I guess it is time for this subject to come up.
When it comes to applying levels of abstraction to musical practice, be it reading, writing, theory or something else many times a chasm opens between those who endorse the concept and those who don't. I have witnessed discussions over this take religious proportions (inquisitors vs heretics). So in a try to help bridge this chasm i try to provide some thoughts. When delving deeper into music and studying other musicians you realise what span exists out there.
On one side we have a musician i respect enormously, Tommy Emmanuel, who simply states that he is unable to read. He has the utmost respect for other musicians but like many other non readers he states that not being able to read forced him to develop his ear.
On the other end of the scale i heard Pat Metheny state that tabs where the stupidest thing he knew, implying that standard notation was the only way to document music the correct way. At first i considered this statement to be an very arrogant one, but nonetheless it got me thinking.
Let me draw some parallels to something related, reading, writing and understanding texts and raising some questions:
1) Why do so few people read the manuals for(expensive) equipment they bought?
2) If you read a book first and watch the movie later, why is the movie always inferior?
I think both questions have a lot to do with how our brains process information. In the first case i would like to classify the text as "functional". That the text has a well defined purpose and no or little qualities beyond that. In the second case a well written text has the ability to absorb the reader totally and make his mind render the narrative with a level of detail that is simply not possible in a movie for a number of reasons.
What if the same is true for reading music, which is much harder than reading text for most of us simply because we have gotten less training. That will mean that most of us see written music on a purely functional level with no other purpose that indicating what notes to play at a given moment. This clearly results in the attitude as for reading manuals, most of us, including TE, simply don't bother.
But on the other hand PM's statement indicates that there are more levels to written music and that given enough training one can learn to understand and even make a mental rendering of the score.
When it comes to applying levels of abstraction to musical practice, be it reading, writing, theory or something else many times a chasm opens between those who endorse the concept and those who don't. I have witnessed discussions over this take religious proportions (inquisitors vs heretics). So in a try to help bridge this chasm i try to provide some thoughts. When delving deeper into music and studying other musicians you realise what span exists out there.
On one side we have a musician i respect enormously, Tommy Emmanuel, who simply states that he is unable to read. He has the utmost respect for other musicians but like many other non readers he states that not being able to read forced him to develop his ear.
On the other end of the scale i heard Pat Metheny state that tabs where the stupidest thing he knew, implying that standard notation was the only way to document music the correct way. At first i considered this statement to be an very arrogant one, but nonetheless it got me thinking.
Let me draw some parallels to something related, reading, writing and understanding texts and raising some questions:
1) Why do so few people read the manuals for(expensive) equipment they bought?
2) If you read a book first and watch the movie later, why is the movie always inferior?
I think both questions have a lot to do with how our brains process information. In the first case i would like to classify the text as "functional". That the text has a well defined purpose and no or little qualities beyond that. In the second case a well written text has the ability to absorb the reader totally and make his mind render the narrative with a level of detail that is simply not possible in a movie for a number of reasons.
What if the same is true for reading music, which is much harder than reading text for most of us simply because we have gotten less training. That will mean that most of us see written music on a purely functional level with no other purpose that indicating what notes to play at a given moment. This clearly results in the attitude as for reading manuals, most of us, including TE, simply don't bother.
But on the other hand PM's statement indicates that there are more levels to written music and that given enough training one can learn to understand and even make a mental rendering of the score.
Pure fingerstyle