Just starting out -- Should I really learn to "read music"?

[CarlM]

There is likely nobody ever whose musical progress was hindered by learning to read music. Nobody, ever, ever said, "darn, that was a waste of time."

Strange as this may sound I have known a couple of people whose progress was definitely hindered by learning to read music and tab. One played banjo and the other autoharp. And unfortunately they did not recognize it. In both cases they were people who should not have been playing in public either which goes totally against what I usually think or tell people. They tried to use the written music as a shortcut to learning the song or listening to what was coming out. They were totally focused on reading, very poorly, what was on the written page. Not listening to the point that the banjo player did not hear when his capo was in the wrong place and he was playing in a totally different key from everyone else he was playing with. This happened more than once, a couple times by half a step which really clashed.

Some people will read the music like a person poorly reading a speech, in a monotone with a bunch of stops and starts and pronouncing a bunch or words incorrectly. That is fine for a first pass through as you try to learn a new song. It is not good for a public performance let alone a jam.

Reading music, like reading a language is a great thing. But the ear and the sounds that come out are primary and essential. Trying to learn a foreign language totally from printed pages without knowing what the sounds and rhythm of the language are would be a mess. So it is with music.

[Ranald]

There is likely nobody ever whose musical progress was hindered by learning to read music. Nobody, ever, ever said, "darn, that was a waste of time."

On the other hand, I've known people who decided not to read music, stuck with that, and became excellent musicians. The fiddler, Calvin Vollrath, knows quite a bit about theory and about music generally, but does not read music, and doesn't want to. He'll never be first violin in an orchestra, but he never wanted to; he wanted to be a fiddler like his father, and has more than achieved his goal. Also, many widely-admired blind musicians don't "read" music. Some might if they could, but do very well without.

I've met people similar to the ones Carl describes in Post #127. Sadly, I fear that some of these folks wouldn't do much better if they were learning by ear. Some have difficulties with music generally, or else stubbornly cling to their method, refusing to learn through the example of others. Funny, how some people don't get the sense that reading notation at a jam where everyone else is playing by ear, memory, and improvisation, isn't in the spirit of the music being created, and keeps the person from being competent in the form of music they've chosen. There's a good online video of David Greenberg, a professional Baroque violinist and Cape Breton fiddler giving a workshop, and trying to get across to a concert violinist how she has to get away from written notation, relax, and get the feel of the fiddle music, which isn't on the sheet. (Please note that neither he nor I suggested anyone not learn to read music.)

[DavidKOS]

.. In both cases they were people who should not have been playing in public....tried to use the written music as a shortcut to learning the song or listening to what was coming out. They were totally focused on reading, very poorly, what was on the written page. ...
Reading music, like reading a language is a great thing. But the ear and the sounds that come out are primary and essential. Trying to learn a foreign language totally from printed pages without knowing what the sounds and rhythm of the language are would be a mess. So it is with music.

I like your point....music notation is a great thing - but what you describe is a situation I've seen before too.

"to a concert violinist how she has to get away from written notation"

Funny thing, since for a large part of the Renaissance and Baroque era, improvising around and based on the "mere notes on the page" was a big thing, but it was no longer so after the classical period when composers wrote much more specifically and performers somehow lost the improvisatory skills that were essential in earlier eras.

We now think of Bach as one of those guys that wrote music and is very tied to notation, but in his life he was known as a massively great improviser. People would come to hear him "test" organs, and he would give a 2 hour concert largely improvised.

[Caleb]

There is likely nobody ever whose musical progress was hindered by learning to read music. Nobody, ever, ever said, "darn, that was a waste of time."

You might be right. This might have just been my experience, but if the only way I could’ve learned to play mandolin was by learning to read music, I’d have quit the mandolin. The experience of trying to learn notation was absolute and total drudgery to me.

[mandokismet]

If I were going give myself advice 6 years ago, I would say to learn tunes by ear and skip tab or music. Find a version you like and slow it down and go back and forth over and over until you know it. Then repeat for every tune thereafter.

Something happens when you keep doing this and eventually you'll be able to pick things up more and more quickly. You'll save time screwing around with paper or phones. You'll grab your instrument and play without needing to find your binder. It will get easier and easier.

If you have extra time in two years, learn music. But focus on the slow and steady mental transcription.

[Jim Garber]

Well, the discussion goes on and on, and I am guessing that the OP has moved on. I do wonder how his tandem lessons with his daughter are going and if he decided he did need to learn to read notation or not. It would be nice to hear from him.

[Ranald]

Well, the discussion goes on and on, and I am guessing that the OP has moved on. I do wonder how his tandem lessons with his daughter are going and if he decided he did need to learn to read notation or not. It would be nice to hear from him.

See Post #61.

[David L]

Strange as this may sound I have known a couple of people whose progress was definitely hindered by learning to read music and tab. One played banjo and the other autoharp. And unfortunately they did not recognize it. In both cases they were people who should not have been playing in public either which goes totally against what I usually think or tell people. Not listening to the point that the banjo player did not hear when his capo was in the wrong place and he was playing in a totally different key from everyone else he was playing with. This happened more than once, a couple times by half a step which really clashed.

Some people will read the music like a person poorly reading a speech, in a monotone with a bunch of stops and starts and pronouncing a bunch or words incorrectly. That is fine for a first pass through as you try to learn a new song. It is not good for a public performance let alone a jam.

Their progress was not hindered by learning to read music and tab. Their progress was hindered by not listening and paying attention.

[Jeff Mando]

A couple thoughts...

Picture a world before the internet, youtube videos, etc. 60 years ago, I remember watching musicians on tv and watching where they were putting their fingers on the fingerboard. Growing up in a small town there were really no concerts for me to see. Once in a while an act would perform at a local college and I would go (also to watch their hands...) Anyway, I remember liking Hendrix and buying the sheet music to purple haze. Well, the sheet music just taught me the notes....dink, dink, dink, dink -- not the flamboyance, style, swing, and swagger. In other words, the sheet music was worthless. (and arranged for piano..?!) Playing the record, on the other hand, gave me the sounds to aspire to, even though it didn't show me how to make those sounds. (no youtube back then)

[DavidKOS]

You might be right. This might have just been my experience, but if the only way I could’ve learned to play mandolin was by learning to read music, I’d have quit the mandolin. The experience of trying to learn notation was absolute and total drudgery to me.

If I were going give myself advice 6 years ago, I would say to learn tunes by ear and skip tab or music. Find a version you like and slow it down and go back and forth over and over until you know it. Then repeat for every tune thereafter.

Somehow I assume neither of you wants to play in a mandolin orchestra!

I'm curious, what styles of mandolin music are y'all playing?

[Caleb]

Somehow I assume neither of you wants to play in a mandolin orchestra!

I'm curious, what styles of mandolin music are y'all playing?

You are correct, and somewhere back in this discussion I admitted that if I were going to play classical, etc, this skill would have been necessary. Early in my mandolin life I dabbled in some of that stuff, realized I would need to read notation to ever do it, tried a bit, hated it and failed, and moved on having zero regrets.

I play mostly folk tunes, O'Carolan tunes, the occasional rock and roll song, and just whatever grabs my ear and makes its way to the mandolin. Tab has helped get me started on a lot of O'Carolan pieces, but even then I usually abandon it once I get the bulk of the melody under my fingers.

A lot of it comes down to goals and probably more importantly, how people learn. People are wired up differently and learn in different ways. Most music lessons and methods are one-size-fits-all. I never took guitar lessons when I was younger because every teacher I heard of wanted to start out with Mary Had a Little Lamb. I would rather not play than play that kind of stuff, so it was MUCH later in life that I began to excel at guitar, mostly when YouTube came along and I could see people playing and mimic them. That is the way I learn music, and it's the way pretty much everyone learned folk music throughout history.

[CarlM]

Their progress was not hindered by learning to read music and tab. Their progress was hindered by not listening and paying attention.

Absolutely true. But in both cases the reading became a crutch for not listening and paying attention. When told by their teachers and other players that they were not hearing what was coming out or what other payers were doing their response was "But I am playing what is written here, see." or other words to that effect. That printed page became an obstacle, an excuse not to listen. In the case of the banjo player I knew his teacher fairly well. The teacher finally fired him as a student due to that obstacle; refusal to learn Scruggs rolls, keep time or hear what was going on around him because he had that paper, he was doing what the paper said and it was right. The autoharp player was even worse. I tried playing a couple of live gigs with her. It was a bad scene completely. She was a friend of a friend and I tried it for his sake but it was time ill spent. Neither one was a good reader because they had divorced the reading from listening or any sense of timing. and rhythm.

[r0gue]

Multiple attempts to play notes while looking at dots. So far so bad. My eyes suck now. I'm not sure what my excuse was when I started guitar 39 years ago.

That said, I did learn "Rise" (via YouTube and my ears) by Eddie Vedder. Oh my goodness it sounds wonderful on my mandolin.

[Ranald]

One thing (of many) that reading notation helps with is getting you to not look at your fingers, a good skill to develop. Hang in there; reading tunes doesn't come quickly to most of us.

[ralph johansson]

Somehow I assume neither of you wants to play in a mandolin orchestra!

I'm curious, what styles of mandolin music are y'all playing?

Good question -- in fact I don't believe the TS ever told us or anyone ever asked. In my case most of the stuff I was playing on the mandolin way back either was stuff I picked up from records, or longer pieces (polkas, rags) for which I happened to have the sheet music (and no other source). In the case of really elaborate fiddle tunes (such as High Level, Brilliancy, Rutland's Reel) I had to rely on my ear, slowing down my turntable from 33 1/3 to 16 2/3 (thereby lowering the sound by an octave). I've even transcribed tunes from 45 RPM records, so I had to transpose them back to a fourth or fifth higher, I forget which. Needless to say, I was helped by my theoretical knowledge, even though I transposed by ear, rather than figuring.

I don't transcribe much these days. On of my most recent examples is Slow Poke, by Chilton Price. My source was a video by Pee Wee King, in the key of G. It sounded a bit tame so I decided to get it in Bb, instead, which also inspired a chordal sequence towards the end, over the IV, iv, I, and VI chords, impossible in the key of G.

Among the tunes recorded by Howdy Forrester, one, Fiddler's Waltz (by Benny Martin) is in many parts, and I found most of them almost in real time, with one exception, the nexto-to-last section, with an almost unbroken string of eighths, with almost no repeats, and none of the structure that's so helpful to the theoretically trained ear. I finally got around to transcribing them a couple of years ago, 50 years later (I will be 79 in August). And the reason I remember it is the effort it took to learn it.

[ralph johansson]

If you recall, my reply to you about the non-essentialness of chords was specifically about Irish/Scottish traditional music. There are no "right" chords in many of the fiddle tunes in this genre. It's been said, and I agree, that in this music the melody is fixed and the chordal accompaniment is improvised. It's not like Americana genres where there are standard chord charts you can build off of.

It's why many Irish pub sessions have an informal rule of just one guitar player accompanist at a time, because two will often clash on their chord selections. For example, there is no "right" way to harmonize the last part of "The Butterfly." Some people like to hear it kept in the E minor mode, others like to hear a G major chord there. Neither is canon, you'll hear it both ways (and personally I like it kept minor, the G is too happy for that tune).

This genre of music also features shifting tonal centers in many tunes. The five part "Kid on the Mountain" slip jig starts in an E minor tonal center for the 1st part, then shifts to a G major feel for the second part, back to Em for the third and fourth parts, and finishes back to G major tonal center for the last part. If you have the sheet music for this tune, the single sharp indicating E minor won't tell you enough. It's not "in" that key. It's a tune that famously drives newbie guitar players nuts with the way the tonal center shifts around, and there are many tunes like this in the repertoire.

There are also tunes with ambiguous tonal centers using pentatonic or hexatonic note patterns. It's one reason DADGAD tuning is popular for guitar players in ITM, because it's easy to avoid making strong chordal statements by dropping the 3rd interval.

Even with tunes that don't play games with shifting tonal centers, you have to be careful about making assumptions from the key signature. A tune with two sharps in sheet music might be in D major. Or it might be in E dorian, or in A mixolydian, or in B minor. You have to play the melody and hear whether it has a major feel, or minor, or the sort-of-major mixolydian feel.

Anyway, this goes back to what I was saying about genre being important. You can't assume that what works in one genre automatically applies to every other genre, and this will have an impact on desirability of sheet music and how it's used.

I was assuming, that the earlier thread was not only about American music, but commercially recorded music, with, e.g., piano or guitar. In many such tunes one should be able in a first listening to hear the harmonic sructure, by simply knowing about chords, how they connect, tension and release, etc. Of course, many of these tunes may have existed long before being played by string bands, etc., and sometimes in different keys or modes. Bill Monroe recorded several modal tunes over major chords and cadences. E.g., the coarse part of Dusty Miller is basically in A dorian or minor penta and the fine part in A mixolydian. Texas fiddlers introduce passing chords, dim chords, inversions, etc. And even in such a simple tune as St. Annne's Reel (which I believe is Canadian) I've noted that many people play a IV (G) chord in the third bar, where I want V7 (A7) chord under the b and g melody notes. Do you want a major or mixolydian ending on Old Joe Clark?

Key center shifts in American tunes? The first example that comes to mind is Chief Sitting in the Rain. Although I can't think of traditional American example right now, I can hardly recall a polka without key changes. How about Jesse Polka (Mexican) or Clarinet Polka (Bohemian; busy section in Bb, with an episode in F, and a "trio" part in Eb)?

Etc.

[Billy Packard]

$.02=

Literacy is a good thing.
Higher education is a good thing.
Promoting illiteracy and ignorance is NOT a good thing.
If you are illiterate by circumstance it is what it is. Do something about it or move on and do what you do.
If you are illiterate by circumstance and want to better yourself, go for it but know your limitations will be what they are.
I know TWO people who are educators at the collage level that willingly cultivate musical illiteracy.
I so admire those amongst us that became musically literate in childhood. They read music like I read a book or newspaper.
I keep hammering away fully knowing I will never read musical literature like reading a book...but I keep on because the horizon is almost endless.
Why is it even a topic of discussion?

Billy

[r0gue]

...
Why is it even a topic of discussion?

I think because I made that first post two weeks ago.

I like they way you're thinking though. How old were you when you started to try to read notation? I'm a little north of fiddy now. I'm definitely going to need to get some larger print notation. My instructor gave me an old photocopied packet he's obviously used for many years (decades likely). It's not going to work with my eyes. I have a set of glasses for up close, but they're dialed-in for computer use and I can't quite make them work for looking at the sheet music and pivoting to looking at the fret board. Maybe some cheap cheaters from Wallymart or something.. Ideally though, just bigger music.

[PaulS]

When I was new to the mandolin I took a stab at learning to read notation. I gave up quickly and haven’t regretted it. For me there was absolutely zero joy and excitement in the endeavor. Everyone’s mileage will vary.

I think a lot of it depends on what kind of music you want to play. Once I settled on the fact that my mandolin life will likely always consist of a handful of old tunes, my ear and a bit of tab was all I’d need. I’m content with that. But if I wanted to play classical music, it would have been different.

The thing that comes to mind for me is that learning to read music doesn’t automatically produce a musician. I think of all the kids I knew growing up who took piano lessons but never stayed with it. People who love music will find a way to play it, and those going through the motions won’t.

The thing that excites me is finding pieces of music I can’t stop playing. I’ve not needed the ability to read notation to do that. With YouTube available I’ve almost stopped using tab too, but I mostly just find someone playing the tune (usually on the fiddle) that I want to learn, and I can almost always pick it up just by watching.

Lots of ways to learn. No need to pick just one.

The ideal is to be able to play by ear, to be able to read tab, and to be able to read standard notation. There is a wealth of information in that notation, which is why the same notation can be used by a just about every instrument invented by man. This does mean that if you have a part made for another instrument in a similar range, you can easily figure it out. Right now, being fairly new to Mandolin, I find standard notation and tab are both useful.

[fatt-dad]

my, "No" vote relates to the, "just starting out" pronouncement.

"Just starting out" in language rarely begins with, "Reading!" To an infant, we'd give them ear training and pictures. Jam and tab to me!

Get some familiarity and sure, it's awesome to read music. I'd just never start that way!

f-d

[DavidKOS]

my, "No" vote relates to the, "just starting out" pronouncement.

"Just starting out" in language rarely begins with, "Reading!" To an infant, we'd give them ear training and pictures. Jam and tab to me!

Get some familiarity and sure, it's awesome to read music. I'd just never start that way!

f-d

Yeah, we all start by learning language "by ear" and are taught to read later.

As I've said, that was sort of the old Italian method...learn to sing, learn to read by singing, and then read.

[JeffD]

<<double post>>

[JeffD]

The ideal is to be able to play by ear, to be able to read tab, and to be able to read standard notation. There is a wealth of information in that notation, which is why the same notation can be used by a just about every instrument invented by man. This does mean that if you have a part made for another instrument in a similar range, you can easily figure it out. Right now, being fairly new to Mandolin, I find standard notation and tab are both useful.

That is the ideal. The so called "complete mandolinner" I call it. By ear, tab, notation, and Nashville notation. All useful, none subtract from the others.

[PhilO]

Hey all….I did not go back to the beginning of this thread, so I may be repeating myself from years ago.
I did not really get into music and mandolin until I was nearing retirement from my full time job at 57 and then continuing with part time work to help pay the bills and have more free time. I was the classic, budding ANT musician….Absolutely No Talent. It seemed pretty obvious to me that as I was starting so late in life, it would behove me to acquire as many tools as I could in my tool box to learn this new, mysterious craft….those tools being music theory, standard notation, tab and aural skills.
I never once regretted any time I spent on any of the above, and then after picking up a guitar, I now had the necessary road map for another instrument.
With that being said, we all have different learning styles, and as I have burdened in life with sort of a top-down mathematically inclined brain, understanding all the pieces worked for me. All of the above was a YUGE help when I progressed to not getting all sweaty when taking breaks at jams and playing in several bands over the years. I will admit to using a cheat sheet from time to time when I have not fully memorized lyrics to a new song.

[ralph johansson]

The ideal is to be able to play by ear, to be able to read tab, and to be able to read standard notation. There is a wealth of information in that notation, which is why the same notation can be used by a just about every instrument invented by man. This does mean that if you have a part made for another instrument in a similar range, you can easily figure it out. Right now, being fairly new to Mandolin, I find standard notation and tab are both useful.

One thing I will never understand is why some people think fluency in TAB is an essential skill. To me its's a waste of time. I believe I've used TAB as a source for a tune or song only once. As Ashokan Farewell had been mentioned frequently I became curious about it, and the only source I could find at the time was in TAB. It was painful, mainly because I realized that this is the kind of tune I would learn in about the time needed to hear it through, just once. Today it's printed in many places on the internet. And today TAB banks ususually have both TAB and standard -- translating from TAB to standard is straightforward using tools like Tefview.

One piece of advice here: IF you learn a tune from, say, mandozine, at first turn on the MIDI and turn off the notatioan and TAB and listen for the greater picture -- such as harmony -- before going into details.

And I would say that the proper question to ask here is not, should I bother with notation, but should I bother with theory, and what is the best route to learning and understanding theory? I believe the anlaogy with learning a foreign language is fruitful. Elementary text books usually have short texts introducing a bit vocabulary (often organized around some special topic) and some grammatical topic; then, on top of that teacher led conversation classes. All of ths translates to learning an instrument.