There Are Two Kinds Of Musicians

[peteb]

Interesting video from Stewart Copeland (in conversation with Terry Bozzio and Chad Smith), saying that there are two types of musicians; musicians of the eye and musicians of the ear. 

I'm not saying that I agree 100% with this view (there are guys who are both), but I think that he is more on the money than not... 

 

[Guest subaudio]

I caught this too, interesting chat, I've noticed as I studied drums for a while that theres a really healthy attitude in a lot of drums media, some great books on the mental aspects of drums that transfer very well to bass too.

I don't think humans are quite so polarized as one or the other, though as I started out as a classical musician, I totally get what he's saying about those who only read struggle to improvise. It took years for me to totally get it.

I think its more like a ven diagram with multiple cross over points and intersections than one of two options.

I consider myself a visual musician but not in the reading sense, I sort of see music. It has architecture, colours, depth, clarity, cloudy etc but I'm also totally working from my ear, my intuition etc, its a mix.

[TheGreek]

51 minutes ago, subaudio said:

I consider myself a visual musician but not in the reading sense, I sort of see music. It has architecture, colours, depth, clarity, cloudy etc but I'm also totally working from my ear, my intuition etc, its a mix.

Interesting...🤔🤔

[Monkey Steve]

1 hour ago, subaudio said:

I caught this too, interesting chat, I've noticed as I studied drums for a while that theres a really healthy attitude in a lot of drums media, some great books on the mental aspects of drums that transfer very well to bass too.

I don't think humans are quite so polarized as one or the other, though as I started out as a classical musician, I totally get what he's saying about those who only read struggle to improvise. It took years for me to totally get it.

I think its more like a ven diagram with multiple cross over points and intersections than one of two options.

I consider myself a visual musician but not in the reading sense, I sort of see music. It has architecture, colours, depth, clarity, cloudy etc but I'm also totally working from my ear, my intuition etc, its a mix.

In the terms that Copeland is explaining it, I'm definitely a musician of the ear - can't read music to begin with (or not well...actually i could at school because they made us do it, but I didn't play an instrument and dropped music it at 13) so for me it's all about listening and feel, learning the song and rehearsing it until I can play it.

However, on your last point, I do have something of a visual memory.  Whenever I'm listening to a recording of either something I've played on or to a song that I need to learn, I can picture the frets that I am/should be playing, and I can "hear" when I am picturing myself playing the wrong note (and need to work out what I should be playing)