[Harp-L] Reading Music

Michael Rubin michaelrubinharmonica@xxxxx
Fri Nov 2 15:45:13 EDT 2018


Yes, it is the lack of early "by ear" approaches coupled with reading music
ONLY that causes fear of improvisation later in life.

On Fri, Nov 2, 2018 at 12:16 PM Slim Heilpern <slim at xxxxx> wrote:

> Hi Michael!
>
> I found your personal journey of learning to read music to be really
> interesting, and even though it’s very different from mine, I can relate.
>
> Just wanted to comment on this bit though:
>
> BUT what I have discovered is that there is a certain type of student who
> took lessons reading music as a child.  Almost always, their relationship
> with music is a skittish one.  Improvisation scares the heck out of them.
> It is like a shelter dog who was beaten by their previous male owner and
> now all men scare it.  This is not an exaggeration.
>
>
> Just to be clear, I’m assuming you don’t mean that the reading lessons as
> a child were the _cause_ of having difficulty learning to improvise later —
> only that there are such cases where a person learned to read music but
> never tried to play by ear or improvise until much later, and then found
> that transition to be difficult (or impossible). I have seen the same.
>
> However, I and others I know did take lessons which included reading at a
> very young age and also learned to use our ears at a young age (my piano
> lessons began at age 5, reading, but I also picked up the chromatic
> harmonica at the same time, not reading, and I soon found myself playing be
> ear on the piano as well). Despite the reading lessons, which went on for
> years, I’ve always been much stronger playing by ear and improvising — it
> has always come to me with relative ease compared to reading. My wife also
> learned to read music as a kid and she also plays very well by ear as well
> as improvising, but in her case she became a much stronger reader than I
> will ever be (she's routinely in situations where she has to sight read
> very difficult music on various instruments as I watch in amazement).
>
> We each have our strong points, for whatever reason, and the same path
> won’t necessarily produce the same results in different individuals.
>
> - Slim.
>
> www.SlimAndPenny.com
>
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