[Harp-L] Re: Reading Sheet Music

["'Dr. Michael J. Marino, DC'" <m.marino@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

ÂOkay this has gotten interesting,

Before I give my opinion and how I view it and why; a little
background of my biases. I have had 8 yrs of traditional vocal
training as a youth. Also training in Violin (4yrs), recorder (2yrs),
and Practice chanter for Bagpipes (15yrs). I am self trained for
the most part with a number of weekend seminars in Chromatic
harmonica; completely self trained in Anglo concertina, and dabble in
a few other instruments. I play primarily from sheet music and ear
training (though working on getting that back to what it once was
while teaching our children). My wife who I have regular discussions
on about instruments and theory has over 14 yrs combined training in
Violin, Euphonium and music theory from Elementary school to College
with private tutoring. So this is the place I am coming from.

Written music, when FULLY written DOES tell the player a huge amount
of information. It tells time signature, meter of music to be played
(what note = how many per minute, which can vary), It will also have
accents of how a note should be played when they should be joined or
clipped, and last on this incomplete list when crescendos and
diminuendo's should be used. When one is first learning music a good
part of the fancy stuff can be ignored to allow the basic structure of
the language learned (it is a form of language really).

In modern times education has gotten very, very lazy. If one looks at
a 19th century tutor for an instrument you will find for most (not
all, even then there where bad examples and people taking short cuts)
a complete structure of the staff taught in chunks for the player to
be able to progress in the ability and level of play. There is a
movement from different sides of music to either consider written
sheet music only used for the "formal" training and therefore not
proper for other types of music, such as jazz and folk (which both
have extremely extensive libraries of written music if you look for
them). The concept of tableture as a form of music is a short cut in
my view, while it is useful only when you raise it to the same level
of notation as sheet music do you get the ability to carry the amount
of detail a well written score carries.

On Concert instruments and in reality any instrument. I you are
reading a piece of sheet music that is written in concert pitch; you
simply play the notes as written. This is why both my wife and I
despise transposed pieces. They lie. An example is this transposed
music for a Bb Trumpet will tell the player that Bb = C which is one
full tone off of what is really coming out of the horn. The lie has
gone so far that you now have tuners made for trumpet here in the UK
that will auto transpose the note so even though you are playing Bb
the tuner says you are playing C. Another example of how lazy the use
of music has become is moving all notation to the Treble Cleft. The UK
is one of the worse for doing this. Anyone who plays a Tenor or Base
Cleft instrument can tell you how much of a headache that is.

I apologize for getting slightly off topic. I do not apologize for
the points made or content therein. I is my opinion and I can point
out some very sound reasons for it.

Michael