A Good Argument...

[Sigbass]

A friend of mine and I are at an impass. I say that in order to become a great musician, you should be able to read and write music (standard notation) and understand a good grip of knowledge before you are a great musician. He, on the other hand, thinks that you can become a good musician if you're not totally sure of what your doing when you play. This mostly applies to the guitar (which was the basis of our argument...) but we want to see what other people's opinions are. We keep coming to a stalemate.

[grovest]

I suppose it depends on what you consider a great musician to be. Maybe you are including composition and your friend is only thinking about playing?

Originally Posted by Sigbass

A friend of mine and I are at an impass. I say that in order to become a great musician, you should be able to read and write music (standard notation) and understand a good grip of knowledge before you are a great musician. He, on the other hand, thinks that you can become a good musician if you're not totally sure of what your doing when you play. This mostly applies to the guitar (which was the basis of our argument...) but we want to see what other people's opinions are. We keep coming to a stalemate.

Subtle Bias?

[Benjamin Strange]

Hendrix could not read music. But he was trying to learn towards the end of his life. It doesn't matter whether you learn music or not; a great musician progresses. If that involves reading music, great. If not, it doesn't matter anyway.

Now go practice or something.

[Bruce Lindfield]

Originally Posted by Sigbass

A friend of mine and I are at an impass. I say that in order to become a great musician, you should be able to read and write music (standard notation) and understand a good grip of knowledge before you are a great musician. He, on the other hand, thinks that you can become a good musician if you're not totally sure of what your doing when you play. This mostly applies to the guitar (which was the basis of our argument...) but we want to see what other people's opinions are. We keep coming to a stalemate.

You're both wrong - what you need are really good ears!

So Hendrix is a good example - he heard whole albums once and could play/sing them back note-perfect .

Thats' what makes you a good musician - being able to hear, understand and then play whatever you want, with nothing between you and the music.

[TxBass]

Originally Posted by Bruce Lindfield

Thats' what makes you a good musician - being able to hear, understand and then play whatever you want, with nothing between you and the music.

well said.

[Hellsgamerz]

Does it hurt to do so? If you devote 10 minutes of your everyday practice time to learning how to read, why not do it? It's not that much, and in the end you can read music.