[Harp-L] Reading Music -- Pros and Cons



If you've ever written a grocery list, or kept a calendar, or asked or been asked, "Could I have that in writing?" you have a glimmer of how the ability to read and write can be useful. If you've ever preferred to use a pencil and paper instead of doing a calculation in your head, you have a glimmer of how the ability to read and write "math" can be useful.

Wouldn't it be useful if there were a way to write down musical ideas "for later"? And wouldn't it be useful to be able to read those written-down ideas, either your own or someone else's?

It isn't that the ability to read and write music is essential to intelligent listening and playing, just as people get by in the world -- some of them very well -- who cannot read and write spoken language. But for many of us, the ability to read music takes us further, and faster, than if we tried to do what we're doing without it.

Different people learn differently. For those who learn well when there is a strong visual element, the ability to read music is especially useful as a foundation for future growth. To give just one example, there is a particular rhythm that I have heard many, many times in Cuban music, but I could never *quite* get my ears and mind around what I was hearing. I chanced on the "Latin Jazz" section of a theory book I own, and there it was -- the "clave" rhythm -- written out. Once I saw it, my brain went "Aha!" and now I "have" that rhythm as my own.

One of the terrible limitations of most harp tab systems is that there is no clear way to convey rhythm information. One of the limitations of conventionally-written music is that there is no good way to convey subtle inflections, and The Iceman is right: The music *does* come first.

I did have a long struggle to correlate my knowledge of written music with non-key-of-C diatonic harmonicas -- a question that has been raised here, but not as thoroughly answered (at least not in recent memory) as might be hoped. It is a highly non-trivial problem, imho, and I have asked many sages how they do it. Winslow was one of those sages. If I understand his answer, he mentally shifts the clef of the staff (pardon the music-reading jargon, here), and then is able to read the music and transpose in real time. I have not come close to that skill, and have embraced the method of other sages who "think in the key of C" as it were. For me, the trick is to play non-C harps as "virtual C harps". So it is "as if" 1-blow were C, "as if" 5-draw were F, etc. One link is position playing. In 2nd position on a C harp, I'm playing in the key of G. 4-draw is D, just like always. If I want the blue third, Bb, I play 3-draw-half-step-bend. In 2nd position on any other key harp, I play "as if" I were playing in the key of G on a C harp, and when I want the blue third, I play 3-draw- half-step bend never mind in the heat of the moment what concert pitch it is. When I play in 3rd position on any harp, and want the minor third of the scale, I play 5-draw "as if" I were playing in the key of D on a C harp. And so on.

Scale degrees are the other link, here. If I want to play a song on my C harp (or any harp) that is notated in some key other than C, I take the time to pencil in the scale degree of each note. Then I can decide what position I want to play it in, and I play those degrees as if I were playing in whatever-position on the C harp.

In summary, if you are able to play what you hear and what you want without reading music, and think that you will always be able to do so, you are probably right to allocate your time elsewise. (A pretty good theory book that *doesn't* require the ability to read music is "How Music Really Works," by Wayne Chase. I have learned a lot from it.) If you are a visual learner and/or like to read books as one way of expanding your knowledge, learning to read (or at least decipher!) music might well be a worthwhile investment, particularly if your interests take you to styles of music with stronger written traditions than, say, blues. Everyone's mileage will vary, but these are the pros and cons as I see them.

My long-winded three cents, for what they're worth.

Elizabeth (aka "Tin Lizzie")




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