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Reading music and elitism

#403
electracoyote said:
You probably missed my earlier post where I mentioned I am a teacher with 15-20 weekly students and I require all my students aged 16 or younger to engage in reading standard notation and other formal music principles.

For my busy adults who do not wish to engage in anything quite so academic, yet desire to learn their favorite songs and enjoy their newfound hobby, there is TAB.

Oh, I also allow my young students to use TAB if the piece is years away from being read in standard, but to keep them motivated and interested in their instrument.

You may have missed my post where I mentioned that there was also no TAB when I started playing.

No problem. I liked the rest of your post, some very good points there.
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Didn't read all of the posts. Sorry, I didn't mean to impugn you.
 
#408
So I have a question for all the teachers on this board. My experience leaning to read was atypical and spanned many years and two different instruments. In your experience how long does it take the average student of bass to learn to read functionally assuming they put in a minimum of work, let's say 30 mins a day? By "functionally" lets say typical bass parts that don't require lots of positions shifts as opposed to say "Teen Town".
 
#410
mbeall said:
So I have a question for all the teachers on this board. My experience leaning to read was atypical and spanned many years and two different instruments. In your experience how long does it take the average student of bass to learn to read functionally assuming they put in a minimum of work, let's say 30 mins a day? By "functionally" lets say typical bass parts that don't require lots of positions shifts as opposed to say "Teen Town".
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1 year, 4 months, and 3 days.

:D

Everyone always says "People are different" for a reason. So there's no way you can predict that. Some will have more aptitude than others and catch on in a month. Some might take longer. But everyone can get to that level if they work at it.
 
#414
As far as BP it’s only like 10 pages long anymore if it wasn’t a buck or so an issue with the subscription I don’t think I would bother anymore with it. Without the TAB and the cheesy Warwick adds it would be 3 pages.

I have been playing bass for almost 30 years and only until the last few months found a great teacher a Berkley grad and we are working through charts in The Real book and some sheet music. This has been the most enlightening time in all my playing. It opens up a million more doors and I’m so sorry I was never disciplined enough until now to take this art of bass playing and playing and making music seriously enough. That said I think as thin as BP has become I sort of wish they had TAB and proper written bass clef together so guys who were taking time to go through the TAB could see how it really looks. It would help me anyway…

Also I never associated “elitism” with guys that can read until now after reading this post. Who cares what a competent reader thinks of an illiterate player or vice versa. But I do like the idea of real sheet music in BP.
 
#417
Roy Vogt said:
FWIW it seems to take about a year of consistent hard work in most cases. Obviously, the more consistent time invested the quicker it tends to go. That's no guarantee, of course
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So true Roy but other factors will also dictate how easy it is to learn.
How long/easy it takes to learn depends on other skill sets learned and the depth of related knowledge or the player.
SN and Tab use the same skill set, they are both forms of cognitive reasoning based on Cognitive Pattern Recognition.

We associate and cross reference cognitive information so it becomes intuitive. We can learn very quick what the intention is using a cross reference of what we already know.

Chord sheets, Nashville Number System, crib notes etc all use this skill set, as human beings we cannot stop it, it is a natural part of learning and we cannot stop learning. We take in information in so many ways and it all links up to form our final reasoning or response to situations or tasks.

If a tab shows E string 5th fret then it is an A we play, the same as if someone says A, or a chord sheet says A, or in a numbers system in E by going to the IV we know it is A, or a Maj second of G is an A etc.
Regardless of how it comes to you, you will relate the infor to what you know. So in all the examples you understand it is an A that is to be played and you will play that A the same way you have always done regardless of where it is shown in a tab. You also know that the 5th fret of the E string is A, so the Information is supporting both ideas and coming to the same conclusion of what you play.

This is why some learn faster than others, they cross reference it better with what they already know so it becomes intuitive to learn. For others they have to start with no reference at all to base what they are learning. For example red means stop, green means go, once that information is known you will cross reference it into other situation to move or preceded or wait and stop. If you know red means danger you will cross reference that in situations and add that to stop, so you know to be careful or or use caution if you see these signals being used in other situations. So we see a green light on an appliance we always assume it is on, as green means go or OK, of it is red then it is off.

This reasoning is part of learning that's how we do it, so if we learn to read SN we will cross reference it with what we already know about music, and if we learn tab we will cross reference it with what we know.
If the common experience between the two is the fret board then we will associate the three together to make the final decision on the note to be played regardless of how it is notated.

This is why player can transpose in their heads what they see when reading different clefs, the cross reference the actual clef with the new clef by assigning the notes a new relative value and play them.
We all do it with key sigs when we read, we see the number of sharps or flats and adjust the fretting to suit. In many cases we do not count the number of sharps or flats, we associate their position and shape in relation to the last sharp or flat. Because we know the order they are written we assume that if the last sharp is an A we assume we are in Bmajor because we know that Bmajor has 5 sharps and the last one is A.

Learning to read is a multi skilled process, the more skills we have relating to it, then the better and quicker we learn it as the information supports or fills in the blanks to what we already have learned.
 
#418
That's just my general observation of teaching about 1000 bass students over the last 30 years. About a year of intensive reading work will give most people a good grasp of reading. The key seems to be consistency as far as improvement. Of course, everybody brings a different set of innate ability to the table and that's a factor.
 
#419
I had decided, not to reply to this thread but after reading a lot of it I skipped to the last page. I had another window open and it was....well I will let it speak for itself.
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I picked the bass back up after 30+ yrs. off. I'll probably never be a pro.
Tabs got me started again. The more I played from tabs the more curious I got about theory. I'm learning from the same books, and sites already mentioned. Just by tinkering I made discoveries like if you are on C on the fretboard, the fourth is directly under that root C ect. Even though i'm learning I still look up tabs and jam with MP3s.

Roy were you referring to your work with Englebert Humperdink, or Simplicity on Hotwire, pages back speaking label work?
But really to this thread i say carrots.
 
#420
oleskool said:
I had decided, not to reply to this thread but after reading a lot of it I skipped to the last page. I had another window open and it was....well I will let it speak for itself.
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

I picked the bass back up after 30+ yrs. off. I'll probably never be a pro.
Tabs got me started again. The more I played from tabs the more curious I got about theory. I'm learning from the same books, and sites already mentioned. Just by tinkering I made discoveries like if you are on C on the fretboard, the fourth is directly under that root C ect. Even though i'm learning I still look up tabs and jam with MP3s.

Roy were you referring to your work with Englebert Humperdink, or Simplicity on Hotwire, pages back speaking label work?
But really to this thread i say carrots.
Click to expand...
Now that's fun! :) I remember that photo shoot for Simplicity. That's Victor Wooten's 1 string bass-I thought it would be a fun thing to have for the inner sleeve shoot since I recorded the CD with 6 and 7 strings (if you've ever seen the CD cover you get the joke):
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You must have found the interview I did with Warren Murchie for Global Bass. That was a while back:
http://www.globalbass.com/archives/june2001/roy_vogt.htm
http://www.globalbass.com/archives/sept2000/roy_vogt.htm
Yep, I toured for a little over 7 years with Englebert-that was a fun gig! While I was there I recorded with him twice for Universal Records and also played on the Live at the Palladium DVD.
Allmusic doesn't have everything but here's a short list:
http://www.allmusic.com/artist/roy-vogt-p508859/credits
There's a ton of Indie stuff I've done that doesn't show up there.
I guess it goes to show that everything is alive on the Internet somewhere. I just wish I could go back and airbrush off the 30 pounds I've lost....;)
 

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