Bad Reputation

No, it's drummers who get the bad rep! By comparison, guitarists are thought of as near-normal.

What did the drummer get on his IQ test?

Drool.

Best,
Ande

what do you call a guy who hangs around with musicians in his spare time??

a drummer :lol:

Actually, both guitarists and drummers are often seen as barely musicians by those with training. There are a few reasons for the bad rep.... and in my opinion, it boils down to one core reason: most guitarists and drummers don't read music in standard notation.

And that means everything they play must either be from memory, or improvised. That in turn causes lots of limitations:

- if you're playing from memory, you need to LEARN a song before you play it. That takes time. Jazz or classical musicians typically read pretty well at sight. So when a group of trained musicians gets together for a rehearsal, they're working on perfecting the performance - guitarists and drummers are often figuring out how to play the tune.

- If you're improvising, every run through will be different. Guitarists often (and drummers sometimes) say it's boring to play something the same every time. Trained musicians see the subtext - the average guitarist isn't capable of playing the same notes every time.

- if you're playing from memory or improvising, your repertoire is limited. Bands I've played with that are made up of non-readers might play 100 songs. Bands made up of readers typically have a performance list of several times that, at least. And that limited repertoire limits the work you can get - how many weddings can you do if every bride names three songs you don't know as tunes she wants? For the reading band, that's no big deal. But for the reading band with a non-reading guitarist... it means less gigs.

- guitarists often cover up their lack of general musical knowledge with a lot of instrument specific "theory". We've hashed out a bunch of this in other threads: endless talk about modes, suspect chord names, misuse of standard terms, etc.

And that generally adds up to the sense that guitarists don't know what they're doing.

When I've worked with a new (reading) band leader, the number one question I get is: "Do you read?". Once they're satisfied that I really do, we're peers. So it's not that they look down on the guitar as an instrument; they just tend to lump all guitarists together, because the stereotype really is the norm.

90% of us give the other 10% a bad reputation.

This one courtesy of Rick Wakeman....

How do you get a guitarist to shut up?

Give him some sheet music and ask him to play.......

:D :D :D

Vic

I think it's true that guitarists aren't considered real musicians until they've proven themselves. On the other hand, I've had other guitarists tell me that written music is a crutch. I think there's room for both standard notation and improvisation. I play for a community chorus and I read music. The director has commented more than once that it's nice to have a guitarist who doesn't need the chords to play something. What I end up playing is mostly chords, but I can figure out what they need to be from the sheet music for the choir and keyboard. I can also tell when chords are provided that they sometimes aren't correct.

I don't have a lot of training. Sometimes I wish I had more. I'll never catch up to our pianists who had years of lessons and majored in music in college. One of them gives piano lessons and another has been a choir director. In a way, I feel that I missed out. I'm not always sure of timings and I run across musical terms that I don't know (but I do know arpeggio :) ). So I encourage anyone who has the opportunity to do more than just learn how to strum some chords and read tab. You never know where your musical journey will take you.

what information would a guitarist get from written music?
would it just be the chord progression and key for them to play along to?
if so, why should they need to read music, as they should be able to to play along just as well from a sheet that has the chords written out in letters?

am i being naive??

the answer is probably yes - i just need somebody to tell me why :D

If you're playing in a session, the written music can tell you the specific notes to play. It can also tell you a specific strumming pattern that the arrangement wants the guitarist to use.

The "reputation" Coolnama speaks of isn't always about written music, though. Quite often it's about attitude. Guitarists are the only musicians you'll run into that think that ignorance (not needing to read music or not needing to know theory - both of which you can certainly be a successful guitarist and not use) is a good thing. And, of course, it's not all guitarists who think this, but more than not (the "90%" that Jason refers to) they not only see learning music as a crutch but also as an inhibitor of creativity. It's the equivalent of a writer who says he doesn't need to spell or know grammar in order to be a writer.

You also have to remember that attitude also goes many ways. There are a lot of good guitarists who do know music theory and can read music and do their best to make sure no one knows that because then they don't look as cool. On the other side of the coin, there are plenty of other musicians (and guitarists hold more than a fair share of these positions, too) who feel that whatever instrument they play is the coolest or hardest or involves the most work, so they tend to look down at (and put down) other musicians who've not followed in their personal footsteps and who don't share their beliefs.

These last things are not musical traits, they're human personality traits, and in the long run you have to remember that all musicians are first and foremost people. People who are incredibly insecure tend to boast how their way is better. People who are arrogant (and also usually very insecure) are going to do the same. It's a lot easier to tear something down and to belittle than it is to work together to make everyone better together. In a world where flip answers are taken as a sign of both coolness and intelligence, guitarists could do better by showing respect for music (by learning it) and other musicians (again guitarists included) could do better by reaching out and helping instead of just being petty and snide.

So whenever you run into this sort of thing, you need to take the personality into context. And you also have to be honest about how much more you yourself have to learn. Speaking only for myself, I could spend the next thirty years learning and still be so far from where I want to be that it's never worth the time to get riled up over it.

Peace

I think David has it nailed it pretty good. Trained musician at least form my limited experience for the most part look down at pepole that haven't put in the work that they have so being able to read music is some sort of badge of honor that they hold over other guitarists.

And the ones that don't think of themselves as being cool or hipper or whatever, than those that do, somehow beleiving that because they may play the guitar very well without reading music.

Neither side is right, for most rock guitarists there is no real need to read music, they have no desire and never will be session musicians or would want ot play in some wedding band that needs to know how to read music so they can play some lame chicken dance song.

I think the reality is there are different types of people that play guitar and each has a slightly different set of skills. If you're in a rock band your not going to be reading sheet music on stage that's just not rock and roll but if you aspire to be a session musican or play in situations where reading music is important then you better know how to do.

Everyone needs to understand what they want to get out of playing the guitar and acquire those skills needed to get there.

I personally don't see myself at this point in my life ever having the NEED to read music but I do respect those that do and realize the work involved.

My only aspiration is to be the best player that I can be and that's from a pure physical/technical aspect related to just palying the instrument, sight reading has no bearing on that and it's not something I plan on pursuing.

Badge of honor? I have to disagree with that. I think if you're looking to be a musician, you need a musician's skills. And standard notation is pretty darn important at that.

Jon Finn (guitar professor at Berklee) said he didn't learn to read music until pretty late in the game. And he did it because of economics - he'd get a call "Hey Jon, I've got a gig for a guitarist this Saturday - pays $1500. You read music, right? Oh, you don't? Well, that one's out. I got another gig where you don't have to read... pays $100. Want that one instead?"

There are roughly 12 million guitar players in the US. About 11 million don't read music at all, and another few hundred thousand can work their way through the notes, but can't read "at sight". There are about 30,000 guitarists in the US who make a living by playing guitar (not by being rock stars, but as their full-time job doing studio work sideman work, teaching, etc). And almost all of them read music. So you can be one of the 11+ million trying to land one of the 2,000 or so jobs that don't need reading (odds = 5500:1) or you can be one of the half million or so who read well trying to get one of 28,000 jobs that need reading (odds = less than 20:1)

Reading gives you a bunch of stuff that's pretty important for a working musician. To list just a few:

- you don't need superhuman memory. If you've played a piece before from music, you can play it again - within minutes, even if it's been years since you did it last. If you learned a piece once, but lost it in your memory, you can probably play it again... in an hour. Or two. Or more.

- you're able to grasp distinctions in music theory. F# sounds just like Gb; some augmented 6th chords sound just like dominant 7ths, etc. Reading the notes lets you understand what the differences are - your ears won't.

- you learn faster. To play a new 3 minute song by ear will take you a minimum of 6 minutes - and that's if you have a perfect ear and a perfect memory... you need to hear it first. Reading at sight cuts that time in half, and you don't need perfect ears/memory.

- because you can play more new music in the same amount of time, you're exposed to more sounds. Your ears get better. Readers tend to have good ears. Ask Corbind - he once brought over a 45 minute CD and saw me figure out all the chord changes and major riffs in one sitting. I couldn't do that if I hadn't played a lot of different stuff, and I couldn't have played as much different stuff if I didn't read. (The fact that this particular evening involved zero reading leads many guitarists to consider it unimportant - I didn't read a note that night. But I know if I didn't read, I couldn't have done it, or it would have taken me much longer.)

- your stage repertoire is huge. As I noted above, non-reading working bands tend to have anywhere from 40-300 songs they can perform. Reading bands I've worked with generally have 400-2000, limited only by the fake books they bring.

- reading and improvisation are not mutually exclusive. Instead, reading exposes you to more sounds, and lets you refer to them faster - your vocabulary improves. Good readers are generally at least fair improvisers. And I can tell you from experience with my students: the ones who read before they try to improvise generally put together much more coherent lines the first time they try compared to those who don't read.

Finally, reading is a discipline. To read decently - to be able to pick out a tune in any key - takes a couple of years of daily practice. To read complicated arrangements with multiple position shifts, heavy syncopation, and big chords reasonably well takes another couple of years. So a reader with fair chops has invested at least four years of daily work on his/her craft. This work ethic generally pays off in other areas too - technique, speed, and phrasing.

I don't see it as a badge of honor. But I do see it as a measure of a minimum level of general musicianship. Good readers are rarely bad musicians. Band leaders tend to see it that way too.

I've known great musicians who couldn't read. I also know one very successful businessman who is almost completely illiterate (he grew up poor in Mexico and never attended school). It's not impossible to rise above your limitations in any field. But I see lots of guitarists who to cling to the self-imposed limitation of not being able to read as a badge of honor, and that I don't understand.

I teach guitar for a living, and I've had thousands of students over the years. I don't insist they all learn to read, and I don't look down on those who don't want to. You can have a lot of fun with the instrument without reading. But for those who have professional aspirations, I urge reading, and I urge it strongly. If you don't read, you're deliberately putting a barrier between yourself and your chances of success (in both monetary and musical terms).

The bottom line is that learning to read will not guarantee you'll be a better musician because of it, but it will improve your chances by exposure to more musical ideas. Not learning to read will not improve your chances in any way.

Which makes more sense as a path to follow?

Another real danger that Tom doesn't mention (and that in re-reading my own post I realize I didn't make clear enough) is that there's also a "reverse snob" attitude with guitarists who don't read music. A "badge of honor," if you will, for the other direction.

I understand that a lot of guitarists don't need to read music, but anyone who actively thinks that not reading music makes them a better guitarist (and there are more than a few out there that do think this) or that it makes them superior to musicians that do (and there are definitely many guitarists in this category, too) is very sadly mistaken. Worse, he is missing out on an easy way to improve himself.

Part of it comes from the approach. If you say you "can't" read music, well, who's to argue? But if anyone's being honest with himself the word "can't" should be replaced with "don't" because anyone can read. It's not hard. You can get the basics down in less than a month in just your spare time. Then, just like everything else with the guitar and music in general, it becomes a matter of practice and repetition.

One last thing, and I can't verify if this is universal, but the guitarists I know who read music also seem to be better tablature readers than those who only read tablature. Part of this is that they are used to reading in "phrases." In other words, they can look at two or three (or eight to ten) measures of tablature at once and almost immediate know what chord shapes to place their fingers in to have optimal movement and when to make shifts in those shapes and positioning. It often takes "tablature only" readers quite a while to make the connectiion between seemingly disjointed numbers and chord shapes.

Peace

I understand how to read music but am far from proficient at it. I read tab .... does that count? :lol: Call me naive, but I never worried about what someone who could read music proficiently thought about me. :? They on the other hand impress the crap out of me. Do I still have fun playing? Heck yeah! And that is all that matters. 8)

what information would a guitarist get from written music?
would it just be the chord progression and key for them to play along to?

Hi almann,

It's not essential to read music but in my opinion it's just too good to want to miss out on.

The ability to read music is one of my most treasured skills - simply because it's so incredibly handy.

Reading a score really is as useful as reading a book is. Sure you can find somebody to read a novel out loud to you, or buy an audio-book, but gaining literacy is better. Some cultures have no written history, just a tradition of passing on stories by word of mouth. That undoubtedly does work, but it sure as hell doesn't have the enormous potential that libraries and books do. Like reading a book, reading a score should make life EASIER - not snobbier, geekier, or any of the other stuff you might hear tossed around by some who still lack musical literacy.

Contrary to popular opinion, reading music is not that hard either. I could explain the basic idea in one sitting (roughly - the position of the dots on the score tell you what pitch it is - G, F#, etc - and the 'shape' of them tells you how long they last relative to each other. There's more of course, but that's the backbone of it). The basic elements of music are often said to be Rhythm, Melody and Harmony, and you could add factors to doing with interpretation and expressiveness to the list. A good score will give you information about ALL of those things. A 'do it yourself kit' that enables you to play things you've never even heard before. Dehydrated symphony, just add fingers.... 8) 8)

What does take time is being able to decode it FAST. Just like you can figure out 3 basic chords from a chart but it might take you months before you can change smoothly, accurately, and musically. Or how you might ‘get' the idea of a particular bar chords in 6 seconds and then need 6 months before you nail it well. Music is like that - it take patience and practice, but the effort is worth it, and the rewards are rich. :)

I'm purely an amateur - a musical hobbyist. I have no memorised note-for-note repertoire of songs - not a single one (including the ones I've written myself). But I don't need one, because a) I can read scores and chord sheets, and b) I can improvise. That includes enough basic grasp of rhythm to be able to make up some kind of strumming or picking pattern on the fly, to suit what's going on with the music and what the other players are doing. It might be something very basic, or perhaps a little fancier on a good day, but developing the necessary coordination between ear and hands is not really that big a deal. It's not that I'm so unambitious that I can't be bothered learning even ten songs, it's that I'm so greedy that I'd rather aim at having the kit of tools to play ALL of them! :twisted: If I ever do need to memorise something for a performance, then having the reading skills will (as NoteBoat said) speed that process up, and also give me something helpful to hang the memory on. Sure, I could build up my ability to play any song by ear (and that's very much a goal too) but improving my ear is an ongoing task that will take me the rest of my life. I can get the benefits from reading NOW. 8) :)

Even at my fairly basic level, if somebody puts a sheet of music in front of me, for a song I've never seen before, and starts playing the lead line I can play the accompanying chords. I'm not making that up - it happens quite regularly with the guys I play with. Somebody brings in some music and suggests we have go at it. It might be 400 years old, or from this year's pop charts - we're not fussy. Naturally, I can only play the chords that are in my current toolkit but, because I've learned a bit of theory as well, if the one that's written looks too tricky to nail quickly then I'll substitute it for something simpler. This is not about boasting, it's just about having some of the basic USEFUL musical skills.

If you asked me to read and play the melody line to an unfamiliar song I couldn't do it sight unseen at full speed, because I've done almost no lead playing and I still read scores quite slowly. But give me a bit of time to work through the score, and I will be able to. Not because I've heard it, but because I can see it. Just like reading a novel and being able to hear the characters talk and recreate the scene in your head.

Even as a fairly slow reader, I can also use the score as we play. I don't need to decode every G and F# as we go, I just need to be able to follow the pulse and pattern of the music to know when I need to change chords. By following what I can see happening on the page and matching it to what the lead player is doing (i.e. using my ears as well as my eyes) I know in advance when to change, and also have some idea of an appropriate style to play.

Boxer Joe Louis said “I've been rich and I've been poor, and believe me rich is best”. I've also been rich and poor, and you can take it from me that Joe nailed it. I've also been ignorant on a wide range of musical topics and I've gained a bit of knowledge about some of them. As you might guess, having the knowledge wins hands down. To round it off I've been unable to read music, and I've learned to read. It's a NO CONTEST, folks - reading wins by a mile. :note1: :note2: :note1:

A good ear and a good eye are a killer combination. Get some of that good stuff if you can... :wink:

Cheers,

Chris

Noteboat I don't disagree with anything you are saying about reading music it's a very important skill and one that every guitarist should have but that every guitarist doesn't necessarily need.

So tell me what type of "gigs" offer $1500 vs $100, weddings? Session work? it sure ain't gonna be for any rock bands playing in a club that night because I would doubt any of the music was written out in the first place. For those types of things most rock guitarists wouldn't be interested in doing them anyway so using those as examples is kind of skewing the facts.

If a person has no itention of looking for those type of gigs the only reason to learn music is for their own benefit and musical development all good but still not necessary.

If I learn how to read music will I automatically be able to play technically difficult songs better than someone that doesn't...my guess is no it won't and you'd have a hard time proving that it would.

Are the 10,000 or whatever number of sight reading guitarists you quoted the best guitar players? Are you able to read music that is beyond your capabilities as a player? If I put sheet music from some technically gifted guitarist in front of you and you could read it but couldn't play it and I put it in front of a non reader who could play then what does that mean? That sight reading doesn't matter or that playing the guitar well is not necessarily tied to the ability to sight read? To me that's what counts I could care less listening to a guitarist whether they can sight read or not it's what they can do with their fingers that count. The two are somewhat non related. I will admit if someone does take the time to read music it's more likely that they are a little more disciplined than most which might carry over into their playing so compared to the average non reader the may be slightly better players but maybe not.

Like I mentioned before it really comes down to what you want to do with the guitar and how you want to spend your time with it. For all the examples Note listed reading is essential and there's really no other way to get there but learning to read, but if you aren't looking to play weddings and sessions and sit on some recital at the drop of a hat then the need diminishes quickly and it only becomes important if you want it too.

PS - David and the reverse snob issue you raised about reading music is similar to the guitarists that claim they were all self taught as if that makes them somehow better than those that have taken lessons...invariably somehwere in a conversation they will make the statement, "And I never took lessons learned it all on my own" and my response to that is so what, you either play well or you don't, they use that statement as either an excuse for the lack of skills or as some sort of badge of honor like saying haha I did this on my own and you needed a teacher. It's all BS and I can't stand people that preface everything they say with those words as the first thing out of their mouth...just shutup and play the guitar nobody cares how you learned to play.

OK one more pet peave since I'm on a roll are people that comment someone's playing with " It's not my kind of music but..." What the heck is that supposed to mean and why was there a need to say that..to put down the music they are playing. If you are commenting on someone's playing that's what you should do tell them it's either good or bad but prefacing it with That's not my kind of music is ridiculous. If you need to do that then don't comment.