Musical Illiteracy

Anyway, reading notation doesnt necessarily equate to understanding how music works. I know plenty of musicians who can read but wouldnt have a clue about say, why a particular chord goes to another one or anything like that.

Yes that used to be my case a few years ago. I always knew to read notes (from my childhood, when my grandma taught me the basic notation), and I also knew from the formal lessons what a tonality is and could tell all the scales/keys, but when it came to harmonisation, I was clueless - that's why I always say - formal music schools (at least over here) are worthless. I learnt incomparably more on my own.

And as for the tabs, I find them useless especially for one reason - RHYTHM..you know what I mean.

it rises from the dead.

I'm pretty OK with a level of music illiteracy. If you can communicate with "3rd fret, low string" and what amounts to lining out the melodies and riffs, then there's no need.

Then again, you end up with anyone's who's not familiar with your instrument or plays a non-string, you're more or less boned.

But when you're based around improv, you need no formal training.

I agree with what Nikolas said. Traditional western music notation is something very useful, because it's a widely known standard with which one can easily communicate quite complex ideas to a wide range of musicians. But the notation isn't the music. If the same result is easier achieved without notating it traditionally, I see no reason to do so.

Of course it is true that knowing how to read sheet music can be helpful for gaining a more detailed knowledge of the music you're performing/hearing and it will allow you to play and get to know a lot more music in shorter time than if you were just learning by ear. But that's an individual decision, to see whether this matters to yourself.

And honestly, knowing how to read sheet music really doesn't mean you understand more of the music than someone who's learning by ear. As has been said: There are tons of musicians who simply play the notes they read, without realizing what harmonies they are playing, what formal structures, etc. Let alone be able to do things like improvising. A lot of people who learn music by ear actually have a much better grasp of these things.

I also don't understand the animosity against tabulature. It is one of the earliest forms of notating instrumental music and has been widely used throughout centuries in different cultures for a good reason: It is effective, easy to learn and makes sense logically. For some things it may be less appropriate than other music notation, for others it might be more practicable. It all depends on the context. The type of notation should be chosen to help the performer understand the composers directions as easily as possible, no matter whether that means just giving them some structure for an improvisation, writing down notes on paper, writing a tabulature sheet, or drawing a graphical score.

I have used forms of tabulature notation in guitar pieces myself, combined with traditional notation, in places where it was simply the most efficient way to explain what I wanted.

As I started on electric guitar, I learnt tab to begin with. However, when I went over to classical guitar I had an awful lot of work to do to learn how to read notation, and wished I'd learnt it from the start.

Now I'm fairly fluent at sight reading with guitar I don't find it any more difficult than tab at all. And the argument that there are loads of ways of playing the same note on guitar is ridiculous as if there's any ambiguity at all as to where a particular note should be played then there will be a number next to it to indicate where to play it.

Yeah, the difficulty of sight reading on guitar is massively exaggerated by many people. Difficulty only arises when you don't have any understanding of how your instrument is laid out and neglecting to learn that is simply lazy.

I don't know about this one. I think that if you've got the musical aesthetic and the drive to work hard no matter your limitations you can become a pretty damn good musician. Plenty of fantastic rock/blues players, i.e. Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan, were by your standards musically illiterate but they still made careers for themselves and I think we can all agree that they qualify as musicians. And now, with the rise of sequencers, more and more composers are illiterate in the classical sense. Hans Zimmer and Danny Elfman are both huge and successful film composers and both of them are illiterate by your definition.

I think now with the rise of technology, MIDI sequencing is almost becoming the next generation of notation. I mean, its been a couple hundred years since notation was standardized, so it's about time for an upgrade don't you think? I think that if a person has the right musical aesthetic and can figure out ways to translate that to what you hear, there is no reason we should belittle them. Just because somebody like Stevie Ray Vaughan didn't know how to read music, doesn't mean that he had any less of a work ethic or drive to succeed. I would almost argue that being unable to read or write music in the traditional sense probably improved his musicianship as he had to spend many more hours figuring things out for himself than just reading them off the page.

And isn't performance about 90%+ of music anyway? Who cares if you can't read music? If you can play it, and play it well by anyone's standards, then I think you've pretty much fit the definition of a musician.

I recently taught a my best friend how to read music, after he was just tabbing along. He embraced it and is becoming a very powerful musician!

Another says that it will destroy his style. What the hell?

If you can read music, improvise, play by ear and play basso continuo, you are GOOD! AND... it's possible!

To read is to understand!

ALL HAIL CHOPIN!

-MWAHAHAHAHAHA!

I don't see how learning standard notation could hinder your creativity, but I don't consider it necessary to be a good musician. However, I have found that it makes memorizing music come less naturally. I play in a six-piece band with three horns, and we memorize our lines much faster if we learn them verbally than if someone actually brings in sheet music.

Being musically literate certainly isn't necessary for all musicians; I already knew how to read music for other instruments when I picked up guitar, but I still haven't bothered to learn to sight-read for it. A situation where I would need to simply hasn't come up.

Dissimilarly, though, it's absolutely crucial when I'm playing string bass in an ensemble or composing music.

The idea of rock, and pop music, is to be heard and enjoyed by the average joe bloggs, that's why it doesn't fit under 'art music'.

Sex pistols for example, They're getting a message across to the audience. the message isn't 'I can play my instrument properly!', because people aren't supposed to care about that.

It only really comes into it when you get virtuoso performers like Satriani and Vai, in which case they CAN read music.

The electric guitar is a people's instrument, basically.

To anyone arguing that people who can't read standard western notation aren't "musicians", consider this: the vast majority of the music made in the world isn't written in this way at all, and is either passed down orally or communicated through a very different system of notation. Are these people not "musicians" because of their different cultural relationship to music, regardless of the complexity of what they play or the way in which they understand it?

To anyone arguing that people who can't read standard western notation aren't "musicians", consider this: the vast majority of the music made in the world isn't written in this way at all, and is either passed down orally or communicated through a very different system of notation. Are these people not "musicians" because of their different cultural relationship to music, regardless of the complexity of what they play or the way in which they understand it?

Do you consider medicine (for example) and hearth wisdom to be one and the same?

To anyone arguing that people who can't read standard western notation aren't "musicians", consider this: the vast majority of the music made in the world isn't written in this way at all, and is either passed down orally or communicated through a very different system of notation. Are these people not "musicians" because of their different cultural relationship to music, regardless of the complexity of what they play or the way in which they understand it?

I live and work in a Western nation, and frankly, I don't particularly care what "musicians" in Assbackwardistan are doing. Nor do I particularly care what HACKS are putting out as "music".

You either know your scraggy, you don't, or you fake it like the hack you are. Forgive me if I can tell the difference.

The real problem is that none of them truly understand what theyre missing out on. I learned guitar and couldn't really read music for the first 2 or 3 years but as I put more interest in my classical learning of percussion, sax and upright bass i decided to learn and everything is sooooo much more enjoyable now although it also alienates you from the crowd of guitarists who cant read music and can often give an overzealous impression on other "musicians"

Well there are differences between a musician and a musician.

A blues guitarist who can't read music? Not a problem.

A free-jazz bassist who can't read music? Not a problem.

A symphony violinist who can't read music? There's a problem.

It's all about the lineage of the music. Folk forms (I'm gonna use this term loosely and somewhat unfairly) like rock, blues, jazz, have less of a need for knowing how to read, since they're not exactly written forms. [jazz is a bit of an in-betweener in almost every sense...]

Also, knowing how to read music also includes knowing what's not written as well as what's written, and that's a lot harder than every good boy does fine and all cows eat grass...

"Western music notation" is also not very strictly defined, in what it necessarily encompasses. Does a "professional western musician" have to be able to read all clefs fluently? Or do only vocalists of ancient music have to do that? Transpose in all keys? Or do only hornists have to do that? Able to understand any common 20th century symbols for extended techniques? Able to read jazz chord symbols? Basso continuo? Does somebody who only plays music before 1600 have to understand all articulation signs? Or does somebody who only plays music from the romantic era onwards have to understand all the ornamental signs of the baroque? Do you have to be able to read complex scores of orchestral pieces, when all you do is play from jazz lead sheets?

All those things aren't very clear, and I think it's almost impossible to set up a definite canon of what "must" be understood by a professional musician. I think the main point here is to understand what it needed for the music you are playing, and then to expand on that. Personally, I wouldn't expect any violinist to be able to understand the notation of a piece by Lachenmann when first being confronted with it. But I would expect them to be ready to learn it.

So I guess it comes down to: What I expect from a professional musician is not being a lazy donkey.

(But of course I'm not arguing that there are no general standards whatsoever, when it comes to "academic classical music", that definitely should be expected from every such professional musician. Obviously there are.)

I have many difficulties reading titles of pieces.

in chinese...

Do you consider medicine (for example) and hearth wisdom to be one and the same?

No, but the analogy doesn't follow; the latter can objectively be said to be inferior to modern medicine as we have science to back it up, but there is no way to objectively gauge musical quality, and as such in a discussion about what constitutes "musicianship" all cultural differentiations need to be taken into account. I wasn't actually making a point about world music, it was merely figurative, as the same argument still applies within the Western world: more music is made that is not notated than is (and regardless of whether you enjoy it, it is still music), so how can the ability with which one reads notation constitute an effective measurement of musicianship? it'd be like measuring how good someone was at their job based on the quality of their suit; it may be an indicator of their success of a businessman, but is incredibly inspecific, and disregards the fact that for many many people suits are of no use to them.

If you are living and working in a Western nation, playing Western music, if you want to be treated as a professional Musician, you need to be a professional. Being a professional Western Musician, in my opinion is being educated on your instrument and being educated in music, not some schmuck/HACK who can't even read music. I EXPECT A PROFESSIONAL TO BE A PROFESSIONAL.

I live and work in a Western nation, and frankly, I don't particularly care what "musicians" in Assbackwardistan are doing. Nor do I particularly care what HACKS are putting out as "music".

You either know your scraggy, you don't, or you fake it like the hack you are. Forgive me if I can tell the difference.

I didn't actually mention anything about "professionalism", and if you're talking about being able to being able to cope as a working classical musician then yes, of course you need to be able to read western notation. My point is that thats an incredibly narrow view on what constitutes music, given that it accounts for the tiniest tiniest proportion of all music made now, in the past, in the future, here and anywhere else.

And besides, the argument that by not being able to read music someone won't be able to understand it is a misnomer - I know plenty of people trained as classical instrumentalists that don't know their arse from their elbow when it comes to composition, and also plenty of what are being termed "musical illiterates" who consistently create what I consider to be interesting and powerful music. That it may not appeal to the majority of posters on this forum is irrelevant, the point is that the classical domain does not have ownship of the word "musician", and as such it is in no position to dictate its terms.

I know plenty of people trained as classical instrumentalists that don't know their arse from their elbow when it comes to composition, and also plenty of what are being termed "musical illiterates" who consistently create what I consider to be interesting and powerful music.

I'll leave you to your Yanni now.

Why, on a classical music composition forum (using the phrase "classical" to denote music made by and for professional, trained musician or students of music) you would choose to assert this is beyond me.

Because thats my opinion and it's relevant to the discussion, why else? I can't quite work out what you're trying to imply, but if you mean that by questioning the authority of classical music on a classical music forum I'm committing some sort of faux-pas, then thank you for your concern, but I can't say I'm worried; most people here seem civil and undogmatic enough to accept it.

Also, knowing how to read music also includes knowing what's not written as well as what's written, and that's a lot harder than every good boy does fine and all cows eat grass...

It's "Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge!" :angry:

So basically, the point is, "Do you know what the hell you're playing?"

I hear alot of people saying that guitarists don't learn notation because they're lazy. Honestly, that's usually far from the case. Sure, it began as a crutch, but for many musicians it is now possibly the only real way to do it. Truth is that it's much more difficult to find notation online or such than it's ever been to find tablature. I'm not really justifying it, but you have to understand that most guitarists don't learn western notation because they honestly can't see how it'd benefit them.

But, I was in a band last year where only the keyboardist and sort of the bassist and drummer (they knew western notation on other instruments, but not on their own) had any real idea of what music really meant. It makes rehearsing very difficult. For instance, if we wanted to start from a certain measure in the song, you would not be able to just say the number because no one knew what number that was. Vocal harmonies were almost impossible unless you talk it note by note, given people didn't know how chords were formed. Guitarists were unable to create solos, needing instead to just play them exactly as the recording had..

It really doesn't have to be western notation, I guess, but everyone needs to learn the same format of music to really understand what the others are doing. Western music tends to promote that pretty well.

Uh.

Nobody really needs to learn how to read traditional western notation unless they need it for SOMETHING. But as an automatic need, it's simply not there. You can, hell, invent your own notation or use whatever else (or not even use notation depending on what you're doing, since sometimes notation is impossible.)

This is one of those "it helps" things, but otherwise it depends what you want to do.

Now this is going into a sociological discussion IMO. To be part of the Western society and perform music, you MUST learn Western notation. If a society has standardized a way of showing music, then the society will follow it. If you are going to colaberate with other musicians, then a standard form of communication must be established. This form is western musical notation using the 5 lines and clefs and notes and what have you. Colaberation is the key, not for the sake of learning it for nothing. To colaberate with another person in the context of music REQUIRES the use of notation.

Okay, so I don't know if this counts as "musical illiteracy," but I'm a rather horrid music reader. I can decipher music, but I'm a bad reader--I can't, like, look at multiple staves and tell you what's being played. But I am, I like to think, a good musician--I know Western music conventions and terminology, I've got a good ear. Also, I can sightsing, as long as it's fairly tonal. I like to think I write engaging, interesting music, but once I've written something down, I have to peer at the notes for a good thirty seconds before I can play back what I've written. So what does that make me?

Paco de Lucia didn't know how to read notation until he was asked to perform Rodrigo's "Concerto de Aranjuez", and he had to learn how to read notation in order to perform it. He was 45 years old.

And Paco de Lucia has been a performer of a lot of kinds of music, from flamenco to jazz to classical. And I don't think anyone could have claimed that Paco de Lucia was not a "professional" guitarist until the age of 45.