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Missing out by not being able to read music?

#121
lustersilk said:
Good Lord, what in the world are you basing this statement on?
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I've only heard people who couldn't read make that statement as justification for not reading. The first time I heard it was on a gig with some FANTASTIC acoustic jazz/new/blue grass musicians when an SVR wanna-be walked in and saw that we had some charts. One of the guys I was playing with was of the Dave Grisman/Tony Rice/Mike Marshall/Sam Bush lineage (performed and toured with those guys at one point or another) and continues to play with like people today.

I later played with SVR wanna-be dude and he was one of the most closed-minded people I've played with. I turned him down the next time he called...
 
#122
Didn't read the whole thread, sorry. I am a small-time originals guy, with some cover fill-ins from time to time. Maybe 5-6 years ago, I decided that there was a big hole in my musicianship from not being able to read music. I tackled it, and today I read reasonably well. And it's a skill that, for me, comes in handy exactly never. YMMV. But I do enjoy it.
 
#124
AngelCrusher said:
Thank you kind sir for posting your observations from your throne that sits high above the earth...lol.
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I'm just a human observing other humans. Nothing more. Besides, there's no air up there!

But thanks for the promotion (rather than a demotion to that much warmer place with all of that teeth gnashing and such).

And even though it sounds very weird, I have disconnected myself from having an interest in the outcome. No, not the outcome of something trivial such as reading music versus not reading music, but the outcome of the human race itself.

It amazes me what we humans have convinced ourselves to be important. It is.......entertaining, to say the least. I mean, look at this thread for example. We have music readers and non-readers. And each camp has a mindset to debunk the other camp. It's adorable! And to think we get this level of entertainment for only $20 per year. Now THAT is a good deal! I'll bet that deal is not available on other life-infested planets.
 
#125
Febs said:
No. That was not my challenge to you. I challenged you to use tab to write out a melody that a musician unfamiliar with the melody could play correctly. Do you think that you have done that, or not?
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Well, no, or yes, rather depending on what you mean by, 'the melody', and 'correctly'...

But that kind of conversation is tedious. I'm interested in finding out what rhythmic information can be shown on a score that can't be shown on a tab. If you don't think the tab is any good, great - what else should we add?
For example, accents and bar lines could be marked... even the lyrics could help... maybe I've remembered the melody totally wrong... you tell me.
 
#126
topo morto said:
The discussion I was having with Febs is about the representation of *timing*. What else do you think should be shown from a timing point of view? Maybe it can be added.

One thing that is missing is bar lines, which I often put in my own tabs.
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Well, I still wanna know what the heck this tab means if you're trying to convey this information to another musician who plays a completely different instrument?

If I hand this to a piano player, what do they do?
 
#128
topo morto said:
Hand it back to you and ask for their part instead..?

I don't think anyone here is suggesting that standard music notation is not a better standard way of notating music than tablature.... I'm certainly not.
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Then why bother with tab in the first place? You said that standard notation was not a good way to write music, and now you're defending the use of tab as a convenient way to notate timing?

BTW - how do you notate 16ths, 32nds, triplets, etc with your tab? I don't know about you, but most of the music I play has lots of triplet 1/4s, 1/8ths, and 16ths.
 
#129
lowfreqgeek said:
Then why bother with tab in the first place?
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If you are a guitarist, then obviously, if you consider it has considerable advantages for guitarists.

lowfreqgeek said:
You said that standard notation was not a good way to write music, and now you're defending the use of tab as a convenient way to notate timing?
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I was only saying it's not appreciably worse than score for representing rhythms...

lowfreqgeek said:
BTW - how do you notate 16ths, 32nds, triplets, etc with your tab? I don't know about you, but most of the music I play has lots of triplet 1/4s, 1/8ths, and 16ths.
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You have to widen the grid - which could start to get rather space-inefficient! Of course a bar full of 32nds would take up a lot of space in score as well, but having rests (and variable length bars) would help if you have a lot of fast runs separated by a lot of long rests, I can see an advantage for score there.
 
#131
Crazy how these threads always generate a great deal of heat really, really fast. What's everybody afraid of? :hmm:
OP, if you want to "Rock the World" all you have to do is pick up your bass, learn some simple riffs, get together with some buddies and....well...."Rock the World"!
I started out being able to read Music on another instrument, and then picked up the Bass Guitar. To be honest, I was a pretty miserable reader and player for a long time but with the help of a couple of good teachers I was able to get my act together to go to UNT and attend Music School because I knew that's what I wanted to do for a living and thanks to reading about players like Carol Kaye and Joe Osborne and studying with successful local players I had a clue about what was going to be required of me.
Personally, I've played a lot of Rock, Country and Pop tours and most of the time Music Stands were nowhere to be found. Ironically, I would not have gotten the highest paid touring gig I've had if I hadn't been able to read. Again, I do this for a living. If you are just starting out and having fun, playing in a Weekend Warrior Band or getting together with some buds, driving across the country and playing shows and living on peanut butter and jelly and crashing on couches in pursuit of the Rock Star Lottery it's not necessary. I'm just saying it helps to get you there faster to be able to read and write Music and communicate it to others that way, IME.
 
#132
Roy Vogt said:
Personally, I've played a lot of Rock, Country and Pop tours and most of the time Music Stands were nowhere to be found. Ironically, I would not have gotten the highest paid touring gig I've had if I hadn't been able to read. Again, I do this for a living. If you are just starting out and having fun, playing in a Weekend Warrior Band or getting together with some buds, driving across the country and playing shows and living on peanut butter and jelly and crashing on couches in pursuit of the Rock Star Lottery it's not necessary. I'm just saying it helps to get you there faster to be able to read and write Music and communicate it to others that way, IME.
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I think Roy makes a good point here. If someone is planning to make a career out of playing music, I think being able to read music will help. I'm not saying it's necessary, but I think it would improve the chances of success.

I was never in that camp. I chose civil engineering as a career, and I play bass on the side for fun. So my perspective is different than a career-bound musician.

And even though I do well as a civil engineer, I still like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (as long as it's Jif Creamy and Smuckers Apricot preserves......yum!)
 
#133
Standart notation still evolve with new problems and new instruments.

I don,t understand how "timing" could be off ... it is easy to spot every beat in a bar or in the whole score ... the tempo is clearly written and there is some notation like ritt. and cresc.

also music composer for movies and video games use something that everyone know !!! BPM !!!

Let say the music should start at 15min in the movie and there should be a queue at 21min10 where the music has to be very frightening ... the composer start his music at 100bpm ... it means you have 100 beat per minute so you know exacly what beat of what bar it will exacly be at 21min10.

I think people who think it is limited and all, just never learn to read because to me it is obvious how perfect and adaptable it is.
 
#134
is how you communicate music to other musicians, especially horn players and vocalists. Reading is also how you take a piece of manuscript paper and write down some music you hear in your head. Reading helps you to understand theory and how different instruments work together. Reading should also include the ability to look at a piece of music and hear it in your head, at least to some degree. If you just want to limit your skills by confining yourself to playing bass, then you can get by, some of the time, without having to read. But, if you want to be a musician, then learn to read, and learn to read other musicians' music, too.
 
#135
Clef_de_fa said:
I think people who think it is limited and all, just never learn to read because to me it is obvious how perfect and adaptable it is.
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It was the opposite for me - I learned to read, then over time realised how many unnecessary assumptions standard notation makes. Same reason I got sick of MIDI actually.

IMO Music notation is:

- THE standard way of communicating music within many (not all) groups of musicians
- a reasonable way to record some types of music for archival
- a good route in to many musical resources
- a space-efficient way of writing music (This is what I have learned from this discussion)
- a good way of writing music for the keyboard

It is not, IMO:

- a good way to notate music that isn't easily considered simply as a sequences of 'notes'
- a good way to notate music that is not a linear performance - e.g. rule based music.
- a good way to *record* (for archival) music with very detailed timing (for reasons I've tried and failed to explain already, but if you've ever really analysed the timing of great performances, you will know what I mean)
- a good way to gain insight into harmony, especially non-diatonic harmony (in fact anything other than C major or one of its modes is treated as a special case).
- the only way to communicate with other musicians.
 
#136
The OP asked if they were missing out on something by not being able to read music.

How could someone who can't read music even answer this question? About as well as someone who has always been able to read music. No way to compare the two unless you've been in both situations.

OP, I would read this entire thread again, and listen to how many people are telling you they learned to read later in their playing. IMHO, there is your answer. Not one of them says "yeah, I learned to read and it was a big waste of time".
 
#138
20db pad said:
It's relative to what your goals and desires as a player are. If you want to do theater, you'll have to read. If you want to be in a successful rock band, it's not nearly as important to read.
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Let me add to that thought. My first experience with Musical Theater came when I was 50. Since then, I've played ten shows -- about one per year. (My cover-band keeps me too busy to play more shows than this.) I have learned SO MUCH by playing the great bass scores in these productions (Suds, The Full Monty, Little Shop of Horrors, Miss Saigon, Big River, Footloose, etc.). The experience has not only challenged my reading ability, but I'm a much more-rounded player as well. I would never have had this "stylistic enhancement" if I couldn't read.
 

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