reading music

[Earl Cameron]

I won't say that I can sight read on the concertina, but I can work out the notes to a tune

using the sheet music as a guide. On fiddle sight reading is very easy. As a concertina player

I've relied on learning tunes that I already play on fiddle by memory on the concertina.

But I find that even if I can remember how I play on the fiddle I'm really translating a finger

position into a note and then processing that into concertina fingering, so It's become

faster to start reading on concertina from the same notation. I monkeyed around with concertina

tablature and is still something I would like to work on as I want to build a program much like

those programs that show you the keyboard note when a midi file plays but it will light up

a button on a concertina diagram as the notes play, or it might light up several buttons if there

is more than one option.

[fearfeasog]

I won't say that I can sight read on the concertina, but I can work out the notes to a tune

using the sheet music as a guide. On fiddle sight reading is very easy. As a concertina player

I've relied on learning tunes that I already play on fiddle by memory on the concertina.

But I find that even if I can remember how I play on the fiddle I'm really translating a finger

position into a note and then processing that into concertina fingering, so It's become

faster to start reading on concertina from the same notation. I monkeyed around with concertina

tablature and is still something I would like to work on as I want to build a program much like

those programs that show you the keyboard note when a midi file plays but it will light up

a button on a concertina diagram as the notes play, or it might light up several buttons if there

is more than one option.

`

I have a friend who's working on that. you better get a move-on--he's pretty close to done.

[cboody]

Let me take a shot at the idea of music reading and sight reading. I spent lots of years supposedly teaching folks to do that and so, regardless of my success, I have some thoughts:

 

1) "Reading music" is taking a piece, looking at it, and mentally "hearing it." Most musicians who are trained to play from paper develop this skill along the way, though it is not often taught as a separate skill. And, there are all sorts of things that enter into that general idea including understanding of the musical style of the piece being read. I use the skill when looking at orchestral or concert band scores that are filled with instruments in various clefs and transpositions. I'd be lying if I said I heard everything that is there, but I do get a good idea of what things are going to sound like, where the tough parts are, and sometimes whether the work is worth the effort. I'm much more successful with a single line part, since I spent most of my performing life playing instruments that play a single note at a time. And, I'm extremely good at interpreting Baroque music because I spent many years studying and performing it at a high level. That's the style aspect. Ask me to properly perform balkan music and I'm in trouble. I'll probably get the notes and rhythms but not the style.

 

2) "Sight reading," as already mentioned, is the ability to put the music on the stand and play it with accuracy. The pros do this at a level that the rest of us can only marvel at. I used to perform with a women who is a professional violinist. She always complained how poorly she read. After the complaint she would immediately play some fairly complex music without error. Part and parcel of this skill is the ability to pretty much hear the piece as it goes by so intonation gets corrected as need be. Also part of the skill is the ability to read ahead of the note being played so you are prepared for what is coming.

 

For me, reading music requires musical knowledge, but no application of that skill to any given instrument. Sight reading adds to music reading the necessary executant skills on the instrument in question. The sight reader is reading music, internalizing the expected rhythms and pitches, applying the appropriate executant skills, and checking to see that what comes out matches what his music reading tells him should come out.

 

Humans have incredible capabilities.

[David Barnert]

I won't say that I can sight read on the concertina, but I can work out the notes to a tune

using the sheet music as a guide. On fiddle sight reading is very easy. As a concertina player

I've relied on learning tunes that I already play on fiddle by memory on the concertina.

I wouldn't think you should expect this will be a static position. Keep working on it. It will come.