How important is it to learn to read music on top of tabs?

It occurs to me that guitarists who can play from standard notation probably have to be a little longer on theory than, say, keyboard players or wind players or brass players or, well, most anybody.

Theory and sight reading don't really go hand in hand (on any instrument!). It's like reading English vs. understanding grammar - related skills, but you don't need a heck of a lot of one to dig deeply into the other.

When you read chords, you get used to the shape of the notes. If I see a set of five notes on the staff, I'm not thinking "well, that's C, F, A, D and E... so that's a C13 voicing... and I need the E on top so I'll play it here...". I see the notes as one block, and I play the chord. If you ask me what notes are in the chord, it may actually take me a second to tell you - it's a lot like seeing an odd word on a page. You recognize the word, even if you haven't seen it in a while, without having to look at the letters individually and sound out the result. You don't think about how many 'S's are in Mississippi when you read it.

There are stereotypes here too - classical musicians are thought of as being good at reading, weak on theory. Oh, they know the basics - they took theory in school - but they don't do a lot of application. Jazz players tend to be long on theory, especially pianists (jazz pianists are the monsters of applied theory, really!) and folks like sax players who do lots of soloing. You may not be able to play a C13b5 chord on a sax, but they sure as heck know the chord structure, and they'll play the arpeggio up down and sideways when they need it. By comparison to those folks, most guitarists are weak on theory.

Guitar is harder to read than any other instrument. But the guitar, with the chromatic layout of the fretboard, actually makes the application of theory much simpler than other instruments. I can teach you the major scale on guitar in all keys in a few minutes. I can teach it to you in all keys, in all positions in about 2-4 lessons. Most instrumentalists spend 2-5 YEARS on their instrument before they can do it in all keys. As a result, they end up with a deeper understanding of the structure of the scale. When they're ripping through a scale run, they actually know where they are - guitarists, as a rule, don't; they're playing by rote.

Guitar isn't the only instrument where these sorts of discussions take place... I was a percussionist in my youth, and many percussionists don't read. Perhaps even more than guitarists, they're considered the 'dummies' of the music world - it's really just a gap in understanding the demands of the instruments others play.

There's a big difference between knowing and doing in anything - theory, reading, etc. Look at the parts for an orchestral piece, and you'd say the violins have it tough... their pages looks like a pepper shaker spilled. The toughest part to play may actually be the one that looks easiest on paper - I remember a school orchestra piece where I had 155 bars of rest, followed by a cymbal crash on the off beat. I guarantee that's a harder, and more stressful, part to play than 4 pages of 16th note arpeggios when you've got 15 other people playing the same part.

you should have glanced at other people's sheet music to not get lost.

you should have glanced at other people's sheet music to not get lost, or just remembered how the song goes.

You've never played percussion, have you?

Sure, you mark your score with cues after you've played through it once.

But the pecussionists are in the back - you can't just look over someone's shoulder to see where they are, and the other percussion parts are also loaded with repeats and rests, and nobody's part shows where that cymbal crash will fall. On first performance, all you can do is count. No substitutes.

Quote:
This points to the fact that no matter how important it may be for guitarists working as professional musicians to be able to read standard notation, standard notation is akward and cumbersome for guitar usage.

The alternative explaination is that it points to a very popular instrument played by a large number of fairly unskilled musicians for whom a simplified, but largely inadequate, alternate notation arose.

Point taken. But please explain to me why, during the boom of popularity of pianos when they were mass produced in the early 20th century, a similar, largely inadequate alternate notation for a large number of fairly unskilled musicians didn't arise. Millions of pages of sheet music were published to supply the demand for simple songs to play on all of those pianos. Hundreds of thousands of them were sold to people who wanted to play. Lots of those people couldn't play and lots of those pianos are still sitting around, unplayed, in the living rooms of the grandchildren of the people who bought them second hand off of the original owners who couldn't play them.

But no alternate, simplified system of notation for the masses arose. The Hammond organ that you could play with one finger arose, but an alternate notation didn't.

I guess we could pin this all to the flawed character of all of us post baby boom slackers. Our great grandparents were full of macht and gumption and they were willing to put in the hard work, walking to school through blizzards and fighting two world wars and toiling for months or years to learn to read standard notation before they'd deign to sully Mary Had a Little Lamb with their inferior skills; but these kids these days, they don't want to do the work, they just want to jump straight into learning Hendrix tunes by rote before they pay their dues, those lazy ungrateful slugs-a-bed....

:wink:

Hey, you know, I popped over to the intermediate lessons page on this website I like called "Guitarnoise.com" - you may have heard of it. I looked, and all of the lessons are notated using tabs under the standard staff. Imagine!

:wink:

Please, please, hold your fire! I'm not arguing that guitarists don't need standard notation. But really, it seems pretty obvious that tab exists for a very legitimate reason and I tend to believe that the reason is NOT that guys like me are stupid or lazy (okay, well, maybe a little stupid and a little lazy, but anyhow...). I think it's because playing guitar from standard notation demands a level of comprehension of music theory that, for example, playing piano from standard notation does not require. And I'm going to guess that the most direct route from complete beginner guitarist to accomplished musician who can read standard notation guitarist involves using tab to get you over the hump.

The alternative explaination is that it points to a very popular instrument played by a large number of fairly unskilled musicians for whom a simplified, but largely inadequate, alternate notation arose.

Bah! I guess it's about class. People belonging to the upper classes learned to read music, since it's an invention coming from monks and priests, who also educated people in the upper classes. People in the lower classes didn't get that education.

My Grandfather came to America at the age of 10, never graduated grade school, and worked as a coal miner in Apalacha his whole life. He played chromatic harmonica, and could site read any sheet of music for his instrument he could find.

His daughter, my mother, got piano lessons from a neighbor. She had to practice at the local Slavic club because my grandparants didn't own a piano. To this day she can sight read anything you care to put in front of her (though generally at a slower tempo than it's scored). When she was playing regularly she could sight read Rachmaninov with no noticable errors.

Growing up in coal mining family doesn't tend to make one upper crust, yet somehow I managed to learn to play four instruments, and can play 2 of them well enough to sight read music on.

Your insinuation is crass, tasteless, and demonstrably wrong.

I'm sorry for people who want to be musicians but who are too lazy to work at it. I pity them because they will never fully realize their own potential. It is not about class. It is about working hard to be good at something.

When she was playing regularly she could sight read Rachmaninov with no noticable errors.

Dude, yer mama musta gots big hands.... :wink:

I've tried to learn a little Rachmaninov but I just don't have the reach.

it's all in how flexible you are.

But slavic women aren't small either :)

I've been in chorus all through school and will be in it next year entering highschool. I must say it is helpful to be able to read music but I still can't play guitar by reading sheet music. I have to have tab. I guess I'll learn sometime or another. But being able to read music is a good thing b/c I can set down at a piano and play a simple piece. But class isn't really a nice way of looking at it but everyone has their point of view.

it's all in how flexible you are.

Yeah, up to a point, but I don't care how much yoga I do on my hands, no way are they gonna' flex an octive and a third.

But the pecussionists are in the back - you can't just look over someone's shoulder to see where they are,
Tell that to the bass drum two feet from my head. :) No, I agree, it's much harder to stay with an orchestra than people who haven't played in one would expect. Especially for percussion, who really are very far away, and have a lot of rests.

I don't think that playing guitar from notation requires any understanding of music theory (edit: beginning to play from notation). At most, it requires you to memorize a few notes (and note values, but if you can't hold whole note, half note, and quarter note in your head, then you may have bigger problems than learning to sight read on the guitar). Beginner pieces don't use many notes, and beginning method books provide a well-paced introduction.

Your insinuation is crass, tasteless, and demonstrably wrong.

I don't know what you think I've insinuated. I see two possibilites

1. If you think I've insinuated that you seem to have an elitistic view of music, well, I guess I might have, because when I read your posts it seems so to me.

2. But If you think I've insinuated that you are a snob from an upper class you're wrong. I don't know anything about you or your background. When I talked about classes and priests and monks I talked about music history. The status standard notation (and classical music) has, might be a result of the fact that it was developed by the church. I admit this reasoning are a bit speculative, and I might be totally wrong. It was just an idea I spat out, not an insult.

By the way, if you are that easily offended, you should not go on and call everybody lazy who don't learn to read music. That is frankly crass, tasteless and wrong. And congratulations! I'm happy for you, now when you have found your way to reach your full potential. Just don't expect it's everybody's way.

I don't think it's meaningful for you and me to discuss this topic anymore. If we are going to be angry with each other it's not worth it.

The status standard notation (and classical music) has, might be a result of the fact that it was developed by the church. I admit this reasoning are a bit speculative, and I might be totally wrong.

Standard notation was developed by the church, yes - but that didn't give it any special status. Fact is, monks (and the occasional abbess) were the only folks literate in Europe for several hundred years. Anything written down for later retrieval/performance - music, poetry, literature, stage plays, even your grocery list - owes a debt to the clergy.

Music notation has the status it does because it works. It's a simple, fast way to record musical ideas for later recreation.

The way it jumped from the church to the wider world: churches had composers - at first, just for plainsong, then for choral works. Some of them became quite well known for their skill... Hildegard of Bingen, Leonin and Perotin of Notre Dame, etc.

Royalty had lots of money, and they built their own chapels or cathedrals. They tried to scarf up the best composers for their own services - after all, they deserved the best. As music started moving to polyphony and instrumental ensembles, they wanted those too - and since they had composers on staff, some were pressed into double duty writing for both the church services and the amusement of king and court.

There weren't enough clergy to go around for all the composer/organist jobs, so people started taking apprentices. Apprentices who weren't clergy often had children, and raised them to follow in the family business. Some of those folks, having developed musical skill, became the free agents of the day, moving about from church to church and king to king to find better paying gigs with more prestige.

All these composers were writing stuff down - they had to, so it could be performed later. But other than composers and church organists, nobody read music. Part of the composer's job was to teach the parts to the ensemble members - composer would play a line on the harpsichord (or whatever) and violinist would listen, learn, and memorize.

Somebody in France - I have no idea who - got the bright idea that it would be easier to teach the instrumentalists to read music than to continue playing each part dozens of times for each new composition.

Along comes Mozart. His father, Leopold Mozart, was a court composer in Salzburg, and taught young Wolfgang to read music. He starts composing, and does just what Daddy does - teach the parts to the musicians.

Then Wolfie goes on tour, performing for kings all over the place. He gets to Paris, and he's amazed - the court musicians read music! It's not just a skill for composers! He starts to teach musicians in other courts as he travels. The French revolution happens a few years later, and the sight readers look for new gigs in other cities, also spreading the skill.

The spread of sight reading does something else for music - it makes big ensembles possible. Most stuff was chamber music - the court ensemble in Paris was HUGE at the time - 25 members! Mozart, having seen what was possible if the musicians could read music, started to write for larger groups; Haydn, Beethoven, etc. followed pretty quickly.

The ability to sight read THEN developed its status - the paying work was in large orchestras. If you could read, you could work. That's a powerful motivator in any field.

Noteboat, you seem to know a lot more about music history than I do. Though, even after I have read what you write, I still think the fact that the clergy developed it partly explain its status.

I'll continue to speculate:
The church developed the foundary of all western music, even folk music, if I'm correctly informed. In Dalarna in Sweden they have a sort of song called kuling, that sound a bit odd with a strange scale. Some say it might be a rest of an older pre christian music tradition. When people had to go to the church the music changed and we started to use different scales. Isn't that interesting? Isn't that an indicator of the power of the church? And do you think this might be one reason that standard notation is so good to write down classical music and church music with? I do. I think music was changed so that it would be easier to theorize (is that a word?)about and in the long run easier to write down. Then it was made more complex with help from theory. This is not a bad thing, in my point of view, but it's only one kind of music.

I don't know a lot about very early (pre-medieval) music history, but by the middle ages there were two very different sources of music.

Before roughly the 1300s, church music was exclusively composed by clergy - they were really the only ones capable of writing things down. Their music followed a series of eight set scales, which have become four of our modes: Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, and Mixolydian. (Each of those four modes was considered two different scales, depending on how the melody was centered). We've got decent historical evidence of this music, dating back to the theorist Boethius (480-524).

But there was also secular music. Since the practitioners were pretty much illiterate, there's no guarantees a piece would be performed with the same melody one day as it had been a month before. One of the texts I have here says their music was 'highly improvisational'... but I kinda doubt that. I think it more likely that there was an improvisational aspect to it, but that a song stayed pretty close to a set melody - but since it wasn't written down, it would evolve over time.

Secular music was spread around by minstrels, traveling entertainers who used poetry, music, and theater to entertain crowds. Some were hired by feudal lords as private entertainers.

Some of those minstrels taught their lords a thing or two about music, and a new class of traveling musican sprang up: troubadors. The difference between a minstrel and a troubador is basically one of class and education - troubadors were the upper crust; wealthy, educated, and in some cases literate (or wealthy enough to hire folks who were literate). By the 1200s or so, we start to have evidence of secular music... love songs, heroic tales, and even parodies of church hymns.

This secular music was noticeably different from church music. For one thing, it didn't use church modes - our major and minor scales grew out of their tunes. By the 1300s, some church composers were also doing 'popular' music - like Guillame de Machaut (who doesn't get enough credit as a composer - he was the first one to use four-part harmony!).

By the 1500s, there was enough of this music around that theory - which was all based on church modes - needed to be expanded to encompass this new stuff. A Swiss theorist, Heinrich Glarean (or Glareanus) did that in 1547, expanding the modes to 12 - 2 on each of the modes from Ionian through Aeolian - and also looking at the possibility of the Locrian mode.

A number of music historians like Joel Cohen, director of the Cambridge Consort, and Christopher Page, founder of Gothic Voices, are working to further our understanding of how this secular music was authentically performed.

It's fairly safe to say, though, that 1. reading notes wasn't considered important before large-ensemble pieces, and that 2. the large ensemble pieces came from the secular music tradition, not the church.