Author: Clive
Date: 2007-05-23 17:11
John:
No it was very clear honestly! Thanks for the clarification for Amazing Grace. I confirm that my sheet music starts on G. I'm sure that you are right, it's just that the way it's written and you have validated, is just not the way I have heard it sung, and that simply throws me. Yes I know I should play what's written not what I think should be written but that's hard!
The early pieces in my tutor are either in C or F, as you have recommended. Some of them however seem deliberately to use other than the first verse of the song, and again that throws me.
Allen:
You are absolutely right that the brain should not be involved. In fact I am even trying to eliminate the note name from my thought process, i.e. go straight from the ledger line to the fingering, and where achieved this seems to have improved "translation" speed.
An analogue is in the learning of Morsed code, which I did 40+ years ago. When you start you just hear dots and dashes, and have to translate those to a letter of the alphabet, and write it down as fluently as you would if writing ( say) a letter. Initially the extra translation process slows matters down, and all you can do is print each letter. Since I am now about as proficient as one can get at the game, I "hear" letters, and if e.g I am asked what is the combination of dots and dashes of a particular letter of the alphabet, I actually have to stop and think before giving my answer, because that is just not how it sounds to me. At my stage in the game I even hear words like "the" or "that" as a pattern which is instantly recognised. Since each of the 26 letters of the alphabet comprise up to 4 dots or dashes ( and the ten numerals even more), that is an awful lot of information that the brain is processing, and therefore reading music and fingering shouldn't be any problem. Of course at present it most certainly is!
Your two rules and facts are interesting and instructive. I suppose that I did know fact 1, but it's helpful to see it actually stated in print. Why oh why does this not appear in instructional texts; rhetorical question of course.
Of course it's when your rule 2 is broken ( which it sometimes is even in my student stuff) that I have most trouble, as I have to do some rapid mental calculation of the next finger position, which is not yet sufficiently intuitive. This will come I'm sure.
You are clearly right that it is helpful to have the lyrics printeed along with the music as a crutch, and I am surprised that only perhaps 25/30% is configured in this way in my student books. Why is it so hard to provide this; another rhetorical question!
You are also right that I shouldn't be too scientific in my approach, but as a trained scientist it is very difficult to escape this process.
Thanks again all
Clive
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