Est-ce que la lecture de musique Faites-vous un meilleur musicien?

Toby Pitman on Jan 12, 2013 in Recording & Production 6 comments

Think musician, and you may picture sheet music reading. But, is the ability to read music important? How crucial is it for professionals relying on computer software? Toby Pitman explores.  

Lecture de la musique, hein! Soit vous faites, ou vous n'avez pas. Hows que pour une lapalissade! Je me demandais l'autre jour combien de lecteurs HUB pense effectivement que la musique la lecture est une condition nécessaire pour faire de la musique, surtout dans un monde de la création musicale assistée par ordinateur.

Je me trouve dans une position curieuse ici parce qu'être un musicien professionnel, je me ne lisent pas la musique. Well thats pas exactement vrai. Je peux lire, mais Im pas de vue-reader. Il me faut un certain temps pour passer et travailler tout ça. Quand je dis un moment que je veux dire environ un jour!

Ce n'est pas comme si je ne sais pas ce que toutes les notes, des valeurs de synchronisation et le marquage veux dire, c'est juste qu'il ne fait pas de sens pour moi. Je pense que je pourrais être dyslexique, musicalement! Je pense que la réponse la plus probable est que je n'ai jamais pratiquer la lecture à vue donc Im pas bon dans ce domaine!

Dire que je n'ai pas de problèmes d'écriture musicale sur une portée assez rapidement. Ce qui est étrange! La seule chose Ive remarqué, c'est que si je commence à lire quelque chose et je reconnais la mélodie, j'ai tout de suite

Je dois admettre Im un peu déchiré par ma capacité (ou leur absence) à déchiffrer, et ce que je considère être les avantages d'apprendre de manière informelle (à l'oreille) et il suffit de faire jusqu'à que je vais comme beaucoup d'autres musiciens font . Parfois, je souhaite que je pourrais soupir lire et je pense Pourquoi ai-je besoin?. Je suppose que cela dépend de quel type de musique que vous jouez et ce type de concerts youre va pour.

La première chose que j'ai l'habitude de dire aux clients potentiels qui m'approchent pour les sessions, c'est que je ne lisent pas. Je pense que c'est la meilleure façon honnête et d'approcher ce que je fais (et le moins gênant!). Id-dire qu'il perd m'a un emploi sur dix.

La musique a toujours traditionnellement jamais été documenté sur papier. Theres des centaines d'années d'une valeur de la musique écrite sur les résultats qui nous permettent de revivre et d'entendre les œuvres de grands compositeurs comme Bach et Mozart qui sont depuis longtemps disparu exactement comme ils avaient l'intention que ça sonne. Il n'ya rien comme entendre un orchestre incroyable Lire ces ouvrages de nouveau à nous comme un grand acteur pourrait relire les œuvres de Shakespeare à haute voix.

Cependant, la documentation de la musique a changé de manière significative où vous pouvez désormais enregistrer et d'écouter la musique que revenir quand vous voulez. Une symphonie peuvent désormais être stockés dans un fichier MIDI ou MP3. Vous pouvez maintenant documenter vos idées musicales sans la nécessité d'une langue écrite.

La chose importante à retenir est que la musique est un langage. Dans la vie quotidienne, theres aucune raison que vous devez être capable de lire l'anglais d'interagir et de communiquer avec quelqu'un qui parle anglais. Vous avez juste besoin d'être capable de parler anglais. Avec la musique, l'apprentissage de la langue est très important si vous voulez communiquer avec les habitants (musiciens), mais finalement, la musique parle d'elle-même et peut être compris par tout le monde, peu importe quelle langue vous parlez. Et ne pas être capable de lire la musique vous rend pas moins musicale ou en mesure de communiquer ou comprendre les idées musicales. Certainement pas!

Peut-être que vous avez une opinion à ce sujet? Si oui jaimerais entendre. :)



Toby Pitman

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For the past 20 years Toby has worked as a professional guitarist, programmer and producer. Clients include Sir Paul McCartney, George Michael, Shirley Bassey, Yusuf Islam, Giles Martin as well as the London 2012 Olympic Ceremonies. He has also worked extensively in TV, Advertising and Film. As well as composing himself he has also ... Read More

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Discussion

Dave DeLizza
Depending on the type of gigs you want, can be the serious decider. A lot of the paying gigs that I've ever gotten that were not cover bands like playing in Pits at shows, it's obviously a necessity to read.

Also, at as a student of music, especially if you have any interest in jazz or classical, you are not ostracized completely but you are cut off from a large portion of literature. There are not a ton of classical and jazz tab books. They do exist, but far more in standard notation.

I always ask my students if they want to learn how to read music, but one thing that I always force them to do is to read rhythm. I teach guitar bass and drums. To me, being able to visualize the rhythm makes it so much easier to learn. Imagine doing math in your head without ever having written it down.

Nice write up an nice perspective, and I think you're right. To get paid and make music today, you don't need to read music. But there are plenty of reasons that you would want to.
Jan 12, 2013
ksandvik
It's easier to jot down notes for tracks if you know basic notation, at least writing down chord progressions. Similar if you want to play using Real Book and similar systems.
Jan 12, 2013
msonic
I don't know if you really NEED to read music to be a professional musician or if it makes you a better musician. I just know that I've gotten a lot of really cool gigs because I read music.
Jan 13, 2013
Paul Bissell
I have never found that reading music has detracted from my abilities to perform, produce, compose, transcribe, or any other music related activity that I have done for the past 30 years.

Quite the contrary, it has been one of the skills that has allowed me to move between genres and duties with little resistance; and in many situations made me one of the indispensable workers in a collaborative situation.

Need? That is completely contextual today as others have stated.

I think the best analogy is: Do you need to be bilingual?
Jan 13, 2013
Peter Schwartz
Paul nailed it with his first sentence. Personally I'm highly allergic to any and all quasi-justifications for a musician to not learn music (or, as an aside, music theory). To address several of your points... you mentioned the idea that a symphony can be "documented" by virtue of it being recorded. Well, you're not going to ever hear that piece recorded unless the musicians playing it have the original documentation in front of them -- in the form of a score and charts. And just because music is the closest thing we have to a universal human language, there's no equivalence in suggesting that learning how to read music might be moot. It's the difference between being in the audience and being a performer, and in many cases, between amateur and professional. Finally, if you're losing 10% of your gigs because you don't read music, that's a lot my friend!
Jan 17, 2013
matde007
Hi,

I discovered this discussion pretty late, but there are few aspects I’ld like to add.
I’m over 50 now and a classically trained musician (and I’m from Germany, so please excuse my bad English). I learned reading music when I was 5 or 6, started playing piano at the same age and started studying music (orchestral conducting) when I was 19.

At first sight this looks like a very classical education, but I was always involved in all kinds of music (jazz, rock, pop etc.).

I do a lot of arranging (for studio, live music, shows etc), and - of course - all of this music is written down.

A typical situation is, that somebody calls me to arrange some backing vocals for a song. When I come to the studio with my sheet music and find some singer there who can read music the job is usually done in 1 or 2 hours. Can you imagine how long it would take, if they don’t read music? If we really have to rehearse it instead of making a quick check? Time is money!

Another example:
think of any kind of orchestral music. Depending on how complex the music is you will never be able to hear exactly what the composer wrote (you will always hear what the conductor and/or the sound technician want to make you hear!). You need the score to find out. And then you might find out, that there are parts in it that you didn’t hear, or you didn’t understand. Without reading music there is no change to get closer.

Music for movies or games is a big thing nowadays. And there are a lot of people out there who would like to work in this business. First thing you can read in almost every book about scoring is: study the score of big romantic music. ...Wagner, Strauss, Stravinsky, Debussy, Ravel etc. - but therefore you must be able to read it.

And then there’s music theory: to achieve a certain sound, to write a proper second vocal line to a pop-song, to make a small vocal or string-arrangement sound big, to orchestrate your music in your DAW, to create certain musical effects etc. you should have good knowledge in music theory. But to understand it you should read music. An believe me: it’s very helpful mot just to follow your instincts but knowing what you do and why you do it.

I hear a lot of excuses from people who say that Hans Zimmer doesn’t read music, too. Or the Beatles, or („fill in whatever you want“). Maybe, but do you know who’s working in the background to make their ideas sound better?

One more thing: if you start learning a new language you’ll be taught a rule and at the same time 200 exceptions of the rule. That’s making it so hard.
Learning how to read music is so much easier: the system is totally logical. There are some rules to learn but there’re no exceptions to the rule. I don’t know, but maybe even here at macprovideo.com they’re offering a training (and if not they should consider it!) . ;-)

It’s not necessary to get happy, but it will open you a whole new world for your own music and your musical career.
Think about it. It's easy!
Jun 15, 2013

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