Re: Can't Read Music


rforman61@xxxxxxx wrote:
> >
> > Many believe that being trained gives you musical ability but they're
> > only half right. You may get the technical know how, but there's a
> > chance your artist creativity will be frozen out. You could lose the
> > ability to experiment *because* the training told you X is wrong so you
> > never try X.
> >
> > Sometimes (and for some people) it's easier to bend the rules if you
> > don't know what the rules are, and if the rules are never bent, then
> > art stagnates.
>
> This is repeated so often and really drives me crazy. Musical
> education, knowledge and training does not stifle or stagnate
> creativity, it enhances it and one's ability to express one's ideas and
> emotions musically and communicate with other musicians. Learning the
> technical ins and outs of music is not about learning "rules" to be
> bent or broken, but rather about concepts and possibilities. It is
> learning the language and something of the rich, deep history of music
> if that's something you are interested in. The more of them
> (concepts and possibilities) you know and the better you understand
> them, the more you explore what others have done and learned in the
> centuries preceeding you, the more you can think of and the more you
> can do with your own musical efforts. Obviously the Beatles and many
> others prove that you don't "need" formal training to be creative and
> succeed. But the Beatles did not bend or break any "rules" of harmony,
> rather, their harmonic vocabulary is relatively simple, small and
> limited by their lack of training and education, they obeyed the rules
> that seem like rules if you only know the simplest fundamentals of
> chords and harmonies.
>
> Studying music definitely increases one's ability to express one's
> emotions and ideas musically. The range of emotions and ideas
> expressed in the Beatles' music, and the level of detail to which those
> emotions and ideas can be felt and heard and experienced through the
> music, is minuscule, trivial, tiny, in comparison to those you can hear
> explored in, say, Chick Corea's or any other accomplished jazz master.
> Not that music has to be complex to convey emotions successfully and
> effectively - obviously not. But the greater one's vocabulary and
> understanding of what one is doing, the more options one has available
> to him, the wider a pallette. It is exactly like saying you could
> write more creatively if you never advanced in your reading and writing
> beyond an elementary school level because you would be freer to bend
> and break the "rules" you would be burdened by if you continued your
> education and exploration of language and literature.
>
> richforman


Not my experience of being taught music, I'm afraid. My "training" and
many others' was dealt out by the school music teacher way back (1950s
and 60s), supplemented by a few priovate piano lessons in my case, and
was more about rules and conventions than inspiration and invention.
In fact one of my music teachers "told" me that what the Beatles did
wasn't really music, nor was any popular or jazz artist's output - the
only "real" music was classical.

I appreciate that there is musical education out there which would be
as you describe and I wish I had been fortunate enough to have
experienced it, but for an awful lot of my generation, my experience
was more typical.

Didn't mean to upset you, I should have made clear I was speaking from
limited experience, though if it's repeated *that* often, it's maybe
not so limited.

.

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