I wouldn't expect a traditionalist to accept my playing or my viewpoint, but there are a lot of musicians who share it, and trust each other to come up with something worthwhile.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by chuneboi slim
Re: Reading music
Lilting from the page is a good way to learn to hear the dots, with or without your instrument in hand.
Yes, musicians are a creative lot, and there's no shortage of opportunities to cut loose and really play with the sounds you can produce. My own approach to this is to keep some things separate, though. I enjoy playing lots of other styles of music on a variety of instruments, but when it comes to Irish trad, I pretty much stick to the tradition. Simply because that appeals to me.
But that doesn't stop me from playing punk tunes with my son or improving to Folsom Prison Blues with a local Johnny Cash sound-a-like, or plugging in my electric fiddle, cranking the gain, and wailing away.
Just not on Irish trad music.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by Will CPT
Re: Reading music
Oisin McAuley's opinion :
Even though McAuley has been mixing the styles for years, he understands why most musicians find it difficult. “You’ll often find classical players trying to pick up traditional music because they get interested in it and some of them, whether they want to give up on classical music or they just want to try new things, they then try world music, jazz, Celtic music or whatever it is and they find themselves lost very quickly,” he explains. “Even though they’re very accomplished in classical music, they’re not able to pick up music by ear very well and their technique tends to be very rigid. It doesn’t lend itself to some of the faster playing that you need for traditional music. But then again you often find traditional musicians sitting in on a gig where there’s maybe a singer and it’s a little more middle of the road and they find themselves absolutely lost; maybe unpolished; out of tune. Each background has a part of the jigsaw in my opinion.”
http://www.fiddle.com/issues/win0708.htm#1
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by wolfbird
Re: Reading music
As a non-orchestral player, I saw another point for classical orchestras to use sheet music. Just like your local session version of a tune, every conductor has HIS own interpretation of dynamics etc of a tune, and during rehersals they will all sit down with a pencil and jot down notes of the conductors wishes, quite understandable that they won't memorize every twist of a symphony-score.
Anyway I always felt sheet music restrained me. Fine for learning our session repertoire, but I have to dispense as soon as possible because the version I play might adapt, or change, and it will actually cause conflicting input that is not necessary.
What I find interesting is the qoute about an unbiased written version. It always struck me that the only sheet music you can get for trad are solely based on someones playing. You might cut out a century by learning from o'neill's, but then he also wrote how he played it, and you can't be sure that a tune by a certain title is what you're looking for, so that doesn't help much either.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by TMB
Re: Reading music
Just to put things in perspective - I've played at the same session as chuneboi on many occasions, and far from holding him back his guitar playing is truly exceptional. He sometimes leaves me in the dust, and I'm playing a box for goodness' sake. He's well versed in the tradition, including the element of it that involves winding up people who climb up on their soap boxes...
I understand his desire to be able to sight read sheet music at a reasonable speed. It's a skill I've acquired due to years of piano playing, and it allows me to skim through a book of eighty Australian Bush Tunes and pick out the twenty which are really poorly remembered Scots songs, and the twelve I actually like and want to memorise.
Whilst I CAN read sheet music and add lilt and rhythm at full speed, I don't do it in sessions for one obvious reason - it blinds me to what the other players are doing (as I think Screetch pointed out). If anything I would consider it rude to play from a book, except in the rare case where someone has learned a tune which no-one else knows and wants someone to play along with them as they lack confidence, which has happened a couple of times.
To return to the original post, I don't think the Black and Tan Band's problem is reading from the dots, but the fact they have come to this music from the dots without ever hearing it played well. The very name of their band tells you that before you hear the first note, surely?
Eno
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by bc_box_player
Re: Reading music
Q: Why would anyone NOT want EVERY available tool for assimilating more new music? Any debate of that point simply boggles my mind, so I hope that is not the case here.
My twa farthings, IMHO, my own experience only:
Common sense would state that anything can be a crutch if taken to extremes, so just do what works, right? Carbon-copies and clones are just that - do we want to play someone else's music, or make our own? What is there to debate?
That said, still I would tell any musician (who asked me, first!) that if opportuntiy presents itself:
DO be as adept as possible at sight-reading. It is handy, especially for hiring out with strangers for pay, different subject I know. (There are too many tunes out there to hear them all at a session at your convenience, direct from the well. It seems only logical to also have the dots to reference. But a tool, nothing more.) i would tell kennedy, if asked , that it is like any muscle, exercise it and you may be surprised by how well you can master it. Like the memory muscle, BTW. Just keep working it.
DO learn sight-reading for voice as well (good supplemental for sight-reading with the instrument as you can better anticipate what the tune sounds like, improves your sense of pitch when you pull notes out of the air instead of off of a pitchpipe or other instrument).
DO practice memorization for most of the practical reasons above stated by others (spontaneous and from the dots as an aid to memory. Just remember that perhaps it is bare bones at best, or else, with additional pages of commentary and ornamentation noted, someone else's version).
Re. That youtube link: I am not enough of the scholar to be passing judgement. I remember the tune differently, but that is just me.
My personal taste?
Yecch.
It made a better reel.
Next?
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by Rook
Re: Reading music
I suppose the reason some ITM fake books only have two or four bars is that you're expected to think "oh, yeah... THAT tune". The dots are useful as you learn more (and more) tunes, and some start to get crowded out of your cranium. Tune books are a basis upon which you can extrapolate and breathe life into what is printed. Perhaps if some adherents to the great religions of planet Earth could view their relgious books with the same perspective, there could be more acceptance of living, breathing variations of their faiths. Just a thought.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by drone
Re: Reading music
Quote: For every good busker ( who is usually born with a real musical gift and a wonderful ear) there are thousands who churn out the same old monotonous corn with very little idea of phrasing, fingering, or musicianship. In most cases they can be improved 100% by the simple process of learning to read music.......I read that in a music book in the early sixties and it stuck with me. I still know accordion players who haven't an idea what notes are on their box and that, in this day and age, is sad. On the other hand I know a lot of lovely people who couldn't play the simplest of tunes without the dots in front of them, and that is even sadder. I'm blessed with good retention, and can play all night without referring to music, however shoud the need arise, it's still great to be able to read a few dots to enable you to start a tune.
# Posted on May 31st 2008 by Free Reed
Re: Reading music
I think, in our modern society, that the act of memorization tends to be looked down upon, not just in music, but in many areas. We tend to let our computers and calculators keep our facts straight for us, and in teaching tend to focus on the rules and the logic of it all, and not on rote memorization.
More's the pity. When you memorize a tune, or the words to a song, or a poem, it becomes part of you. The music or song or words remain in your memory for years and years, and the phrases become part of your vocabulary.
When I was first exposed to this music, I marvelled at the memorization needed, and never thought I could get very far in that department. But the more you memorize, the more you learn how to memorize, and the easier it gets. And you are richer because of it.
Whether it is the aural tradition of learning music by ear, or the oral tradition of passing on stories by telling them, we are part of a tradition that is very important to what it means to be human.
# Posted on June 1st 2008 by AlBrown
Re: Reading music
You should see how little we actually have to memorize in our exams these days..."data sheets" and information booklets *are* the new brains...
# Posted on June 1st 2008 by mehitabel23
Re: Reading music
It is not difficult to memorize this music. Anyone who thinks it is is either kidding themselves or lazy. If you have taken music to a session be honest with yourself. You CAN NOT do the music justice while reading it. Like a lot of folk I can sight read and learn by ear - nobody I know would consider playing trad in front of anyone with the music in front of them. Put in the time necessary to learn the tunes. Can you remember the first bar? Why don't you try to remember the second bar? What about the first four? See, your quarter way there. Bad memory is not an excuse it's a cop-out
# Posted on June 1st 2008 by bogman
Re: Reading music
To get back to the original question........
.....if you follow the links to other videos made by this band, the young lady doesn't use music all the time, but she obviously doesn't know Father Kelly well, hence the need for the dots.
I certainly don't think this is the worst example of a classically-trained musician ruining ITM on youtube.
Come on, let's have a few more contenders - name and shame !
# Posted on June 2nd 2008 by Guernsey Pete
Re: Reading music
Remember, MAKING music came before NOTATING music.
Like dogs, some musicians are simply and solely "paper traine ".
# Posted on June 2nd 2008 by hauke
Re: Reading music
Although I would never use sheet music at a real session, I practice with it at home, especially if it's a tune I don't know. i'll sight read it until i get the notes in my fingers, then i'll listen to someone who knows the tune to learn what it really sounds like.
that being said, for all that kennedy wonders why anybody would bother, please remember that, while some people sneer at crutches, some of us really do only have one leg. It takes us a little longer, while we're waiting for our prosthesis to be made, to limp along with those who run. i'll use whatever crutch i can find in order to begin to play what this music is all about.
# Posted on June 2nd 2008 by Mandogal