Thank you to those who read and made comment on my previous article, The Value of Music and Music Education in Schools. This month I have thought about the relationship between music reading and music making. Like the previous article, this one is based on observation and opinion. For the purposes of this post I define music reading as the act of learning music from notation and music making as the act of learning and performing music by ear. All the while creating links to their effect on learning music.
First I turn my attention to music reading. As a classically trained pianist I struggle with learning music without some sort of score, be it a fully notated work, lead sheet, or chord chart. I do envy those who can successfully learn music without a score but recognise that both methods have their benefits and short-comings. In my context as a choral conductor I make a concerted effort to distribute sheet music to the students. Even those students who cannot read music fluently find learning a new song difficult without the score as a guide. This fills my heart with joy as I am a strong believer that all musicians should at least have a basic understanding of music notation. While I appreciate that teaching a choir is largely an aural process and different to that of directing a band or orchestra, the printed score is still vital to the learning process as a means of ‘reminding’ students of their parts. After all wasn’t ‘memory jogging’ the primary function of neumes?
It can’t be denied that if you can read music, learning a musical work will be faster. This is very true in the case of my choir. When I have tried teaching a song by ear, the result after about 30 minutes is no where near as secure as with sheet music. Perhaps this could in part be due to our technological lifestyle where we don’t necessarily need to train our memory. Sometimes even complicated warm up exercises take some time teach. On a side note, I rarely use sheet music to teach warm ups as I prefer students to focus on their technique rather than being glued to the score. I don’t want to confuse my readers into thinking that my aim is to learn repertoire fast in order to cover more. In fact quite the opposite. I want my students to learn the notes as quickly as possible so that I can then focus on more expressive elements such as articulation, dynamics, tempo changes and tone colours. In this way, the sheet music makes the note-learning stage quicker and the true enjoyment of music can begin (I will investigate the true enjoyment of music in a later post). So, I take the skill of reading music to be important in the learning process. It can help a musician learn the notes faster allowing for time to perfect technique and expression. Being able to fluently read music also allows the musician to embrace many genres and gain valuable experience in a variety of musical styles.
The flip-side, although not entirely opposed, is the idea of not reading a score and being able to solely learn and play by ear (aurally). I envy the many students who can learn and commit to memory entire works (classical or otherwise) purely from a recording. I envy them because they are more free to reach a level of expression that takes more time to achieve with a notated score. Students who are able to learn music quickly by ear tend not to focus on technique but develop their own methods for overcoming technical obstacles. I often look at modern-day artists and wonder how they learn their music. In an interview with Paul McCartney he said "As long as the two of us know what we're doing, i.e., John and I, we know what chords we're playing and we remember the melody, we don't actually ever had the need to write it down or read it.” This acclaimed songwriter cannot read music yet he was still able to become one of the world's greatest songwriters. But there is that crucial element of memory that is at play. Without it, the whole process falls short. Perhaps musicians, like myself, who rely on the notated score could take a leaf out of McCartney’s method and focus more on memory to achieve greater musical expression. I would love to hear about my readers’ ideas on how this memory process impacts on improvisation skills. Not being a trained improviser (in fact I call myself a fake jazz musician when I try to improvise) I would love to hear how improvisation fits in here.
In summary, I think that music reading and music making essentially cannot exist independently. A lot of score readers will inevitably listen to recordings or live performances to gain deeper insights into music and non score readers will at some point have to either look up a chord chart or a video to work out tricky sections or passages that aren’t clear on recordings. All in all it doesn’t matter how you learn music as long as the expression and intention of the music is front and foremost in any context of music performance.
Thanks again for reading! Please leave a comment and join the discussion. Please also subscribe to receive these posts directly to your inbox. See you next month when I take a look at the importance of singing in the music classroom.
First I turn my attention to music reading. As a classically trained pianist I struggle with learning music without some sort of score, be it a fully notated work, lead sheet, or chord chart. I do envy those who can successfully learn music without a score but recognise that both methods have their benefits and short-comings. In my context as a choral conductor I make a concerted effort to distribute sheet music to the students. Even those students who cannot read music fluently find learning a new song difficult without the score as a guide. This fills my heart with joy as I am a strong believer that all musicians should at least have a basic understanding of music notation. While I appreciate that teaching a choir is largely an aural process and different to that of directing a band or orchestra, the printed score is still vital to the learning process as a means of ‘reminding’ students of their parts. After all wasn’t ‘memory jogging’ the primary function of neumes?
It can’t be denied that if you can read music, learning a musical work will be faster. This is very true in the case of my choir. When I have tried teaching a song by ear, the result after about 30 minutes is no where near as secure as with sheet music. Perhaps this could in part be due to our technological lifestyle where we don’t necessarily need to train our memory. Sometimes even complicated warm up exercises take some time teach. On a side note, I rarely use sheet music to teach warm ups as I prefer students to focus on their technique rather than being glued to the score. I don’t want to confuse my readers into thinking that my aim is to learn repertoire fast in order to cover more. In fact quite the opposite. I want my students to learn the notes as quickly as possible so that I can then focus on more expressive elements such as articulation, dynamics, tempo changes and tone colours. In this way, the sheet music makes the note-learning stage quicker and the true enjoyment of music can begin (I will investigate the true enjoyment of music in a later post). So, I take the skill of reading music to be important in the learning process. It can help a musician learn the notes faster allowing for time to perfect technique and expression. Being able to fluently read music also allows the musician to embrace many genres and gain valuable experience in a variety of musical styles.
The flip-side, although not entirely opposed, is the idea of not reading a score and being able to solely learn and play by ear (aurally). I envy the many students who can learn and commit to memory entire works (classical or otherwise) purely from a recording. I envy them because they are more free to reach a level of expression that takes more time to achieve with a notated score. Students who are able to learn music quickly by ear tend not to focus on technique but develop their own methods for overcoming technical obstacles. I often look at modern-day artists and wonder how they learn their music. In an interview with Paul McCartney he said "As long as the two of us know what we're doing, i.e., John and I, we know what chords we're playing and we remember the melody, we don't actually ever had the need to write it down or read it.” This acclaimed songwriter cannot read music yet he was still able to become one of the world's greatest songwriters. But there is that crucial element of memory that is at play. Without it, the whole process falls short. Perhaps musicians, like myself, who rely on the notated score could take a leaf out of McCartney’s method and focus more on memory to achieve greater musical expression. I would love to hear about my readers’ ideas on how this memory process impacts on improvisation skills. Not being a trained improviser (in fact I call myself a fake jazz musician when I try to improvise) I would love to hear how improvisation fits in here.
In summary, I think that music reading and music making essentially cannot exist independently. A lot of score readers will inevitably listen to recordings or live performances to gain deeper insights into music and non score readers will at some point have to either look up a chord chart or a video to work out tricky sections or passages that aren’t clear on recordings. All in all it doesn’t matter how you learn music as long as the expression and intention of the music is front and foremost in any context of music performance.
Thanks again for reading! Please leave a comment and join the discussion. Please also subscribe to receive these posts directly to your inbox. See you next month when I take a look at the importance of singing in the music classroom.