[Harp-L] Reading Music

[Laurent Vigouroux]

Slim wrote:
" 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."

Actually in France we do have a problem with the "conservatoires" (the official places where music is taught). Until recently (can't really talk about what's happening today), they used to teach reading music and playing instruments with not any clue about improvisation. Their main goal was to produce high level concertists.
So today,  we do have tons of "classical" players who are totally blocked when improvising time comes. Really. It's even surprising to see how high level musicians can't even play the arpeggios of jazz chord progressions.
I've been told it's improving. I hope this is the case.
I'm sure it's not a matter of Music learning skills Vs improvisational skills, but simply a matter of the global orientation of the teaching. If you only teach how to read a part and how to transcribe music, you've got musicians who are lost without their parts.