My rant concerning the near obsolescence of sheet music

[Mike Perlowin]

A machine is programmed to perform that creation. When the line is drawn so firmly between reader and writer, then I feel the distinction must be made. ntually work through a complex piece using notation.

James are you saying that people like Joshua Heifitz, Itzak Pearlman, and Anton Rubenstein are not artists?

Please tell me I'm misunderstanding your position.

[Ben Jones]

I'd love to be able to read music. It would be so cool to be able to hear a peice of music in my head that someone else has composed without having to have it filtered thru someone else's performance or interpretation of it first. That may not be the optimal way to study or learn or communicate musical ideas or maybe it is, but it would be great to at least have that option. as I said before, you'll at least have the option of reading the book before seeing the movie, or worse... tv adaptation

[James Mayer]

James are you saying that people like Joshua Heifitz, Itzak Pearlman, and Anton Rubenstein are not artists?

Please tell me I'm misunderstanding your position.

I don't know enough about those players to make a comment. Are they composers?

Everything has a parallel and I love using them to explain. How many well-respected legendary cover bands are there? They are out there, but they never make the impact of the composers. Before the Beatles, it seems that playing covers was the norm and standard. I'm glad things took the turn that they did.

No matter how great Beethoven was as a reading player, we likely would have never heard of him if he hadn't composed. I'd bet he learned to play his stuff without using notation in a performance.

Musical complexity is a valid excuse to use notation in learning. There is no excuse for using a learning tool while performing. Is notation a learning tool or is it a performing tool? Notice how no-one here has touched on my metronome parallel. My point that there are better tools than notation, available today, for learning has been ignored, as well. This seems to be an argument about whether or not respect is handed out properly rather than a debate on the usefulness of notation in the face of other options.

I wish I could change the title of this thread from "obselete" to "eventual obsolescence". Things change rapidly. My generation barely uses handwriting. Everyone types on a keyboard. Caligraphy has been replaced by the digital font. Confusing music notation with music itself is a deep-rooted tradition that will surely take a long time to die. It was created and became widespread in an age where long-distance communication was slow or entirely absent. Traditionalists will defend it, specialists will keep the torch alive, but it will eventually pass on. My prediction is that better ways to communicate will surface in music just as they have in every other medium. To me it seems that modern alternatives for the aspiring musician are outweighing it already. Classical reading-dependent players are definitely a smaller chunk of the musical pie than they've ever been. There is also more original music being created than there has ever been. I see a correlation.

Put all of the great classical composers on a time-line. First of all, there aren't that many when compared to composers of other genres. They get more respect because they are the all-stars. They are the geniuses that broke out of the play-only mold that classical training teaches. Second, they occur decades and even centuries apart. These are the all-stars and the noblemen. This is no longer a time when the majority of those keeping literature alive were monks transcribing the bible.

To suggest that all rock (or any other genre) is "folk" is really narrow-minded. There are progressive rock bands that write music that rival the most complex classical arrangements. Metallica's "Master of Puppets" could easily be arranged and played by an orchestra and the traditionalists would eat it up until they found out who composed it. When they found out that something so intricate was composed by poor inner-city kids with no formal music training, it would be panned.

Another Beethoven probably will occur and there is a good chance that he will use methods other than classical notation to record his works.

Look, this discussion isn't meant to be insulting or cause any hard-feelings. I think it's been an interesting debate. I have definitely read some good points that I hadn't previously considered. However, as I address points that are made, the majority of mine are ignored.

[James Mayer]

I'd love to be able to read music. It would be so cool to be able to hear a peice of music in my head that someone else has composed without having to have it filtered thru someone else's performance or interpretation of it first. That may not be the optimal way to study or learn or communicate musical ideas or maybe it is, but it would be great to at least have that option. as I said before, you'll at least have the option of reading the book before seeing the movie, or worse... tv adaptation

This a good point. My question to you is, if you really want to be able to do it, why haven't you learned to do it?

I'd like to be able to as well. Hell, it would be nice to be able to speak fluent Ukranian, just in case the situation arises where I should need it. However, it will take many many years of hard work and I don't foresee enough reward to really make it worthwhile.

[Mike Perlowin]

James are you saying that people like Joshua Heifitz, Itzak Pearlman, and Anton Rubenstein are not artists?

Please tell me I'm misunderstanding your position.

I don't know enough about those players to make a comment. Are they composers?

James, while it's reasonable to assume one or more of these people have done some composing, the answer is no, these are all concert artists who are known for interpreting the compositions of others.

You really ought to investigate who these people are and were. (Itzak Pearlman is still alive.)

[James Mayer]

James are you saying that people like Joshua Heifitz, Itzak Pearlman, and Anton Rubenstein are not artists?

Please tell me I'm misunderstanding your position.

I don't know enough about those players to make a comment. Are they composers?

James, while it's reasonable to assume one or more of these people have done some composing, the answer is no, these are all concert artists who are known for interpreting the compositions of others.

You really ought to investigate who these people are and were. (Itzak Pearlman is still alive.)

Well, when I read that name, the first thing I thought was the Polish protagonist in "The Pianist". Is that right?

[Brint Hannay]

Itzhak Perlman is widely considered the greatest classical violinist living. As it happens, he is a very adept improviser as well, but I think that's beside the point Mike was making.

James, do you consider that a great actor is an artist, or only the playwright?

[David Mason]

I don't mean to demean the non-improvisers. I DO mean to demean the method that teaches willful creative stagnation.

Frank Zappa was highly influenced by Edgard Varese, and to a lesser extent Erik Satie and other modernists. John McLaughlin's main early influences besides Indian music and jazz artists were Bela Bartok and Igor Stravinsky. For Miles Davis, it was the impressionist music of Debussy and Ravel that helped spur him to develop a few entire new creative genres, not just a tune or two...

John Coltrane was a voracious reader and lifelong student - his bandmates were often shocked at how hard he worked, and the sheer variety of material he would read through - the octave pedals he employed in "My Favorite Things" were a direct result of suborning and perverting some piano-reading studies, for example - no one had ever played anything so creative before..... Slonimsky's book "The Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns" was a big influence on Coltrane, as it was on Allan Holdsworth and many others. Coltrane listened to everything he could, but he had named Sibelius and Prokofiev as two particular favorites to study. Study.

Charlie Parker was another voracious student - although Ravel and Prokofiev had both written him with praise, his own tastes ran more towards the earlier romantic era, particularly Beethoven and Brahms, and very particularly Jascha Heifetz playing their violin concertos - Jascha Heifitz was Parker's favorite musician.

Now, these guys worked hard - people playing at that level know not to try to wait around for "the Muse", they work their tales off reading everything they can, writing and experimenting on the paper too (Mozart, Bach, Paganini and Franz Liszt were all known for their fantastic improvising). Don't your fingers blow out after eight hours or so? Don't you wish you could keep working... maybe not.

I don't mean to demean the non-improvisers. I DO mean to demean the method that teaches willful creative stagnation.

Your task: name five 20th Century musicians, NON-readers all, who could improvise more deeply, more influentially, more creatively than (demon readers):

Frank Zappa
John McLaughlin
Miles Davis
John Coltrane
Charlie Parker

I am, obviously, partial to guitarists, so I'll spot you James Marshall Hendrix, though very many "real" musicians would quibble... O.K., your four -
2.
3.
4.
5.

I am really sorry about your cello friend who read music, but then couldn't improvise, but I don't see the causal chain there - please, provide evidence?

And....

There are progressive rock bands that write music that rival the most complex classical arrangements. Metallica's "Master of Puppets" could easily be arranged and played by an orchestra and the traditionalists would eat it up until they found out who composed it.

And....

Well, I have to admit that I don't like playing anything the same way twice and can't understand why anyone would want to listen to an exact note-for-note performance more than once. So, I guess it's kinda like discussing religion. I think the music world is better off without exacting consistency.

You do understand that your attitude renders you completely unemployable, in the scenario of "a progressive rock band that writes music that rival the most complex classical arrangements." I mean, either you can play the parts or not, but you just don't want to. Fine! When's your CD coming out?

Very rarely would an artist ever do anything exactly the same way repeatedly. It's just not in the nature of art. I guess no matter how many times I hear the argument for this sort of "programming", I'm never going to understand why someone would want to play that way.

It's O.K. to prefer music like this, but I am curious - what do you listen to? Do you ever listen to the same song twice? Could you see any value to you whatsoever in learning what someone else played - consistently - in order to assist your own, never-repeating improv?

I can't see how an ensemble of decent musicians is going to screw up something so bad that you wouldn't recognize what it is supposed to be.

What level of complexity is in the music you play with your band? When all five of you are playing without "ever doing anything exactly the same way repeatedly", are there ever problems? You must see how an ensemble of eighty people would have to make some attempt to do things the same way - even repeatedly. And it's fine that you dislike it, but might there be something there that could help your own playing? But, how would you ever, ever find that out.....

I DO mean to demean the method that teaches willful creative stagnation.

I just don't get how anyone else's music, however they derived it, can feel so stifling to you that it deserves "demeaning."

[Barry Hyman]

Hominids have been playing music for maybe a million years. They have been writing it for maybe a thousand years. And the percentage of musicians who read probably peaked with the advent of rock and roll in 1950 and has been going down since then.

Rock musicians do not usually read. Country musicians do not usually read. Hip hop, reggae, bluegrass, blues, folk, Celtic, R&B, techno, rockabilly, slack key, you name it -- most modern players of popular music do not read notation, even though many of them can. The only musical idioms where musicians are called upon to read a lot are classical, jazz, maybe some Latin bands, and if you want to record tv or radio commercials.

I know this for a fact because people have been paying me to perform and record dozens of times every year for decades, and it is only about once every five years that someone asks me to read notation. I have never lost a job because I could not read. (Had a paying gig yesterday where I was expected to read notation and I did just fine, thankyou.)

But I prefer to improvise, I think it gets you higher, I respect it more, I think musicians who can improvise are superior musicians who also have more fun, and it is obvious that traditional notation has limited value for PSG players because the pedal steel has more ways of playing the same pitch than any other instrument ever invented. So, while notation is useful for PSG players, it is less useful for us than for players of other instruments.

Plus it is true, as James says, that recording technology has made much of the value of notation depreciate -- a composer now has other ways of teaching compositions to players. And learning to read before learning to play has stunted the creativity of millions of people -- I know that for a fact also because I get about twenty adult students a year who come to me with that precise complaint -- I don't put the words in their mouths -- they are already botherd by the fact that what they have been taught to do is inherently not creative.

Erv Niehaus seems to be convinced that pedal steel players don't get any respect. I don't see it that way. Everywhere I go people are entranced and easily perceive that PSG is the most complicated, difficult, sophisticated, and mathematical instrument imaginable. The fact that I can improvise on it is treated as evidence of even greater status. I can read -- I choose not to. I can teach my students to read -- I choose not to, at least at first. I can play what others have played, note-for-note, nuance-for-nuance -- I choose not to! And as for the pedal steel not getting any respect because of attitudes such as this -- I simply do not have that problem; quite the opposite. Go James, go!

[Bill Hatcher]

James are you saying that people like Joshua Heifitz, Itzak Pearlman, and Anton Rubenstein are not artists

I don't know enough about those players to make a comment. Are they composers?

Thank you for giving substance to my reply to you concerning this topic.

[David Doggett]

...Really, if I was in an orchestra and i had practiced for weeks or even months, I would know my part and where to play it. Saying you enjoyed the performance does not mean they weren't using a crutch. How about connecting with the audience? It is a performance, not a practice.

I'm still of the opinion that notation is a learning tool, not a performance tool.

This ignorance and arrogance is beyond ludicrous! During the season, an orchestra plays a completely different 3 hour set of music each week. And probably less than 20% of each 3 hour set is repeating themes. It takes full-time rehearsals between performances just to learn to play the conductor's interpretation while reading the music. There is simply not time to also memorize that much new music each week. Then in the off season, most orchestra musicians play summer programs, which are completely different sets of hours-long pieces, which also change every week. With all due respect, saying you could and would memorize that much new music on a weekly basis just makes you look foolish.

In fairness, eventually during a long professional orchestral career, some of the pieces learned in previous years come back around again, and so are familiar and not completely new. But if one of those was memorized (the way you said you would do for every weekly performance), do you seriously think you would still remember an hour of unrepeating music memorized several years ago, and not played since?

Solo virtuosos who play concertos (hour-long solos accompanied by a full orchestra), do in fact usually memorize their pieces and perform without music. But they work for months before performing a single concerto. The rest of the orchestra accompanies a different soloist each week, and so only has a week to learn their accompaniment, and they also play, on the same evening, one or more other hour-long pieces in addition to the concerto.

You are apparently unaware that, during the periods of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, etc., there were many composers we no longer remember who were also writing and publishing music. In fact, the stuff we now consider classical, was the popular music of the day. There are literally tons and tons of written music from the past, not just the stuff by the once-a-generation guys still remembered, who are the only ones you seem to be aware of. The vast majority of it is unrecorded, so the only way anyone will ever hear it again is for someone to read it.

No one will ever memorize by ear all the music classical orchestras and opera companies perform for hours on a weekly basis. Therefore, if reading music ever becomes obsolete and no longer possible, as you apparently wish, we will only have recordings (of the small portion that has actually been recorded), and there will no longer be any live classical music. The idea of guys like you sitting around memorizing hours and hours of the old classical recordings by ear is, I repeat, beyond ludicrous.

Go ahead, memorize a single symphony. Then memorize a whole season's worth of dozens of symphonies, and play us a couple of different ones from memory each week, all year around.

Broadway musicals also depend on written parts. I'm sure by the end of a run, the orchestra practically has a whole musical memorized. But if they had to memorize the whole thing from scratch before opening night, the preparation would take so long few musicals would ever be able to afford to open.

Finally, the vast majority of movie and TV drama scores are written. It would be prohibitively expensive to require the musicians to memorize the whole score, only to play it once for the soundtrack. It's true many movies today use a great deal of popular music that can and is played by ear. But to require it all to be done that way would greatly impoverish and limit the kinds of soundtracks we would get.

There is nothing I could hope for more strongly than that your horrendous prediction will never come true that written music and reading music will someday become obsolete. (There's no emoticon to express such a dark horror.)

[James Mayer]

....double post.....

[James Mayer]

Geez, David! I've never seen you seem so upset. It's just a debate. If I'm wrong, at least I learned something. AND I've already admitted to the first person who mentioned it that sheet music does have an important organizational role in a large ensemble.

You made some good points, in particular about the sheer volume of music an orchestra performs. I could never memorize all that. A professional orchestral musician negates every point I have made. They also make up about less than 1% of musicians in the world. I'm not talking about them when I make my points. I'm talking about you and I and everyone else we know and we might work with and we might aspire to work with and this is a big run on sentence.

It's a very small niche.

By the way, I don't hope for the obsolescence of anything, including sheet music. I simply said that it's inevitable. Just as the library of congress is preserving their vast recorded collection by translating it to digital, new technology will eventually give musicians(it already has) a better option that they will not be able to ignore. Conservative traditionalists will bemoan the loss of the cumbersome paper just as the purists once ridiculed the fine tuners now found on every bowed instrument in that orchestra, or synthetic reeds, or those new in-line geared tuners that are replacing traditional tuning pegs. Sure the orchestra will be the holdout, someone has to do it. Do I need to mention Latin again? There are still those who speak it.

David, do you really think we are so far from being able to scan in those old tomes of sheet music and have a computer translate them into a midi file that we can use to study them? Students would be able to hear them as they were meant to be heard and study them by playing along just as people play along with the radio.

I think it's funny that the last line of defense rests with orchestras. It's really got nothing to do with any of the music that is ever discussed here.

[James Mayer]

James, do you consider that a great actor is an artist, or only the playwright?

Touché and bravo! This is a worthy enough exception to the rule to make me reconsider my definition. I do consider acting to be an artform. You know there is a barb coming. Wait for it.....wait......correct me if I'm wrong, but actors don't have a choice unless they work in comedy or with an exceptional and experimental director. There are far less forms of acting than forms of music and when faced with their slim choices, they don't carry their lines on stage or in front of the camera. Nonetheless, delivery is an art form in itself.

Frank Zappa was highly influenced by Edgard Varese, and to a lesser extent Erik Satie and other modernists. John McLaughlin's main early influences besides Indian music and jazz artists were Bela Bartok and Igor Stravinsky. For Miles Davis, it was the impressionist music of Debussy and Ravel that helped spur him to develop a few entire new creative genres, not just a tune or two...

Ok, a couple of things here. Was the Indian Music that John McLaughlin studied Hindustani or Carnatic? They are both considered classical forms of music in India. Neither uses written notation and they both employ and encourage extensive improvisation. They use syllables to communicate the the music. If you can't say it, you can't play it. I studied mridangam for a couple of months under T.H. Subhash Chandran (READ), the brother and mentor of Vikku Vinayakram (READ) who I met when he was on tour with Zakir Hussain. Indian classical musicians, unlike western classical musicians, are prepared in an extremely disciplined regiment. However, they are trained to be flexible. Ever hear a classical musician jump in a carnatic circle and start playing? Well, vice-versa has been done countless times.

On to Bartok. Aren't his biggest influences eastern-european traditional gypsy dances? Isn't that folk music? Come to think of it, Ernesto Lecouna also fits in the same category for transcribing flamenco music. Albeniz as well. I know these these things because I studied them all from the source, recordings of "folk" music. I didn't need the classical portal to get what I needed.

John Coltrane was a voracious reader and lifelong student - his bandmates were often shocked at how hard he worked, and the sheer variety of material he would read through - the octave pedals he employed in "My Favorite Things" were a direct result of suborning and perverting some piano-reading studies, for example - no one had ever played anything so creative before..... Slonimsky's book "The Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns" was a big influence on Coltrane, as it was on Allan Holdsworth and many others. Coltrane listened to everything he could, but he had named Sibelius and Prokofiev as two particular favorites to study. Study.

I love Coltrane. His most famous recording and the example you chose was a cover tune. I don't mean that in a disrepectful manner, but better points could be made by employing a giant such as Coltrane.

Your task: name five 20th Century musicians, NON-readers all, who could improvise more deeply, more influentially, more creatively than (demon readers):

Frank Zappa
John McLaughlin
Miles Davis
John Coltrane
Charlie Parker

I am, obviously, partial to guitarists, so I'll spot you James Marshall Hendrix, though very many "real" musicians would quibble... O.K., your four -

Thanks for spotting me Hendrix. He would have definately been on the list. I'll give 5 more.

1) Django Reinhardt.
2) Paco De Lucia, ----played and made several recordings with John McLaughlin. Pay attention in those recordings, the flamenco tunes are dominated by Paco and Mclaughlin/DiMeola play small roles. On the more jazzy numbers, Paco plays an equal role. I'd say he crossed over to jazz faster than any western-trained musician has ever going to cross over to flamenco.
3)Ali Farka Toure, malinese blues is not notated. The guy is a badass.
4)Debashish Bhattacharya, indian slide master. Read my comments on his training above.
5)Ravi Shankar, not a guitarist, but a master of improvisation

I'm a fan of everyone you listed, but I'd say the ones I listed are better (or equal, at least) improvisors and more influential in their own cultures than Zappa or McLauglin, without the marketing power or distribution that those two enjoyed. There are countless more musicians that could be listed. I could list 20 more flamenco guitarists.

I made a point to include musicians from different cultures and the point is the western world puts itself on a pedastel in just about every subject. Music is no exception. Where are the microtones in sheet music? Where is the tradition of improvisation that is a fundamental aspect of every other type of music in the world with the exeption of electronic music (which notably(no pun intended), is note-for-note programming)?

You do understand that your attitude renders you completely unemployable, in the scenario of "a progressive rock band that writes music that rival the most complex classical arrangements." I mean, either you can play the parts or not, but you just don't want to. Fine! When's your CD coming out?

My CD is coming out in Sept/Oct of this year. It won't be considered groundbreaking, but it won't be stiff and contrived either. We even have a cover tune that has been reworked more than Hendrix reworked Dylan's "All Along The Watchtower". Much of the music started out one way and ended up completely different. We let it breathe and take on a life of it's own. I'm proud of it, even if it wasn't written or performed by the best musicians.

As to the unemployable comment, I don't know that I can think of one example of losing anything due to my attitude in music. I can learn and rehearse parts just fine. I don't enjoy it as much, but I'll do it and get paid. Weddings bring in some dough, so do small corporate parties. I've never taken sheet music to a gig.

It's O.K. to prefer music like this, but I am curious - what do you listen to? Do you ever listen to the same song twice? Could you see any value to you whatsoever in learning what someone else played - consistently - in order to assist your own, never-repeating improv?

I listen to all sorts of things. There really is not way to abbreviate what I listen to. I do listen to the same song many times over, but rarely ever listen to the same track multiple times in a short time-span. It seems to lose some of the magic, like watching a movie twice in one night. Of course, I listen to study and learn. I take ideas from others all the time. But I do it by listening to a lot of recordings then putting my own spin on it. There is no need for me to get everything exact. I don't want someone else voice even if I sing their song. Make sense?

What level of complexity is in the music you play with your band? When all five of you are playing without "ever doing anything exactly the same way repeatedly", are there ever problems? You must see how an ensemble of eighty people would have to make some attempt to do things the same way - even repeatedly. And it's fine that you dislike it, but might there be something there that could help your own playing? But, how would you ever, ever find that out.....

Your last sentence suggests that I don't study and explore. That's an incorrect assumption on your part.

Of course there are problems. There is no safety net. Surprisingly, we can be pretty tight. Some nights, not so much. I would rather be great or terrible, than consistently just good. There is no "high" in being consistently just good. There's no joy without the leap, no rush.

[James Mayer]

James are you saying that people like Joshua Heifitz, Itzak Pearlman, and Anton Rubenstein are not artists

I don't know enough about those players to make a comment. Are they composers?

Thank you for giving substance to my reply to you concerning this topic.

If I listed a bunch of stellar musicians that you had never heard of, would it provide any substance to this topic? I've heard of both Pearlman and Rubenstein, but only by name.

Did I miss your point?

[Herb Steiner]

Would those defending James' point of view agree if an illiterate person got on Youtube and proclaimed the written word "near obsolescence" and for all intents and purposes "useless?"

We'd probably hear a chorus of "hell, yeahs" from many other illiterates, but it would have to be on Youtube because they wouldn't be able to communicate any other way.

Hopefully other illiterates might see their lack of reading/writing skill as a shortcoming and wish they knew how to write down what their ideas were to better communicate with others.

This topic to me is the definition of trolling, flame bait that stirs the pot just to arouse conflict and argumentative opinions, without any edification for anyone or advancement of anyone's skills. It's a rationalization for the non-pursuit of knowledge.

Many musicians are in situations in which the skill of reading is not necessary. That's fine, all well and good, more power to ya. But to proclaim the skill as unnecessary is beyond self-serving and ludicrous. It's silly.

[Colin Goss]

I was going to say (as hinted at above) What came first?

Music came before any written form.

I can remember a meeting between Stephan Grapelli and Yehudi Menuhin - both world class violinists but from quite different backgrounds.

One completely overshadowed the other in his artistry and knowledge of his instrument.

You can probably guess who.

[Doug Beaumier]

This topic to me is the definition of trolling, flame bait that stirs the pot just to arouse conflict and argumentative opinions, without any edification for anyone or advancement of anyone's skills.

I agree, Herb. This is a bait thread going nowhere. Every time we try to explain the positive benefits of note reading, we get nothing but stubborn resistance, excuses, and topic drift from the other side. James is just stoking the fire to get a lot of replies. I'm not wasting any more time on this thread.

[b0b]

Since it's not really about Pedal Steel, I've moved this topic to the Music section.

[Gene Jones]

I had a recent well-paying gig where I was sent the "book" with the sheet music. Fortunately, the package also included a CD of the aspiring singers songs. As most of us do, I listened to the CD and made my own "number" chart for the show and everything turned out well. I would have been in a lot of trouble if I had been required to "read" the score during the performance.

I am reminded of an anonymous quote: "I can read music, but not enough to hinder my playing".

Not to diminish the importance of basic music theory, I submit that most professional musicians rely primarily on their own interpretation of what is correct and what isn't when they are playing a performance.

[Mat Rhodes]

I'll bet them classical musicians (the "readers") get paid better than them alliterate st-steelers.

[Herb Steiner]

I'll bet them classical musicians (the "readers") get paid better than them alliterate st-steelers.

True. For that matter, most of them can read and write English better than many steel players.

Lack of education, though perhaps unfortunate, in and of itself, is no sin. Celebrating that lack of education, OTOH, is a grievous one.

[James Mayer]

I'll bet them classical musicians (the "readers") get paid better than them alliterate st-steelers.

They are at the very pinnacle of "readers" and they make a good living. The pinnacle of rock and country make far far more money. The chances of getting a seat in a respected professional orchestra is comparably as difficult as "making it" in popular music. Maybe even moreso.

Aren't the orchestras partly paid with grants meant to preserve the arts? That in itself suggests that it is being used and appreciated less and less.

Was that trolling? Is the above not a valid point? I think the point was not only a damn good point, but can easily be backed up by a brief research into the how an orchestra is funded. This IS like religion which, if I had realized it would be this way, I wouldn't have started this thread in the first place. I'm the only one that has conceded that any of my views have changed or that I've learned anything from this thread.

Since this is likely the last post on this thread, I'll sum up my perception of the whole mess.

There are four categories of respondents.

1) Those who regularly employ reading as a primary source or learning and/or performing. I believe Mike Perlowin is the only respondent in this category.

2) Those that can read and defend it to the teeth even though they don't depend on it or use it as their primary (and it seems, secondary) means of conveying knowledge or learning.

3) Those that can read a little but don't feel the need to because the situation of need rarely arises. They believe there are other means of learning that feel more natural, or are more easily available.

4) Those that don't read and wish they could.

I fit into category #3. The most angry here fit into #2.

My perception is that all of the categories with the exception of #1 support my theory that notation is being supplanted by other means of communication and learning.

I never became angry in this thread. If any of my points were belligerent, I apologize. Having strong opinions and backing them up with points is flaming and or trolling if someone disagrees, apparently. I thought I was discussing something, not fighting the Catholic Church. Many people on this forum disrespectfully comment on certain forms of music. I know that I have made quite a few remarks about modern country and it's over-production. Why, like religion, is classical learning held sacred? Why is it uniquely privileged?

[David Mason]

Well, I always suspected that that Coltrane fellow was just a cover-band guy pretending to be creative... so I re-read the chapter on "Giant Steps" in Lewis Porter's 'Trane bio, and sure enough - he ripped it off! That major third chord movement dates all the way back to the 18th Century, Beethoven had 'em, C.P.E. Bach... in fact the melody of the last eight bars of "Giant Steps" are a direct theft from the "ditone progressions" on page 40 of Nicolas Slonimsky's book! Check it out...

On to Bartok. Aren't his biggest influences eastern-european traditional gypsy dances? Isn't that folk music? I know these these things because I studied them all from the source, recordings of "folk" music. I didn't need the sterilized classical portal to get what I needed.

Yep, every note of every sonata Bartok wrote was just sterilized from real musicians. As you surely know, the Allman Brothers wrote "Whipping Post" based around a quote from "Frere Jacques". The cover version of "You Don't Love Me" stole from "Joy to the World", and in the most blatant sterilization, they took Donovan's "There is a Mountain", changed a few notes around and claimed it as "original." But thanks to the new way of thinking I've learned here, I never have to waste time listening to Southern rock or that jam-band dreck when I can go right to the source to learn - French nursery rhymes. And Donovan!

I should mention, I quite consciously chose Debashish Bhattacharya as the co-model for my pedal steel guitar playing, along with Miles - there's plenty of other people got that "Bud's Bounce" thing covered. One reason I chose him was because of the piece "Maha Shakti", which is his medley of Shakti and Mahavishnu Orchestra licks he ripped off during his stint as McLaughlin's poodle in "Remember Shakti", 2000-2001. He has another song called "Aanandam" which is a delta blues he "sterilized" from his tenure as Bob Brozman's poodle. On his newest CD, he's even sterilized a Hawaiian tune! Heavens, is there anything new under the sun....

No matter how great Beethoven was as a reading player, we likely would have never heard of him if he hadn't composed. I'd bet he learned to play his stuff without using notation in a performance.

Oh, my... you can throw out the baby too, it drowned in the bathwater a while back.

[Mike Perlowin]

1) Those who regularly employ reading as a primary source or learning and/or performing. I believe Mike Perlowin is the only respondent in this category.

This is true today, because I choose to play that kind of music, but just to set the record straight, I played (by ear) in country and rock bands for decades before embarking on this particular musical journey.

And at the risk of making some of you angry, I say that I take issue with this attitude "I can read but not enough to hurt my playing."

Again I say that knowing how to read helps me play by ear better, and being able to play by ear helps me me to be a better reader. Rather than being mutually exclusive, the two skills compliment each other.