Thread: Learning an instrument without reading music? Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.


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Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on :
 
I have dyscalculia and cannot read music. However, I can sing and pick up new songs quickly so I must have some ear for music - are there any instruments I can learn easily by ear, or by other methods? I've heard that guitars/ukuleles and other instruments that use tabs are easier for dyscalculic people to learn.

Any suggestions?
 

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Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :
 
I've been playing guitar for nearly 30 years, and cannot read music.

As long as you are OK with patterns, there should be no limit to your possibilities.
 

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Posted by The Kat in the Hat (# 2557) on :
 
What instrument do you want to play and why are the two questions you maybe should ask first.
Reading music just means that you can work out a tune without having to hear it first.
If you want to be able to play hymns on the organ at church, maybe you should learn to read music, but I know quite a few keyboard players who can pick out a tune and make a very reasonable accompaniment without being able to read music. It just can take them a bit longer with something new because they have to memorise it.
 

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Posted by Darllenwr (# 14520) on :
 
In principal, there are many instruments that are easy enough to play by ear - penny whistle comes to mind.

I would suggest that the difficulty of the instrument itself is unlikely to be the issue (French horn is an exception here) - the big issue will be your own determination not to be beaten.

Penny whistle has the attraction of being simple to blow and simple to finger. At least, for the beginner. You can make it as complicated as you wish by trying to play in keys other than the one marked on the instrument. Stick to the whistle's own key, and it will prove very easy.

Guitars have drawbacks of their own. How tough are your fingers' ends? I ask because a steel-strung guitar will rapidly start to feel like an egg slicer when you first start out. Just getting over the pain barrier can be quite a problem. If you want to try guitar, start out with a 'Classical' instrument (nylon-strung) which is a lot kinder to the fingers. Once your finger tips have hardened, you may want to think of migrating to steel.

Having said that, electric guitars, whilst being steel-strung, are not usually as vicious as acoustic instruments.

If you go with guitar, buy yourself a chord dictionary of some sort - this will show you where to put your fingers. It is something of a head start!
 

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Posted by TheAlethiophile (# 16870) on :
 
Interesting that you've linked it with dyscalculia. I taught myself to play guitar, based on tabs (since they correspond to the physical appearance of the instrument) and cannot for the life of me read music, in spite of many attempts.

Yet I would never consider myself dyscalculiac (sp?), not least due the fact that I have never had an issue with numbers or maths in general as I did a master's degree in the subject and work as a chartered accountant.

The side effect of learning tabs rather than reading music is that I am far more proficient at complicated 'picking' pieces than I am at strumming chords.
 

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Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :
 
Reading music was the preserve of the educated until relatively recently. Your average Tudor fiddle and recorder players wouldn't have been able to read a score, but could have performed any amount of cracking dance tunes to keep people happy at gatherings. If you want to play an instrument, don't let it stop you.

You might have some difficulty with the piano, but stringed and wind instruments should be do-able: just pick one up and have a go, figure out your own fingering. It doesn't matter if you don't play to approved concert standard, the point is to have some fun and enjoy what you do.
 

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Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
Jade,
I have heard of a dyscalculic who learned to read music by treating the notes as an alphabet.
As to being able to pick up songs and sing them, that is a bit different than learning an instrument by ear. Out voices are part of our natural expression. This is not said to discourage you, but to prevent discouragement if learning an instrument proves more arduous.
Tabs are available for multiple instruments, pick the one you like best. That, I think, will encourage you to stick with it.
 

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Posted by HughWillRidmee (# 15614) on :
 
FWIW - Occasionally my late father, who could not read music, would return from church having heard a hymn tune for the first time, sit at the piano and, at the second attempt and using both hands, play the tune faultlessly (though rather in the style of an unaccompanied Mrs Mills )

I recall asking him why he could not play from music and he said that he was told (rightly or wrongly I have no idea) in his twenties that if he learnt to read music he would lose the ability to play-by-ear. I am sufficiently his son to understand why he chose not to risk his "natural" ability.
 

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Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on :
 
Thanks everyone.

LilBuddha that is interesting - when I was small my grandma had some Early Learning Centre sheet music which had colour-coded notes. I found that I could follow that.
 

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Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
Jade, you might like to try this

Tobin music system

I went on a course, thinking "coloured notes" nah, kiddy rubbish, and it was eye opening. Candida Tobin used colour to connect the different notes in relation to each other and to the key signatures - the notes were placed on the stave as in normal music, but matched with stickers on instruments - there are special stickers for recorders and guitars. I found that the children I taught picked up the reading very well, and could switch from descant to treble recorder within a couple of weeks. The system extends into an understanding of some theory as well.

Unfortunately, I see that the website is rubbish, and you can't find examples of the books, exercises and stickers. I found a criticism that she didn't use the spectrum order of the colours - an ignorant criticism, because she ordered the colours so that those in a chord were related.

Here's a Youtube of her teaching! So you can see how she has used colours, and the pattern for making the chords. She is not as inspiring in this as she was on the course I went on.

Tobin teaching

Another programme Watch this one first!
 

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Posted by balaam (# 4543) on :
 
What instrument should I learn is approaching music from the wrong direction.

I prefer the approach of saying "What noise do I want to make" and finding something that makes that sound, then learning that.

As for music reading, there has never been a shortage in any style of music or instruments of blind musicians for whom dots on lines are irrelevant. Learning the techniques to produce the sound is what it is about.
 

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Posted by la vie en rouge (# 10688) on :
 
A caveat about bowed strings – if you try to learn them on your own you are likely to learn a LOT of bad habits that will prevent you from ever playing them really well. For violin, cello etc., you really need to find a teacher so that you get a solid technical foundation. An instrument like the guitar is easier to learn by yourself.

That said, if you are interested in taking lessons, might it be worth looking into the Suzuki method, which AIUI is based on learning by ear in the first instance? (Have to admit I don’t know much about Suzuki; my cello teacher is anti-Suzuki precisely because he says it produces musicians who can’t sight-read.)
 

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Posted by la vie en rouge (# 10688) on :
 
Sorry, just noticed the last part of Balaam’s post.

Blind musicians are really interesting. I know several of them for family reasons. Braille scores actually do exist, although they obviously serve a different purpose to printed scores, since you can’t read Braille and play the piano at the same time

Nonetheless blind musicians do a lot of work by ear, because Braille scores are a bit clumsy to deal with. My boyfriend’s Dad is a (blind) retired concert pianist, who used to learn entire concertos mostly relying on his ear, with a bit of support from a Braille score when he couldn’t remember what came next.

Consequently classically trained blind musicians (more than sighted ones) usually have prodigious powers of memory. The main downside to learning works this way is that it is very difficult not to be influenced by someone else’s interpretation.
 

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Posted by JFH (# 14794) on :
 
As the son and brother of professional musicians but a lifelong difficult relation to music, partially due to a sense that I just couldn't do it and partially due to strong lack of joy in doing it due to expectations and other things, I'd like to throw in that it's all about what you want to do with the instrument, as well.

There IS a big difference between playing an instrument as an accompaniment for other things such as singing, and between playing it solo or for melodies. This is something that took me way too long to get:
All of those are "real" ways of playing the instrument.
They may take different kinds of skills and practice, but music is about doing what you want to do, not what impresses others (unless there's a love interest involved, in which case you want to go for a hot, lingering saxophone).

You're a master when you can play what you want to play and the way you want to play it, or feel truly satisfied with your ability to do so. For me, that means right now I'm "only" strumming chords on the guitar. Life's at present too short to go into melodic play or picking the chords, but I can make your average audience cheer to your average Springsteen or U2 song. Some may scorn, but I can make that music come alive to the audience and to myself.

This is also related to what songs you want to play. Some songs are easier to fill with "life" - Cohen's Hallelujah a typical example, which is why it's so frequently played. Others take more specific techniques, styles, or sensitivities, but do what you feel pleases you. Musicality means enjoying music, as my father, percussionist in a world-touring orchestra, usually says.

This is a good place for learning guitar if it's related to anything post-50's-y. It shows you the chords on a guitar neck using tabs if you hover the pointer over the chord letters, and their database for tabs and chords is huge. Feel free to PM me if you think I can help you further!

P.S. I myself read music decently but never use it outside choir-singing. Probably because that's really the only place where I meet more classical music. What kind of music did you have in mind to play? That will probably effect your choice of instrument.
 

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Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :
 
Genuine question - why would dyscalculia make you unable to read music? I can sing from sight reasonably well and I'm not conscious of using maths - I just think "oh the little dots go up, so my voice should go up", with a few extra rules to cope with accidentals. This mostly works ok unless the composer is doing something weird with tonality.
 

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Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on :
 
It's actually a well-established symptom of dyscalculia - it doesn't use maths in a conventional sense but it does involve 'number sense' and hand-eye co-ordination, both of which are problems for dyscalculic people (eg spatial awareness, rhythm etc). Dyscalculia is not just about doing sums badly, though obviously poor numeracy skills are often the most obvious symptom.

Other symptoms include difficulty telling left from right and difficulty reading analogue clocks.
 

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Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :
 
I think there is a close relationship between music and maths - many IT people are musicians. I think it is more that the mind processing patterns are similar.
 

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Posted by Timothy the Obscure (# 292) on :
 
It is possible to play any instrument without reading music. The real question to start with is, what kind of music do you want to play? In my case, I like music but had no particular interest in playing it until I heard the Beatles, and so obviously guitar and bass were the instruments I chose. If you want to play folk-rock-blues-country kind of stuff, guitar is a good place to start (or ukulele...the skills will transfer if you want to add two more strings).

If you want to play jazz or especially classical, it's more of a problem. Not insurmountable, but you have to want it bad enough to work really hard at learning things by ear (and for classical, memorizing).

However, while I believe that reading music is a valuable skill that anyone who aspires to be a complete musician should learn, I think there can be some real advantages to learning it after you have some competence on an instrument rather than starting there. When playing music becomes primarily an eye-hand coordination process, it's very easy for the ear to get left out of the process. I can read--I'm a mediocre sight-reader, and don't ask me to sight-read more than one line at a time--but I mostly learned to play by ear and tablature (don't let any snob tell you that tab is an inferior form of notation--it's older and for stringed instruments it's really better than standard notation). I have found, in playing with classically trained musicians (people who were considered good in high school and college orchestras, not professionals) that they have a hard time listening and playing at the same time. They are fixed on the score--if something changes (like they inadvertently skip a note, or the leader says "one more time,") they can't adjust--they just keep on driving into the train wreck like Casey Jones, high on cocaine.

As the (probably apocryphal) folk or jazz musician may have replied to the interviewer who asked "Can you read music?":

"Not enough to hurt my playing."
 

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Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :
 
Can't reiterate too much: learn something you like the sound of - speaking from personal experience, a violin can sound like torture to the person playing as well as those listening.

The simplest instruments for you to master would be woodwind - either whistles (mentioned above) or unreeded instruments such as recorders.

Brass is possible but you'll take a long time to develop a 'lip' without some expert guidance.

If you have a brass band in your area you may find they'll be willing to take on an teach a novice who can't read music - bands vary.
 

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Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
If you go for a recorder, do not choose a descant - a treble has a much better sound. The much smaller sopranino also has a better sound than the descant, despite having a higher pitch. I found it easier to play because I didn't need to stretch my fingers so much. It is tuned similarly to the treble, with the lowest note being F, so you don't have to learn new fingerings when changing.
 

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Posted by Kyzyl (# 374) on :
 
I have a lap harp that requires no music reading ability at all. Each song is printed on a sheet shaped to fit under the strings. You just pluck along. I have several sets of sheets for various holidays, traditional folk songs, and several of hymns.

ETA - once I got the hang of playing it was really easy to start picking out tunes by ear without any sheet of tabs.

[ 16. May 2014, 20:43: Message edited by: Kyzyl ]
 

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Posted by RevMotherRaphael (# 18102) on :
 
I learned to play a shinobe (Japanese flute) reading the Japanese music score. It is just numbers in Japanese and our familiar Western numerals so you might find it a possibility too.
 

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Posted by Snags (# 15351) on :
 
As others have said, pick an instrument that will enable you to play the kind of music you want to play, and go from there.

If it's guitar, and initially mostly for strumming along you don't need to read music at all. And tab + ear is easier to muddle you through more complex stuff.

I'd also not get too hung up on the music/maths thing. I know a number of pro musicians who are hopeless at maths - they have commented that amongst their peers there's a fairly even split between those who approach it mathematically, and those who don't. So you never know ...
 

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Posted by piglet (# 11803) on :
 
Snags is right - from my experience, many musicians fall into two categories: the ones who are brilliant at maths and the ones who are utterly hopeless. My husband, who's been a cathedral organist for over 30 years, always says we should never trust anything he says that involves numbers, as he falls into the "hopeless" category, but it hasn't stopped him from getting a good degree in (and making a career out of) music.

If you have a good ear (and a good sense of rhythm), you may find with a good, patient teacher that learning to match notes to sounds isn't as difficult as you imagined.
 

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Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on :
 
Hello, sorry for the delay - had a job interview yesterday and was so exhausted after I got back (it was in another town) that I just had to go to bed!

I want to learn for singing along to, so while I am intrigued by the idea of a penny whistle, not much good for that! I like folk/bluegrass music so something in the ukulele family seems about right - and ukuleles are easy to get now. Rather less easy to get hold of, does anyone know about playing dulcimers? A musician I am a fan of plays it and I am intrigued, plus again I could play it to sing along to.
 

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Posted by jacobsen (# 14998) on :
 
Do you mean a mountain dulcimer - four strings, and played horizontally on your lap here with a goosefeather plectrum, or a hammer dulcimer which stands on legs, has many more strings and is played standing, using beaters? here

Dammit, those links worked on the preview window!
But both instruments can be found on u-tube

[Edited. - Ariel, Heaven Host.]

[ 17. May 2014, 15:28: Message edited by: Ariel ]
 

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Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :
 
Jacobsen, I've edited the links in your post for you. You had "http:" in twice in both links; you might want to look out for that in future postings because the UBB code will always put one in for you as well, which you will need to delete to get the link to work.

Ariel, Heaven Host.
 

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Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on :
 
A mountain dulcimer is the kind I meant. Thank you!
 

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Posted by Kyzyl (# 374) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Jade Constable:
A mountain dulcimer is the kind I meant. Thank you!

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quote:

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Originally posted by Darllenwr:

....Guitars have drawbacks of their own. How tough are your fingers' ends? I ask because a steel-strung guitar will rapidly start to feel like an egg slicer when you first start out. Just getting over the pain barrier can be quite a problem. If you want to try guitar, start out with a 'Classical' instrument (nylon-strung) which is a lot kinder to the fingers. Once your finger tips have hardened, you may want to think of migrating to steel.

Having said that, electric guitars, whilst being steel-strung, are not usually as vicious as acoustic instruments.

If you go with guitar, buy yourself a chord dictionary of some sort - this will show you where to put your fingers. It is something of a head start!

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When I were a lad int the 1970s, I had a Fender Mustang and a Vibro Champ amp. My fingers were too fat to play House of the Rising Sun adequately, but I found that I could tune it to an F chord and play slide with a screwdriver. Mum did not offer me a lipstick case. I sold it at age 18 to another university student and bought a surfboard. I have never looked back: I still surf and sometimes I mess around with the drums...
 

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Posted by The5thMary (# 12953) on :
 
I learned snare drum notation in high school but when I tried to learn drum set notation I got really confused. I still can't reconcile the various symbols for snare drum, bass drum, crash cymbal, hi-hat, etc. And don't even get me started about odd time signatures! However, I have good rhythm. If a song is fairly simple (such as a song by The Rolling Stones or The Beatles), I can learn it just by listening to it. I'm never going to be able to play stuff by Genesis, Dream Theater, Sevendust, or speed metal. Not this side of Heaven, anyway.
 

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Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
In a cave once occupied by Neanderthal people was found a bone pipe, tuned to what we would recognise as doh, re, me and so on. I bet whoever owned it didn't read music.
 

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Posted by Chorister (# 473) on :
 
If you can find someone willing to write out the notes under the music, you can play almost any instrument (that plays a single line, best avoid piano or organ!). Failing that, guitar chords are often written in, as well as the notes of the stave, so you could play those without help.
 

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Posted by balaam (# 4543) on :
 

quote:

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However, I have good rhythm. If a song is fairly simple (such as a song by The Rolling Stones or The Beatles), I can learn it just by listening to it. I'm never going to be able to play stuff by Genesis, Dream Theater, Sevendust, or speed metal. Not this side of Heaven, anyway. [/QB]

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quote:

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Originally posted by balaam:

quote:

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However, I have good rhythm. If a song is fairly simple (such as a song by The Rolling Stones or The Beatles), I can learn it just by listening to it. I'm never going to be able to play stuff by Genesis, Dream Theater, Sevendust, or speed metal. Not this side of Heaven, anyway.

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I practice in 5/8, 7/8 and 11/16, and keeping time in 4/4 with one hand and triplets with the other. It's about getting the feel of the rhythm rather than counting it. I always lose the rhythm when I try to count. [/QB]

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Oh, I hate people like you! I can barely keep 4/4 time with one hand, no be bringing another hand doing 6/8 and a foot that's banging out some other damn thing on the bass drum!
 

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Posted by Sir Kevin (# 3492) on :
 
I don't read cello music, but I played the cello once and it sounded OK. It didn't sound horrble! My wife used to play the cello and she may have given me some pointers... The cello was in the band-room next door to her vocal music classroom.
 

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Posted by Fineline (# 12143) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Jade Constable:
It's actually a well-established symptom of dyscalculia - it doesn't use maths in a conventional sense but it does involve 'number sense' and hand-eye co-ordination, both of which are problems for dyscalculic people (eg spatial awareness, rhythm etc). Dyscalculia is not just about doing sums badly, though obviously poor numeracy skills are often the most obvious symptom.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Fineline:

quote:

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Originally posted by Jade Constable:
It's actually a well-established symptom of dyscalculia - it doesn't use maths in a conventional sense but it does involve 'number sense' and hand-eye co-ordination, both of which are problems for dyscalculic people (eg spatial awareness, rhythm etc). Dyscalculia is not just about doing sums badly, though obviously poor numeracy skills are often the most obvious symptom.

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Out of curiosity, to what extent is the difficulty reading music a number processing thing and to what extent a visual processing thing? I'm just wondering because I have Irlen Syndrome (common in people on the autism spectrum, and also in people with various other neurological differentces - dylsexia, ADHD, etc.) and it is apparently a well-established characteristic of Irlen Syndrome that we have difficulty reading music. But in this case it's about the visual processing - difficulty keeping track of which line is which. So I'm curious whether this is also the case in dyscalculia - whether it's part of the overlapping difficulties of a lot of these disorders - or if it's purely a number difficulty.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Jade Constable:
There is probably some overlap - a quarter of people with ADHD have dyscalculia (though I am not amongst them) for instance. As to whether it's a visual processing problem or a numerical one, I couldn't tell you, but maths and music are very strongly connected.

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Ah yes, I know there can be a connection between maths and music. (Although in my case I always found maths quite natural to understand, while I was completely confused by music!) And sight reading does involve counting up and down, visually - so I can see how sight reading would be difficult from that angle if numbers are difficult. It wasn't the counting that was difficult for me - it was seeing what line a dot was on and being able to make sense of the whole and convert the visual to the kinaesthetic.
 

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Posted by womanspeak (# 15394) on :
 
As a classically trained singer I can read music but no longer, thanks to a couple of bouts of whooping cough, sing as well as I would like.
I tried guitar during the folk 60's but found it too difficult for my small hands.

But two years ago I discovered the joys of playing the ukelele in a group. It is an easy instrument and if you buy a good one and replace the original strings with top quality, it is like playing with butter. On-line lyrics and tabs provide a world of music from all genres and times and youtube clips give excellent instruction. But playing with a group really helps cover up any flaws. And after two glasses of red, even my voice sounds good, at least to me.
I've even used it at a country church where I lead services and preach once a month. A very forgiving instrument and very portable.
 

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Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
Not entirely seriously, but this morning a clue in the quick crossword gave the answer ocarina, and I recall that someone was doing lessons in those at school because of the simplicity of learning.
 

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Posted by The Phantom Flan Flinger (# 8891) on :
 
I've played bass in my church music group for about 5 years, and I can't read a note (I do want to learn to read music though).

<cue comments about bass players not being real musicians >
 

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