Sheet music, reading it and where to start?

[bass_dinger]

1 hour ago, Burns-bass said:

Where music notation trumps tab is that you can provide details of expression and it's able to convey much more complex rhythm patterns.

And also, music notation can be played on multiple instruments, without having to be re-encoded. 

 

If I have notation for a bass guitar, it can instead be played by the left hand of a pianist (and, indeed, often is!); a double bassist; an organist... 

 

I am told that the bass guitar is a transposing instrument.  I read a middle C on the clef but I actually play a note one octave below that. Is this the case?

[Owen]

4 minutes ago, bass_dinger said:

If I have notation for a bass guitar, it can instead be played by the left hand of a pianist (and, indeed, often is!);

 

I am told that the bass guitar is a transposing instrument.  I read a middle C on the clef but I actually play a note one octave below that. Is this the case?

Yep and yep

[bass_dinger]

6 minutes ago, Owen said:

Yep and yep

I am impressed that you know what note I am playing! 

 

I should have written "One reads a middle C on the clef but one actually plays a note one octave below that. Is this the case?"

 

Even with better grammar, the answer is still yep, of course. 

 

[BigRedX]

3 hours ago, chris_b said:

You will only play music you are interested in? OK.

 

Personally I don't see any benefit in a player placing such restrictions on themselves.

 

I already do a creative job, graphic design, where much of the time I have little interest in what I am creating and my function is to produce what the client wants. If I really disagree with the creative direction that a project is going in, I will have one go at trying to persuade them my idea would be better, but ultimately the client is in charge and after that I'll take their money, shut up and do exactly as they ask.

 

However when it comes to the music I want to play, I'm only interested in what I actually like. For me music is too important to be wasting time with songs I can't get 100% behind and I hope that the rest of the band feel the same. We are currently in the enviable position where we have more songs we really like than will fit in a typical 45 minute set.

[BigRedX]

3 hours ago, fretmeister said:

 

You don't consciously identify the letters in a word either. You recognise the whole word.

 

That isn't the main problem with tab. Tab is usually lacking rhythm information and other things like accents and so on.

But worst of all it has no genuine pitch information. E string 3rd Fret is only a G if the guitar is tuned that way. A G on a stave is always a G.

 

Guitarists (and bassists) are particularly bad for this. "Play a G" - "that's not a G, we are in drop D Tuning!"

It's a small wonder that piano / keys players haven't killed us all.

 

Standard Notation provides a common language that can be used by everyone on any instrument. Tab does not. Tab can be a barrier to effective communication. Not a problem in a small band or one where all the instruments are guitar based, but as soon as any other instrument is added then the problems are there. Can't hand Tab to a keyboard player and ask him to sight read it!

 

Don't get me wrong - Tab is a useful tool to get beginners playing something they recognise quickly. That's inspiring, and inspiration and encouragement is vital for progress, but it's limitations are massive.

 

But what about woodwind or brass transposing instruments?

 

When they read a "C" do they think of it as "C" or whatever note their instrument actually makes?

[fretmeister]

2 hours ago, BigRedX said:

 

But what about woodwind or brass transposing instruments?

 

When they read a "C" do they think of it as "C" or whatever note their instrument actually makes?

 

I played sax for many years. So I'd see a note on the stave and play that note - and the sound would be a major 6th below what was written.

I have tried to write for sax along with Concert pitch instruments and it does my head in trying to make it work. I can still play a bit but I don't own one anymore.

 

The best get a piano piece, and then play using that. They can't play a "C" on the page because the note will be wrong - so they shift it all in their heads in real time as the play.

My old teacher jumped between all the different saxes (Eflat and Bflat), Clarinet (mostly Bflat but a few odd ones) and the Bassoon family and the piano. Had no trouble transposing it all in his head. Amazing!

 

Good image from wiki:

 

 

[Downunderwonder]

11 hours ago, alibabu said:

brass and wind instruments, the staff is often transposed. This means that the same written note can produce different sounded notes.

I never thought of that. Anyone with good pitch memory would get really messed around.

[Downunderwonder]

10 hours ago, BigRedX said:

It seems to me, and again correct me if I'm wrong, but many readers are doing the thing that Tab is criticised for which is to go directly from a note position on the stave to a finger position on the fretboard without consciously identifying the note name. And I suppose that for complex pieces this is a requirement or you simply wouldn't be able to play them. And which is why for some people reading for one instrument is not a transferable skill to another even if it uses the same clef and transposition. Also makes sense for transposing instruments where the fingering is the same but the actual note produced is different. You're not actually reading the notes per se, you are reading a fingering position and blowing technique.

 

As a composer I think the reliance on scale shapes and muscle memory limiting, and as far as possible if I find myself repeating note patterns from one composition to another (even if they are different keys) I will do my best to try something else and only revert to the original already used idea if I really can't come up with something different that is at least as good. Maybe that's why I'm not impressed with a lot of playing technique, because it often sounds like regurgitating the same thing over and over, particularly when we are looking at solos.

 

Also I find a lot of the suggestions for music to use if you want to learn to read, very uninspiring, and as exercises that would put me off very quickly. On the other hand it seems that most of the people who want to learn to read need to do so in order to land paying gigs, which I suspect will involve performing some music that they have little interest in.

I think you just need to do you and forget about probing questions on how people learn to read bass.

[Bilbo]

There is some decent practice material here...

 

https://bilbosbassbites.co.uk/

 

https://bilbosbassbites.co.uk/transcriptions/

 

20/30 minutes a day is enough. You'll be reading in no time. Don't read things twice - you will be playing by rote/ear and not reading. Don't just read tunes you like. You are practicing reading dots, not practicing tunes. 

 

Edited Friday at 15:35 by Bilbo

[Bilbo]

Actually, we can all read. It's just a case of how FAST we can read. If you are reading at 10bpm today, head for 20bpm this time next week. Then 30 the week after. Before you know it, you will be reading at 330bpm and holding down the Zappa gig.

[dclaassen]

There are, imo, different steps involved in learning to read notation. First comes understanding the actual notation for pitch and rhythm. The other step is being able to read music at tempo. I guess the last step is being able to sightread at tempo…this takes years to master. The other complication include key signatures, choosing where to play a passage on the neck as you are reading it, and, in the case of a lot of written out jazz parts, dealing with rhythms that are not exactly as written and parts produced by non-bass players that are unplayable as written. Then, at last you master all of this, get a pit gig for a musical, and have a singer need to go down a step on the night….

 

please don’t get discouraged though…all it takes is time

[Bilbo]

Note recognition first, then rhythm. First reading, then sight reading. Reading is not just about gigs and performances, it is also about learning and communicating ideas etc. I am working on my guitar reading at the moment (as well as bass). I recently bought four books of classical studies and read through them all in about 4 weeks. That's in excess of 600 pages of dots. I couldn't read them well enough to perform them, no way, but to be able to find my way through that much material in such a short space of time? I am kicking myself and asking why I didn't do the decades ago. Sight reading is the ultimate goal but it's so much more than that.

[Bilbo]

PS a '10 finger' piano reader friend of mine said he took 15 years to get that good at it. Bass is relatively easy as it is mostly monophonic. Couple of years would see you better than most of your peers. The important thing is to keep going and don't neglect it. 30 minutes a day is enough.

[dclaassen]

1 hour ago, Bilbo said:

PS a '10 finger' piano reader friend of mine said he took 15 years to get that good at it. Bass is relatively easy as it is mostly monophonic. Couple of years would see you better than most of your peers. The important thing is to keep going and don't neglect it. 30 minutes a day is enough.

This is great advice!

[diskwave]

Get a copy of Musescore. Its free and brilliant. You can input your own notation and it plays it back.....It really helped me after a long lay off and I'd gotten rusty with complex rythmns.