 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: john gibson
Date: 2003-02-03 03:20
Hi....
Just wanted to get your thoughts on this. I stopped playing clarinet over 30 years ago. Picked it back up in November 2000.
Played in junior high and high school. Private lessons and all. could sight read pretty well. Stopped playing and became a professional rock and roll drummer. No music reading, just from the "gut"...play how you feel. Much like Jazz. In the two plus years I've reattached to the clarinet, I've spent probably 3 hours reading, and the rest just "blowing". Including playing along with CDs. I find it fun, and actually play much better now than when I "studied". My question is.....am I missing out on something by not reading? In my advanced age (52 next month) all I want to do is play a good tune. Don't want to sit in the "pit and read music. Just want to "play" music. However I feel like maybe I'm "shorting" myself by not "studying". Any thoughts on this? I'd love to get together with some jazzers and jam, but feel like not remembering the scales and arpeggios and blah blah blah, I'd just embarrass myself. Playing rock...like jazz was always from the moment and not from the sheet, if you know what I mean.
Now that that is off my chest, I'll wait and see if you respond.
Thanks for letting me ramble.
John
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Author: Hank
Date: 2003-02-03 03:32
Hi John,
Think about Eddie Daniels and what great jazz clarinet (and sax) he plays. Now consider that he is a graduate of Julliard. Not that you need to go out and get a degree but being able to read music unlocks a whole new set of possibilities for you.
Playing jazz as well as other music does not always require "sitting in the pit." What you need though is to be able look at a page that you have never heard and be able to play it. This ability is needed to go the furthest in jazz. I'm sure the top musicians in rock bands read as well (but in all areas, there are exceptions).
Being a ear player gets you only so far. Learn to read music by getting a few exercise books and doing what we all do, scales, apreggios, studies, and the jazz will come easier.
HRL
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Author: john gibson
Date: 2003-02-03 03:48
Thanks Hank....
As mentioned I used to read well.....years ago....guess I'm just intimidated by the "newness" of it.
John
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Author: Jim E.
Date: 2003-02-03 04:20
A quick run through the Rubank (or similar) series perhaps starting at the intermediate book ought to get most of it back for you.
While I can play rather well by ear, I've always read and can't imagine not reading, it opens up many more playing possibilities.
Though... My musical hero and neighbor from childhood died about a year ago at 80 something. He was functionally blind from birth, he saw shadows and walked unaided, but couldn't recognize faces. He played piano by ear (obviously he never read a note in his life) well enopugh to support himself his whole life playing standards and pop songs in the bars and restaurants of Atlantic City finishing his career in the French restaurant in Resorts International Casino. Never sell short playing by ear.
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Author: Allen Cole
Date: 2003-02-03 06:06
Whether you actually need to read depends on what you want, but if you enjoy playing that much you would probably benefit from being able to read. After all, written music was developed to save time and rehearsal. Add it to your current capabilities and you have the ability to write.
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Author: William
Date: 2003-02-03 16:16
No matter where you inspiration for music comes from, it has to be internalized ("felt") before it can be brought to life in sound and produced in performance. All musicians--that are any good--must, therefore, play to a certain extent "by ear", or maybe better said, by intuitive musical instinct. Just playing the notes never gets you by, you need to interpret what you read before it will come out as music.
Musical performance is much like public speaking. To be most effective, you must speak with intelligence and passion or your words lose their impact upon the ears of your audience. And, you can be a passionate, intelligent orator without knowing how to read the written word--but isn't it an advantage in gaining new knowledge from the minds of others by being able to read, and learn, their thought's via books, newpapers and other publications???
Being able to read music and have an understanding of music theory doesn't automatically make you a musician, but it certainly gives the true musician of intelligence and passion the advamtage (edge) to participate in both the "improv" and the "reading" worlds of music.
Of all the musicians I know, all of the "jazzers" would like to read music better, and all the "readers" would like to be able to play jazz. The reality is that real musicians can do both. It just takes that old thing called practice.
John, I am certain that with your rock drumming, you had total understanding of all the rhytmic relationships of sounds that came into your head before you played them on your set. As a saxophonist/clarinetist, you have only to deal with a new set of rhythmic sounds, pitch and tonality. You need to gain the same command of their theoretical relationships and learn to reproduce them with the same passion and fluency as your percussive efforts. Nobody will say that "sitting in" with a group for the first time is easy, but if you "walk the walk" (practice and learn) and "talk the talk" (take some chances and gain experiance), as you are already a musician, you'll "make it."
Now, stand up and play a chorus (or two)!! Good luck!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2003-02-03 17:35
Good comments above, I played my early years reading [like most?], next 20-30 reading and ad libbing jazz [loved it], next 20-30 reading symp-musicals-comm. band, now getting back to some jazz! in my 80's, encouraged by a fine sax player-friend. His favorite comment on this subject is " I dont read enough to HURT my playing". Not exactly true, as he does both better than I, even tho I can keep up with his cl playing. For me, it takes both. Don
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Author: Henry
Date: 2003-02-03 18:08
Don, you are a true inspiration to me and, I'm sure, many others. Being a youngster (65) I look at you as a role model in the hope that I can carry on many more years, as you have. And hopefully there will be many more to come for you! Just keep tooting!
Henry
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2003-02-03 19:27
TKS, Henry, just "Doin' what [seems to] come nachurlee" as in one of my favorite musicals. I do attribute my reasonably-good health and survival to musical interests, along with long-lived ancestry, and "snifters" of [good] Scotch [not quite like Churchill, tho], and not too many bad habits [nosmoking]. ?Who said, [sic, I think] "old age is what the early years were for", will research those words! Mark, so you may not erase this senile rambling, playing CLARINET has been both fun and salvation. Don
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Author: tetiana
Date: 2003-02-04 02:22
To Jim E. who wrote about his musical hero and neighbour who was functionally blind from birth, and who "obviously he never read a note in his life": Blind people are surely more gifted in learning by ear, and their memory is much better developed. But it does not follow that they cannot "read" music.
Several years ago I was privileged to meet an extraordinary musician.. who was totally blind, and yet could read music - by braille! This person even had a special typewriter on which a sighted person could enter the score and out it would come in braille (I believe there are now computer programs that will do the same thing. To observe this gifted person "sight-reading" and being able to sing in a choir, or "read" the braille score and then be able to render it with great precision and beauty on the piano, well, it made me realize how spoiled we "sighted" people are and that no obstacle is to great to overcome where there is determination and strength of spirit. Also made me stop complaining about having to count, to decipher complicated syncophated rhythms etc.
tetiana
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Author: tim K
Date: 2003-02-04 17:02
As a teenager I played with a local dance band (4 saxes, trumpet, trombone, piano, bass and drums) that had good gigs every week, never a rehearsal. The leader, who played lead alto, could not read music. We played the standards, and when he had a new piece the 3rd alto would play lead the first two times through (which was usually on two separate Saturdays). After hearing it twice the lead alto could play it, virtually note for note, for ever more. He was not a trained musician, but a remarkable natural talent
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Author: john gibson
Date: 2003-02-05 14:16
You folks are great. Wonderful advice and insight.....Don B., I always enjoy your posts and am amazed that you are in your 80s. Just goes to show you.....Thanks all.....
John
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