I'll give my half-pennyworth and then shut up. I admire and respect quite a lot of folk musicians who play only by ear., I also admire and respect quite a lot of classically trained musicians who play from the dots, and it seems that many who are damning the classically trained on this nsp list don't realize that many of the very best among the classically trained can (and frequently do) play brilliantly by ear, and can capture the nuances of different styles, be it folk, national, period, or whatever. I agree that many classically trained musicians tend to be glued to their dots. But do all those who learn by ear play superbly?
Re: "musical dictation". Like so many things in life, this is a matter of practice. Children learning to read words first do it by spelling everything out letter by letter but with practice comes fluency. None of us as adults needs to read aloud in order to understand what is written. Similarly with music. As far as dictation is concerned, usually you first are given a short phrase and learn to jot down the rhythm, then start with simple melodic lines. If you keep it up you become fluent - if you don't you get rusty!. As you look at the dots of a tune you hear it in your head. Conductors are probably the experts in this field, hearing not only one line but a whole score in their heads as they look at it - and woe betide a member of the orchestra who plays a sharp when it should be a natural or a flat, or is late with an entry - even though the whole gang may be playing. There is nothing arcane about the process but for most of us it does require practice, ! working at it, and keeping it up. End of lesson, Keep smiling. Sheila -----Original Message----- From: Matthew Walton <matt...@alledora.co.uk> To: gibbonssoi...@aol.com Cc: anth...@robbpipes.com; cwh...@santa-fe.freeserve.co.uk; nsp@cs.dartmouth.edu Sent: Tue, Dec 1, 2009 8:18 am Subject: [NSP] Re: From notation to music It's got a lot to do with training, I think. I learned music in what ight be termed a 'classical' style - in that there was an instrument, e, a teacher, and a sheet of paper with music notation on it. Over ime I learned to read the notation and play what's written there, and hen learned things about how to interpret that to give a good erformance, as the notation never encompasses every aspect of how one hould play it. You can put a sheet of music in front of me and, rovided it's within the capabilities of my instrument, I can have a tab at playing it. Assuming it's not beyond my technical skill, I an, given enough time, turn it into a fluent performance, much as I ight practise reading a speech aloud so that I can deliver it well. What I cannot do, however, is listen to music and write it down. It's ifficult. It's slow. It requires me to play around with an instrument o make sure I've got the idea of which notes are involved correct. 'm also terrible at notating heard rhythms, even though I can play otated rhythms fairly easily. I don't know why it works this way, but t does - and this is common in classically trained musicians. I also find it very hard to listen to a piece of music and play it, ither joining in or copying afterwards. I have never learned to play by ear'. I suspect if I could do that, notating heard music would be great deal easier... It is, of course, possible to learn both ways. I should do that. On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 10:25 AM, <gibbonssoi...@aol.com> wrote: The trouble is some think 'reading music' and 'reading music notation' are synonymous - the trick is to read the dots and put the music back into them. I guess the player who can only play from a notated copy she'd just written down, on hearing,, would be a good ear-player if she believed in it. Notation has its uses, particularly in complex music, but the people who can't play unless they are reading are limiting themselves. John -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html --
