Learning to read music

[Hereward]

A celebratory tea party in the garden...or the park. Cakes, sandwiches and Tea. Bring a concertina as your proof of invitation. lol!

 

I think I could drag these old bones along to a tea party.

 

Ian

[michael sam wild]

I suppose, theoretically, you could go straight from staff to button visually but I doubt if anyone approaches it like that.

 

I do. I can tell you what any of the note letters are, but I don't think about them while learning a tune off staff notation. That would be asking far too much of the little grey cells.

 

 

Respect Theo! I just can't get my head round the ' blackbirds on the wires' I was brutally treated by a sadistic 'music teacher' with a blackboard T square/ruler so when I started playing whistle in the 60s I came up with my own ABc to avoid dots , bit late for me I fear but I do refer to the stave for the general flow. On The Session I always check out the dots first to confirm the ABc

 

If I use a highlighter on the Abc score ( yellow for push red for pull) it usually tells me enough to work out which button and on which side on the Anglo I need. My button diagram is similarly coloured

 

I also found Mick Bramich's book a great aid and hat's off to his own voyage of discovery. We all need a system don't we?

 

Mike

[Mark Evans]

Standard notation is not such a big deal, really.

 

As a kid I had real trouble cleaving to written notation. My ear was faster, so if I could get my teacher to play the piece through for me, measure by measure...we were good to go, until that dear beehived hair do lady discovered I was "cheating" a year into the piano lessons and gave me hell.

 

Through out all the choirs I served in, it was strength in numbers hanging off the few hot readers. Then came college and my system broke down, as the literature I was working on had to be note for note, beat for beat as written.

 

It wasn't so bad. I still listened to recordings to help me out but sometimes the artists were doing things not written in the score. I learned. The feeling of being able to competently read for myself a score was nothing short of freedom.

 

For most folk music, the ear in the long run is all one needs, but I've found the transcriptions on Session. org, here, different printed sources fascinating. The variation in pitches, keys and the clincher...rhythm and meter are a real eye opener. Someone's version of a particular folk tune is written out in a universal language, to be mulled over and mucked about with and compared to versions learned by ear.

 

If an ole fat cracker like myself can learn this and actually scratch out what passes for a living reading and playing music....well then? You have no idea how freakin' clueless I am on most technical issues. What folks like Miss LDT do with compurter technology....now that's past my understanding

 

P.S. I've looked at those abc files and it seems to me you need to hear the tune to have a clue as to rhythm.

Edited January 14, 2009 by Mark Evans

[PeterT]

For most folk music, the ear in the long run is all one needs, but I've found the transcriptions on Session. org, here, different printed sources fascinating. The variation in pitches, keys and the clincher...rhythm and meter are a real eye opener. Someone's version of a particular folk tune is written out in a universal language, to be mulled over and mucked about with and compared to versions learned by ear.

 

P.S. I've looked at those abc files and it seems to me you need to hear the tune to have a clue as to rhythm.

For those of us who learn this way, the Tune-o-Tron (or similar) becomes our ears. It plays ABC well enough for us to know whether to reject a tune, or consider learning it.

 

Regards,

Peter.

[frogspawn]

For most folk music, the ear in the long run is all one needs, but I've found the transcriptions on Session. org, here, different printed sources fascinating. The variation in pitches, keys and the clincher...rhythm and meter are a real eye opener. Someone's version of a particular folk tune is written out in a universal language, to be mulled over and mucked about with and compared to versions learned by ear.

 

P.S. I've looked at those abc files and it seems to me you need to hear the tune to have a clue as to rhythm.

For those of us who learn this way, the Tune-o-Tron (or similar) becomes our ears. It plays ABC well enough for us to know whether to reject a tune, or consider learning it.

 

Regards,

Peter.

 

I've had a program that plays ABC files on my palmtop for some time, but I only recently discovered ABC Navigator which is freeware and looks excellent.

 

Richard

[Mark Evans]

For those of us who learn this way, the Tune-o-Tron (or similar) becomes our ears. It plays ABC well enough for us to know whether to reject a tune, or consider learning it.

 

Regards,

Peter.

 

So I was correct. The ABC system gives only the letter name of the notes and I assume a grouping as to measure or meter. What the actual rhythmic value assigned to each note within that measure must be gleened from someone who knows the tune and can play it for you, a recording or resorting to the midi player. You know, I've played a few of those midi files. What is played vs. what is written can be...divergent.

 

Okay, it works I suppose, but reminds me of the beehived hairdo lady...without the givin' of the hell or the overwhelming Shalimar perfume, and that is something to be grateful for.

Edited January 14, 2009 by Mark Evans

[Dirge]

Why don't those of you that are whining about learning to read music just get on with it? Of course it doesn't happen instantly. It takes practice like everything else. So do lots of things including playing the concertina. But it's well worth it; if you play by ear you are limited to selecting from what other people like and play; read it for yourselves and the choice, especially on the net these days, and especially if you are into folk, is endless. You can go out and discover your own new music. People can plank the music down in front of you and you can play it. Just like that.

 

Of course ABC is not 'one stage less' than notes. For me it's as instantaneous as reading, and I'm just as sure I can take in more, and more complex, information faster than an ABC reader as I am that my skills are not exceptional. Practice.

 

You can clearly get by in the trad world playing by ear, I can even sort of cope with 'authenticity' used as an excuse for this, but you won't do it anywhere else. And do you really want to play JUST folk? Play by ear if you want, but you miss out. And for heavens' sake spare us this endless 'Oh music is so hard' stuff. Most of us have already got on with it and coped. Get on with it.

[hjcjones]

The ABC system gives only the letter name of the notes and I assume a grouping as to measure or meter. What the actual rhythmic value assigned to each note within that measure must be gleened from someone who knows the tune and can play it for you, a recording or resorting to the midi player.

 

ABC allows you to define a rhythm and also the default length for a note in the header.

 

When you're writing out the tune you can show the length of the note as well as the pitch. So A/2 is half the length of the default, A2 twice as long. There are other qualifiers, including ones for dotted rhythms. You can of course add barlines.

 

With ABC you are writing out everything contained in the the staff notation but using a different format. Software can then take that information and reproduce it as notation. However you could play straight from the ABC - all the information is there.

[Mark Evans]

The ABC system gives only the letter name of the notes and I assume a grouping as to measure or meter. What the actual rhythmic value assigned to each note within that measure must be gleened from someone who knows the tune and can play it for you, a recording or resorting to the midi player.

 

ABC allows you to define a rhythm and also the default length for a note in the header.

 

When you're writing out the tune you can show the length of the note as well as the pitch. So A/2 is half the length of the default, A2 twice as long. There are other qualifiers, including ones for dotted rhythms. You can of course add barlines.

 

With ABC you are writing out everything contained in the the staff notation but using a different format. Software can then take that information and reproduce it as notation. However you could play straight from the ABC - all the information is there.

 

So that's what them little numbers an' such are for. Well then.

[hjcjones]

More than you ever wanted to know about ABC here:

 

Introduction to ABC

 

If you want to see what ABC is capable of, follow the link to Beethoven's 7th Symphony.

 

I find ABC absolutely invaluable - it enables me to quickly transcribe a printed piece of music and play it back. Once I know how it goes I can learn to play it by ear. Or if I'm writing out a piece of music from memory, I enables me to check that I've got it down right.

 

I keep meaning to learn notation (I can play it on the recorder, slowly, but more than one ledger line and I go to pieces) but I've been put off by the thought of having to learn the connection between the dots and the notes on all my instruments - guitar in several tunings, melodeons in 2 different keys and concertinas in 3 - it all seems a bit much. What I really need to do is sit down and learn to read music without referring to an instrument, so I can just look at the notation and understand what it should sound like. Seems a bit like black magic to me

Edited January 14, 2009 by hjcjones

[Ivan Viehoff]

I don't think I'll ever 'read' music fluently or learn by ear.

I had always assumed that either one read music or played by ear. Evidently you have found a third "alternative" that I am not aware of.

 

My problem is that I have great difficulty remembering pieces of music, especially more than just a tune. So I have to be able to read the music just as a memory aid.

 

I think reading music is a lot easier than reading writing. You have to recognise 26 symbols in writing, as well as variant forms like capitals and handwriting, and then you have to work out how the letters put together to make words, and deal with multitudinous irregular spellings. Even today, I have to have recourse to the dictionary fairly regularly. But music is all very regular, and uses (for the most part) a much smaller "alphabet". But of course one starts learning to read words when one is young and receptive, and reading music may come later. I started reading music at about 6 (the recorder) so it became instinctive. But actually I discovered some important things about reading music rather later in life. Today I can fairly reliably sing a tune unaccompanied at sight off a written score(provided it isn't too chromatic). I couldn't do this when I was younger, and would now say that I wasn't actually really reading the music fluently then.

 

To read music fluently, it is important to be able to know the intervals, equivalently, the position of notes in the scale relative to the key note. If you can instinctively, immediately produce the sound of the 6th of the scale (etc), because you have the key note in your head and know what a sixth sounds like in relation to it, then when you see a note a sixth about the key note, you know what to produce. The vertical distance between notes is easily recognisable at a glance, well up to about a 10th. You don't even have to be over aware of them. People who can play by ear clearly have a very well developed interval recognition ear. They only have to develop an awareness of what they are doing in order to become a much more fluent reader of written music than the rest of us.

 

In my mid-teens, I tried to play the bassoon. For historical reasons, bassoon (and cello) parts are written on the tenor clef when they go higher up (why upon earth they don't use an octave treble clef and put us all out of our misery, I really don't know). I never got the hang of this at the time. Later in life I had to read plainsong, which uses c-clefs, and you can specify any line is a c. Plainsong is mostly sung unaccompanied. So I just had to develop the technique I mentioned above in order to be able to sing it. I gave up the bassoon very quickly, but I don't think the tenor clef would hold such terrors for me any more.

[Frederick Wahl]

...

To read music fluently, it is important to be able to know the intervals, equivalently, the position of notes in the scale relative to the key note. If you can instinctively, immediately produce the sound of the 6th of the scale (etc), because you have the key note in your head and know what a sixth sounds like in relation to it, then when you see a note a sixth about the key note, you know what to produce. The vertical distance between notes is easily recognisable at a glance, well up to about a 10th. You don't even have to be over aware of them. People who can play by ear clearly have a very well developed interval recognition ear. They only have to develop an awareness of what they are doing in order to become a much more fluent reader of written music than the rest of us...

 

I once went to great lengths to create a set of audio flashcards containing all the various intervals that I had sampled on the guitar. In theory it seemed like it would be a very simple process and I was certainly motivated - hoping the ability to recognize intervals would allow me to better play by ear. In practice however, it turned out to be very difficult - I suspect because when I listened to the notes, I was also hearing the harmonic series of the strings and it became very confusing to reliably identify the notes themselves or the interval between them. I do however have an instinctive ability to pick out the notes of a song on the guitar without too much trouble, so maybe I'm doing it in a less analytical way.

 

As for reading music, I can decode it - but why use a notation that changes the distance between lines and spaces every time you change keys? A major 3rd is a major 3rd in any key.

Edited January 15, 2009 by Frederick Wahl

[LDT]

I don't think I'll ever 'read' music fluently or learn by ear.

I had always assumed that either one read music or played by ear. Evidently you have found a third "alternative" that I am not aware of.

 

Its a hybrid of the two really I 'work out' what button to play for each 'dot' in advance and interpret it in a way I can understand, then read that.

[michael sam wild]

A few elitist comments here, eh?! . A bit like readers condemning dyslexics. We ' the non cognoscenti' are merely looking for help after dealing with 'the cognoscenti' who have been found wanting as teachers

As a 'whinger or whiner' I always have to translate the dots into an alphabetical note, I actually use doh re mi as my guide anyway which allows transposition etc

 

 

ABc saves a lot of time and paper and I'm sure if the QWERTY keyboard existed it would have been preferred for speed. Although, as I said before, I like the dots for the general pattern and I have a friend who teaches kids by the Kodaly method and they pick up dots quickly. Google it

[hjcjones]

To read music fluently, it is important to be able to know the intervals, equivalently, the position of notes in the scale relative to the key note. If you can instinctively, immediately produce the sound of the 6th of the scale (etc), because you have the key note in your head and know what a sixth sounds like in relation to it, then when you see a note a sixth about the key note, you know what to produce. The vertical distance between notes is easily recognisable at a glance, well up to about a 10th. You don't even have to be over aware of them. People who can play by ear clearly have a very well developed interval recognition ear. They only have to develop an awareness of what they are doing in order to become a much more fluent reader of written music than the rest of us.

 

When I'm playing by ear, I don't think "that's an interval of a third", I just play the button which I know will give me the right note. How I know that, I've no idea, it just happens. Years of playing no doubt has something to do with it, but I really don't know the process by which I work out what button to press, let alone how I decide which one of several options to choose. It's a mystery.

 

I'm trying to learn to read from notation in the way you describe (not to play an instrument from notation, but so that I can read a tune off the page) but I'm having to work out the intervals by singing my way up the scale. The connection which comes to me automatically when I'm playing doesn't seem to be there.

[michael sam wild]

Funny isn't it how you just feel right when playing? It's a bit like singing. In our local pub carol sessions in South Yorkshire I can put my mind into gear and sing harmonies and am told they are the tenor parts 3rds or 5ths or whatever but I don't know how or why I do it. Maybe years of hymns at school or listening to the radio, Beatles etc. I put it down to playing mouthorgan from childhood and blowing several holes at once. You get harmonies most time s within the 4 hole octave . Just like hitting adjacent buttons on an Anglo along the rows.