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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Can you read music?
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
This came up in discussion today, and I was surprised by the number of my interlocutors who could not read music.
I was under the impression that most people learned music at school (even if it was just playing the recorder) and so therefore would have at least a rudimentary knowledge of musical notation.
So can you read music? Are my expectations ridiculous?
(If it makes a difference, all the people present for the discussion had college degrees.)
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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Porridge
Shipmate
# 15405
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Posted
Interesting question. During my brief teaching stint (with high school graduates, 18-25) I found several active musicians in my classes. They played instruments, joined semi-pro bands, developed their own songs, etc. etc. Not one of them could read music, and I had the impression (when this came up in discussion) that they regarded this skill as not quite legitimate, as though "real" musicians had no truck with this fancy-schmancy sort of thing. Apparently they all thought reading music was strictly for poseurs.
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Posts: 3925 | From: Upper right corner | Registered: Jan 2010
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QLib
Bad Example
# 43
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Posted
I can read mus-ic. Look, Jan-et, here is some mus-ic. I can read it (a bit). Look, John, this note is high, but that note is low.
Like that.
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Tradition is the handing down of the flame, not the worship of the ashes Gustav Mahler.
Posts: 8913 | From: Page 28 | Registered: May 2001
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
I think your expectations are ridiculous. I had a class in music theory in university, but it was an elective, and very few of my fellow students take the course. If one didn't play an instrument or sing in a choir in high school, one is very unlikely to know how to read music, at least in my experience in the US.
I sing in the choir at church, and my ability to read music is very rudimentary. I have the timing bit down perfectly, but figuring out notes is a chore. I can figure out an interval, given enough time (thirds and fifths are obvious but everything else throws me), but as to whether it's minor, major, diminished, or augmented, I'm completely lost. Aside from C, F, and G, time signatures are a mystery to me. I can recite the cycle of fifths. But for actually figuring all this out in real time, I am essentially singing from memory. The notes going up or down serve as a reminder.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
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Belle Ringer
Shipmate
# 13379
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:
...Not one of them could read music, and I had the impression...that they regarded this skill as not quite legitimate, as though "real" musicians had no truck with this fancy-schmancy sort of thing. Apparently they all thought reading music was strictly for poseurs.
Yup I ran into that attitude in the "worship leader." He is absolutely convinced the only legitimate way to learn music is by ear and reading holds you back.
In a way he's right if the music has irregular rhythms that cannot be expressed in music notation - jazz, some Contemporary Christian "worship" music.
As to when do people learn to read it - I learned in church, from the hymnal, didn't take too long to see if the notes go up the voice pitch goes up. These days Churches are ditching the hymnals. CCLI has the music line available for download, but "worship leader" is opposed to allowing people to see it.
Schools where I live have music one hour a week.
Most kids learn folk songs and camp songs and pop songs from the radio - didn't you and I? I think a lot of chorus members don't read, choruses hand put rehearsal CDs these days for you to listen to your part and learn that way.
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Jante
Shipmate
# 9163
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Posted
I learnt at school as we all learned the recorder then. I then sang in a church choir so used the knowledge and didn't lose it. Very few children learn music in school today.
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My blog http://vicarfactorycalling.blogspot.com/
Posts: 535 | From: deepest derbyshire | Registered: Mar 2005
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Arabella Purity Winterbottom
Trumpeting hope
# 3434
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Posted
I learned to read music at the same time as I learned to read words. Its my second language, learned at my dad's knee. He taught three generations of kids in our small town, so from my point of view a lot of people did learn to read music at school where I come from.
However, I am useless at improvising or learning things by ear. This is a sadness and I think it comes from having learned to read so early. I would love to be able to pick things up by ear.
Musicians are often a bit unbending about their particular tradition (reading or by ear). My boss (a rock guitarist and singer in his free time) and I have this discussion frequently - I've been to a number of his gigs, but he has yet to come to one of mine.
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Hell is full of the talented and Heaven is full of the energetic. St Jane Frances de Chantal
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
Yes, I can read music. I also learnt to write it at school. A bit of a waste really as I hardly ever listen to any these days, but I have been surprised by some avid Prommers who can’t read a note yet make it a priority to get to as many concerts as they can.
But I suppose unless you are actively involved in music i.e. play an instrument/sing, or are going to take a score to a performance with you there isn’t really much point for most people. Having said that, I found it quite interesting looking through scores as a teenager (I was doing music O level) because with an orchestral work you don’t always realize that certain instruments may even be playing, or what their role is, and it helps you to follow them in a piece you’re quite familiar with and get something new out of it and attune your ear to listening for the less obvious.
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cross eyed bear
Shipmate
# 13977
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Posted
I know what all the notes are called, how to read key signature and recognise the rhythm/s.
This is through lots of choir singing at school, and some self-taught piano at home.
I don't have the musicality to sing straight from the notes, and would need a lot of practice to play properly from the notes, but I can work out what direction the tune is going in...
Strangely enough, I'm quite good if I have played notes to orientate myself by. If the Alto part is relative to the main tune, I can use those notes to sing a harmony near straight off.
I am also very good at thirds...
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Sipech
Shipmate
# 16870
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Posted
No, I cannot. This is not for some trying, but the only way I can manage is to look at each note individually and work out using the mnemonics FACE and Every Good Boy Deserves Food. This way, I can manage about 1 note every 5 seconds or so. I suppose that puts my ability to read music at the same level as a 4 year old reading words.
In terms of education, I have a masters degree in maths (1st class), so am not generally classed as a dunce.
This doesn't stop me from playing music, though. I can play guitar where reading tabs is much more intuitive, as it actually relates to the instrument, rather than the more abstract notation of sheet music.
So to me, I know A as 0-0-2-2-2-0 and A minor as 0-0-2-2-1-0. This style actually tells you what to do and to me just seems more sensible than learning what is effectively another language.
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pererin
Shipmate
# 16956
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Arabella Purity Winterbottom:
However, I am useless at improvising or learning things by ear. This is a sadness and I think it comes from having learned to read so early. I would love to be able to pick things up by ear.
Snap. But then again, I too have read music from a young age. What my ear does serve to do is to convince me that I'm singing all the wrong notes when what I'm hearing doesn't match the pitch on the page (i.e. when someone's transposed it without telling me).
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"They go to and fro in the evening, they grin like a dog, and run about through the city." (Psalm 59.6)
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Heavenly Anarchist
Shipmate
# 13313
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Posted
I can neither read music nor play any instrument. I was brought up in a very poor neighbourhood and few of my peers learnt any instrument. Reading music did not seem to be taught at our school, we did the odd strumming of notes on the guitar but without regular lessons in small groups it is hard to learn such a skill. Very few children at my school took private lessons, presumably due to financial reasons but there are also social reasons, it wasn't a cultural norm for us (in the same way that we didn't hope to go to university).
Both my children can read music but the have private guitar lessons and my husband also teaches them. Most of my friends here are middle class graduates and they almost all play instruments, I assume most can read music too. I have often felt, this might be my personal inferiority complex, who knows, that the reading of music is one of those skills which denotes class here in the UK. It certainly highlights my working class roots but perhaps Cambridge is extreme in this sense.
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Galloping Granny
Shipmate
# 13814
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Posted
At prmary school in the 1930s we were taught tonic sol-fa and how to breathe from the diaphragm.
Learned piano from age 8. Sang duets with Mum, or accompanied her on the piano. Sat Music 101 extramurally and passed on the set works but failed the (self-taught from text book) harmony.
So I'm lost when I have to 'pick up' a new song by joining in, but give me the music and I'll lead the rest.
Intervals – for ear tests in music exams we learned to associate each interval with the beginning of a song, eg Auld Lang Syne begins with a major fourth.
That's quite true that an alto is a soprano who can read music _ that's me.
GG
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The Kingdom of Heaven is spread upon the earth, and men do not see it. Gospel of Thomas, 113
Posts: 2629 | From: Matarangi | Registered: Jun 2008
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pererin
Shipmate
# 16956
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Galloping Granny:
Intervals – for ear tests in music exams we learned to associate each interval with the beginning of a song, eg Auld Lang Syne begins with a major fourth.
![[Smile]](smile.gif) For me that was Away in a Manger.
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"They go to and fro in the evening, they grin like a dog, and run about through the city." (Psalm 59.6)
Posts: 446 | From: Llantrisant | Registered: Feb 2012
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la vie en rouge
Parisienne
# 10688
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Posted
As an orchestral musician, I have to read music. I can read bass, tenor or treble clefs, but if I try to follow treble on the cello, it completely throws me (my brain automatically turns it into tenor).
I think reading a score or learning by ear definitely do give you different approaches to music. My boyfriend's Dad is a concert pianist, he is also 100% blind. Consequently the world of the printed score is completely unknown to him and he has always learned everything by ear (and not small pieces, either - at his retirement concert he played the Schumann concerto in A, for example). The most impressive aspect of this is the absolutely colossal memory it requires. He also thinks of the music straight away in phrases, rather than as individual notes on a page. The downside to learning this way is that rather than discovering the music on your own by figuring out the score, you always hear it played by someone else first and it's quite difficult not to be influenced by their interpretation.
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by TheAlethiophile:
No, I cannot. This is not for some trying, but the only way I can manage is to look at each note individually and work out using the mnemonics FACE and Every Good Boy Deserves Food. This way, I can manage about 1 note every 5 seconds or so. I suppose that puts my ability to read music at the same level as a 4 year old reading words.
In terms of education, I have a masters degree in maths (1st class), so am not generally classed as a dunce.
This doesn't stop me from playing music, though. I can play guitar where reading tabs is much more intuitive, as it actually relates to the instrument, rather than the more abstract notation of sheet music.
So to me, I know A as 0-0-2-2-2-0 and A minor as 0-0-2-2-1-0. This style actually tells you what to do and to me just seems more sensible than learning what is effectively another language.
I'm exactly the same, though I'm not proficient enough with tabs to play lead parts "straight off the page".
My initial comment on seeing the thread title was going to be "of course I can't - I'm a guitarist" ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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Hail Gallaxhar
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L'organist
Shipmate
# 17338
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Posted
Yes, learned to read music from ? I think 4 years old.
Was also blessed with a Welsh granny so learned tonic solfa at the same time so can read that as well.
At my state primary we ALL learned to play the recorder and were taught to read music - but that was the early 1960s.
I know the local state schools in my area have more or less stopped having recorder groups. This is partly because music is now valued so little that head teachers can get away with "we have a new teacher with Grade 4 piano so don't need the music specialist coming in any more".
Doubt that? A specialist music teacher friend "did" the music for 5 local schools for years but gradually they've all stopped having her - the quote in the para above is what she was told by the head at the last of her schools.
She is a dedicated and gifted teacher - she taught my own children piano and was brilliant. An intuitive and sensitive musician, she's a graduate of the Royal College of Music plus has a PGCE and she's now working as a care assistant. As she says, the only way back into teaching at primary level is to find a job in a private school.
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Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet
Posts: 4950 | From: somewhere in England... | Registered: Sep 2012
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Lucia
Looking for light
# 15201
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Posted
Yes I learnt piano briefly as a child but then subsequently took up the flute. The result of this is I can read treble clef pretty automatically but have to work out bass clef more note by note! Sadly I haven't played flute for years but I sing alto in a small choir so I get plenty of practice reading music still.
Posts: 1075 | From: Nigh golden stone and spires | Registered: Oct 2009
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
I was never taught to read music in primary school (this was in the 90s, at a UK state primary). We were taught at secondary school (UK state secondary, 2000-2005) but I never got the hang of it. I have dyscalculia and I wonder if that's had an impact?
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
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Adam.
Like as the
# 4991
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Posted
I can read music ish. Certainly, I can sight-play a melody on a piano, unless the rhythm's devillish, in which case I'll get it after a little bit of slowing down and counting. Score to voice is so-so (mainly due to not being a particular good singer). I can often hear what I'm reading even when I mess up getting it out of my mouth. If you can sing up and down a scale, sing fifths and octaves, and make a good guess (guided by which notes are in your scale) about thirds and fourths, you can sight sing pretty much any hymn out there. Of course, you also need to be able to recognize these things on the piece of paper.
To be honest, I don't think I was ever really taught sight-singing, but I was taught enough music theory in secondary school to be able to know what to look for in a score (not just naming the notes, but knowing that going from C to E sounds just like going from G to B, etc.). Piano lessons never covered sight-singing, but just gave me a bunch of experience of hearing what these patterns sounded like. Every choir I've been in has basically assumed that we'd use the score as an aide-memoire after listening to it being played, which suited me well.
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Ave Crux, Spes Unica!
Preaching blog
Posts: 8164 | From: Notre Dame, IN | Registered: Sep 2003
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Adam.
Like as the
# 4991
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Posted
I should add that my ability to pick up sight-reading reasonably naturally seems to go along with an almost complete inability to remember music without a score. I play the O Salutaris and Tantum Ergo about once a week for Benediction (both very simple pieces) and would be completely lost without a score.
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Ave Crux, Spes Unica!
Preaching blog
Posts: 8164 | From: Notre Dame, IN | Registered: Sep 2003
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Snags
Utterly socially unrealistic
# 15351
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Posted
I can read music, having been taught classical piano as a child and been tortured through various grades.
However, amongst my contemporaries only those who actually learnt an instrument could do so. School music lessons didn't feature that much actual music reading.
Over the years I've hung around with a lot of musical types, and there's been a fairly even split between "dots" and "ear" (some worship guitarists skewing the stats by not being able to do dots or ear, but being fine with a chord sheet!).
IME most people are better at one or the other, and tend to be jealous of their opposites, which comes out in disparaging comments. Certainly the "only playing by ear is real, man" attitude smacks of teenage rock-god-wannabes. I can't remember who it was, but it was A Serious Rock Legend who once opined "People who say you shouldn't learn to read music and shouldn't learn theory because it's not pure ... those people are arseholes, and are limiting themselves" (sic).
My ear playing is pretty ropey for getting something spot on, but as a (now) guitarist I can blag my way through a jam/something that fits approach.
However, getting back to the OP, I tend to assume most people can't read music, and I don't absolutely assume they can even if they're a musician.
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Posts: 1399 | From: just north of That London | Registered: Dec 2009
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Porridge
Shipmate
# 15405
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Posted
My father and sister were untrained singers; my sister learned note-reading in school. My brothers had no interest in music, but attended school with Sis, and may have had the skill. We had loads of sheet music in the house.
I sang harmonies with my sis & dad by ear once I had surgery that provided me with enough hearing to manage, but was only introduced to note-reading in the primary grades.
To me, writing rather than reading notes was more important. It became a way to "record" the tunes I invented picking at the piano or my dad's guitar.
In middle school, a teacher encouraged us to try composing; in high school, I was selected for a small singing group (The Double Quartet) and would have been utterly lost without the ability to read, as we tried some fairly challenging stuff and performed for money.
This was over three different school systems (though all in Massachusetts), so teaching the reading of music must have been the norm, not the exception.
These days, though, with no practice, no singing group, and no instrument to play, I'd probably be lost.
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Spiggott: Everything I've ever told you is a lie, including that.
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Spiggott: That everything I've ever told you is a lie.
Moon: That's not true!
Posts: 3925 | From: Upper right corner | Registered: Jan 2010
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
I can read music. I can sight-sing unless it's something very complex. When I read a partiture, I can usually hear the piece in my head.
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blackbeard
Ship's Pirate
# 10848
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Hart:
I should add that my ability to pick up sight-reading reasonably naturally seems to go along with an almost complete inability to remember music without a score. ...
... and after singing in various choirs for (cough) years, I find that the music director of one of them now wants us to sing without using scores (something to do with seeing what the conductor is doing, apparently). I am now finding that memorising the music is difficult (and memorising the words is worse, especially if not in English) ... all of us seem to be finding this, whether we can read music or not.
Incidentally, why do I still find that reading music is so difficult, despite music notation being so much easier, simpler and more logical than the written word? And I only have to fathom out one vocal line at a time; I am in awe of pianists and organists who can play on sight, I have no idea how they do it.
Posts: 823 | From: Hampshire, UK | Registered: Dec 2005
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
Yes. We had may little mnemonics for remembering various things. Like "every good boy does fine" for treble clef lines, FACE for the spaces. I remember a particularly rude one for guitar strings names, which I suppose reflects adolescence when I learned them.
Music was part of life for us growing up, and also for our kids. Everyone took piano, played in a school band, and in optional extras like jazz band. I take recorders on canoe trips actually. Good rainy day activity is recorder-harmonica duets, not they are actually very good mind you.
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Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Nenya
Shipmate
# 16427
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Posted
No. I grew up in a very musical family and music was something that had to be Done Very Well. I knew I'd never be as good at it as my dad and eldest brother (and for them it was classical stuff or nothing so we never had family singing round the piano or anything) so it was a complete turn off for my younger brother and me. ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
I do have a reasonable singing voice and a fairly good musical memory, so I enjoy singing in a choir where, like mousethief, the way the notes go up and down on the stave serve as a reminder.
Nen - currently part of a gospel choir where no music or words are ever supplied in written form. ![[Yipee]](graemlins/spin.gif)
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Posts: 1289 | Registered: May 2011
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Og, King of Bashan
Ship's giant Amorite
# 9562
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Posted
I can read music, thanks to private piano lessons while I was a kid. It serves me well in my church choir, as we do fairly sophisticated music at a fairly quick pace, and you would be left behind without some sight reading skills. Mind you, I can't look at a scale and tell you what mode it is, but I can usually work my way through a piece of music from the score. Once a year, I sing in a chorus where all music is learned by ear, and the repetition would absolutely drive me up the wall if there wasn't a keg backstage. Don't get me started on the overhead projector with the words method of singing.
We did recorders in the fourth grade, but by that time I was so familiar with music that I blew through the book in one day. I turned into the problem with large class size- the guy who was ahead, got board, and started screwing around. I don't know if anyone who was unfamiliar with music actually learned anything from a month of recorder instruction.
Re: Jazz musicians not needing / using notation, I am pretty sure that an article about the first draft score for "A Love Supreme" was floating around recently. At any rate, Sun Ra was known for having painfully long rehearsals, and swore that his Arkestra (which played / plays some of the freest Jazz you can find) was playing music that originated in scores and sheet music.
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Posts: 3259 | From: Denver, Colorado, USA | Registered: May 2005
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
This came up in discussion today, and I was surprised by the number of my interlocutors who could not read music.
I was under the impression that most people learned music at school (even if it was just playing the recorder) and so therefore would have at least a rudimentary knowledge of musical notation.
Not at all, not here anyway.
The schools I went to in the 1960s and 1970s only taught you to read music if they taught you to play an instrument, and the majority did not have those lessons. It was an out-of-hours voluntary thing. "Music lessons" in grammar school were what was once called "music appreciation", not about performance. Musical instument lessons were one-to-one with a "peripatetic" music teacher who wasn't on the regular staff. A large proportion of the students did have musical instrument teaching but nowhere near all.
You only got taught to sing if you were in the choir, and that didn't involve reading music.
The schools my daugher went to in the 1990s and 2000s had even less music teaching. I think it was pretty much killed off ny the National Curriculum - nowadays if its not compulsory, there is no funding for it; and if its not examined, there is no time for it. And the instumental teaching at her school - again mostly voluntary, after-hours - was mostly pop rather than orchestral - lots of electronic keyboards, a few guitars - and much of it done by ear, not reading music. So I guess her generation are even less likely to read music than mine were.
quote:
So can you read music?
Yes, but I taught myself when I was about 8 or 9, nothing to do with either school or parents. And only to play instruments, not to sing. Later on I did do some instrumental lessons at school where I suppose I woudl have learned to read music if I hadn't already known how. But many people didn't.
And when I say "I can read music" I mean a single melody line in treble clef when I have an instrument in my hands. I can play simple tunes on recorders or whistles or flutes or similar instruments, and pick out notes on a keyboard or a guitar with one finger, slowly.
I'm trying to teach myself to read bass clef at the moment, and also to read chords or more than one line. I bought a cheap electronic keyboard about three weeks ago to help me do it... watch this space.
quote:
Are my expectations ridiculous?
Not ridiculous but utterly unrealistic.
quote:
(If it makes a difference, all the people present for the discussion had college degrees.)
Makes a small difference as they are more likely to have gone to the kind of schools that teach orchestral music and so more likley to have learned to play instruments from written music.
[ 03. October 2013, 17:09: Message edited by: ken ]
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
I learned in church, from the hymnal, didn't take too long to see if the notes go up the voice pitch goes up.
Hymnbooks in England don't have written music, just words. Everybody learns the tunes by ear. Most ordinary church choirs don't use written music, only instrumentalists (and sometimes not even them, especially for guitarists)
quote:
Originally posted by Snags:
However, getting back to the OP, I tend to assume most people can't read music, and I don't absolutely assume they can even if they're a musician.
I reckon its something like this:
- orchestral musicians always read music
- jazz musicians nearly always read, apart from maybe drummers
- piano players and church organists always
- professional choral singers and opera singers always
- church choirs and amateur choirs almost never read music, apart from a few choirs of near-professional standard you would have to audition to get in to (and I doubt if one church in twenty has such a choir)
- professional pop and rock musicians mostly but not always, and 6-string guitar players very often not - but you almost always need to read music to be a session muscian so its a career opportunity if you can
- amateur pop and rock musicians (including church worship bands) mostly not
- country & folk musicians almost never, especially guitar players - though that's not as ignorant as it looks because 6-string guitar players almost always read tab and chord symbols, which is simply more appropriate for that instrument (and if tab was good enough for John Dowland its good enough for me)
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
Hmmm... not sure when I learnt to actually read music. I think it may have been when I was quite young, and fascinated by the family piano, and wanting to play some of the things my mother used to play.
In fact I was desperate to play. I found it quite frustrating sitting on the piano stool looking at the piano keys, unable to unlock the secret of their harmonies. I've a feeling my mother may have shown me how to do it - there was also a beginner's piano book which taught you very clearly how to read music and I taught myself a bit out of that.
(At school a lot of us also learnt a second instrument thanks to a benevolent county council who made school instrument hire extremely reasonable - it was something like 50p for a violin, so unless you were really broke, expense wasn't a problem. I did the violin for a bit, and got a set of three different recorders - descant, sopranino and treble - and played in the school orchestras. I kept that up when I went to college. It all stopped when I left; you can't do this kind of stuff in rented accommodation.)
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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L'organist
Shipmate
# 17338
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Posted
quote:
posted by ken
Most ordinary church choirs don't use written music, only instrumentalists ...
Not sure where you're getting this from, Ken.
ALL the church choirs I've either sung in or directed use written music, and lots of it.
To take my current (village) choir as an example:
- everyone uses a full-music (4 part) hymnal, plus chant book for psalmody
- every choir member has a copy of 5 basic anthem books (New Church Anthem Book, Anthems for Choir 1 & 4, Oxford Tudor Anthems, Sixteenth Century Anthems
- all use full music copies of the ordinary of the mass (communion setting) as set for that service
- all will have a full music score for the setting for choral Matins
In addition, we have a library with individual motets and anthems, plus carol books, etc, etc.
To fund the cost of new music or replacing worn-out copies we hire out music to other choirs and choral ensembles.
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Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet
Posts: 4950 | From: somewhere in England... | Registered: Sep 2012
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
no prophet: I remember a particularly rude one for guitar strings names
Now I'm really thinking about what rude sentences you can make with EADGBE.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
quote:
posted by ken
Most ordinary church choirs don't use written music, only instrumentalists ...
Not sure where you're getting this from, Ken.
From having visited or worshipped at dozens of churches
quote:
ALL the church choirs I've either sung in or directed use written music, and lots of it.
Yes, but you are a trained musican. the very fact that you were singing there or directing the choir is a clue that they aren't a random sample of normal churches. You are definitely at the highly skilled end of the range.
I doubt if anyone in our choir would know what a motet was. (Actually it seems a strange word to be using for current-day music to me - I associate it with the 16th & 17th centuries)
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Belle Ringer
Shipmate
# 13379
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Posted
I've been in churches where the choir has hymnals with 4 part music notation, the congregation gets hymnals with just the melody line. A congregation member doesn't even know the fuller notation hymnal exists. I remember my startle at seeing one that got into the pews by mistake, and started learning how to read the alto line from it.
As to piano players reading music - gal in our "worship group" couldn't play a note when we practice "All creatures of our God and king" for pet blessing Sunday this week. She doesn't know the song, and the sheet music didn't help. I'm guessing she can read a single line but didn't know what to do with a printed sheet with four parts.
Which brings out - what do we mean by "read music"? I am often told I read well. Now I am working on learning how to read. Specifically, I do great when handed a choral piece, a simple church anthem I might be able to read on my own cold with no supporting instrument.
But now I'm trying to read for piano, whole different game to see chords instead of several separate notes, and to learn bass clef and notes above staff in treble, which chorus leader after leader all my life told me not to bother learning because "you don't need it," their framework for judging my need being "choral altos" don't use bass clef."
Lots of degrees of functional reading, for different purposes. Hand me an orchestral score - nope, don't functionally read more than one instrument at a time.
Posts: 5830 | From: Texas | Registered: Jan 2008
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
quote:
posted by ken
Most ordinary church choirs don't use written music, only instrumentalists ...
Not sure where you're getting this from, Ken.
From having visited or worshipped at dozens of churches
quote:
ALL the church choirs I've either sung in or directed use written music, and lots of it.
Yes, but you are a trained musican. the very fact that you were singing there or directing the choir is a clue that they aren't a random sample of normal churches. You are definitely at the highly skilled end of the range.
I doubt if anyone in our choir would know what a motet was. (Actually it seems a strange word to be using for current-day music to me - I associate it with the 16th & 17th centuries)
It must vary from place to place. There isn't a single choir in this deanery that doesn't read from music. One of them is v. small and only sings a single line, but still from music. The non-church choirs based in the nearest market town all read music bar one, which calls itself "The Community Choir" - they do learn by rote.
I agree with you about the hymnals though - it's pretty rare to find the congregational copies with the melody printed in them (though Winchester Cathedral do use them). The choirs always use 4-part harmony editions.
[Yes, I read music. I learnt at my local primary school playing recorder, but subsequently took piano lessons from my aunt who was a music teacher by day. As a boy I was fortunate enough to be able to sing both first and second treble lines, so when my voice broke it was straightforward to move to the lower parts. I have a baritone voice, but because I can hit the high notes I usually end up singing tenor.]
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Anglo-Cthulhic
Posts: 4857 | From: the corridors of Pah! | Registered: May 2001
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Adam.
Like as the
# 4991
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
quote:
posted by ken
Most ordinary church choirs don't use written music, only instrumentalists ...
Not sure where you're getting this from, Ken.
Doesn't match my experience either, and I'm definitely not performing at the high end. I know plenty of churches where the congregation aren't given music, but I've not known a choir not be (even if not all the members can read it).
For people that do sing at sight, I'm curious: if you know how you do it? Let's say you were faced with the first three notes of Morning has broken and asked to sing them (without being told what the tune is). What goes through your head? I can think of a few options:
a) Nothing, it just comes out. [In which case, I'm jealous]
b) You see a major arpeggio starting with the tonic, and sing that. [I think this is what I do]
c) You see "do-mi-so" and sing that.
d) You see "ascending major third, ascending minor third" and sing that.
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Ave Crux, Spes Unica!
Preaching blog
Posts: 8164 | From: Notre Dame, IN | Registered: Sep 2003
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Chorister
Completely Frocked
# 473
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Posted
I learnt to read music at primary school as part of class lessons ('Time and Tune' anyone?) and then from playing the recorder and, later on, private piano lessons.
It's much easier to make the music you read turn into notes when you're playing an instrument but harder with the voice unless you have perfect pitch. I can work out the key and the notes of the scale, then convert printed music into sounds made by the throat, but I'm much slower at it than the fluent sight-singers. Fortunately, most anthems are played over a few times by the organist, so I can match notes on the stave to pitch more easily (if you sing a part for long enough you can hear your line even among several parts at once).
By the time we come to sing the anthem in a church service, either accompanied or a capella, we have sung it through two or three times already, so the notes on the page are already fairly confidently registered in the brain. I'm much more confident at sight-singing hymns and psalms where the range is much more limited.
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Retired, sitting back and watching others for a change.
Posts: 34626 | From: Cream Tealand | Registered: Jun 2001
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
quote:
For people that do sing at sight, I'm curious: if you know how you do it? Let's say you were faced with the first three notes of Morning has broken and asked to sing them (without being told what the tune is). What goes through your head? I can think of a few options:
a) Nothing, it just comes out. [In which case, I'm jealous]
b) You see a major arpeggio starting with the tonic, and sing that. [I think this is what I do]
c) You see "do-mi-so" and sing that.
d) You see "ascending major third, ascending minor third" and sing that.
Singing at sight (sight-reading) is probably a bit like riding a bike. If you think too hard about it you fall off. Sometimes you do have to think really hard - at other times (such as in a Bach piece) it's often more a question of watching the line ahead for its twists and turns and unexpected intervals. "Morning has broken" would be mostly a) for me with a bit of b)
Keeping the key in mind is always there, but it often moves without a signature change. A flattened fifth is a nightmare usually. It's called "The Devil's Interval" for good reason.
[ 03. October 2013, 22:46: Message edited by: Honest Ron Bacardi ]
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Anglo-Cthulhic
Posts: 4857 | From: the corridors of Pah! | Registered: May 2001
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Belle Ringer
Shipmate
# 13379
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Hart:
For people that do sing at sight, I'm curious: if you know how you do it? ...
a) Nothing, it just comes out. [In which case, I'm jealous]
b) You see a major arpeggio starting with the tonic, and sing that. [I think this is what I do]
c) You see "do-mi-so" and sing that.
d) You see "ascending major third, ascending minor third" and sing that.
e) pick a starting note (which will be near the right note - could accidentally be on it, or a half step or two off), go up or down about the amount of space the notes indicate to the next note. I don't think in minor or major or in chord arpeggios, just at each note how many steps to the next note, and does the amount I moved "sound right."
Simple music of mostly half and whole steps and sometimes two steps (i.e. a third), and occasionally a fifth, if it's basic Western music sound I'll get it right the first time. More "complex" intervals, like 4ths 6ths octaves, jazz intervals, I won't. So for me it's a familiarity thing.
Posts: 5830 | From: Texas | Registered: Jan 2008
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jedijudy
Organist of the Jedi Temple
# 333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
quote:
posted by ken
Most ordinary church choirs don't use written music, only instrumentalists ...
Not sure where you're getting this from, Ken.
I was wondering the same thing. Every choir I've been part of uses written music. These choirs range from well-trained singers, to folks who read by seeing the notes go up or down the staff.
It's so sad to see more and more people who have never learned to read music. Thank goodness there are some magnet art schools that teach music reading, theory and solfege. I've watched a whole class of students sight sing four part solfege perfectly for the national music teachers' association.
I read music. My beginning experience was figuring out how to read bass and treble clef from the hymnal. (I don't know of any churches around here with hymnals without four part scores.) Piano lessons started when I was ten, and I just devoured everything my teacher could throw at me!
It's kind of interesting, though. I'm the only one in my immediate family who ever had any interest in playing music.
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Jasmine, little cat with a big heart.
Posts: 18017 | From: 'Twixt the 'Glades and the Gulf | Registered: Aug 2001
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
quote:
no prophet: I remember a particularly rude one for guitar strings names
Now I'm really thinking about what rude sentences you can make with EADGBE.
Okay, I'll do it. You know the 12 year old in me wants to:
Every Adult Dog Gets Bum Entry
Even Anal Dorks Get Blown Eventually
Okay now one of us is sorry.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Hart:
I should add that my ability to pick up sight-reading reasonably naturally seems to go along with an almost complete inability to remember music without a score.
Me too!
I used to speculate about the connection, because back in the days of playing piano in eisteddfods and other competitions there seemed to be a correlation. It seemed to me that the best sight-readers couldn't memorise well, and the best memorisers couldn't sight-read well.
I kept entering the sight-reading competitions in the eisteddfod every year because I could virtually guarantee a win, which would get back some of the money spent entering other sections. But conversely, in those other sections I was easily the most likely person to need the printed music on stage.
Of course, I would point out to people that until Liszt came along, people didn't memorise. They used the score. The fascinating thing is, the only pieces I successfully memorised were all after Liszt's lifetime.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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Belle Ringer
Shipmate
# 13379
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
quote:
I remember a particularly rude one for guitar strings names
Now I'm really thinking about what rude sentences you can make with EADGBE.
Okay, I'll do it. You know the 12 year old in me wants to:
Every Adult Dog Gets Bum Entry
Even Anal Dorks Get Blown Eventually
Okay now one of us is sorry. [/QB]
In the Coursera.com guitar course (coming up again mid-october, free) someone said his guitar teacher said Every Acid Dealer Gets Busted Eventually.
Not rude maybe, but fun.
Posts: 5830 | From: Texas | Registered: Jan 2008
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Arabella Purity Winterbottom
Trumpeting hope
# 3434
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Hart:
a) Nothing, it just comes out. [In which case, I'm jealous]
b) You see a major arpeggio starting with the tonic, and sing that. [I think this is what I do]
c) You see "do-mi-so" and sing that.
d) You see "ascending major third, ascending minor third" and sing that.
A mix of a and b, but I have always tended to sing with one eye on the other parts, so I would add e) anticipate the harmony. This comes from having played in recorder consorts from the age of 5, with a teacher who insisted we always know where the other parts were. I also spent 12 years conducting a choir, so I'm used to reading the whole score and can sing any part.
Over the last 10 years I've been training myself to memorise. Like many other good sight singers, I used to have terrible trouble memorising, but this year I sang the whole of the Verdi Requiem without needing to look at the score. I feel it really brings me into the music and the drama heaps more than singing from a score. I'm currently working on memorising the Messiah, but I suspect that might take another couple of goes, since we only have 5 rehearsals. Small pieces are no longer any trouble, unless they're in French (my French is painful for everyone, including me).
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Hell is full of the talented and Heaven is full of the energetic. St Jane Frances de Chantal
Posts: 3702 | From: Aotearoa, New Zealand | Registered: Oct 2002
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Taliesin
Shipmate
# 14017
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Posted
I apologise for not reading whole thread, so may repeat, that the new national curriculum has music notation it, so all UK children will be able to read music by the end of key stage 3
Said with a straight. Ish face.
Posts: 2138 | From: South, UK | Registered: Aug 2008
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
Another one who can read music ~ piano lessons from about 7, I suspect paid for by my grandparents who had a piano and watched me picking out stuff from very young. Self taught recorder, penny whistle and some classical guitar from there. I can also read guitar tabs and when have time try for tabulture.
Choir here user musical scores too. And the settings are available.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
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Posted
Look there is read and read with respect to music. I am pretty sure I would read at acceptable level to pass stage III, I certainly can read well enough to pick out a tune on the piano, and I recognise various chords and such on the page. Actually if I did some work on the piano I might even be a decent enough basic pianist given the level I got to on the piano at school.
However show me a piece of music and ask me to say what it sounds like or try and sing it and I have very little clue whatsoever. There is no connection between the notes on the page and sound that they reflect. Music theory to me is an arcane puzzle that I know quite a few of the rules too.
Jengie
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"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge
Back to my blog
Posts: 20894 | From: city of steel, butterflies and rainbows | Registered: May 2001
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Alicïa
Shipmate
# 7668
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Posted
I can read music well enough to get by, although it's quite a new experience for me as I only learned relatively recently, a long time after I learned to play the guitar and piano and write computer music.
I used to get by with feeling what sounded right and with the supplemental knowledge of chord charts and scales and arpeggios but I now very much enjoy the theory and learning new things about music all the time.
Posts: 884 | From: Where the Art is. | Registered: Jun 2004
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