Missing out by not being able to read music?

[BillyRay]

What if the OP doesn't want to play jazz or doesn't want to play theater ? I don't want to throw oil on the fire here, but for the average-joe guitar who plays in a rock cover band and who has 2 kids, a full-time job, a mortgage, and for whom music is simply a hobby, I really, really wouldn't suggest reading as a priority. When was the last time somebody wiped out a music sheet for a Motley Crue or a ZZ Top song ?

But if you want to be a musician in a number of projects and get sub gigs, you better read and read well, in almost any setting, be it charts, lead sheets or standard notations (depending on the music style), since you will be asked at one time or another to read.

People here are comparing apples and oranges.

 

[Dieps17]

Did you even look at the link? I literally linked you to something like that.

Buy Mel Bay's intro to bass playing and combine it with the link I sent. Then start doing exercises and learning chords from the book.

Every day, use that link.

Just do it..if you need a hand held, you will never be motivated enough to be a great player.

In the time you spend responding to everyone searching for an easy way, you could have already learned to read the C major scale. It is not that hard man.

Of course I looked at it, and I have used that Studybass before, i also use an app for iphone Music Tutor Free, great app for when i dont have a computer around.

 

[gregbackstrom]

I haven't been on this site very long but this topic is likely the most abrasive I have seen and by far the most likely to highlight pomposity in the extreme.
Music is in the ear of the beholder, but you all really knew that.........

Not even close! Just check out the fEARful threads!

 

[AngelCrusher]

Of course I looked at it, and I have used that Studybass before, i also use an app for iphone Music Tutor Free, great app for when i dont have a computer around.

Well now I must thank you because music tutor free is currently being downloaded by me.

 

[JimmyM]

People who read music are proud that they read music, and therefore will insist that it's better than not reading.

That's cool.

People who don't read music are proud that they play by ear, and therefore will insist that there's no need to read music.

That's cool.

OP: Whichever camp you select for yourself, go forth and enjoy life!

What about people who are proud they can read music AND play by ear? They're not mutually exclusive concepts.

 

[JimmyM]

Sheesh! I worked back about 4 pages in this thread and I just made myself depressed. So many misconceptions about reading and readers spoken like gospel. I read, and I'll put my abilities with my ears and my ability to make the music sound like it's being played with feeling up against any non-reader on the planet. But about half the gigs I get are reading gigs, and if I didn't read, at 51, my music career would be for all intents and purposes over instead of humming right along.

But suit yourselves...the less of you who get it, the less of you I have to compete with for the good paying gigs.

 

[jallenbass]

People who read music are proud that they read music, and therefore will insist that it's better than not reading.

That's cool.

People who don't read music are proud that they play by ear, and therefore will insist that there's no need to read music.

That's cool.

OP: Whichever camp you select for yourself, go forth and enjoy life!

No reason to restrict yourself. It's all one big camp.

 

[nutdog]

People who read music are proud that they read music, and therefore will insist that it's better than not reading.

That's cool.

People who don't read music are proud that they play by ear, and therefore will insist that there's no need to read music.

That's cool.

OP: Whichever camp you select for yourself, go forth and enjoy life!

I don't read well and I'm not proud of it. There are (obvious?) benefits to reading music.

After the last 'should I read' thread I dug out an old Mel Bay bass book and started trying to learn (re-learn, I played trombone until I got kicked out of HS band freshman year). Dropped off but about a month ago started again. I'm most of the way through the book. I was able to read a simple piece from the hymnbook last Sunday. Kind of neat.

I do take exception when people say it's easy. It's not for me and I've got a bit of a head start.

 

[Jeff Bonny]

I think something that plays as an unseen undercurrent in these threads is how difficult and frustrating learning to read can be for someone with great ears. It's so much easier just to cop something by ear that you start to develop the idea that reading is bunk and gravitate towards gigs that don't require it. There are no rational motives for calling people who advocate reading "pompous" or "proud" or for any of the reasons given not to learn to read. It's a defense tactic for people who won't face the truth that reading opens doors to gigs no matter what style or genre you pursue.

 

[lustersilk]

I would try to find a good local bass teacher and start studying with someone if you can afford it. Having that weekly accountability and guidance can get you where you need to go much quicker.

This is the best comment in this entire thread, right here!

 

[Timmy-Watts]

Those learning to read music:
It is a language, like English. It is hard work. There have been a lot of great posts here. It is easier to learn what the notes on the page are after they are in your head. Think of it like this: I can read English. I can read a Robert Ludlum novel out loud. I can read Shakespeare out loud. I know what a British accent and inflection sound like but one I have it in my head and have practiced it, I can read Shakespeare mor convincingly. Just because I'm limited to English words and alphabet doesn't mean I can't read out loud without emotion or inflection. I see the stories as phrases and sentences. I see the question marks and know to inflect my voice up like a question ahead of time. Reading music is no different. I can read you a story without having heard it before. You may have a different accent than me, and that's fine. But when the vernacular is in my ears, I can read it (because I've put in the time) and generally make it sound like I know it.

I've seen many posts here of folks wanting to learn to read better, and wanting to learn jazz, funk, fusion, etc. I say work at it, it will pay off huge, but start with understanding the languages as they sound and how they work. Get some of your favorite jazz tunes and funk tunes in your head, even learn some. THEN when you want to learn some by written notation you know what you're reading.

 

[topo morto]

OK, reply to Febs.

First of all I'll just re-iterate that I'm not here to espouse some particular other notation over standard notation, or deny the many uses of standard notation. I'm saying it has its strengths - and weaknesses. It has its uses, and places where it falls short. All stuff to think about when considering whether to spend time learning or improving.

topo morto, you have this idea that standard notation favors C major and its diatonic modes and that anything else is a special case. I would urge you to try put aside that prejudice and to recognize that key signatures are not limitations of standard notations but rather features that provide valuable information to the reader.

Standard notation is equally effective at notating something in C as it is in G, D, A, E, B, F# (or Gb), C# (or Db), Ab, Eb, Bb, or F. It does not treat keys other than C as a special case.

The notes in the key of C are C, D, E, F, G, A, B. Do any other notes have their own name? no - they're seen as mere 'variations' on those notes, using the 'sharp' and 'flat' system. So it's pretty clear that music notation treats the C major scale (and its modes) as some kind of default. Which has undesirable consequences - the names of notes change depending on the key you're in, for example.

Another undesirable consequence of this system is that to tell what actual note you're supposed to play, you have to look at the note itself, the clef (which is fair enough, otherwise you'd have to notate the whole audible range on every stave) AND the key signature. Or, possibly, the accidental...

To the extent that it treats anything as a special case, it is
notes that are not diatonic to the current key, which are reflected by the use of accidentals. Even so, accidentals are not some sort of limitation of standard notation, but rather a tool that provides meaningful information to the reader.

The meaningful information the reader wants to know is, usually, what note it is; the fact that the note might need to be qualified with an accidental is the limitation of the system... though admittedly in some cases only. If you are reading a piece that is mainly diatonic and the accidental is genuinely one of only a few exceptional places where you are straying outside the scale, that is useful.

But if you are having to use accidentals because the piece is not diatonic, or because it has changed key temporarily, that's a pretty inefficient way of doing things.

Take the following example:

To a proficient reader, these four bars convey a tremendous

amount of information at a single glance:

Let's be a bit careful of the 'proficient reader...' thing. Sure, if you are good at something, you are good at it. A proficient reader of Roy's Alpha-TAB would understand it fine. We have to have a look at the strengths and weaknesses of the system for everyone, from the beginner upwards.

• We know that we are in the key of F.
  
• We know at a single glance that every single note in the
  example is diatonic to F major. I can't emphasize enough how important that is. There are 24 notes in this example. A proficient reader can glance at this example for literally a fraction of a second and know in that single glance that every single one of those 24 notes is a note in the F major scale. There is no way that tab can convey so much information about so many notes, so quickly.

• 
  
  To be fair, though, this example is one of those that standard notation is biased towards, in that it is diatonic. If it had accidentals all over the place:
  
  
  
  
  
  it would take more time - or skill - to make sense of what was going on.
  
  I agree with you that tab is worse than score for analysis.
  
  

  [*]Similarly, we can also see at a single glance that most of the movement in this example is scalar in nature. It is easy to see that after the octave jump on the second note, the remainder of the example is a descending scale to the first note in the next measure, a jump up a fourth, and then a repetition of the same pattern.

  
  But although it looks like it, it's not actually the same pattern - the first decending run is C, B♭, A, G, F, E, the intervals between which are tone, semitone, tone, tone, semitone.
  
  The second run is A, G, F, E, D, C, which is tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone.
  
  Of course those are adjacent notes within your F major scale. But the way the notation hides the real intervals you are playing is an example of the way that notation can be a barrier to understanding.
  
  

  [*]We don't have the beginning of the music which shows the time signature, but even so, we can tell from the fact that there are two eighth note triplets in the measure that there are two beats per measure.
  
  [*]We can also tell that there are six notes to be played across each of the two beats of each measure. We can tell that each of those six notes is the same length as each of the others.

  
  Yep, that's all pretty nice.
  
  

  [*]We can also tell that each of those notes is to be played
  staccato rather than being given its full value. This, by the
  way, is a specific example of timing information that is lacking in the grid based tab system that you and I discussed earlier. You never did respond to my question about whether you thought your tab example would allow a musician to play the melody of "America" accurately. I contend that there is not, but even if your example could allow a musician to play something close, what if we wanted to instruct the singer to sing the word "America"
  with each of the last three syllables short and clipped rather than with their full value? The grid-based tab system has no way of notating that. It is easy to show that in standard notation, as the staccato articulations in the example in this post demonstrate.

  
  Because I had absolutely no way of knowing if my vague recollection of the piece was the same as what you expected to see, I just wanted some more specificity. If you are implying that staccato/legato (/tenuto?) is something you wanted to see, feel free to go back and look at my tab - IIRC I did show a way that the later notes could be shown as intended to let ring, within the limitations of what i can do with text here, with the tildes(~). But I don't want to talk too much more about tabs, in case I am misinterpreted as asserting that they are superior to score. They are simply another tool, with its own strengths and weaknesses.
  
  

  You've also suggested in some of your posts that standard
  notation is an inflexible grid in terms of tempo.

  
  Not what I was intending to suggest. The 'grid' is, as you say made flexible with tempo instructions, and somewhat subjective terms such as the ones you mentioned. None of which negates the points I was trying to make earlier about timing, however badly I may have expressed myself!

 

[topo morto]

the disconnect here is that when you can read notes, you "think notes". That means that when you see F, you play F, you think F you HEAR F. It develops your ears a lot faster.

F is a letter. There's nothing fundamentally 'F' about the note. Especially when you start getting kinky and calling it E#.

The note loves those who call it 'F' no more than it loves someone else who happens to be thinking of it a different way at a given time.

 

[fdeck]

Question: How many electric bassists have learned to read as adults, at a level where they can sight-read without compromising their playing style? I've been careful not to say that everybody must learn to read, because it may simply be prohibitive for many. It might be like learning a language, where it's a lot easier when you're younger.

 

[topo morto]

By the way, the page I nicked that last graphic from is interesting -

http://musicnotation.org/tutorials/chromatic-staves-example/

 

[fdeck]

it would take more time - or skill - to make sense of what was going on.

That's why I play bass.

But by way of comparison, it would be interesting to see that same passage written out in other notation systems, including tab.

 

[topo morto]

That's why I play bass.

But by way of comparison, it would be interesting to see that same passage written out in other notation systems, including tab.

Lol, me too!

The page and site it's from is actually all about one alternative:

http://musicnotation.org/tutorials/chromatic-staves-example/

http://musicnotation.org/

 

[Febs]

OK, reply to Febs.

I don't have time at the moment to reply to everything, but let me make a few quick observations.

The meaningful information the reader wants to know is, usually, what note it is; the fact that the note might need to be qualified with an accidental is the limitation of the system... though admittedly in some cases only. If you are reading a piece that is mainly diatonic and the accidental is genuinely one of only a few exceptional places where you are straying outside the scale, that is useful.

But if you are having to use accidentals because the piece is not diatonic, or because it has changed key temporarily, that's a pretty inefficient way of doing things.


Let's be a bit careful of the 'proficient reader...' thing. Sure, if you are good at something, you are good at it. A proficient reader of Roy's Alpha-TAB would understand it fine. We have to have a look at the strengths and weaknesses of the system for everyone, from the beginner upwards.



To be fair, though, this example is one of those that standard notation is biased towards, in that it is diatonic. If it had accidentals all over the place:

it would take more time - or skill - to make sense of what was going on.

Well, of course it would take more time to read this example than my example, because this uses the grand staff rather than a single staff like in my example, and because there is contrary motion in the left and right hand parts.

But it is still pretty easy to tell at a glance that the left hand part in this is octaves and that all of the motion in the left hand is chromatic: C# down to A, up to B#, down to G natural, up to A#, down to F#, all chromatic. If you can see that pattern, you don't need to read every note or accidental.

Similarly, the right hand part consists entirely of root-major-third-octave and that all of the movement in the right-hand is also chromatic in nature: C# up to F natural, down to D natural, up to G natural, down to E natural, up to G#. Again, if you see that pattern, you don't need to be consciously aware of every single note to play it correctly. In fact, the very fact that the note or the accidental changes with each successive note in both the right and left hand parts makes this fairly easy to read. If would be more difficult if the right hand intervals changed.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make with this particular example in any event. Are you suggesting that there is a better way to notate this example than standard notation? Certainly tab is not the answer, because this example would be impossible to notate in tab.

But although it looks like it, it's not actually the same pattern - the first decending run is C, B♭, A, G, F, E, the intervals between which are tone, semitone, tone, tone, semitone.

The second run is A, G, F, E, D, C, which is tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone.

Of course those are adjacent notes within your F major scale. But the way the notation hides the real intervals you are playing is an example of the way that notation can be a barrier to understanding.

Looking at that example, the intervals are as plain as day to me. But that said, I don't need to consciously think about the intervals to play the example anyway because it's clearly a fragment of a scale.

Because I had absolutely no way of knowing if my vague recollection of the piece was the same as what you expected to see, I just wanted some more specificity. If you are implying that staccato/legato (/tenuto?) is something you wanted to see, feel free to go back and look at my tab - IIRC I did show a way that the later notes could be shown as intended to let ring, within the limitations of what i can do with text here, with the tildes(~). But I don't want to talk too much more about tabs, in case I am misinterpreted as asserting that they are superior to score. They are simply another tool, with its own strengths and weaknesses.

My whole point was that text-based tab is in fact severely limited compared to notation in terms of being able to convey note durations. You seemed to be disputing that point in your earlier posts.

 

[Febs]

By the way, the page I nicked that last graphic from is interesting -

http://musicnotation.org/tutorials/chromatic-staves-example/

I was typing while you posted, so I didn't see this until after I had written my post, but I'm glad to see that they acknowledge essentially exactly the point that I made in my post: "Actually, experienced readers of traditional notation may not find this passage to be that difficult for reasons that will become apparent below."

That's why I play bass.

But by way of comparison, it would be interesting to see that same passage written out in other notation systems, including tab.

I don't think that it is possible to write that example in tab.

 

[AngelCrusher]

F is a letter. There's nothing fundamentally 'F' about the note. Especially when you start getting kinky and calling it E#.

The note loves those who call it 'F' no more than it loves someone else who happens to be thinking of it a different way at a given time.

No.

The reason is because if you know your fretboard, you automatically know where F is all over it.

If you just know the fret #s you are not pairing the note with the tone.

Your point who the note loves makes no sense to me.

Your point about the note just being a letter does not make sense because notes are the language of music.

Knowing how each note sounds and being able to hear intervals is a lot easier when you look at music and practice it as notes instead of numbers on a fretboard.