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Can you read music?

#21
How close are you to Yakota? There's an Air Force band there, and an Army band somewhere in Japan, too. One of the bass players there would probably be glad to teach....
 
#25
My teacher says I shouldn't rely on notation anyway - he says all the great players memorize; he's never seen a musician playing from sheet music. (I don't know if he was refering to rock/blues musicians only, though.)

But I figure I should learn it so I can play through Levine's Jazz Theory book. :)
 
#27
Kurisu said:
My teacher says I shouldn't rely on notation anyway - he says all the great players memorize; he's never seen a musician playing from sheet music. (I don't know if he was refering to rock/blues musicians only, though.)

But I figure I should learn it so I can play through Levine's Jazz Theory book. :)
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Then maybe he's never seen an orchestra, or a big band, or for that matter any jazz band working with hard arrangements on stage, or any studio session requiring reading. It's ridiculous to even suggest that knowing how to read well makes you dependent on it, or that reading means you can't or don't memorize. I mean, jeez, think of actors: does knowing how to read English mean that you can't memorize your lines in a play?
 
#28
Richard Lindsey said:
Then maybe he's never seen an orchestra, or a big band, or for that matter any jazz band working with hard arrangements on stage, or any studio session requiring reading. It's ridiculous to even suggest that knowing how to read well makes you dependent on it, or that reading means you can't or don't memorize. I mean, jeez, think of actors: does knowing how to read English mean that you can't memorize your lines in a play?
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That's why I thought he was talking about rock and blues players. His point, I think, is that he wants to train my mind to memorize the music instead of always reading it from paper when I play.
Does that make sense? Or should I find a new teacher?
(I like this one though, and it's tough to find experienced teachers who still take lessons and keep their own practice log.)
 
#30
Knowing how to read will in no way cramp your creativity - in fact it will expand it. It will add to your overall musical vocabulary, so when you are in your rock and blues setting, you will have more to draw from. All music is really a melting pot of ideas anyway. Lelts draw an analogy here - I have three kids. Each of them developed rudementary language and communication skills before they were taught to read books. Music can be though of in the same way. Develop your ear and rudementary "language" skills (scales, modes, intervals, arpeggios, etc.) and reading will come much more naturally, and will then add to your vocabulary and your knowledge. Believe me, reading and playing through the Bach cello suites will not hamper your skills - they add to it. Learning and discovering how to use positioning through notation as opposed to tab is harder, requires much more thought and discipline, and in the long run makes you not only a better bassist, but a better overall musician.
 
#31
Kurisu said:
That's why I thought he was talking about rock and blues players. His point, I think, is that he wants to train my mind to memorize the music instead of always reading it from paper when I play.
Does that make sense? Or should I find a new teacher?
(I like this one though, and it's tough to find experienced teachers who still take lessons and keep their own practice log.)
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No, it does make sense to memorize things. That part's good. Just don't fall into the idea, which your post *seemed to* suggest, that memorization and reading ability are somehow opposed. They're not. Reading is one way you get songs under your fingers so that they can be memorized, and you may well encounter situations where you don't have time to memorize. There's absolutely no reason why a bassist can't simultaneously be able to (1) read well, (2) memorize quickly and accurately, (3) pick up things well by ear, and (4) improvise. These things are not competing skills, they're complementary skills. One doesn't rule out any of the others.
 
#33
I can read Bass and Treble cleff. I think that you can learn and play a song better by reading the music than by reading tabs. With tabs, you have nothing to give you the rythm, or how fast, unless it is noted. With sheet music, everything is told to you. I use a combination or tab and notes, just to make things easier on me.
 
#35
I think generally that people who claim reading music is a hinderance to their creativity are making excuses for not learning.

I've played music in one form or another since I was around 6 years old. Piano, brass intruments and now bass. I started to learn to read music only a few years after learning to read English. Treble and bass clef are both second nature to me now. Something I'm very happy about.

You know what I had a hard time getting used to? Tab. When I attempted to play guitar I couldn't read it at all. It took me a few weeks on bass to get used to it. But I felt it was important in beginning to learn bass, since it is so widely used to communicate musical ideas, particularly on the internet. My bass teacher, even though he can read and write standard notation, used tab because it was quicker during lessons. So I learned it. I also wanted to focus on developing my ear, so I rarely used notated music at all when playing bass.

The first opportunity I had to gig, guess what? It was a sub job and I had to be able to read music. I've been asked to sub a few more times since then for the same bass player. And every time I'm handed standard notation music. I couldn't have gotten that gig, as little as it is, if I couldn't read music.

Richard Lindsey made the best point, I think:
There's absolutely no reason why a bassist can't simultaneously be able to (1) read well, (2) memorize quickly and accurately, (3) pick up things well by ear, and (4) improvise. These things are not competing skills, they're complementary skills. One doesn't rule out any of the others.
Click to expand...
 
#38
ok i cant read music at dont see is as a nessesity (spelling?) because of the music i play metal/rock, but i was thinking about having kind of a hybrid tab/notation thing.

for instance you have the tab written out with numbers and everything, then have the note symbols kinda over the numbers and have all the notation signs and everything on the music.

does anybody know what i mean i dont think my wordings very good, but if you could do this it would put an end to the whole tab vs notation argument. i used to think notation users just hated numbers!
 
#39
Paz,
I know what you mean, check out an issue of Guitar World. They switched to a combo Notation/Tab. Though I still think that learning to read music is a necessary skill. It's the non-audible way of communicating the sounds of music, just as text is the non-audible way of communicating the sounds of Language. Doing either correctly is also necessary. It's definitely more efficient than any other system that has been developed which, is why it's been in use for hundreds of years.

Trav
 

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