# Technique, Theory, Playing Tips and Tricks > Theory, Technique, Tips and Tricks >  Advantages/Disadvantages of Notation (not Mandolin Specific)

## geoffreymbrown

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4echOq29d0

(not sure I linked correctly)

I found minutes 2-15 of this to be an interesting discussion of the negative side of notation -- before a lecture based upon notation (also interesting).

Geoffrey

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HonketyHank

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## boblang

I think notation would be improved if we went back a few hundred years!  

At school, I learned of grace notes and ornamentation. You've probably seen older printed music with smaller notes (appoggiatura and acciaccatura), wavy lines (mordents), sideways S (turns), and so on.  These add specific ornamentation to the music, but have the massive advantage of keeping the main musical line clear and uncluttered.  A beginner can play the music and ignore the ornaments, concentrating on getting the tune right. The ornaments can be added later or not at all, according to taste.

Today the trend is to spell out ornaments directly in linear runs of eighth and sixteenth notes.  I suspect that this is because most notation these days is typeset by computer and it's to fiddly to go back later and put in the ornaments. The downside is that we end up with notation that is technically "correct", but is also cluttered, difficult and unhelpful. The clear detail of the wood is lost in a forest of sixteenth notes. 

My 2 cents

Bob

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## DavidKOS

> I think notation would be improved if we went back a few hundred years!  
> 
> At school, I learned of grace notes and ornamentation. You've probably seen older printed music with smaller notes (appoggiatura and acciaccatura), wavy lines (mordents), sideways S (turns), and so on.  These add specific ornamentation to the music, but have the massive advantage of keeping the main musical line clear and uncluttered.  A beginner can play the music and ignore the ornaments, concentrating on getting the tune right. The ornaments can be added later or not at all, according to taste.
> 
> Today the trend is to spell out ornaments directly in linear runs of eighth and sixteenth notes.  I suspect that this is because most notation these days is typeset by computer and it's to fiddly to go back later and put in the ornaments. The downside is that we end up with notation that is technically "correct", but is also cluttered, difficult and unhelpful. The clear detail of the wood is lost in a forest of sixteenth notes.


Good notation today still uses the traditional symbols for appoggiatura, acciaccatura, mordents, turns, grace notes, etc.  
I suppose notation programs have something to do with the practice of writing everything out as if it were part of the melody, but I can add all of those symbols easily on Sibelius, and think it's the same on Finale.

Some musicians think the ornaments are really part of the melody, particularly in certain folk styles, but the standard practice of writing ornaments does have the advantage of making a distinction between essential melody and the extras.

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## JeffD

Summary:

1. Notation doesn't do it all.
2. Notation affects the music.

Gosh he took 15 minutes to say that.   :Smile:

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DavidKOS, 

k0k0peli

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## geoffreymbrown

Yes, but it takes longer to explain things with Yale students  :Smile:

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billhay4

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## JeffD

:Laughing:

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## Beanzy

It used to be that you could get players to read music and just say which style they should play it in. I know that's how I approach things. There's real fun to be had in learning regional and temporal differences in styles so you can just go to a tune or score and apply that. I did a fiddle day last Saturday with David Shepherd from Blowzabella and he was teaching us Norfolk style, French regional differences, neecastle bowing, Sand Dance bowing etc etc etc. this stuff just gets lost if it is not passed on between generations of players. Playing different rhythmic accompaniment styles depending on region and era is another important aspect that is often not passed on. At least the old figured bass scores have preserved some of the clues.

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k0k0peli

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## ModalBliss

"Q: How do you get a guitar player to stop playing?
A: You put music in front of him"

A joke I was once told by a MUCH older drummer when I sat in with a community jazz band.

I love the discussion on this topic! It's one I've discussed with a lot of different people. When it comes to fretted instruments we have a precarious situation. Sure, you can read the notation but I can play my E here... or here... or even here (if I REAAAAALLY feel like it). Tablature cuts through that trial and error and tells a technician where to put their fingers. We've been using it since the 15th century!

Being able to read notation is SO important. I've had several gigs where a sax player pulled out some blank staff paper, wrote out a quick lead sheet and that's what I went on for the next little while. In addition, being able to transpose or share that music with anyone else... even share the Bb real book with that tenor player... I couldn't do that without a STRONG understanding of notation.

As a student at a non-guitar school, I had to FIGHT to read tablature as part of my juries. (At state school, I had to perform my instrument once a semester to prove I had reached a certain level of understanding) My last jury, I was thrown out for wanting to read a Joe Satriani piece in tablature. I chalked it up to misunderstanding the tradition of fretted instruments.

As a teacher, I first approach the technician side of playing... where do you put your fingers? Slowing fitting in those stretches that are just... UNCOMFORTABLE! After we have that down, we start working on reading the language of notation. Starting by translating between the two. Transcribing some solos or heads from other instruments. Everything is one great big journey! If you can't enjoy the opportunity to widen your grasp, why do it?! 

Just my thoughts on it.

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Jess L.

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## JeffD

The big three - standard notation, tabulature, and I would add the "Nashville" number system charts, all three are ultimately important to know.

Each has its advantages and disadvantages. Everything you don't know limits you, IMO. 

I am most fluent with standard notation, with a strong first position prejudice. I prefer it because I can see the tune, and even hum the tune, directly from the dots. Sight reading a new piece is one of life's great joys. And notation transcends the instrument. I am not chained to playing mandolin music, I can read from any music as easily as from any other.

If I am playing some great player's transcribed solo break, I am wanting to not just play the tune but to play it as Sierra Hull played it, I find tablature invaluable - because often the whole thing is way up the neck and I need to know exactly which finger goes where. So for me, where explicit finger placement is very important, tablature is the way to go.

I think the Nashville system is a very powerful notation system - especially if you are a good improviser, and in live real time situations. I am new to this, but its a lot easier than when I first started learning it, once I get "intuitive" at it I can see it will have some great advantages, not available to me with notation or tab. I like how one can compose a song, or fix a composed song and boom boom boom here is a chart and you do that here, and it would take a whole lot longer if the composer had to write it out in notation. It seems a more direct transfer from the composing musician's head to the paper.

And the disadvantages of each are the polar opposite of the advantages - notation doesn't tell you how to play the tune, tablature does not visually show the flow of the pitch of the tune, and is instrument specific, and the Nashville system relies so much on your familiarity with the genre and ability to provide creative real time content.

Eventually need all three systems, I think.

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Jess L.

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## JeffD

Someone is going to say it, so I am going to beat them to it - yes it is important to develop a good ear. Of course. That's a separate thing.

You also have to be able to drive to get to the gig. Lots of things to learn.

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Jess L.

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## ralph johansson

The lecturer does not really dwell on the disadvantages of notation, but rather its limitations. Those are certainly not overcome by any other form of notation, such as tablature. Indeed, his two main examples pertain to the human voice (what happens between the notes) and tenor saxophone (to capture the groove and particular phrasing accurately) - these instruments certainly have no frets. 

I simply don't agree with those who stress the importance of mastering tab - there is NO professional use for tab as far as I know. Tabs may be used didactically, e.g., to explain the possible fingerings for  certain passages, but not really as representations of whole pieces. Sometimes the composer will indicate that certain passages are to played on one string or course only; one example would be JS Bach's "Air" (on the g string); or perhaps on the lower strings in high positions. Such instructions are easily included in standard notation. 


And, of course, in colloquial genres, such as Bluegrass, notation is not used at all. Someone says that tab will resolve the dilemma of where to play a certain note. I contend that it's up to the player to find out, or decide, for himself. Maybe that note shouldn't be played at all. When I learn a piece by ear or from notation my first decision will be not to play the tune that way. I may even decide to play it in some other key.

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## Joel Glassman

Tab and standard notation are perfectly good tools.
Tab for initially learning how music is placed on the mandolin, and for advanced solos
to explore a player's style. Standard notation for analysis, composing, playing classical
music and for access to dance or Celtic music [ie. if you play a lot of fiddle tunes].

I believe the basic process in becoming a "roots" musician though is learning music by ear.
People who learn to do this are more flexible and interesting to listen to. More likely
to develop a personal style. It seems inefficient when you're in the "tune collecting"
stage all new players seem to go through. Going back and forth on a recording to learn
the sequence of notes... Frustrating too. The goal is to approximate a tune you don't know 
and place it on the mandolin. Listen to it, hum it, play it, "fake it". Takes a couple of years
of hard work and patience to learn this skill. The big reward is becoming a musician 
who can play music he hasn't worked on, because it seems familiar. It resembles known music,
can be analyzed on the fly, and played by ear. I think that's hard to achieve with a heavy reliance on tab or notation.

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## Nashville

Everybody's right and everybody's wrong. Depends on the gig. All I need to know is what key the song is in. 

Now for learning a tune/melody then either notation or tab gets the job done. For studio work the Nashville number system is great. For work with a orchestra or jazz ensemble then notation is invaluable. For playing with a rock band or many other styles then it's usually ear.

At home I use both notation & tab. At the gig I say "what key is it in?"

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AlanN, 

DavidKOS, 

Jess L.

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## John Ritchhart

It is best to be able to do both. Many times classically trained people have a hard time without music in front of them. The Professor in this example struggled with his own fight song without the music. Some people (like me) can read music notation but cant sight read at speed. I really need to have the tune in my head to be able to play it. This is the disadvantage of the aural tradition. I should practice sight reading so I can do it.

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DavidKOS, 

Jess L.

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## sblock

> ...
> I simply don't agree with those who stress the importance of mastering tab - there is NO professional use for tab as far as I know. Tabs may be used didactically, e.g., to explain the possible fingerings for  certain passages, but not really as representations of whole pieces. Sometimes the composer will indicate that certain passages are to played on one string or course only; one example would be JS Bach's "Air" (on the g string); or perhaps on the lower strings in high positions. Such instructions are easily included in standard notation. 
> 
> And, of course, in colloquial genres, such as Bluegrass, notation is not used at all. Someone says that tab will resolve the dilemma of where to play a certain note. I contend that it's up to the player to find out, or decide, for himself. Maybe that note shouldn't be played at all. When I learn a piece by ear or from notation my first decision will be not to play the tune that way. I may even decide to play it in some other key.


I think this response betrays some serious misconceptions about (or perhaps a serious unfamiliarity with) modern tablature and its role as a form of musical notation.  Tab is an ancient form, historically, that predates the "standard notation" used today for most classical music.  Put simply, tab can do some things that standard notation can't do (without extensive and tedious annotation), and conversely, standard notation can do some things than tab can't do (but again, without extensive annotation). And they have a huge amount of overlap.  As others have pointed out, these notations each have their place, and deservedly so, and neither one is about to go away anytime soon!

That said, to assert that there is no "professional" use of tab is simply wrong, and entirely at odds with the facts. This is not a matter of personal opinion. There are many Baroque pieces for lute/guitar that were written in tab. Most the the printed music available for non-classical folk instruments, in particular for the 5-string banjo, are to be found only in tab, and not in standard notation. Countless professional artists who perform today, and who play in Bluegrass or Oldtime or Americana styles, themselves learned to play from tab. Many recording artists who offer lessons employ tab.  Tab is found at many recording sessions (in addition to popular Nashville numbering and jazz-style lead sheets with chords and melody -- and neither of those representations is fully standard notation!). Professionals _DO_ use tab.  It's a fact of life.

Furthermore, tab has evolved quite a bit over the years!  A lot of modern tab (for example, the type of tab that can be generated by programs like TablEdit) is something of a hybrid with standard notation:  it indicates the meter (using standard notation conventions!), note and rest durations (with flags and symbols identical to standard notation!), repeats and codas (ditto), effects like tremolo, pick directions, and a whole lot more.  Modern tab indicates ligatures, grace notes, and all that. For some things, tab does a BETTER job than standard notation, for example in handling techniques like slides, hammers-on, pull-offs, note bends, chord brushes, and stuff like that.

Not that standard notation -- which, in fact, is not all that "standard" when it comes to instrument-specific annotations! -- cannot handle these things altogether.  It just does a very awkward job.

As for the need to "master" tab, this is unnecessary for many purposes.  Moreover, it is equally unnecessary to "master" standard notation.  A great many of the recording artists and performers so admired on this forum have mastered _neither_, in fact -- especially the top "folk" performers.  But some familiarity with both standard notation and tab is helpful, without a doubt. And, as the saying goes, "knowledge is power."

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Jess L., 

MikeyG

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## DavidKOS

> It is best to be able to do both. Many times classically trained people have a hard time without music in front of them....I should practice sight reading so I can do it.


Yeah - and any classical player that needs music to play tunes should take a few more courses in ear training.

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sblock

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## ralph johansson

> I think this response betrays some serious misconceptions about (or perhaps a serious unfamiliarity with) modern tablature and its role as a form of musical notation.  Tab is an ancient form, historically, that predates the "standard notation" used today for most classical music.  Put simply, tab can do some things that standard notation can't do (without extensive and tedious annotation), and conversely, standard notation can do some things than tab can't do (but again, without extensive annotation). And they have a huge amount of overlap.  As others have pointed out, these notations each have their place, and deservedly so, and neither one is about to go away anytime soon!
> 
> That said, to assert that there is no "professional" use of tab is simply wrong, and entirely at odds with the facts. This is not a matter of personal opinion. There are many Baroque pieces for lute/guitar that were written in tab. Most the the printed music available for non-classical folk instruments, in particular for the 5-string banjo, are to be found only in tab, and not in standard notation. Countless professional artists who perform today, and who play in Bluegrass or Oldtime or Americana styles, themselves learned to play from tab. Many recording artists who offer lessons employ tab.  Tab is found at many recording sessions (in addition to popular Nashville numbering and jazz-style lead sheets with chords and melody -- and neither of those representations is fully standard notation!). Professionals _DO_ use tab.  It's a fact of life.
> 
> Furthermore, tab has evolved quite a bit over the years!  A lot of modern tab (for example, the type of tab that can be generated by programs like TablEdit) is something of a hybrid with standard notation:  it indicates the meter (using standard notation conventions!), note and rest durations (with flags and symbols identical to standard notation!), repeats and codas (ditto), effects like tremolo, pick directions, and a whole lot more.  Modern tab indicates ligatures, grace notes, and all that. For some things, tab does a BETTER job than standard notation, for example in handling techniques like slides, hammers-on, pull-offs, note bends, chord brushes, and stuff like that.
> 
> Not that standard notation -- which, in fact, is not all that "standard" when it comes to instrument-specific annotations! -- cannot handle these things altogether.  It just does a very awkward job.


First of all, again: the limitations pointed out in the lecture have nothing to do with the tab-SN controversy. Tab does not overcome them, and in the case of the human voice and tenor saxophone (the two main examples) does not even exist. 

Secondly: what I'm saying is that I rejcect the notion that mastery of tab is important or even imperative to a musician, e.g., a guitarist or mandolinist. The only time I've used tab is when a song was not available to me aurally or in SN. It was painfully slow as I'm used to getting the idea and structure of a song - and its possible interpretation (key, tempo, phrasing, embellishments) at a quick glance at the score (my main sources are lead sheets à la Real Book, or full piano scores in grand staff). How many tab addicts (e.g., those who even claim that one advantage is that you don't have to worry about keys!) can extract that kind of information from just looking at tab, and transpose the tune to some other key without learning the tabbed version first? One fact pointed ut over and over in the cited thread is that, unless you have very big ears, SN is the most convenient gateway to  musical theory, e.g., harmony. There are exceptions, e.g., T Emmanuel who does not read, knows an awaful lot about chord construction, and I'm sure it wasn't tab that got him there. Another example would be Martin Taylor, who knew a lot about these things before he learned to read notation (which he did by listening with a score in his hand). 

What I'm saying about professional uses derives from this thread, that I followed a year before joining the Café:
http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/sh...otation-vs-tab
The most important contributions come from three educators at Berklee (one of them deceased), and at least JimD has done quite a bit of session work. E.g., #168, 170, 171, 176, 182, 185, 186, 203. 

HO's and PO's are easily indicated by legato arcs in SN. There are standard symbols for slides, mordents, trills, tremolo, etc. But who needs these except in didactical examples? To me, or just about anyone with some kind of musical ambition, the written score is just raw material for my own  interpretation. Which also includes the choice of fingerings and positions.

And, again, the lecture is emphatically *not* about that.

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## ralph johansson

> Yeah - and any classical player that needs music to play tunes should take a few more courses in ear training.


As far as I know classical training always involves some pretty rigorous ear training - you can't really play from a complex score without a good ear.

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## JeffD

> I believe the basic process in becoming a "roots" musician though is learning music by ear.
> People who learn to do this are more flexible and interesting to listen to. More likely
> to develop a personal style. It seems inefficient when you're in the "tune collecting"
> stage all new players seem to go through. Going back and forth on a recording to learn
> the sequence of notes... Frustrating too. The goal is to approximate a tune you don't know 
> and place it on the mandolin. Listen to it, hum it, play it, "fake it". Takes a couple of years
> of hard work and patience to learn this skill. The big reward is becoming a musician 
> who can play music he hasn't worked on, because it seems familiar. It resembles known music,
> can be analyzed on the fly, and played by ear. I think that's hard to achieve with a heavy reliance on tab or notation.


The right tool for the right job. A musician needs to learn it all. Everything you don't know limits you. Being able to learn by ear is gigantic for a roots musician. Being able to follow the number system is important for the roots musician in session work. Being able to read tab and notation is important if the musician wants to play anything that is not recorded or currently being played.

The problem, I think, is not a heavy reliance on tab or notation - it is an inadequate ear training.

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Jess L.

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## DavidKOS

> Secondly: what I'm saying is that I reject the notion that *mastery of tab is important or even imperative to a musician*, e.g., a guitarist or mandolinist.


The only musicians that need to use tab are lute players playing from period scores, which were written in tablature - however the same players could also read staff notation and intabulate music from staff to tab.




> As far as I know classical training always involves some pretty rigorous ear training - you can't really play from a complex score without a good ear.


It should indeed, hence my point that classical musicians that cannot play by ear need further training. We had to be able to sight -sing, take musical dictation, etc.




> The right tool for the right job. A musician needs to learn it all. Everything you don't know limits you. ......
> The problem, I think, is not a heavy reliance on tab or notation - it is an inadequate ear training.


A _complete_ musician can play by ear and by notation.  Folk and rock players can get by on ear alone, but for many styles including playing shows or any sort of reading gig, you won't see a note of tab, only staff notation.

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## August Watters

It might be interesting, considering this conversation, to take a look at some mandolin music that is very specific about which note is to be played where -- a century before the rise of mandolin tablature. This exerpt is from Calace's first prelude (op. 45), included in his Metodo per Mandolino volume 6a:



Perhaps the most interesting part about the notation is how seldom Calace indicates fingerings, suggesting how much was implied by the composer, and understood by the player. This elegant language involves writing in a few fingerings and (perhaps) position markers, and is of course in widespread use today among mandolin composers.

I will write in more depth on this soon, on an upcoming blog post -- to be posted soon on the Mandolin Cafe blogs.

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dang, 

Jess L.

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## RonEllison

I use notation, I read and write notation and, in the past I taught notation. I learned to play by ear and learned notation much later. When I started private teaching I used tab so that the students did not have to commit everything to memory by ear. A student can learn to read simple tab in a half hour lesson. Notation would take far far longer and probably loose the student's interest, and therefore loose me money. 

These days if I write an arrangement for four guitars I write it in notation. The ideas are musical, not instrument specific, and for that notation is easiest. When I come to record the parts I don't want to take the time to commit each part to memory. It is simpler to work out the fingering once, put that into tab and record from that. Horses for courses, they are both good for what they are good at.

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Jess L.

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## farmerjones

A question for this illustrious panel: 
Is there piano tab?

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## DavidKOS

> A question for this illustrious panel: 
> Is there piano tab?


Technically, two types I know of, in a way.

One organ (keyboard) tablature...a bit of a stretch, since it was used before the invention of the piano.



Then there is the piano roll, from the days of player pianos and now used for MIDI writing, along with various ways of showing the notes to play on the keyboard:

http://www.choose-piano-lessons.com/piano-tabs.html

https://www.google.com/search?q=pian...IVA48NCh2IdgAC

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k0k0peli

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## k0k0peli

> Then there is the piano roll... now used for MIDI writing, along with various ways of showing the notes to play on the keyboard:


 I started my PC computer-music efforts with the AdLib soundcard (ancestor of SoundBlaster) and its Composer software, using a piano-roll interface like your illustration. It is indeed piano / clavier tablature.

As for voice tabs -- I gargled for *vocal tablature* and, among other things, *found this*.

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DavidKOS

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## Jess L.

> A _complete_ musician can play by ear and by notation.  Folk and rock players can get by on ear alone, but for many styles including playing shows or any sort of reading gig, you won't see a note of tab, only staff notation.


I like the way you expressed that.  :Smile:  

Seems to me that when it comes to learning tunes, there's no harm in learning as many different ways as possible, so that one's learning isn't limited by a particular medium (sound, or notes on a written page, or whatever)... Um, well... *maybe not*... ok I can do music by ear, notation, or tab, but some of these *other* less-common notation systems are probably way too complicated for me to ever understand:  :Whistling: 


(shape notes, nah I'll pass, looks too difficult)

*Or* whatever precision notation system they allegedly used for this alleged *2000-year-old Greek drinking song* "The Song of Seikilos": 



I'm probably not up to learning *Egyptian heiroglyphics music notation* either,  :Whistling:  here a guy has made a clawhammer banjo adaptation of some professor's interpretation of a 3400-year-old tune that was allegedly found in written-tablature-like notation (um I think I got all that right), hmmm, so people even back then were writing down their tunes, cool  :Cool:  ...  supposedly something-or-other about a *"fretted lute"* that allegedly evolved prior to the lyre like 5000 years ago with skin heads just like banjos... hmmm... well, I wouldn't be surprised, I always thought banjo sounded ancient (especially when low tuned), heck, anything's possible... 



So anyway...  :Grin:  back to the topic... and modern standard notation:

It is useful to be able to *write* music and/or tab, like if you think of a cool riff or an idea for a tune while you can write it down so you can remember it later. I've jotted down tune fragments on the back of receipts, envelopes, any ol' piece of scrap paper (helps to write tiny like I do), takes about 2 seconds to draw the staff lines or tab lines (they don't have to be straight or evenly spaced). I guess nowadays there are other, more high-tech options (recording audio via cellphones etc), but say you're in the middle of a grocery store aisle shopping for broccoli  :Wink:  (hey, I like broccoli) or a library or church or funeral or something and you get an idea for a tune or a riff, might get some funny looks if you start singing into a portable recording device, but writing it down on paper is silent... and doesn't require batteries.  :Smile:  

For stuff like fiddle tunes, I don't see any reason to know all the fancy classical Italian musical words and symbols (I learned all that stuff in piano lessons but have forgotten most of it as very little of it is used when writing fiddle tunes)... Probably a good starter for notation is to know what the "sharp" signs mean, and the repeat dots at a double bar, and 1st/2nd endings, and maybe a couple of different "rest" symbols... the rest of it you can learn if/when needed... The standard-notation notes themselves are not that much different than reading a graph in math class - the higher the notes are on the graph (musical staff), the higher the pitch of the note, kind of a visual thing...

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DavidKOS, 

k0k0peli

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## dang

Pulled out some standard notation after reading this thread, and I have to admit I hate it but want to be able to sight read standard notation.  In my days as a tuba player i could easily sight read bass clef but the best I could on mando was to name the note and then find it on the fretboard.  Slow going.

One disadvantage of standard notation, various clefs!

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tkdboyd

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## k0k0peli

I am an incomplete musician and claim nothing more. I trained early on clarinet and can read a couple of keys for recorder and penny whistle / flageolet, but that's about it for strict notation. I learned the director's hand gestures in a Choral Speaking class in high school, and Shape Notes in a folksy choral class, both being sorts of vocal tablature. (Vaguely remembered after a half-century's disuse.) 

I learned mountain dulcimer from tablature. I learned guitar by reading tabs and chord diagrams in songbooks and by drawing my own fingering charts. I learned mandolin by reverse-engineering many guitar chord positions, and just noodling. I'm trying to get more serious now; with both mando (in standard and Irish tunings) and non-standard ukuleles (6- and 10-string) with non-linear courses, I write notation and tablature together to impress the fingerings into my subconscious.

And I wrote a lot of pseudo-MIDI music on the AdLib Composer PC software's piano-roll interface, truly a keyboard tablature, and very powerful for that. It's very easy to see melodic and rhythmic intervals without the necessity of knowing each note's name. And it can play a helicopter as an instrument.  :Wink:  Try *that* with standard notation!

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## Beanzy

> very easy to see melodic and rhythmic intervals without the necessity of knowing each note's name. And it can play a helicopter as an instrument.  Try *that* with standard notation!


Stockhausen did that didn't he? 
Anyway the input method could be driven by any type of notation

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## k0k0peli

> Stockhausen did that didn't he?


 I've seen some of KS's 'scores', and those of John Cage and others of that ilk. Calling them "standard notation" is a bit of a stretch. One might also draw staff lines across a Jackson Pollack painting and call it a score. Maybe this dates back to something mentioned in the book MUSICDOTES by opera singer, actor, DJ, and Imperial Stormtrooper voice Scott Beach. The book begins with this passage: 




> "Next time you hear Chopin's 'Mazurka in G-Major' (Op.67, #1), listen carefully to the main theme. It's a bunch of freckles. Chopin had a long and torrid love affair with George Sand (pseudonym of Baronne Dudevant). She had freckles. All over. During an afternoon of dalliance, Chopin became fascinated with all those dots, blots, and splotches. He drew a five-line staff and a treble clef on one of Sand's dunes. (I'll bet it tickled.) Letting the freckles fall where they may, he copied the resulting notes and used them for the main theme of his mazurka. George Sand's freckles are thus forever enshrined in Chopin's Opus 67, #1."


 Just because something can be notated doesn't make it music.

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## DavidKOS

> I've seen some of KS's 'scores', and those of John Cage and others of that ilk. Calling them "standard notation" is a bit of a stretch. One might also draw staff lines across a Jackson Pollack painting and call it a score.....
> 
>  Just because something can be notated doesn't make it music.


Maybe it's "Just because something can be notated doesn't make it _musical_"

I agree about stretching standard notation. In college I used to look at a publication called "New Music Journal" which had very odd modern "classical" works, and often the notation, although usually (not always  :Disbelief:  ) written on staff notation often looked as if it was a Jackson Pollack work, not a piece of music.

Much of that music was really hard to read and sounded, well, pretty unlistenable.

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Jess L.

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## objectsession

> I've seen some of KS's 'scores', and those of John Cage and others of that ilk. Calling them "standard notation" is a bit of a stretch. One might also draw staff lines across a Jackson Pollack painting and call it a score.


On the off chance someone might take the statement at face value, I should point out that Stockhausen and Cage both have music that can be (and was) written in standard/staff notation. Both have some music that can't be notated with standard notation because it wasn't written for instruments that can be notated with notes on a staff, in addition to other reasons, like the indeterminacy mentioned in the quote or allowing for improvisation.




> Much of that music was really hard to read and sounded, well, pretty unlistenable.


Of course, music learned by ear is often *impossible* to read . . . since it hasn't been notated. And some (like Howard Stern) would say bluegrass is pretty unlistenable, too.  :Laughing:

----------

Jess L.

----------


## David Lewis

This is a fascinating discussion: I'm a so so reader... used to be nonexistent, but I'm getting there. I think tab is useful, but agree that your ear will always outrank your eye as a music judge...

Also, that Egyptian cunieform/clawhammer: if the professor got it right, you can hear modern Middle Eastern music in there, but also 'Celtic' music; or is that just me.

----------


## DavidKOS

> Of course, music learned by ear is often *impossible* to read . . . since it hasn't been notated. And some (like Howard Stern) would say bluegrass is pretty unlistenable, too.


Not like some of the "new music" that really WAS unlistenable, unless you liked all sorts of cacophony.

That's just a personal thing with guys like that....there's a lot of well respected "roots" music I don't care for much - but my sensibilities are less country/old timey and more urban/modern/jazzy

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## August Watters

> Not like some of the "new music" that really WAS unlistenable, unless you liked all sorts of cacophony.


I've been reading a fascinating book on a related topic:  "Louis Armstrong: Master of Modernism."  The concept of "modernism" here is not a judgment by the book author, but was instead taken from Armstrong's own publicity in the 1930s.  But it is more or less the same idea as the "modernism" explored decades later by contemporary composers, with emphasis on exploring special effects that can't be notated.

----------


## DavidKOS

> I've been reading a fascinating book on a related topic:  "Louis Armstrong: Master of Modernism."  The concept of "modernism" here is not a judgment by the book author, but was instead taken from Armstrong's own publicity in the 1930s.  But it is more or less the same idea as the "modernism" explored decades later by contemporary composers, with emphasis on exploring special effects that can't be notated.


I read that book, it's an interesting take on Armstrong's work; I like how it tries to put the music into social contexts of the time period.

And, if you use enough symbols, almost anything can be notated...sometimes though it makes that sort of writing really hard to sight-read!

----------


## ralph johansson

Anyone know how Harry Partch notated his music?

----------

DavidKOS, 

k0k0peli

----------


## Jess L.

> Also, that Egyptian cunieform/clawhammer: if the professor got it right, you can hear modern Middle Eastern music in there, but also 'Celtic' music; or is that just me.


Me too. 

I tried Googling "where did the celts come from" and found so many contradictory hypotheses that I became thoroughly confused  :Confused:  and gave up. But I definitely see (hear) some sort of distant connection there. 

(Please allow me to digress for a moment...  :Whistling:  On the other hand, as far as *me* seeing similarities in things: At a festival in the late 1970s I and a small group of other folks spent a week jamming with Frank George (William Franklin George, banjo/fiddle/bagpipe player from West Virginia) and one time Frank got kind of annoyed with me because I was always seeing similarities between tunes, whereas he thought of such tunes as being completely distinct and not in any way related to other tunes. In some (maybe most) cases, he was probably right. I was an extremely simple country kid and I had a longstanding habit of looking for common ground, looking for similarities, actively seeking out commonalities between things/people/etc (if you grow up in an isolated rural region, you pretty much *have* to do that, otherwise small-talk with neighbors is impossible)... so yeah I probably transferred some of that mindset to music as well, where I'd play a tune and would notice that it shared common aspects with some other tune.) 

But back to the topic here, I do believe that you might have a valid point about Celtic/Arabic stuff...

And on a somewhat-related note, at least if one is thinking of Celtic influence or - conversely - those who influenced the Celts (I'm never sure which is "cause" and which is "effect" in ethnomusicology stuff) - I have vague recollections of being a kid and reading the liner notes on an early 1960s flamenco guitar LP (album) that my mom had bought - the album's author alleged that some types of flamenco music had clear Celtic influence... hmmmm... ok some more Googling turned up a fascinating and quite detailed article, I haven't read the whole thing yet but skipping around in that article I found this about flamenco and Celtic:



> "While music in the North of the Peninsula has a clear *Celtic* influence which dates to pre-Roman times, southern music is certainly reminiscent of Eastern influences."


The above quote is from a fascinating article by flamenco musician Roberto Lorenz.

I'm also intrigued by the *guitar*-history Arabic connection, here's just a very brief quote from the same lengthy flamenco-history article: 




> "The Moorish and Arab conquerors brought their musical forms to the Peninsula, and at the same time, probably gathered some native influence in their music. The Emirate, and later Caliphate of Córdoba became a center of influence in both the Muslim and Christian worlds and it attracted musicians from all Islamic countries. One of those musicians was Zyriab, who imported forms of Persian music, revolutionized the shape and playing techniques of the Lute (which centuries later *evolved* into the vihuela and the *guitar*), adding a fifth string to it, and..."


I know, I know, no one else here had mentioned flamenco so I hope I haven't strayed too far off topic,  :Whistling:  but the Celtic/Arabic connection mentioned in the article seemed to have some relevance to the discussion here.  :Smile:

----------

DavidKOS

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## Beanzy

The celts were a defined culture and quite a late one at that, unfortunately there is much 'hippy spin' around them so the term gets bandied about and ends up being used for much earlier bronze-age cultures. Back when I was studying this in the late 80s we were told there is every probability that what you hear are the echoes of the musical habits of pre-celt indo-european progenitor cultures. These would be shared with many now separated cultures. 
You only have to hear how well some indian and central asian singers pick up Irish seanos singing to hear how the threads can rejoin.

----------

DavidKOS, 

Jess L.

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## k0k0peli

> Anyone know how Harry Partch notated his music?


 Some examples here: https://www.google.com/search?q=Harr...w=1108&bih=603

Meanwhile, I recall reading of linguistic links between Hindu/Urdu and Celtic languages, suggesting that Indian/Irish fusion is natural.

----------

DavidKOS

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## ralph johansson

> I use notation, I read and write notation and, in the past I taught notation. I learned to play by ear and learned notation much later. When I started private teaching I used tab so that the students did not have to commit everything to memory by ear. A student can learn to read simple tab in a half hour lesson. Notation would take far far longer and probably loose the student's interest, and therefore loose me money. 
> 
> These days if I write an arrangement for four guitars I write it in notation. The ideas are musical, not instrument specific, and for that notation is easiest. When I come to record the parts I don't want to take the time to commit each part to memory. It is simpler to work out the fingering once, put that into tab and record from that. Horses for courses, they are both good for what they are good at.



OT: I've already pointed out twice that the lecture is not about the SN-tab issue (which does not really exist). Yet I'm shocked that your attitude towards your students is guided by prejudice - introducing SN would *probably* lose their interest. Don't you at least try to find out the students' goals? If I had approached a teacher for lessons when I was getting started on the mandolin (after ten years of guitar, standard notation and the theoretical knowledge that goes with it) and he had suggested working with tab alone I would have looked elsewhere for instruction. Because my goal then, as on the guitar ten years earlier, was to make music on the mandolin (create my own variations on tunes, improvise, devise kick-offs, transpose to different keys etc.). What exactly are you  teaching?

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## geoffreymbrown

> OT: I've already pointed out twice that the lecture is not about the SN-tab issue (which does not really exist). Yet I'm shocked that your attitude towards your students is guided by prejudice - introducing SN would *probably* lose their interest. Don't you at least try to find out the students' goals? If I had approached a teacher for lessons when I was getting started on the mandolin (after ten years of guitar, standard notation and the theoretical knowledge that goes with it) and he had suggested working with tab alone I would have looked elsewhere for instruction. Because my goal then, as on the guitar ten years earlier, was to make music on the mandolin (create my own variations on tunes, improvise, devise kick-offs, transpose to different keys etc.). What exactly are you  teaching?


I think if you take Ron's posts as a group, you'll see he has no prejudice against notation, but rather has expressed the opinion that most students (I would assume likely beginners in music too) might be put off by diving into standard notation immediately when their most likely goal is to be able to master a few tunes.  This might be true.  I know my computer science undergrads are completely put off by any new abstractions and I have to be very careful how I weave them into the subject to keep their attention.

I always make a point of explaining my goals to new music teachers so that they understand what I'm looking for.  Most recently drum lessons where my goals are to improve my sight reading of complex  rhythms and to improve my rhythm playing on the mandolin.

----------


## fatt-dad

if you can't whistle it, you can't play it.  If you can't remember how it goes, you can't play it.  There are a lot of ways to learn how it goes and get it into your psyche.

f-d

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## ralph johansson

> but rather has expressed the opinion that most students (I would assume likely beginners in music too) might be put off by diving into standard notation immediately when their most likely goal is to be able to master a few tunes.


And that ain't prejudice?

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## geoffreymbrown

Prejudice  --  "preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience."
So no, an opinion based upon experience is not necessarily prejudice.  I don't think it is possible to be a good teacher without an opinion and a pedagogy informed by that opinion.   But that's just my opinion after 28 years of teaching.  :Smile:

----------

k0k0peli, 

MikeyG, 

objectsession, 

sblock

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## RonEllison

> OT: I've already pointed out twice that the lecture is not about the SN-tab issue (which does not really exist). Yet I'm shocked that your attitude towards your students is guided by prejudice - introducing SN would *probably* lose their interest. Don't you at least try to find out the students' goals? If I had approached a teacher for lessons when I was getting started on the mandolin (after ten years of guitar, standard notation and the theoretical knowledge that goes with it) and he had suggested working with tab alone I would have looked elsewhere for instruction. Because my goal then, as on the guitar ten years earlier, was to make music on the mandolin (create my own variations on tunes, improvise, devise kick-offs, transpose to different keys etc.). What exactly are you  teaching?


Hi  ralph johansson

Were you drunk when you posted this? You quoted me saying that I taught notation yet express outrage that I also taught tab. It's a funny old world isn't it?

The first part of any private lesson was to do with what the student wanted. Back then, and we are talking decades ago, no student expressed a wish to learn notation. They all wanted to learn to play. My policy was to deliver what was wanted. Call it business.

----------

Joel Glassman, 

MikeyG, 

Steve L

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## sblock

It is hard for me to understand Ralph Johansson's vehment opposition to tab, expressed in this thread.  Standard notation has its place. But so does tab.  They are both centuries-old, and they each have some very useful features. Each one can do some things easily that the other cannot, and this has been pointed out several times by now. Importantly, neither one is going away any time soon.  He's welcome to stick with notation, and no one here seems to be trying to persuade him to take up tab.  But he is wrong to suggest that tab is somehow inferior, and even more wrong when he asserts that it has no professional utility. The facts say otherwise.  Anyway, this an an apples-and-oranges kind of thing, and this is becoming a very silly "dispute".  It's good to have a way to get music down on paper.  But in a generation or three, we may all be using some newer way of notating music, which might be better suited to the digital, paperless age of computers.  Who can say?  Everyone to his taste, I say!  Peace -- and good music! -- to all.

----------

MikeyG

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## DavidKOS

> But he is wrong to suggest that tab is somehow inferior, and even more wrong when he asserts that it has no professional utility. The facts say otherwise. .


I'm not sure that the facts of my experience do support your claim - I've never been given a sheet of tab on any professional reading gig on guitar, banjo or mandolin. All those gigs have been for reading standard notation only.

Perhaps in the early music world some lute players may read tab on that pro level, but that would be the only times I've run across professional situations where tab was used.

I also do not think tab can do anything that staff notation cannot do, if fingering and string markings are used. Then you know where to put the fingers in addition to the pitch, rhythm, phrasing and dynamics normally included in staff notation.

----------

Joel Glassman

----------


## dang

I am surprised that no one has brought up the comments from the liner notes on Goat Rodeo sessions:

_"The music kinda wrote itself," says Thile in the studio's kitchen (where a hand-written sign reads "If Yo-Yo ain't happy, ain't nobody happy!"). "It was a matter of finding the center of what all of us could do. Yo-Yo doesn't improvise, and Stuart doesn't really read music. So it was kind of easy given the boundaries we had—while also trying to make it sound like it didn't have any boundaries at all.”_

Stuart Duncan can play circles around any of us posting here (except maybe the Dawg and a very few other exceptions) and it sounds like he is doing just fine without "really reading music."

Here is a 2011 thread where is was discussed, and it managed to get to 4 pages without half the snarky and dogmatic comments I have read in this thread.

The great thing about having an OPINION is it doesn't have to be shared by everyone.

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## farmerjones

> Here is a 2011 thread where is was discussed, and it managed to get to 4 pages without half the snarky and dogmatic comments I have read in this thread.


I really miss Johnny McGann.

Tab or standard notation are just types of documentation. Documentation is a small part of a much bigger picture.

----------

dang, 

k0k0peli

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## objectsession

> I also do not think tab can do anything that staff notation cannot do, if fingering and string markings are used. Then you know where to put the fingers in addition to the pitch, rhythm, phrasing and dynamics normally included in staff notation.


That may be . . but written text (text scores) can express everything that staff notation can and more, as long as you know all the terminology. And a recording can express everything that text can and much more if you have a good ear. 

 .  . . Actually, I just realized that [EDIT: my previous statement, not DavidKOS's] is not true. A performance recording can't convey what does and doesn't happen by chance or what is improvised . . . unless the performer explains it. 

I don't really have a point. Just thinking out loud. And maybe trying to get the thread back on the original topic.  :Smile:

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DavidKOS

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## sblock

> That may be . . but written text (text scores) can express everything that staff notation can and more, as long as you know all the terminology. And a recording can express everything that text can and much more if you have a good ear. 
> 
>  .  . . Actually, I just realized that's not true. A performance recording can't convey what does and doesn't happen by chance or what is improvised . . . unless the performer explains it.


Actually, it's not true for multiple reasons.  Importantly, a good deal of the "terminology" (annotation) is not even standardized in what we like to call "standard" notation.  In contrast to the basic notes, things like pick direction, left-hand fingering, hammers-on/pulls-offs, tremolo (there are several types!), have no single, unique way of being annotated.  They have multiple ways, and in some cases, these things are not indicated at all. In others, some notation borrowed from the violin is used -- but intended in a different way. Many classical mandolin scores from Italy or Germany differ significantly in their usage of annotation.

The fact is that NEITHER tab NOR "standard" notation are able to convey all the information needed to make a musical piece sound "right" to most ears.  If that were true, one could program a computer to play a piece by strictly following the written instructions on the page. And we all know how stilted and artificial music programs that play such pieces sound, whether they work from tab or notation!  They never sound like a recording by a human player. It's not merely the fact that they're using synthesized waveforms, either, instead of real instruments. That's not the main problem. The timing always sounds all wrong, but in fairly subtle ways. The pieces don't breathe. The beat emphasis is all wrong.  They don't seem to adhere to any of the playing conventions of the genre (like jazz, or classical, or the many different types of folk music, like ITM or bluegrass or oldtime). And so on.

One is forced to concede that there is _something more to music than standard notation is able to convey_.  We must conclude that notation is therefore incomplete.  And tab is incomplete, as well.  And these types of notation are incomplete in different, but overlapping, ways.

Notation is useful. And so is tab! But neither one is a substitute for human playing and human interpretation. One could do MIDI capture of a performance, and generate yet another type of musical notation (a digital MIDI record, that is), and that would note closely resemble the desired result.  And perhaps, in a generation from now, both notation and tab will be superseded by an improved notation. 

In the days before recording technology, that is to say for most of modern human history (!), some kind of musical notation (as limited as it is!) was the ONLY practical way to convey music to others -- except by example in live performance, that is.  But all the best musicians learned mainly by listening to other musicians play. This is STILL true.  But with the ready availability of digital recordings, it is less and less necessary to rely upon written notation alone to convey how to play a piece.  Even the best classical virtuosos rarely work just from written scores: they listen to lots and lots of recordings, and they attend lots of live performances.

Many people have pointed out in this thread that ear training is essential, and that no notation (standard or tab) is a substitute for it.  They're right. Both notation and tab will only take you so far.

----------

DavidKOS, 

k0k0peli

----------


## objectsession

sblock, I agree with most of what you're saying, but I should have been more clear in my post: when I said "Actually, I just realized that's not true", I was just referring to my statement "a recording can express everything that text can", not what DavidKOS said.

Recordings can be very valuable, but I would hope that some people including (and especially) classical virtuosos are presenting music for the first time, either live or on recording. Plus, there's reinterpretation of older pieces, which may not be possible without a score. I think there are probably a lot of comparisons that could be made to orality and literacy (see Walter Ong's Orality and Literacy) and their effects on communities . . . but I don't know enough about that to really comment.

----------

sblock

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## DavidKOS

You guys have a point, though - any form of notation supposes the performer understands the musical style involced.

I also agree no form of notation conveys all the information of the actual music as it is played, like live or on recordings.

No more than a script is a play. It's the information to perform a play.

----------

k0k0peli, 

sblock

----------


## JeffD

> I am surprised that no one has brought up the comments from the liner notes on Goat Rodeo sessions:
> 
> _"The music kinda wrote itself," says Thile in the studio's kitchen (where a hand-written sign reads "If Yo-Yo ain't happy, ain't nobody happy!"). "It was a matter of finding the center of what all of us could do. Yo-Yo doesn't improvise, and Stuart doesn't really read music. So it was kind of easy given the boundaries we had—while also trying to make it sound like it didn't have any boundaries at all.”_
> .


What they did and do and can do has absolutely no bearing on what I can do and need to learn to do. I will never be in a position similar to theirs, and if I were, I would do what ever it takes.

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## JeffD

> But all the best musicians learned mainly by listening to other musicians play. This is STILL true.


The truth of this should not be interpreted to mean you don't need to learn to read music. It just means that you have to be able to learn by ear.




> But with the ready availability of digital recordings, it is less and less necessary to rely upon written notation alone to convey how to play a piece.


Most of the worlds music has not been recorded. If you can't read, there is an ocean of music unavailable to you. (Unless you pay someone to play it for you.)




> Many people have pointed out in this thread that ear training is essential, and that no notation (standard or tab) is a substitute for it.  They're right. Both notation and tab will only take you so far.


While that is true, it ignores the fact that not being able to read will only take you so far. Everything you don't know limits you.


And I am entirely insensitive to the argument that so and so amazing artist and thus and so prodigal genius never learned to read. Most of us are not genetic anomalies or even amazing talents. What they do has as little to do with me as Dale Earnhardt Jr driving tips would on my morning drive to work.

Most of us would benefit greatly by learning to read, by getting better at learning by ear, and by picking up the beer tab at the jam now and then.

----------


## Steve L

Most of the world's music hasn't been transcribed either.

----------

sblock

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## JeffD

> Most of the world's music hasn't been transcribed either.


Well that's true too, but not much of the worlds not as yet transcribed music has been recorded.

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## k0k0peli

Standard music notation is adequate to document music suitable for standard music notation. (Yes, circular reasoning!) Standard music notation is NOT adequate to document much of the non-Western world's music, as early ethnomusicologists painfully learned. That's why they started schlepping massive primitive recording equipment to miserably distant lands. Such was the only way to adequately capture the music.




> You guys have a point, though - any form of notation supposes the performer understands the musical style involced.
> 
> I also agree no form of notation conveys all the information of the actual music as it is played, like live or on recordings.
> 
> No more than a script is a play. It's the information to perform a play.


 Any music notation has two distinct purposes, descriptive and prescriptive: to document what was played (description), and to instruct what and how to play (prescription). Strictly oral music cultures have no use for the latter, any more than oral literatures require writing. Written records (notation) of oral cultures need to show their variability -- the creativity of "the folk process". Notation can be helpful but it's just a map of what has been or will be played or said or done. "The map is not the territory." The notation is not the gesture.

----------

DavidKOS, 

objectsession

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## JeffD

> Notation can be helpful but it's just a map of what has been or will be played or said or done. "The map is not the territory." The notation is not the gesture.


I like to say that if you roll up a piece of sheet music and stick it in your ear you do not hear the music it contains.

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## JeffD

> Strictly oral music cultures have no use for the latter, any more than oral literatures require writing.


While this is absolutely true, I don't live or play music in one of those cultures. In the culture(s) I cull my musical sustenance from, a ton of music would go unplayed were it not for notation.

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## David Lewis

The earlier discussion about teaching tab or notation reminded me that when I took bass lessons years ago I couldn't find a teacher who could read standard. 

I now make sure all my students learn to read even though my reading is weak. I don't start with it: we start with playing. But after a while we start. Some students love it. Others struggle. But all benefit. And all think it marvellous when I put a piece of music they've not heard down and they are able to play it.

----------


## sblock

> The truth of this should not be interpreted to mean you don't need to learn to read music. It just means that you have to be able to learn by ear.


Yes, yes, yes!  I entirely agree with that!!




> Most of the worlds music has not been recorded. If you can't read, there is an ocean of music unavailable to you. (Unless you pay someone to play it for you.)


At the same time, most of the world's music has not been put into standard notation, either!!  Or tab, for that matter. And when it comes to folk music, jazz, and other genres -- almost anything besides classical music, in fact -- I'd wager you that there are a while more recordings of tunes than available sheet music.




> While that is true, it ignores the fact that not being able to read will only take you so far. Everything you don't know limits you.


Amen to that!!  Learn to play by ear. Learn to read standard notation. Learn to read tab. Learn, learn, learn. And don't put down people who know how to do some, but not all, of these things.  If you can't read notation, you won't go very far in playing most of the classical music repertoire for violin.  If you can't read tab, you won't go far in playing the sheet music available for bluegrass banjo.  As for the mandolin, there is a lot of sheet music out there available for BOTH tab and standard notation formats (and not necessarily in both).   




> Most of us would benefit greatly by learning to read, by getting better at learning by ear, and by picking up the beer tab at the jam now and then.


You said it.  Amen to that, too.

----------

DavidKOS

----------


## Beanzy

I always come back to the simple fact that music is a language. 

As many poets will testify the written version will only get you so far, the rest is down to the interpretation of the player. 
The ability of a poet, orator, player or singer to interpret an breathe life into the written record is a product of their understanding and their feel for the form. The written record is the skeleton on which the full form is built.

The original lecture merely points out the fact that there are limitations to the skeleton which is recorded and the performer needs to understand this. As Pablo Casals always taught, the music on the page is the door through which you access the musical landscape beyond. To begin an argument about which type of door frame you walk through seems truly bizarre to me and would seem to indicate that people haven't understood the point. 

Often the difference made to your eventual interpretations of a piece by using a score is great. By looking at the abstracted version, rather than the currently internalised version, you free yourself to approach it anew without having to clear the internalised interpretation first. You look past the distractions of the fully formed body in whatever clothing you have previously dressed the tunes seeing to the bare bones beyond. This allows you first to put a new flesh on the structure then to dress and ornament it as you like.

There is an error in the original premise of the argument and that comes from the negative connotations around the word' limitations'.
They are only limitations in the way the presence of a bare structure is limiting. I would argue that the fact that any musical notation is incomplete is one of the great strengths of the notated forms we have. They allow levels of interpretation which are completely ignored by far too many people who claim to understand music. The sad fact is that too many mentors of our musicians have for far too long taught that their interpretation and way of walking through the musical doors of notation is the only correct way. 
They should be riotously ridiculed like the puffed up clowns they are. 

As for those who do not use notation, that is a choice they are entitled to make just as someone could chose to explore the world without being able to use a written guide or map. I'm not sure I'd be brave enough to go too far or into very strange lands without a good guide though, so if you're lucky enough to live where you can access such a good musical guide or it is your natural landscape,  then you're fortunate indeed and should grasp the opportunity while it lasts. Nowadays too many musical explorers are either prey to guides of inadequate ability or limited knowledge or guide books which are similarly deficient.
Many are lucky enough to be immersed in places where there is a living culture which is still passed between people and the idea of using a written out version would seem alien there. But if you want to wander unexplored places or find hidden byways then you won't get it from theses living sources within easy reach. You either need a good local guide or the written version.

----------

DavidKOS, 

objectsession

----------


## ralph johansson

> Hi  ralph johansson
> 
> Were you drunk when you posted this? You quoted me saying that I taught notation yet express outrage that I also taught tab. It's a funny old world isn't it?
> 
> The first part of any private lesson was to do with what the student wanted. Back then, and we are talking decades ago, no student expressed a wish to learn notation. They all wanted to learn to play. My policy was to deliver what was wanted. Call it business.


I was perfectly sober. I even managed to spell the verb "lose" correctly. 

I did not comment on your "teaching tab" (tab can be explained in at most two sentences; putting it to practical use is a different matter). What I commented on was the following sentence: "Notation would take far far longer and probably loose the student's interest, and therefore loose me money."   Note: "probably".Now it seems that you do try to to understand the student's goals (or perhaps even help him/her clarify them). 

In my experience the main dividing line is between those who don't want to bother with theory (i.e., "just play") and those who want to acquire some musicianship on the mandolin. In the former category you find, e.g., those to whom the main advantage of tab is that you don't have to "worry" about keys (genuine example from the Café).

I won't go into a discussion on the optimal methods for achieving the latter goal, because that's really off topic. But I always advise those who are serious about learning to play and make music, and function in a group on their chosen instrument, to find a teacher who is a gigging musician.

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## objectsession

> Now it seems that you do try to to understand the student's goals (or perhaps even help him/her clarify them).


The odd thing about your earlier posts is that you seemed to assume that Ron didn't communicate with his students. I, and I think many other posters, didn't ignore that possibility and therefore didn't read the post the way you did. It was especially odd because you were blaming him of prejudice while seemingly portraying some prejudice against him and the way he teaches. 

I'm just explaining how others are reading your posts (the spelling attacks don't help BTW). Maybe you didn't mean to come off like that.

----------

MikeyG

----------


## JeffD

> At the same time, most of the world's music has not been put into standard notation, either!!  Or tab, for that matter. And when it comes to folk music, jazz, and other genres -- almost anything besides classical music, in fact -- I'd wager you that there are a while more recordings of tunes than available sheet music.
> .


Not at all. I don't think there is much really, that hasn't been put into notation. Very old traditional music I grant you, from traditional cultures that didn't or don't have written languages. 

I would agree with you about written music not having captured particular jazz moments or epic rock performances. But the tunes themselves are available in written music. Its out there. 

Yes there is a lot of classical music, but there is soooooo much more than classical written out in notation. There are hundreds if not thousands of tune books of traditional fiddle tunes, in any particular tradition, from all over the world. And hundreds of tune books of dance music, traditional and otherwise, from everywhere. And many universities are digitizing old sheet music of popular tunes of fifty years ago. There is at least one monster collection of ragtime music, likely many. And how much Broadway musicals and show tunes are collected in fake books.

I have six book shelves of music - tune books, sheet music, fake books, notebooks of loose sheets, and of all of that only a small fraction is classical by anyone's definition.

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## ralph johansson

> Pulled out some standard notation after reading this thread, and I have to admit I hate it but want to be able to sight read standard notation.  In my days as a tuba player i could easily sight read bass clef but the best I could on mando was to name the note and then find it on the fretboard.  Slow going.
> 
> One disadvantage of standard notation, various clefs!


I've always felt  it's a mistake to learn (or teach) only the clef of your own instrument. I'm happy I decided to learn grand staff when I got started on the guitar about 58 years ago; it facilitated my understanding of harmony, among other things. Soprano and bass clef put together is really one single staff, composed of 11 lines, one of them (middle C) latent; in other words, the two staves are simply continuations of one another. At the same time I regret not being fluent in alto clef (where middle C is located on the middle line) as I  like to study scores of string quartets. And orchestral scores (horns in F, trumpets without key signature, etc.) are beyond me. (Orchestral scores with horns in F, clarinets in Bb, etc. is beyond me. Used to be I could play from the Bb and Eb books of a saxophonist friend - he switched from tenor to baritone-  but for several decades I have relied much less  on written music so I lost that ability.)

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## catmandu2

> Not at all. I don't think there is much really, that hasn't been put into notation. Very old traditional music I grant you, from traditional cultures that didn't or don't have written languages. 
> 
> I would agree with you about written music not having captured particular jazz moments or epic rock performances. But the tunes themselves are available in written music. Its out there. 
> 
> Yes there is a lot of classical music, but there is soooooo much more than classical written out in notation. There are hundreds if not thousands of tune books of traditional fiddle tunes, in any particular tradition, from all over the world. And hundreds of tune books of dance music, traditional and otherwise, from everywhere. And many universities are digitizing old sheet music of popular tunes of fifty years ago. There is at least one monster collection of ragtime music, likely many. And how much Broadway musicals and show tunes are collected in fake books.
> 
> I have six book shelves of music - tune books, sheet music, fake books, notebooks of loose sheets, and of all of that only a small fraction is classical by anyone's definition.


Well this is the Western view.  My interests however reach well beyond -

If you want to confine yourself to 12-tet music (essentially, music than _can_ be notated in SN - with reasonable effectiveness), then this can be a viable view.  However, as has been pointed out by several posters - what of al the music in the world that predates or otherwise cannot be put into the box that is 12-tet.  For example - I'm currently immersed in music from about 1k to about 1400 - perhaps earlier -from tabulatures that are only recently being understood.  Increasingly more ancient forms will become availed to us - without benefit of SN.  So much music is completely beyond the,realm of SN -

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## ralph johansson

> It is hard for me to understand Ralph Johansson's vehment opposition to tab, expressed in this thread.  Standard notation has its place. But so does tab.  They are both centuries-old, and they each have some very useful features. Each one can do some things easily that the other cannot, and this has been pointed out several times by now. Importantly, neither one is going away any time soon.  He's welcome to stick with notation, and no one here seems to be trying to persuade him to take up tab.  
> 
> But he is wrong to suggest that tab is somehow inferior, and even more wrong when he asserts that it has no professional utility. The facts say otherwise.


And what I exactly have I expressed? Where's the vehemence? Summing up I've simply pointed out, several times, that the lecture 
is not about SN vs. tab; and that I don't agree that it's important become fluent in tab. I've also pointed out its didactic utility. As for its professional utility I trust the experience of JimD and DavidKOS.

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## sblock

Yes, JeffD, there's a whole lot of printed sheet music out there -- which is a wonderful thing. And there's certainly more sheet music printed than there is tablature. But these numbers pale, I think, in comparison to the *numbers of recordings* that have been made. There are even MORE recordings out there!!  It's an open question about which is more numerous, but I think the statistics are overwhelmingly on my side for this one. 

Of course, having universities and other nonprofits digitize old sheet music is wonderful, and it makes this material more available, but it does NOT increase the diversity of what already exists. That's a bit like saying that some old LP album is being re-released on CD.  It's still the same recording.  So we have to try to count unique pieces available, and not the total number of items, i.e., the catalog size.  This is not easy, but we can make some headway, because the answer is not even close.

Since the advent of sound recording and reproduction (going back to Thomas Edison and others in the late 1800's), there has been an explosive, exponential growth in the number of recordings available. It has completely dwarfed sheet music printing! This exponential growth has been somewhat akin to Moore's Law in the computer field, where the power of computer chips doubles roughly every two years.  In the Moore's Law scenario, for example, there were as many computer transistors manufactured in the last two years of production alone as during the _entire history of computers_ up to that point!

It's hard to get exact numbers, but the current Gracenote CD catalog _alone_, which does not even include LP records, cassette tapes, and other obsolete forms (or near-obsolete, for us vinyl lovers!), and does not include a lot of the recorded music that MC participants tend to own (a minuscule amount, in comparison) numbers around *36 million recordings* of individual tunes or performances.  And it's growing at an incredible rate, with millions of recordings now being added per year. That's a staggering number, and staggering growth.  If you could somehow take all the sheet music for all the individual songs and tunes and classical pieces that have ever been printed and put them together into a single library (without redundancy), you would not have even 10% of that huge number. SheetMusicPlus.com and MusicNotes.com have among the largest existing catalogs of sheet music, and neither of their catalogs tops even 1 million entries (~950,000 in the largest).  Of course, they are missing a lot of stuff (but so is the GraceNote CD catalog), but these numbers are fully representative.  The truth is that unique recordings outnumber unique sheet music by a large factor, and that factor grows even larger every year!

Of course, it's a _very_ different question to ask what _types of music_ happen to be available as sheet music, or as recordings, or as both.  Yes, nearly all classical music is available in both forms (and sheet music alone may exist for some pieces that have never been recorded.  But it's very rare to find any classical piece that hasn't been transcribed into notation). As for certain types of folk music  -- here, traditional Irish/Celtic music is a good example, and of interest to many MC members -- some old tunes are easier to find as sheet music than as recordings, mainly because they're no longer being played, for the most part. The same holds true for a lot of popular music from the 1800's and early 1900's (early Tin Pan Alley tunes, the Stephen Foster/parlor era, Dixieland Jazz and so on), and for some very ancient types of music as well. But that entire canon is _tiny_ compared to all the others!  When it comes to anything in the jazz, pop, bluegrass, "world" music, modern-era folk, and (the list goes on!), recordings outstrip the availability of sheet music by a very wide margin.  In fact, it's true for just about any music produced in the 20th or 21st century, once recording technology became widespread.

There is more sheet music out there than you can manage to play in a full lifetime. But there is more recorded music out there than you can play in many, many lifetimes.  And, as I wrote, the situation grows more lopsided every year.  Standard notation still has a bit of life in it, but I suspect that other (better, computer-based) forms of notation will supplant it completely in another 100 years (perhaps less) -- and these newer forms of notation will be able to capture more of what goes into a musical performance, and they will be able to transcribe automatically from an instrument being played. They will be able to transpose, arrange for other single instruments or groups of instruments, and develop variations, etc. And they will be downwardly compatible with standard notation, too. Until then, standard notation and tab will still hang around.  But neither one is growing very fast now.

Music is not dead!  Music will _never_ be dead!!  But face it: standard musical notation is, slowly, going the way of the dodo bird. Music is all about listening, and about performance. The well-known limitations of standard notation, in being able to "record" things, will ultimately drive folks to finding much better ways to capture and convey music in the digital era.

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## objectsession

> There is more sheet music out there than you can manage to play in a full lifetime. But there is more recorded music out there than you can play in many, many lifetimes.  And, as I wrote, the situation grows more lopsided every year.  Standard notation still has a bit of life in it, but I suspect that other (better, computer-based) forms of notation will supplant it completely in another 100 years (perhaps less) -- and these newer forms of notation will be able to capture more of what goes into a musical performance, and they will be able to transcribe automatically from an instrument being played. They will be able to transpose, arrange for other single instruments or groups of instruments, and develop variations, etc. And they will be downwardly compatible with standard notation, too. Until then, standard notation and tab will still hang around.  But neither one is growing very fast now.
> 
> Music is not dead!  Music will _never_ be dead!!  But face it: standard musical notation is, slowly, going the way of the dodo bird. Music is all about listening, and about performance. The well-known limitations of standard notation, in being able to "record" things, will ultimately drive folks to finding much better ways to capture and convey music in the digital era.


Can't say you'll be wrong about standard notation dying out, but I don't think there being more recordings is necessarily evidence of that. Recordings have many uses in addition to telling a performer how to play - a better form of evidence would be if performers are choosing to use recordings instead of standard notation (and not counting performers who choose to use recordings over live performance). It's like saying that the printed book is dying out because there is a lot more text stored digitally - doesn't really follow, but if people are reading ebooks (or audiobooks) instead of printed books, that's significant. And a lot of the genres you listed may be transitioning from learning by live performance to learning from recordings, which doesn't really fit into the "is standard notation dying?" question.

Looking at contemporary classical music by itself, it might be hard to say if there trends of it dying out (although I'm sure there are musicologists that could answer that or at least are researching it). Seems like whether staff notation is used is a question of whether it suits the music. Like Stockhausen, which was mentioned above: sometimes staff notation (maybe with new extensions) made sense and sometimes (like for his electronic pieces), staff notation did not make any sense. A lot of the contemporary composers I know personally (mostly people that have done at least some electronic/computer music) use a mix of standard notation, non-standard but graphical notation, text scores, and no notation at all.

All depends on what the composer wants to convey. And who can tell what composers will want to convey in 100 years?

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## objectsession

> Well this is the Western view.  My interests however reach well beyond -
> 
> If you want to confine yourself to 12-tet music (essentially, music than _can_ be notated in SN - with reasonable effectiveness), then this can be a viable view.  However, as has been pointed out by several posters - what of al the music in the world that predates or otherwise cannot be put into the box that is 12-tet.  For example - I'm currently immersed in music from about 1k to about 1400 - perhaps earlier -from tabulatures that are only recently being understood.  Increasingly more ancient forms will become availed to us - without benefit of SN.  So much music is completely beyond the,realm of SN -


I agree that the standard/staff notation favors the western classical tradition. But it isn't really confined to equal temperament. Other types of 12 (or fewer) tone temperament and some types of just tuning work just as well on a standard staff with the standard sharp/flat notation. Then, when you get to adding other symbols (or writing a deviation in cents from 12TET for each note), it's just a question of what counts as "standard".

(This has nothing to do with non-western classical tradition music - just non-ET music in that tradition.)

----------

catmandu2

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## catmandu2

> I agree that the standard/staff notation favors the western classical tradition. But it isn't really confined to equal temperament. Other types of 12 (or fewer) tone temperament and some types of just tuning work just as well on a standard staff with the standard sharp/flat notation. Then, when you get to adding other symbols (or writing a deviation in cents from 12TET for each note), it's just a question of what counts as "standard".
> 
> (This has nothing to do with non-western classical tradition music - just non-ET music in that tradition.)


Yes, thanks.  I'm thinking of systems* such as Arabic maqam, Indian raga, and other aural/oral systems .. the most I've heard of so far is a 79-tone temperament .. unless it was Partch or someone with 104 (seems to be in my vague recollection somewhere), but there are any and all manner permutations ..

My primary point was re-iterating mention of the world of music not subsumed under written "standard" notation, and beyond purview of our Grand Tradition(s).

*where "pitch" and its concepts is of lesser importance than as in Western harmony, etc (I shouldn't say "importance" - a better word is...) - while SN is possible to notate a variety of systems, its viability or practicality in doing so is a factor.  But I'm no mathematician  :Wink:

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objectsession

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## sblock

> Can't say you'll be wrong about standard notation dying out, but I don't think there being more recordings is necessarily evidence of that. Recordings have many uses in addition to telling a performer how to play - a better form of evidence would be if performers are choosing to use recordings instead of standard notation (and not counting performers who choose to use recordings over live performance). It's like saying that the printed book is dying out because there is a lot more text stored digitally - doesn't really follow, but if people are reading ebooks (or audiobooks) instead of printed books, that's significant. And a lot of the genres you listed may be transitioning from learning by live performance to learning from recordings, which doesn't really fit into the "is standard notation dying?" question.


You are right to point out that the overwhelming popularity -- and availability -- of instrumental recordings over sheet music is not evidence, _per se_,  that standard notation is dying out.  But it is a part of the totality of all evidence.  And these are sort of apples and oranges comparisons, because most performers who rely on sheet music  --  and that is not necessarily the majority of performers any more, the way it once was! -- ALSO take full advantage of recordings.  These things are not mutually exclusive (they can be complementary, in fact), and I've tried to be clear about that when discussing things. That said, sheet music sales are not tracking, proportionally, with overall recording sales, and they haven't for a long time now.  So sheet music is increasingly becoming rare compared to the availability of music.  The current state of affairs is that majority of the music that the people on our planet hear today has no sheet music available for it!  And that doesn't look to be changing in the years ahead.  I do agree that standard notation has plenty of life left in it, but let us face some awkward facts:  notation is difficult to master (for most), slow and too inconvenient to write (for most), too limited in its ability to capture actual performance (or musical nuance, or musical genre), and mostly able transcribe only the Western Tradition of classical music -- but little else beyond that, except with considerable difficulty or large numbers of non-standard "additions" to the notation. Mark my words, std. notation it will disappear in a few generations.  It is not keeping up, and it cannot keep up. With the advent of increasingly sophisticated software, the next generations of musicians will have the ability to overcome all these pesky issues, and transit more smoothly between the actual goal -- learning to make beautiful musical sounds -- and the method of transcription of those sounds into something permanent (either on paper, or _in silico_!), in a way that can instruct other musicians on how to make similar sounds.  Meanwhile, as many have advised, folks should still learn to read notation and still learn to read tab, too.  I am no snob about such things, and learning is a good goal for life.  But notation is already antiquated and inadequate.

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## catmandu2

> Mark my words, std. notation it will disappear in a few generations.  It is not keeping up, and it cannot keep up. With the advent of increasingly sophisticated software, the next generations of musicians will have the ability to overcome all these pesky issues, and transit more smoothly between the actual goal -- learning to make beautiful musical sounds -- and the method of transcription of those sounds into something permanent (either on paper, or _in silico_!), in a way that can instruct other musicians on how to make similar sounds.  Meanwhile, as many have advised, folks should still learn to read notation and still learn to read tab, too.  I am no snob about such things, and learning is a good goal for life.  But notation is already antiquated and inadequate.


It will be increasingly archaic, but I think it will be around, just as other systems of tabulature/notation - which is simply another example of animals attempting to graphically/organizationally account what it is we _do_ .. it's axiomatic that our current means to quantify, collate and compartmentalize our experience will be left in the dust - here as elsewhere ..

I'm going to see if I can find an image to post of the liner notes to Brotzmann, Vandermark et al's "Chicago Octet/Tentet" ..)

*Well I don't see anything readily - this (from the Machine Gun album) is wild ..  People use some mighty obscure (to me) notational systems .. Anthony Braxton's - ouch!  And Cage of course ..

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k0k0peli

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## objectsession

> The current state of affairs is that majority of the music that the people on our planet hear today has no sheet music available for it!  And that doesn't look to be changing in the years ahead.


Sorry. I just don't follow this. I agree that most music doesn't have sheet music available - but this isn't a new thing. It doesn't indicate that standard notation is dying off. It is confined to certain genres/traditions of music as before. Either those genres would have to die off or people working within those genres would have to switch over to not using standard notation. I think you can give some evidence of that change with examples of contemporary classical music that do not fit within standard notation, but people aren't completely abandoning instrumental styles that suit standard notation.




> I do agree that standard notation has plenty of life left in it, but let us face some awkward facts:  notation is difficult to master (for most), slow and too inconvenient to write (for most), too limited in its ability to capture actual performance (or musical nuance, or musical genre), and mostly able transcribe only the Western Tradition of classical music -- but little else beyond that, except with considerable difficulty or large numbers of non-standard "additions" to the notation. Mark my words, std. notation it will disappear in a few generations.  It is not keeping up, and it cannot keep up. With the advent of increasingly sophisticated software, the next generations of musicians will have the ability to overcome all these pesky issues, and transit more smoothly between the actual goal -- learning to make beautiful musical sounds -- and the method of transcription of those sounds into something permanent (either on paper, or _in silico_!), in a way that can instruct other musicians on how to make similar sounds.


I dunno . . . can you give an example of software based notation that is better even in some of those ways without big trade offs in other areas that even have a small amount of popularity? We can say maybe it hasn't been thought of yet, and that's true, but software capability is pretty advanced now. Seems like if something better is going to kill standard notation in the next hundred years, someone should at least be able to speculate on what it'd be like. Also, even if there is a "better" form of notation, you're supposing that people will tend to do what is rational. People have argued for a long time that the QWERTY keyboard layout is inefficient. Yet, after more than 100 years, it still exists.

A lot of your criticisms of notation can also be applied to certain instruments. I mean, the mandolin is very difficult to master, the double bass is very inconvenient to move and don't suit human ergonomics, the piano is very poorly suited to many non-western tradition styles of expression. There are electronic (and even electric . . . or even acoustic) versions of those instruments that could "fix" all those problems, but I don't think all those instruments are going to die out so quickly. (And 100 years can be pretty quick.)

If standard notation does die out, my guess (which is just a wild guess with no real evidence) is that it'll die out because it is poorly suited for whatever human-computer interface we end up using. Standard notation is especially well suited for writing with paper. Right now, it's easier to learn how to write notation by hand than on a computer and faster in a lot of cases. That could become easier with good handwriting or gesture recognition, but maybe people won't care to simulate handwriting in the future.

So that's my prediction. Let's meet back in 100 years and see who's closer to right.  :Laughing:

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DavidKOS, 

SincereCorgi

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## SincereCorgi

I agree that it's bold to say standard notation will be gone 'in a few generations', although I guess it depends on what you're calling a 'generation' and how optimistic you are about the fate of composed ensemble music. I think it's a little like saying the Roman alphabet will be gone in a few generations... although I suppose it might be more like what's happened to cursive and shorthand.

Standard notation has many limitations, but, at present, it's still got momentum as a tradition. People who learn classical music absorb it from the beginning of their training, and abandoning entirely it would require devising entirely new ways of learning, say, the violin. It's still the fastest and most painless way to rehearse and perform a five-hour opera and keep everybody together. I don't know whether either of those things are going to be considered a worthwhile use of time and personnel in 100 years.

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objectsession

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## k0k0peli

> <snip> this (from the Machine Gun album) is wild ..  People use some mighty obscure (to me) notational systems .. Anthony Braxton's - ouch!  And Cage of course ..


 And they're still within 'Western' music! 

As you mention, other traditions eschew notation. Some seem to be mainly notated by musicologists trying to dissect the living beast, or to teach its basics to alien students. But standard notation may be less than useful for such instruction. I whip out my copy of AN INTRODUCTION TO JAVANESE GAMELAN MUSIC by a noted Javanese musicologist at Oberlin College (USA) Conservatory of Music, 1978. The 'scores' are a combination of numeric sequences and rhythmic tablature -- not a staff nor clef to be seen.




> If standard notation does die out, my guess (which is just a wild guess with no real evidence) is that it'll die out because it is poorly suited for whatever human-computer interface we end up using. Standard notation is especially well suited for writing with paper. Right now, it's easier to learn how to write notation by hand than on a computer and faster in a lot of cases. That could become easier with good handwriting or gesture recognition, but maybe people won't care to simulate handwriting in the future.


 We had a recent thread about notation vs tabs. The question arose, do vocal or piano tabs exist? Yes to both, with piano rolls being an example of the latter -- and we noted(sic) composition software using a piano-roll interface to drive FM and MIDI synths. Damn, I loved the AdLib Composer on my old PC-AT! Slide the mouse around, or poke at the keyboard, and a music score is created. Zow!

I *suspect* future 'notation' systems will be gesture-oriented as we manipulate graphic objects to generate editable data streams. The data stream, a sort of super-MIDI, will be the score, maybe interpreted solely or partly by machines, maybe displayed (via future mutations of Google Glass, or directly via neural link) for human interpretation -- and that display may be a combination of SMN, tab, bouncing-ball ryhthm track, animated images of fingerings / mouthings, other playing instructions, all personalized for each musician. Let's include synesthesia -- the score says, "hot purple watermelon" and you sound the flavor. (I won't even suggest what the teledildonics industry would do with such technology.)




> Standard notation has many limitations, but, at present, it's still got momentum as a tradition. People who learn classical music absorb it from the beginning of their training, and abandoning entirely it would require devising entirely new ways of learning, say, the violin. It's still the fastest and most painless way to rehearse and perform a five-hour opera and keep everybody together. I don't know whether either of those things are going to be considered a worthwhile use of time and personnel in 100 years.


 "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." (Arthur C Clarke) Much current musical technology would be rather incomprehensible to most musicians of a century ago (Percy Grainger excepted). Expect the next century to be even weirder, more disorienting. But antiquarians and revenants and other such pervs will still play acoustic instruments -- unless they're prohibited. When fiddles are banned, only bandits will fiddle.

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objectsession, 

sblock

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## catmandu2

Right on k0peli -

When I talk with my kids about arts, spatial references and conceptions, and various representations, I deeply consider to what extent my words might be relevant to them ahead, so as not to waste my precious breath  :Wink:  .. I'll sometimes stop mid-sentence realizing - wait, this won't mean a thing...

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## k0k0peli

> When I talk with my kids about arts, spatial references and conceptions, and various representations, I deeply consider to what extent my words might be relevant to them ahead, so as not to waste my precious breath  .. I'll sometimes stop mid-sentence realizing - wait, this won't mean a thing...


 I fear trying to explain to my grandkids (now 4 and 6) what life was like in my youth. The concepts, realizations, attitudes change too fast, too much. An age before personal computers, the Internet, wireless phones, AIDS, expensive gasoline and cigarettes, car seat belts, eXtreme sports, remote-control vibrators, radical Islam, environmentalism, CDs and DVDs, home video, CNN and FOX, gay liberation, and the fall of communism. Huh? What is 'communism'?? 1970 is much closer to 1920 than to 2020.

ObTopic: I'll try teaching my grandkids notation. Hey, it might happen...

EDIT - Consider this article about sexist futurism: http://www.theatlantic.com/technolog...sm-men/400097/

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## catmandu2

> And they're still within 'Western' music! 
> 
> ...
> 
>  "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." (Arthur C Clarke)



The concept "Western" et al - will itself be a term of historicity, and its offshoots the lenses through which we study its influences, etc.

http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/ed...postid=1420591

 Granted it's "improvisational" music - (but which also gives rise to the consideration of "what constitutes composition," etc.), but this type of gestural symbolism seems more akin in this music, to me .. anyway

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## sblock



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DavidKOS

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## August Watters

Geez, what a bunch of skeptics! Standard notation on its way out? I'd say it's on its way back in, at least recently, in the mandolin world.

Maybe this would be a good time to point out that there's more mandolin music -- in standard notation -- being written now, than any time previous? Check out the German and Italian publishers. Major American publishers are publishing more mandolin music too (although sometimes duplicating standard notation with tablature). Probably the largest publisher (Hal Leonard) features the "Hal Leonard Mandolin Method" (by Rich del Grosso), which begins in tablature and transitions to SN. Think about it: American folk tunes being taught for mandolin in SN, not in tablature, except as a beginning point. Just like in the old days, before tablature became popular.

I take it as a sign of the times that Berklee Press published my 160-page book in SN only. Just a year or two earlier, that probably would have been impossible, but they're identifying marketplace trends and saw a place.

You can say SN is classically-based and Eurocentric, but children all over the world learn to read music easily and associate notes with pitches.  It's a failure of our music education system that so many students grow up thinking reading SN is difficult, out of reach or reserved for specialists. With the breakdown of social institutions that passed on music reading knowledge (church singing, parlor pianos, music ed for kids) the understanding of SN -- and common knowledge of how to add a few sparse fingerings to make clear which notes should be played where on the mandolin fingerboard -- has declined, but I sense we're learning to compensate for that through software-based learning and virtual interconnectedness.

And then there's the "elephant in the room" of this conversation: the previous generations of mandolin composers who wrote mandolin music in SN, bequeathing to us a clear and concise way to notate music for mandolin, meanwhile leaving a repertoire of music that's just beginning to be recovered. Relatively few of us will be interested in historical styles, but the possibilities for sharing contemporary mandolin music through SN -- seems like we're just beginning to explore that!

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DavidKOS, 

StuartE

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## David Lewis

20th century music pushes exactly what 'notation' is; apart from the above marvellous examples, you have circular music (which dates back to the Renaissance, and even further, (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/F...ular_canon.gif for example)

Danger Music #17, By Dick Higgins: the notation reads 'Scream, Scream, Scream, Scream':

And here's a performance - my old friend Geoff Gartner is the performer.

https://vimeo.com/25389241

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## objectsession

> It's a failure of our music education system that so many students grow up thinking reading SN is difficult, out of reach or reserved for specialists. With the breakdown of social institutions that passed on music reading knowledge (church singing, parlor pianos, music ed for kids) the understanding of SN -- and common knowledge of how to add a few sparse fingerings to make clear which notes should be played where on the mandolin fingerboard -- has declined, but I sense we're learning to compensate for that through software-based learning and virtual interconnectedness.


You know, I don't really understand what's so hard about staff notation either . . but I just realized that I did was taught it from first grade on (well, on through elementary school). That's not typical I guess? Was it more common in the past?

But, really, what's so hard about it. There are a bunch of lines and spaces. You draw a circle in one place to make a note, and if you want to go up the scale, you draw a circle higher up. If you want, you can draw a line next to the circle to make it half as long and fill the circle in to make it half as long again. Now you can write twinle twinkle little star, and then go from there. (Okay, you need to know ledger lines too depending on the clef . . and you need to know a clef.) Harder to explain then tab, yes, but way easier than explaining how you play a single note on the mandolin.

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## JeffD

> So much music is completely beyond the,realm of SN -


To respond directly, you are correct. But I was, at least in my mind, including all of written music. Standard notation is just one way of writing it out, but having it written out is the key.

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## JeffD

> But face it: standard musical notation is, slowly, going the way of the dodo bird. Music is all about listening, and about performance. The well-known limitations of standard notation, in being able to "record" things, will ultimately drive folks to finding much better ways to capture and convey music in the digital era.


Not at all.

If we are not counting individual recordings of the same thing, or individual written sheets of music of the same tune, as you describe, then written music is still winning. There is likely very little music "only" available in a recording. Everything of significance, (meaning being played or listened to beyond the original composer) is likely also available in written form, likely standard notation and tab, or very shortly will be. OTOH there is a ton of music in written form that is not and has not been recorded.

I don't see that trend declining. Pieces of paper may become less (though the paperless revolution computers promised the world has resulted in more stored paperwork, not less), but if you include PDFs and images of written out music, I see that standard notation will co-exist with various types of tab, and be around for a long long time.

A funny example would be ABC notation. Designed for computers, it has become a type of written notation that (many) folks read directly. 

It is a fact (undisputed) that music is all about the sound, listening, and the performance. It always has been. It is not more or less so today. If that fact produced any kind of limit on the production of written music, written music would never have been written at all.

The human need to "write down" human experience in symbols, whether music or speech or whatever, is not going to decline any time soon.

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## objectsession

> It is a fact (undisputed) that music is all about the sound, listening, and the performance.


Since you said it's "undisputed", I feel like I should dispute this statement.  :Wink:  There are many composers (and listeners) that don't care about how the music is performed. A lot of electronic music isn't performed by a person at all and some, like soundscape compositions, might not really have any sort of performance by computer or electronics, either. And their are composers like Tom Johnson whose music really isn't about sound at all (I think I saw an interview where he said something like that but I can't find the quote). The sound is just how you hear the composition, which is a mathematical process, and that's what it's all about.

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catmandu2

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## catmandu2

August; objectsession - I agree, a very elegant system with great utility - I don't dispute its efficacy in the world of mandolin music/pedagogy; simply that future systems will no doubt evince which will facilitate 'notation' of given forms with greater efficacy.  Anyway, just my sense -

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August Watters, 

objectsession

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## JeffD

> Since you said it's "undisputed", I feel like I should dispute this statement.  .


Well I guess I should have said, "sound: listening and/or the performance". What I mean is that there is no music which was meant only to look good on a piece of paper. And while music is composed on paper all the time, it is intended to be heard at some point.

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objectsession

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## catmandu2

> ... there is no music which was meant only to look good on a piece of paper..


I think I can provide examples that will surprise you in this regard - I'll try to endeavor to find those some time ..

But basically, there are all manner of approaches to composition - following all manner of devices , systems, heuristics etc...yes, even visual aesthetic-driven ..

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## August Watters

> You know, I don't really understand what's so hard about staff notation either . . but I just realized that I did was taught it from first grade on (well, on through elementary school). That's not typical I guess? Was it more common in the past?


Oh yes, many ways to measure that. Ask any old church choir member how hard it is to find people who know how to read harmony parts in a hymnal. Or look at the music printed in early 20th-Century general-interest music magazines (like Crescendo). Or look at what used to be required music curricula in public schools: Here in my little New Hampshire town, a 1905 town report bragged about the musical skills required of fifth-graders -- and the description sounded a lot like what my fourth-semester Berklee classes are doing (leaps to and from chromatic tones). It stands to reason that before sound recording, there was more demand for music reading skills.

But to answer your question about "what's so hard," the difficulty is real for people who didn't have your background -- a social situation where people get used to sightsinging, i.e. associating pitch with spelling. There are parts of the world where children still learn sightsinging skills as required curricula, but it's the exception to the rule now in the USA. Thus the rise in tablature?

When I teach someone new to SN, I start with the sound -- most students can sing a major scale, since most of our music is based there (ok, a culture-specific assumption, but usually it works). Next we associate those sounds with numbers 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 or else Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti Do. Once they get the idea of moving the scale around with 1 as the starting point (yes, "moveable do" only), then we start spelling in the key of C major, and noticing that major scales fall into a w-w-h-w-w-w-h pattern. And then it's easy to move to other keys.

Folks who haven't had instruction in sightreading often make the mistake of beginning with fingerboard mechanics instead of the sound (OK, that's a D and the D is played here and that's an F# and it's there. . . .). For that matter, there are plenty of musicians who studied instrumental methods the same way -- especially in the classical world there's no shortage of methods that teach reading through finger mechanics. It's not a bad idea, if balanced by an ear-first approach.

If you can hear intervals, it's a short step to envisioning them on the fingerboard.

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catmandu2, 

objectsession

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## catmandu2

> I think I can provide examples that will surprise you in this regard - I'll try to endeavor to find those some time ..
> 
> But basically, there are all manner of approaches to composition - following all manner of devices , systems, heuristics etc...yes, even visual aesthetic-driven ..


I'm still not recollecting where it was that I encountered a score with this (visual element as primary) particular feature, although works like Alvin Lucier's "Queen of the South" - apparently deriving from cymatics (study of "visual sound") - may equate.  Earlier artists like Kandinsky were also investigating these methods...Cage likely delved into this arena as well.  While not exactly equivalent, Zorn's "game theory" is a compositional method predicated on sets of rules that determine when and who plays, but not what the sonic result will be.  I'm sure there are others - maybe I'll run across them ..

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## objectsession

There are also compositions that are impossible to play. There's "Celestial Music for Imaginary Trumpets" by Tom Johnson with impossibly high pitches and Clarence Barlow's "Stochroma" with impossibly long durations.

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## JeffD

> That said, sheet music sales are not tracking, proportionally, with overall recording sales, and they haven't for a long time now.  So sheet music is increasingly becoming rare compared to the availability of music.


Wouldn't that be because fewer people play music. Most people who buy music buy it to listen.




> The current state of affairs is that majority of the music that the people on our planet hear today has no sheet music available for it!


I don't believe that at all. Except for some esoteric exceptions, most of the recordings one can purchase are available in some tune book or sheet music somewhere, or soon will be. Not exact note for note transcriptions, but tune books for guitar, and or piano, come out all the time for all kinds of popular to not so popular music.





> And  notation is difficult to master (for most), slow and too inconvenient to write (for most), too limited in its ability to capture actual performance (or musical nuance, or musical genre)


Playing a musical instrument itself is difficult to master, slow and too inconvenient to express our real time emotions, too limited in its ability to capture the actual depth of our feelings, and well... you get what I am saying.





> But notation is already antiquated and inadequate.


One man's antiquated is another man's venerable I guess. And in the ways it is inadequate it has been from the start.

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## David Lewis

> There are also compositions that are impossible to play. There's "Celestial Music for Imaginary Trumpets" by Tom Johnson with impossibly high pitches and Clarence Barlow's "Stochroma" with impossibly long durations.


Sadly with sampling and synthesising these are no longer impossible. But not as good either when played synthetically.

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## JeffD

> There are also compositions that are impossible to play. There's "Celestial Music for Imaginary Trumpets" by Tom Johnson with impossibly high pitches and Clarence Barlow's "Stochroma" with impossibly long durations.


 :Laughing: 

Lets not define the argument by the outliers and esoteric. Lets not abandon something because it doesn't do everything everyone wants it to do.

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## objectsession

> Lets not define the argument by the outliers and esoteric. Lets not abandon something because it doesn't do everything everyone wants it to do.


Yeah. I'm not trying to contribute to the argument with those examples. Just thought some people might be interested in those esoteric pieces. And both composers write really good audible pieces, too.  :Smile: 




> Sadly with sampling and synthesising these are no longer impossible. But not as good either when played synthetically.


Actually, I don't even know if that's true in practice. I think the Tom Johnson piece needs a sampling rate of millions of Hz. For the Clarence Barlow piece, the synth would have to run for billions of years.

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## DavidKOS

I'm very happy that Mr. Watters' new book is in SN only, I do not like having to skip unnecessary tabs when reading music.

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## JeffD

> I'm very happy that Mr. Watters' new book is in SN only, I do not like having to skip unnecessary tabs when reading music.


Masking tape! I kid you not.

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## JeffD

> When I teach someone new to SN, I start with the sound -- most students can sing a major scale, since most of our music is based there (ok, a culture-specific assumption, but usually it works). Next we associate those sounds with numbers 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 or else Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti Do. Once they get the idea of moving the scale around with 1 as the starting point (yes, "moveable do" only), then we start spelling in the key of C major, and noticing that major scales fall into a w-w-h-w-w-w-h pattern. And then it's easy to move to other keys.


So much better than "every good boy does fine". Infinitely better.




> Folks who haven't had instruction in sightreading often make the mistake of beginning with fingerboard mechanics instead of the sound (OK, that's a D and the D is played here and that's an F# and it's there. . . .). For that matter, there are plenty of musicians who studied instrumental methods the same way -- especially in the classical world there's no shortage of methods that teach reading through finger mechanics. It's not a bad idea, if balanced by an ear-first approach.


I bet an early emphasis on the sight singing makes for a better musician overall, as well as a better reader.



> If you can hear intervals, it's a short step to envisioning them on the fingerboard.


Interval training also helps with hearing chord changes in a jam situation. I have piano playing friends who help me with this, and it really makes a difference.

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## Beanzy

Yep I had a frame I slotted card stave blanking bars into,  but now I've given up going to the trouble of buying books with unnecessary clutter and distractions on a page. If there's Tablature that's fine, but if it's mixed in with the standard notation on the same page I don't buy them any more. Visually it's like reading two language subtitles, because I sight read both the eye just slips between them and gets distracted. Opposite pages or top and bottom of the page would be much better to read, but best of all is if the tab isn't there taking up valuable printed page space in the first place. I'd rather get full value from the books I pay for and except for rare cases where it can be more useful (cross picking illustrations etc) I feel like I'm paying for fluff and clutter with those dual format books.

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## DavidKOS

> Masking tape! I kid you not.





> Yep I had a frame I slotted card stave blanking bars into,  but now I've given up going to the trouble of buying books with unnecessary clutter and distractions on a page. If there's Tablature that's fine, but if it's mixed in with the standard notation on the same page I don't buy them any more.


I'll try some of those ideas.

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## catmandu2

> Lets not define the argument by the outliers and esoteric. Lets not abandon something because it doesn't do everything everyone wants it to do.


Since about, what, the 40s or 50s - and Stockhausen (electroacoustics, _Gesang der Jünglinge_ [the manuscripts never being collated into a "score"] - samples, sine waves, noise, mixed forms, an aural palette encompassing "tone-noise continuum," and "continuum of sense-nonsense"), modernism had exceeded the capacity of SN.  The traditions affiliated with SN continue to be robust, of course.

The elucidation of Stockhausen's process with "Gesang der Jünglinge" is interesting - incuded here are some excerpts and examples from Stockhausen’s notes to the CD:

http://music.columbia.edu/masterpiec...ndAnalysis.pdf

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## objectsession

Hmm. In case it wasn't clear, my examples above (the Johnson and Barlow pieces) are examples of pieces with scores that are not playable or hearable - I'd call pieces that can't be played or heard "esoteric" as JeffD did. (Celestial Music for Imaginary Trumpets is written in staff notation. I don't think Stochroma is, but I'm not sure.)

But as for pieces that can't properly be presented with staff notation, I wouldn't be comfortable at all with calling them outliers or esoteric. Those are entire genres in both classical and popular music and, like catmandu2 said, those aren't exactly new (well, it's all relative - but it's about as old as bluegrass music).

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## August Watters

> best of all is if the tab isn't there taking up valuable printed page space in the first place.


Yes - that was the real issue. ECM would have been impossible if it included tablature, mainly because of space limitations. But it’s an interesting question: why would anyone expect a classical mandolin book to include tablature, when virtually all the music is written in SN? When in Rome. . . .

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## David Lewis

> Actually, I don't even know if that's true in practice. I think the Tom Johnson piece needs a sampling rate of millions of Hz. For the Clarence Barlow piece, the synth would have to run for billions of years.


That pleases me. These things should exist and be impossible.

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objectsession

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## JeffD

> Hmm. In case it wasn't clear, my examples above (the Johnson and Barlow pieces) are examples of pieces with scores that are not playable or hearable - I'd call pieces that can't be played or heard "esoteric" as JeffD did. (Celestial Music for Imaginary Trumpets is written in staff notation. I don't think Stochroma is, but I'm not sure.)
> 
> But as for pieces that can't properly be presented with staff notation, I wouldn't be comfortable at all with calling them outliers or esoteric. Those are entire genres in both classical and popular music and, like catmandu2 said, those aren't exactly new (well, it's all relative - but it's about as old as bluegrass music).


I don't know what pieces you are referring to, but I am going to guess they are more rare than the mandolin is.   :Smile:

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## catmandu2

> I don't know what pieces you are referring to, but I am going to guess they are more rare than the mandolin is.


I guess this is why discussions here never seem to get anywhere - seems like people are only interested in affirmation of what they believe, and disregard the rest ..  

Maybe it would be better if we just put it into simpler terms: as Leslie Nielsen's character said in the 1975 episode "Identity Crisis" of the series "Columbo" - _why all the jazz_..?

 :Smile:

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## Tom Wright

There are no disadvantages to standard notation. That not all information can be captured by it is a trivial observation. The map is not the territory but it sure is better to have a map than not, in my experience.

As to whether players should be readers, stories also existed without written language but I doubt there is much controversy over being literate.

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## catmandu2

> There are no disadvantages to standard notation...


Were you to include the caveat, "...in the music that (_you_) play," then I could agree with your entire post.   :Smile: 

Still (in some music that _I_ play),  there is good reason for aural/oral basis .. not that SN would be a _disadvantage_ , per se, only inefficacious (unless I wanted to use it as I could - which would be to my _advantage_).

*For expediency, I'll try to anticipate what the "argument" was - and I'll have to go back and read the thread from the beginning - my entrée was only late and in response to specific posts.  FWIW, I suspect that (the thread) is discussing Western/European music (?).  My study of non-western forms probably isn't relevant to this discussion (SN _can_ be helpful in other forms in approximation, but incomplete .. nonetheless, exemplifying again why SN is so elegant a system).

My view - obvious as it is - is simply that SN - being essentially associated with a particular form of musical enterprise and era - a quite vigorous one of course - will always exist, as long as the music is played.  As new forms emerge, other choices will avail - perhaps, or perhaps not, relegating SN tradition to a lesser role.

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## tkdboyd

> Yes - that was the real issue. ECM would have been impossible if it included tablature, mainly because of space limitations. But it’s an interesting question: why would anyone expect a classical mandolin book to include tablature, when virtually all the music is written in SN? When in Rome. . . .


I do appreciate that ECM came out without tab, for the reason you and others state, it is becoming more the usual only to have tab or notation. I will admit that when Tab is in front of me, my eyes gravitate that direction, but I would use both tab and notation to understand the piece I was working on. I have to admit, that modern tab has gotten really good at adding timing and other specifics normally found in SN. It is a sad state for myself, but one I hope to cure in the near future. Was able to get some fantastic advice from Will Patton this past week regarding intervals, vocalizing intervals, etc...I fancy myself a player of classical music, but unfortunately I rely on the layman's Tablature for much of it.

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## foldedpath

> There are no disadvantages to standard notation. That not all information can be captured by it is a trivial observation. The map is not the territory but it sure is better to have a map than not, in my experience.


There is one disadvantage I've seen, and that's not the fault of SN itself. Sometimes students -- especially fiddlers -- are taught SN in a Folk idiom like Irish traditional music, where SN is valued as a learning tool, but not intended to be the final word on how the music is played in groups. The danger is that they can have trouble then moving off the page and playing by ear, which is the next natural step in the progression of playing this music.

I've seen it happen in a local fiddle class, taught by a very good violinist. He's Classically trained, but a decent trad player. There is a regular group of students he's been teaching for years, and he's tried to move them off the sheet music. It just hasn't worked. They only feel comfortable with a small forest of music stands in front of them. They have actually performed in public that way... at local events like St. Patrick's Day parties, taking about as much time to set up and tear down their music stands as they spend actually playing. 

It sounds dreadful when they play, even after years of taking this regular class. They're too focused on reading and not getting inside the music by ear. They'll never be able to join a local ITM pub session, because they can't break away from the dots. 

Again, it's not the fault of SN, but I wonder if maybe this amateur fiddle class would be in a different place if the teacher hadn't introduced SN at all, and just started with ear learning from the get-go.

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## Beanzy

> It sounds dreadful when they play, even after years of taking this regular class. They're too focused on reading and not getting inside the music by ear. They'll never be able to join a local ITM pub session, because they can't break away from the dots. 
> 
> Again, it's not the fault of SN, but I wonder if maybe this amateur fiddle class would be in a different place if the teacher hadn't introduced SN at all, and just started with ear learning from the get-go.


In my experience this is where the Jazz guys get it right and is something for all amateur groups using any notation to get sorted out.
It's a great way to get quick access to the music, to short-cut the learning phase, but you need to go beyond the printed page as soon as you can. 
Speaking of amateur groups, I've seen several ways community orchestras do this, but none I've seen are completely successful. 

The strongest contender so far is to teach the tune first then hand the sheets out at the end of the rehearsal for home practice, but the next rehearsal you just get all the eyes down again and you've thrown away the advantage of quickly accessing the piece for that first rehearsal.

There's a conundrum to resolve here, in that you need to teach people why they're trying to move beyond the page and how to practice to do that, but most amateur groups have players of basic to intermediate skill levels and just need to get them playing through the pieces together as quickly and efficiently as possible. Time for training of the ear / memory is limited and the skill and experience isn't there. Groups that have been playing together for years tend to be better able to move on as they are familiar with the repertoire so probably are only dipping in to the dots from habit. 

Another factor there is that the repertoire is often alien territory for many so it's an extra layer of learning they're trying to get on top of mastering their instrument.

Group leaders need to encourage home and section practice to include moving on from the dots so people are free to listen closer and internalise the pieces. But practice time for most amateurs is really limited and rarely high quality, if you can get them to practice at all. 

The other thing is amateur players can often spread themselves too thin in terms of joining several groups for social reasons, and having scores allows this as they can flit from one to the other without having to internalise a huge volume of material. It's well worth pushing the "moving off the dots" issue for any group though as once people are playing from their memory they naturally listen out for the cues and memory triggers provided by other parts & that means they're listening to the group.

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k0k0peli, 

sblock

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## Randi Gormley

Moving away from SN is a leap of faith, at least for the group of amateur ITM-ers I play with. Most people feel the exact notes are the only way to play a piece and they're terrified of playing a wrong note and, I dunno, blowing up some local bridge. We've had all sorts of arguments over whether the specific version we've decided on is the one played in sessions and whether a C or C# is the correct note in a given phrase. If you want, that's a disadvantage of SN -- too slavish a dedication to what the notes say in an idiom that ought to be more fluid. Of course, I've never heard this discussion when I play classical, where devotion to the printed notes is pretty much SOP.

I'll admit I've had a lot of fun reading this very extensive discussion; some I agree with, some not; f'rinstance, I've always thought that Airy (?) sheet music was a musician's joke and never meant to be actually played, sort of like reading a story in the Onion -- so true but so bogus, if you get my drift.  I've also caught a glance at a PDQ Bach score, which contains SN along with directions to release balloons and spin bicycle wheels ... I also have serious doubts about SN disappearing, even further out than four or five generations. I learned how to read medieval music manuscripts in college so I could sing it as part of an a capella group back when I still had a singing voice. I can see SN joined by other ways to designate sounds but I don't see it disappearing any more than texting eliminated other written communication forms. Most stuff is not an 'either/or' proposition. It's much less defined and messier than that. fwiw.

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## JeffD

> I guess this is why discussions here never seem to get anywhere - seems like people are only interested in affirmation of what they believe, and disregard the rest ..


Not at all. But we are not having a scientific discussion, where each and every counter example, by itself, nullifies the hypothesis. 

We are talking in general terms about the music that is familiar and likely to be encountered by most of the participants, using words and phrases as familiarly meant to the participants, in an effort to be helpful and relevant to the honest questions involved. That there might be special, esoteric, outlander cases where-by the veracity of given point may be questioned - seems to me to be an attempt to win an argument, not an attempt to sort out a confusing situation in answer to an honest question.

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## catmandu2

> Not at all. But we are not having a scientific discussion, where each and every counter example, by itself, nullifies the hypothesis. 
> 
> We are talking in general terms about the music that is familiar and likely to be encountered by most of the participants, using words and phrases as familiarly meant to the participants, in an effort to be helpful and relevant to the honest questions involved. That there might be special, esoteric, outlander cases where-by the veracity of given point may be questioned - seems to me to be an attempt to win an argument, not an attempt to sort out a confusing situation in answer to an honest question.



In order to have a meaningful discourse, we have to be willing to look at the examples provided. 

There are worlds  beyond the familiar .

I'm not sure what the basic "argument" or hypothesis was, in this thread, but the couple of refutations I (and several others ahead of me) provided to the couple of platitudinal statements that I thought were worthy of reconsideration - with no acknowledgement of any kind - seems fairly typical of discourse here .

Anyway, just my thoughts

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## catmandu2

> That there might be special, esoteric, outlander cases ...


Is there an appreciation of the extent to which works like Stockhausen"s (as above) and others have influenced or otherwise served to establish new - and popular - dimensions in music?  I'm thinking this might be a rather significant point, going unawares ..

While most folks might hold a general perception that works by such composers as these (Stockhausen, et al.) are far afield and without relevance, this would be profound underestimation of their influences.

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## objectsession

Electronic music has a very strong presence in popular culture. A lot of electronic music can be represented in standard staff notation in a useful way, but a lot also cannot. (Examples of what I mean by "useful" or "not useful" - a keyboard part for a synth with pitch notes, pitch bends, and maybe some simple timbral indications could be useful for a performer. In contrast, a long single pitch drone with lots of varying effects could be notated as a single note, but that's not useful to understanding the piece or how it's played.) 

Anyway, one popular use of electronic music is in movie scores. For example, The Hunger Games was the 9th highest grossing film in 2012 (3rd in the US) and uses the piece Sediment by Laurie Spiegel. The score for Gone Girl (which earned more than $300 million) by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross was also mostly electronic - yes, parts could be notated and be actually useful (I think it actually was to be played by acoustic instruments) but other instrumental parts are totally non-notatable. Check out this video (might need to be subscribed to Apple Music) to see how parts of At Risk were performed. And there are many more examples - those are just two that come to mind.

And speaking of Trent Reznor, his album The Downward Spiral sold over 4 million copies in the US alone. That's also a largely electronic album (although in style resembling a rock band) and a lot of those synth parts (and some acoustic parts, e.g., the humming part played on saxaphone mouthpiece in the intro to Eraser) can't be notated either. The Beatles' white album has Revolution 9 (and that's just the most obvious Beatles example).

I don't know if most people on this forum have heard those examples. But I don't know if most people have heard Bill Monroe or Nickel Creek or Vivaldi either. Those examples wouldn't be called out, it seems to me, because "what most people have heard" is actually a stand in for "normal music." Since you're not actually polling people to find out what music they listen to, you are basing that idea of "normal music" on what you envision as a "normal person" on this message board. Furthermore, even if something is uncommon, you're still dismissing the experiences of those who have those uncommon experiences. Personally, I find that all very offensive.

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k0k0peli

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## Joel Glassman

> if you can't whistle it, you can't play it.  If you can't remember how it goes, you can't play it.  There are a lot of ways to learn how it goes and get it into your psyche.
> f-d


This actually isn't true. I know classical musicians who can sight read music and play it with soul and personal phrasing. Sight reading like this isn't the approach of most people here. Its completely valid for one to play music they can't whistle or remember.

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## catmandu2

Yeah objectssn - my first thought about Stockhausen and popularism was George Martin who was putting that concrete-electro sonic fabric together early on .. 

Yes I know when it gets down to it it can be discussed on all the usual sociocutural referrants and associations - the de rigueur _this v that_ thing  .. and rather than viewing of its own overt terms, etc. ... but I hope everyone can acknowledge just how profoundly pop _has_ affected and effected the broader "society."  Uhh..  It's a rock'n roll world baby!

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## Beanzy

What I'm not clear about is whether anyone discussing these esoteric examples considers them illustrative of advantages or disadvantages of notation. 

My take is that such examples where the composer chooses to use alternatives reveal one of the core advantages of notation in that it doesn't lock everything down and leaves so much room for both player and composer to express and experiment. This is contrary to what is believed by a lot of people who don't frequently use notational systems.

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objectsession

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## Paleosporin

Interesting. I just skimmed the thread, so forgive my intrusion.

I recently finished Anna Maria Busse Berger's Medieval Music and the Art of Memory, in which the author spends a lot of time reevaluating the role of literacy in the medieval church. She posits that the role of texts and musical notation was principally to aid memorization rather than to free the individual from having to remember something, and that the way that mastery in memory was demonstrated was through skillful manipulation of the source material. Those crafty monks would do things like recite a poem from memory and then recite it backwards, rearrange the syllables of individual sentences, apply remembered verses to their own writing, or in music, apply different rhythmic modes to the same melody (in its extremity, resulting in the isorhythmic motet), sing a cantus firmus in retrograde (which resulted in the canon cancrizans), and improvise discant based on memorized tables of neumes that correspond to every possible note progression in the cantus firmus (sort of like having a bag of memorized licks for every pair of chords).

The visual component of the written word, versification, tables, tree diagrams, other graphic representations, all served to populate the memory palace so that the practitioner could recall information in great detail and manipulate it as they needed it. You probably remember your multiplication tables from elementary school. Same sort of thing. Apparently, professional chess players memorize moves and strategies in much the same way so that plays become immediate and automatic (I'm taking her word for it; I only play casually). Notation was not seen as an impediment upon orality, but rather a way to enhance the singer's memory and ability both to recall tunes and improvise upon them. Busse Berger points out that many elements of mensural notation (mensural rhythms, ficta) are vague and potentially open to multiple interpretations (a longa can be split into either two or three breves depending on the prolation, for instance). I can't help but to think of the inherently vague notation of Real Book heads, where a measure full of quarter notes will never be played as straight quarter notes unless the player is completely uninformed.

Also, it's not the composer's fault that the audience has a stick up its collective ass. I've never had any problem jamming out to Mahler in the concert hall, though I get some funny looks on occasion. (~12:20-14:40 in the video in the OP.)

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catmandu2

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## catmandu2

> Those crafty monks would do things like recite a poem from memory and then recite it backwards, rearrange the syllables of individual sentences, apply remembered verses to their own writing, or in music, apply different rhythmic modes to the same melody (in its extremity, resulting in the isorhythmic motet), sing a cantus firmus in retrograde (which resulted in the canon cancrizans), and improvise discant based on memorized tables of neumes that correspond to every possible note progression in the cantus firmus (sort of like having a bag of memorized licks for every pair of chords).
> 
> The visual component of the written word, versification, tables, tree diagrams, other graphic representations, all served to populate ... so that the practitioner could recall information in great detail and manipulate it as they needed it...



The worlds  of tabulatures are fascinating.  The ap Huw manuscript that I'm playing from contains such examples as these ... it's among the reasons I love to play the music - very stimulating in the ways that the (simple) repetitive figures are manipulated - here's an example:



I'm aware of only a few interpretations of this particular manuscript thus far - each widely varied..

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## JeffD

> There is one disadvantage I've seen, and that's not the fault of SN itself. Sometimes students -- especially fiddlers -- are taught SN in a Folk idiom like Irish traditional music, where SN is valued as a learning tool, but not intended to be the final word on how the music is played in groups. The danger is that they can have trouble then moving off the page and playing by ear, which is the next natural step in the progression of playing this music..


I see this a lot. But like you say it is not the fault of standard notation. It has nothing to do with written music. the problem is a lack of ear training, (and perhaps an understandable reluctance to be as a beginner learning by ear when one is used to competency in reading).

The two skills are important and separate. One does not do the other. Being good at one does not make it less important to learn the other.

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## Paleosporin

> The worlds  of tabulatures are fascinating.  The ap Huw manuscript that I'm playing from contains such examples as these ... it's among the reasons I love to play the music - very stimulating in the ways that the (simple) repetitive figures are manipulated - here's an example:
> 
> I'm aware of only a few interpretations of this particular manuscript thus far - each widely varied..


Fascinating, I've never heard of this manuscript. Sounds like an interesting document.

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## catmandu2

> Fascinating, I've never heard of this manuscript. Sounds like an interesting document.


Here's a bit of info: http://www.billtaylor.eu/index.asp?pageid=74247

And of course, fwiw (to whom it may concern) - while 'obscure' from a _mainstream_ perspective - "early music" is another example of the opportunities extant outside the domain of SN and its traditions ..

*For clarification - I don't want to sound misleading: I don't possess a copy of the MS and am not reading/interpreting it myself; rather, I'm merely learning/playing the music from the MS (by 'ear') from others who have done the work of deciphering themselves (Paul Dooley, William Taylor, Ann Heymann)

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Paleosporin

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## ralph johansson

> I see this a lot. But like you say it is not the fault of standard notation. It has nothing to do with written music. the problem is a lack of ear training, (and perhaps an understandable reluctance to be as a beginner learning by ear when one is used to competency in reading).
> 
> The two skills are important and separate. One does not do the other. Being good at one does not make it less important to learn the other.


Perhaps the question then rather is when and how to introduce SN. When I got started on the guitar in 1957 I knew all about SN, key signatures, the construction of major and minor scales, the relationship between keys, e.g., major keys and their relative minors. I had absorbed all that information in music classes in school. This knowledge enabled me to learn on my own in very systematic fashion, key by key, starting in C and working my way both ways along the circle of fifths (C, F, G, Bb, D, etc.) But  in the beginning I didn't trust my ears. It was only when I became interested in, e.g., oldtime and BG, that I was forced to learn and play by ear, and improvise. Of course, this made me a better reader, better at just looking at a score and getting the idea of a printed piece of music.

However, I'm glad that those music classes taught me about key signatures structuring the staff and fretboard. When the piece is in Eb I dont "remember" to flat the b on the middle line; I  hear and read it as the fifth of the scale.

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catmandu2, 

k0k0peli

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## ralph johansson

> This actually isn't true. I know classical musicians who can sight read music and play it with soul and personal phrasing. Sight reading like this isn't the approach of most people here. Its completely valid for one to play music they can't whistle or remember.


If I were to take fatt-dad literally I can't play guitar or mandolin at all, since I cannot form one single musical note whistling. 

What it takes to remember a piece of music is understanding it. Far too many people try to memorize a song bar by bar.

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## ralph johansson

> Yep I had a frame I slotted card stave blanking bars into,  but now I've given up going to the trouble of buying books with unnecessary clutter and distractions on a page. If there's Tablature that's fine, but if it's mixed in with the standard notation on the same page I don't buy them any more. Visually it's like reading two language subtitles, because I sight read both the eye just slips between them and gets distracted. Opposite pages or top and bottom of the page would be much better to read, but best of all is if the tab isn't there taking up valuable printed page space in the first place. I'd rather get full value from the books I pay for and except for rare cases where it can be more useful (cross picking illustrations etc) I feel like I'm paying for fluff and clutter with those dual format books.




To me tab makes sense only as a complement to the standard score; therefore, if there has to be tab I want it below the standard; no big distraction as I refer to it only rarely. Recently I bought two of the Grisman books. On EMD the tab suggests that the recurring bb be played at the 8th fret - without tab it would of course be enough to indicate that the first 12 bars or so be played on the d course (probably ovious, why leave the d course for just one single note?). On Blue Midnite, the tab immediately suggests that the first half of the bridge be play in fourth position, and the second in third. That wouldn't be immediate to the tab only reader, I guess, and I wouldn't see this  if the tab was printed on the opposite page - of course, without the tab a roman IV and III in the appropriate places would suffice.  (Note, by the way, that all note values, rests, accents, etc. are printed in the SN staff only.

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## Mark Wilson

Good point ralph.  One of the struggles I have w/ standard notation is deciding which course to use in spots.

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## Tom Wright

Standard notation is a map. Editorial additions like which course to play on and which fingering to use are like Google drawing your route to destination. Tab is like the step-by-step directions on the side.

That a map does not tell you which route to take is an advantage for some of us. Most professional music does not tell you how to play your instrument. Instructional material does, that's its purpose. Professionals also work to choose which fingerings are best, and it is not always obvious. Spending some time on that question is not a problem, it's a natural activity. Even editorial/instructional fingering suggestions are rarely the only sensible choice, but just one player's preference.

My take is that  Suzuki-style teaching, which is kind of classical tab, and tab itself, are like using Siri and GPS to let software do your thinking. It works well but you are dependent on that system which makes choices for you. Leave it as soon as possible in your learning process and work with the map---it's the best way to learn the territory, not just a few routes to a few places.

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August Watters, 

Beanzy, 

k0k0peli, 

objectsession, 

tkdboyd

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## tkdboyd

> Professionals also work to choose which fingerings are best, and it is not always obvious. Spending some time on that question is not a problem, it's a natural activity. Even editorial/instructional fingering suggestions are rarely the only sensible choice, but just one player's preference.
> 
> .... Leave it as soon as possible in your learning process and work with the map---it's the best way to learn the territory, not just a few routes to a few places.


Saw this the other day Skip to about 1:08, thought the link with the time stamp would work, sorry.


goes to your point and does make one really think about how to approach a piece before even putting your fingers on the fingerboard.

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## JeffD

> Perhaps the question then rather is when and how to introduce SN. .


You have nailed it. I really don't know what would be best. 

I find that knowing notation helps me with learning a tune by ear, in that it provides a kind of mental furniture on which to place the notes of the tune. 

But is that necessary, or the only way, or are their better ways, I don't know. For example, good ear training, and being able to hear and identify an interval might have made learning to read music much easier.

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## catmandu2

> Standard notation is a map. Editorial additions like which course to play on and which fingering to use are like Google drawing your route to destination. Tab is like the step-by-step directions on the side.
> 
> That a map does not tell you which route to take is an advantage for some of us. Most professional music does not tell you how to play your instrument. Instructional material does, that's its purpose. *Professionals also work to choose which fingerings are best*, and it is not always obvious. Spending some time on that question is not a problem, *it's a natural activity*. Even editorial/instructional fingering suggestions are rarely the only sensible choice, but just one player's preference.
> 
> My take is that  Suzuki-style teaching, which is kind of classical tab, and tab itself, are like using Siri and GPS to let software do your thinking. It works well but you are dependent on that system which makes choices for you. *Leave it as soon as possible in your learning process* and work with the map---it's the best way to learn the territory, not just a few routes to a few places.


And not just professionals, of course - but simply higher-level engagement of play/study.

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