[Dixielandjazz] Brubeck reading music

[ballen]

Get "This Is Your Brain On Music". It describes how notation is completely
at odds with how we experience music, thus many excellent musicians read
poorly or not at all.

The best example is so-called "perfect pitch". Very few people can actualy
sing a note as directed. But a study was done in which average "joes" with
NO musical training were asked to sing a pop melody (one with only one
widely heard version; not "Star Spangled Banner" or "Happy Birthday".) The
best was "Like a Virgin" because it was popular at the time and there are no
other versions in other keys or tempi. Most people could sing the song VERY
CLOSELY TO EXACT PITCH and even pretty closely to recorded tempo. In fact,
with some of the subjects, tapes of them singing unaccompanied as tested
could be played alongside the original version wiith almost a complete
match! So the conclusion was that our standard notation is at odds with how
we actually percieve/experience music.

By the way, the author is a musician, a producer who later got a PhD in
psychology. He uses EVERY STYLE OF MUSIC as illustrations, from Ravel to the
Stones to Monk.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "ROBERT R. CALDER" <serapion at btinternet.com>
To: "Mr. Bill" <ballen at deltapathology.com>
Cc: "Dixieland Jazz Mailing List" <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2008 9:05 PM
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Brubeck reading music


> Dave Brubeck said he had problems at music academy because he couldn't
read music.  This is on a documentary film about him made a few years ago.
He was allowed to continue because he could actually read music and
orchestrations he had himself written. It might have been Darius Milhaud who
spoke up for him.
> I don't myself try to compose, I trained as a classical singer and suffer
from a form of musical dyslexia.  Put a score in front of me and I can do
nothing, unless I know in advance what it sounds like. I can then see the
corrections and why this note in my memory needs to be adjusted.
> I'm not dyslexic with regard to words and letters, I work on reference
book entries and as a text editor! I can however sympathise deeply with
dyslexics due to my own experience with musical notation.  Somegody affected
amazement that I could pick up complex melodic lines by ear, but it's
actually hard for me to credit people mastering complex scores. And there
are people who can pick up and play harmonisations on the piano, and
transcribe no bother! My one friend who did this most amazingly was a
surgeon. I can sing bop harmonies like a horn-player, I have a spatial
feeling for them, they make sense to me. This is no claim to merit, there
are people who can do all that and read and can't deliver a decent
chorus-length solo.
> I believe there have been studies in non-reading.
> The interesting thing about the famous non-reader Pavarotti is that he had
an idiomatic awareness of some music probably at odds with the discipline of
notation. Of course he did need teachers to tell him not to try singing some
music, to concentrate on doing what probably nobody else could -- unless
they learned from him.  This of course is one thing he has in common with
the fathers of jazz.
>
>
> ---------------------------------
>  Rise to the challenge for Sport Relief with Yahoo! for Good
> _______________________________________________
> To unsubscribe or change your e-mail preferences for the Dixieland Jazz
Mailing list, or to find the online archives, please visit:
>
> http://ml.islandnet.com/mailman/listinfo/dixielandjazz
>
>
>
> Dixielandjazz mailing list
> Dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com
>