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Are people wired differently with music?


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I am always just completely blown away by people who can sit down in front of so,e sheet music they've never seen before and just play it. I know a lot of people on here can do that. For me, playing from sheet music means pecking my way through it enough times that I basically know how it goes and essentially play it from memory using the sheet music as a guide and reminder. OTOH, I can pick things up fairly quickly and easily by ear. I can listen to something and play it much sooner than if I had to learn it from sheet music.

 

I remember struggling as a teenager learning song I was supposed to play in recital. One day at my piano lesson, my teacher stopped me and said "let's try something. Close your eyes". She played something and then asked me to open my eyes and try to play it myself. I did. We did that several times with her making it more difficult each step and managed to do it each time. Didn't mean I was off the hook learning the recital pieces, but I think she realized it was important for me to hear the piece played correctly to make it easier for me to pick it up for the music.

 

Do you think people are wired differently or just that so,e have practiced one skill more than the other?

Dan

 

Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth.

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I think you're correct -- for sure there's a wide mix of base capabilities and skills across the musical spectrum, and I'm also sure that focused practice to further develop those skills does help.

 

Not only are "so,e" * people wire differently with music, "some" will claim to be not wired at all! They may enjoy listening to it, but they can't sing in key, carry a tune or play an instrument. Many folks I know can't even hum in tune, it's like they're perpetually out of tune; but that doesn't stop them from hearing it in tune -- seems they just can't recreate it in tune.

 

I liked that scene in "Rocket Man" where Elton John (before he changed his name) didn't bring any sheet music to the Music Conservatory but played the piece the instructor had just been playing -- up until the point where she had stopped. To me, that was a great example of just how gifted the "really gifted" musicians really are! I can learn to play tunes by ear, but I won't catch every note on-the-spot like he did in that scene, and I find it easier to learn a new song from sheet music if I've heard it before.

 

* By the way, your PC's keyboard is wired differently -- as you typed a "," instead of an "m" a couple of times... (Did you close your eyes again?) :o)

 

Old No7

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The debate of nature versus nurture takes a unique shape with languages like music. Researchers have found that babies are already wired with some linguistic characteristics before birth.

 

My personal experience is similar to yours. Regardless of where we begin, we can deepen our awareness and love for music by listening to it. :cheers:

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I think one of the cool things about playing music is that it's one of the rare activities that combines the left and right brain hemispheres; there's the abstract, creative side and the mathematical, analytical side working in tandem. So it makes sense that different people would have different strengths and weaknesses along that spectrum.

 

I've always envied competent sight readers (I can sight read pretty well as a bassist, but I never put in the time early on reading piano music where I've felt comfortable sight-reading even the simplest pieces, and bass parts tend to be much more predictable in terms of patterns and lines). I've always felt like reading music is like doing math problems: I can do it, but it takes a lot of mental work, and I tire of it very quickly. Improvising, playing changes, and composing do seem to come more naturally. On the other hand, I've met more than a few fantastic readers who not only marvel at my ability to figure out harmony by ear, but who can't continue playing a single thing as soon as the music is taken away (even a late page turn is a catastrophe).

 

The ones who can do both well, though... man, that really blows me away.

Samuel B. Lupowitz

Musician. Songwriter. Food Enthusiast. Bad Pun Aficionado.

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The skill is different I think. Plenty of people can read. I took classes where piano conservatory classes were taught at Eastman. I was taking a community gospel piano class from 1997 till 1999. The kids there weren't that great but most of us had better feel than the classical kids. It was really weird to me and there is still some part of me that looks at them as being un-musical. I know that is wrong because playing tough Mozart, Shostakovitch and Rachmaninoff is really special. That said the guys that always impressed me were street musicians or guys that could go into any situation and just play. I remember when I was starting to take lessons. In 1982 I was at the old Duke Spinner music store downtown here and a guy was showing me the theme to Arthur from Christopher Cross. He played it all using the chord symbols and his right hand had a lot of training so seeing that kind of had me memorized. When I see classical piano players I don't feel that impressed I always think of this video, watch it all the way through. It kind of speaks to the same thing:

 

 

[video:youtube]

 

"Danny, ci manchi a tutti. La E-Street Band non e' la stessa senza di te. Riposa in pace, fratello"

 

 

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I used to take home a piece from my lesson and struggle with it and then the next lesson have the teacher play it. The next lesson I would have it nailed after hearing it! To this day I rely on my ear and it allows me to play in 9 or 10 different bands this year! Yes I do chart out tunes I am not familiar with but for the most part my ear is my gift. Plus I have learned that not playing is why I get the work that I get!

Jimmy

 

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I think one of the cool things about playing music is that it's one of the rare activities that combines the left and right brain hemispheres; there's the abstract, creative side and the mathematical, analytical side working in tandem. So it makes sense that different people would have different strengths and weaknesses along that spectrum.

 

I concur and have commented on this here before. Oddly, for me, the only other activity where I have experienced and observed this confluence is when I'm doing printed circuit board layout. I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has experienced this left/right brain cooperation doing anything other than playing music (in my case piano).

 

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

-Mark Twain

 

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Developing software, my day job, is like that too (and I have observed that there is a pretty big overlap in the Venn diagram of musicians and developers). You have to think very logically and analytically to understand what's happening and be able communicate and visualize ideas very precisely, and also be really creative and think out of the box to come up with and design high-level solutions to various problems..

Rich Forman

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I grew into music (guitar) as a system of patterns filled with subtle (and not so subtle) variations and abberations.

I never wanted to play other people's music, especially written.

Being visually impaired is almost certainly a factor in my case.

 

Like you, I do well with hearing and my memory contains a "recorder" that is pretty accurate.

3 weeks ago we had a request near the end of the first set for Black Magic Woman by Santana (not the Peter Green version).

 

I've never played it. We promised the requestee that we would play it on the next set.

I've heard it many times. Took me a couple of minutes to get the opening solo pretty much sussed out. Our singer used his phone to get the lyrics.

We did a decent job and decided to add it to our sets. Now I have to learn the rest of it, should not take too long to get it.

 

The reality is that would be a difficult piece to notate. Guitar is difficult in the first place, unlike a keyboard there are 5 different locations on my Strat where I can play Middle C. American music does not always adhere to the tempered scale and those subtleties can be crucial for authenticity.

 

I do have a friend who plays keys and you can give her a well written song chart including lyrics and vocal melody and she will knock it out of the park first try. I hugely respect and admire that but it isn't going to be me, ever. Cheers, Kuru

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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I've always envied competent sight readers (I can sight read pretty well as a bassist, but I never put in the time early on reading piano music where I've felt comfortable sight-reading even the simplest pieces, and bass parts tend to be much more predictable in terms of patterns and lines).

 

The ones who can do both well, though... man, that really blows me away.

 

Most of my early efforts at the piano were in the areas of jazz and improv: learn the chords and the scales, and learn to create melody lines from them. And then I joined a jazz big band. Everything was written out. I had little to no sight-reading experience and was always wondering why others in the band could read their parts so easily. I started working every day on sight-reading. And as I did so, I realized the task of sight-reading piano music is not just more difficult than it is for other instruments, it is orders of magnitude more difficult.

 

Consider: the bass and horns are monophonic instruments written out on one stave. Piano music has up to 10 different lines of music at any given moment spread across two staves. Drummers may have a polyphonic instrument but do not have to deal with chords and scales. The guitar is nominally a polyphonic instrument, but in a jazz band is only ever asked to play one line of music. I'm a better sight-reader these days, but I am still the slowest reader in the jazz big band. And I also now understand how much more difficult the reading task is for me as a piano player than it is for everyone else in the band.

 

Sight-reading piano music is one of the more difficult tasks in all of music. Small wonder that many here prefer different approaches to piano playing. I continue to set aside some time every day to work on sight-reading, and I can still only sight-read the most simple of classical piano pieces. As time as gone on and my reading has improved, the reading task has grown to include dynamics and articulations on top of getting the right note at the right time.

 

I will say the effort to practice sight-reading pays off when improvising because my fingers can find notes they used to miss: my physical familiarity with the keyboard has expanded because of my sight-reading effort. Additionally, thru sight-reading, I am learning a much wider swath of piano music than when I was focused on jazz, blues, and pop exclusively - so I now have more tools in my tool-kit for improvisational playing.

 

J.S. Bach Well Tempered Klavier

The collected works of Scott Joplin

Ray Charles Genius plus Soul

Charlie Parker Omnibook

Stevie Wonder Songs in the Key of Life

Weather Report Mr. Gone

 

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* By the way, your PC's keyboard is wired differently -- as you typed a "," instead of an "m" a couple of times... (Did you close your eyes again?) :o)

 

I tend to do that a lot when I'm on my iPad or iPhone.....that's how you can tell I'm not at my PC

 

Dan

 

Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth.

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I have also found, that unlike playing by ear or muscle memory, sight-reading skills are perishable. If I go without playing for a while, I can still sit down at the piano - solo or sitting in with others - and bang out my old repertoire at more or less the same level I ever did. Sight reading, at least for me, is a different animal entirely. I sat down the other day with an old songbook - the complete works of Scott Joplin - that I used to play by sight all. the. time. and I sucked! I'm pretty glad my income doesn't rely on sitting in on chart reading sessions. It was surprising how much of that old skill I had lost. I still knew what all the symbols meant and could play what was written on the page, but my ability to read ahead and play at speed was just gone.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

-Mark Twain

 

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I recall as a budding musician a veteran trumpet player once telling me that when sight-reading you aren't really "playing." He likened it to a secretary typing a letter from copy.

 

:snax:

"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing."

- George Bernard Shaw

 

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I've coached cricket and football at junior and senior level for years and my observations there tell me that with hard work and dedication anyone can improve and become more competent - but the potential range of improvement depends on a certain innate ability. The rare people who make it to elite level have a combination of an exceptionally high level of natural talent plus a unusually high propensity to work hard at their craft, including sometimes sacrificing things that others simply wouldn't.

 

I've always felt the same way about music and musicians. I grew up with a supremely gifted musician (my brother) who's mere existence always inspired me to knuckle down and practice so I could exist somewhere within his orbit. Things come so much easier to him (and many others I work with) than they do to me, it seems to take me a lot longer to pick things up that are second nature to others. For me this includes all aspects of music performance - sight reading, playing by ear, timing, accuracy, etc. No dramas, I'm happy enough to work hard at my music because I really love it.

 

To boil my comment down more specifically to the sight reading issue you outlined Dan, I see it like any other skill as per my first paragraph. For the record, I'm very much like you these days. But when I was a kid and was learning classical piano, I was a passable sight reader because I worked so darn hard at it. This said, there was only so good I was ever going to get.

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It"s no different than reading writing the English language. Some folks are natural conversationalists but fumble to write an essay or get the sweats when they have to read a novel for an English lit class. Sometimes Amazon shows up with your new gadget and some folks want to assemble and use by trial and error and others go right for the manual. It"s the same with music.

 

Fluidity in reading music comes from knowing the moves or the musical vocabulary. You can learn that vocab by reading a LOT or you can learn it by listening and figuring things out a LOT - both is best. Once you understand that what they are writing is something you already understand - you literally go, 'I"ve seen and/or heard this before (or something very similar) and you execute the gesture. Eventually you DO NOT go, 'this is G, and a B and D. You see the chord and the voicing and the duration/rhythm at once and you do it. Absolutely no way around time spent reading, listening, imagining what you see as sound and what you hear as written. It"s a mental process and motor memory combined. Your hands execute gestures like a dancer executes moves. Then there"s the time spent building physical strength and a sense of steady tempo.

 

There"s 10 lifetimes or more of musical concepts to study in all the music this earth has to offer. We all get as far as we get and enjoy the journey. Some very successful music makers have limited themselves to just a small corner of the musical world - and maybe that"s enough. It all depends on what you find fulfilling and what your goals are.

 

Are musical people wired differently?

Probably not too much more than other artistic minds.

But clearly very different from people who don"t get any emotional response from listening or playing music.

I"m sure everyone here can"t imagine a music-less world.

J.Dead :) - you could be a pretty decent reader/writer.

Never any substitute for a good teacher and time allocated from our short lives.

But it"s not the only path. Plenty of music makers doing it all sorts of ways.

 

 

Yamaha CP88, Casio PX-560

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This has been brought up before, but once again relevant to this topic "This Is Your Brain On Music"

 

This particular tome was a revelation for me. It convinced me that we all have deep evolutionary musical skills and pleasure centers. We are all wired for music to different degrees. Right up there with s*x. After reading this, I cared less about the intellectual stimulation that music can provide, and realized it mostly a human, sweaty thing.

 

Double bonus for me? The author was an authentic geek hippie (much like me) so I found myself relating in a big way.

 

I play for fun, and part of the fun is how people respond. These days, it's all about responsive gigs.

Want to make your band better?  Check out "A Guide To Starting (Or Improving!) Your Own Local Band"

 

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I play for fun, and part of the fun is how people respond. These days, it's all about responsive gigs.

It was always about that for me.

well... That and avoiding a straight job.

and the misbegotten idea that it would make me a chick magnet.

and getting paid to have a blast.

and Hmm.. Maybe it wasn't all about that after all.

 

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

-Mark Twain

 

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That is a skill... but so is playing expressively and with some depth..... many folks who can read well it's been said are often not as expressive... the great thing about reading well is you can check out alot of different music!

So... as in life... anything can be a trade off.... but I'm sure there are folks that read well and express well, so! All sorts of skills in music.... I struggle with reading... I read well but slow, 1-2 measures a day w/Classical music...

But I do finish the pieces.... just takes some time and often...that in itself will get you in 'deeper'.... the slowness! Art/Music/Dance are a strange beasts...... nothing like business where speed is so important...w/ music Time does not always equate to $$ or 'the booty'!

 CP-50, YC 73,  FP-80, PX5-S, NE-5d61, Kurzweil SP6, XK-3, CX-3, Hammond XK-3, Yamaha YUX Upright, '66 B3/Leslie 145/122

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That is a skill... but so is playing expressively and with some depth..... many folks who can read well it's been said are often not as expressive...

Yeah... no. I've pretty much signed off on that idiom being hopefully lazy. There's absolutely no correlation between practice/learning-to-read and stunted expressiveness. It is true that some practiced musicians have absolutely no expression, but I suspect if you took the same number of non-practiced musicians you'd find the same thing.

 

Brought to you by the same people who tell their kids Einstein was bad at Math (hint: he was very good at math).

Puck Funk! :)

 

Equipment: Laptop running lots of nerdy software, some keyboards, noise makersâ¦yada yada yadaâ¦maybe a cat?

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That is a skill... but so is playing expressively and with some depth..... many folks who can read well it's been said are often not as expressive...

Yeah... no. I've pretty much signed off on that idiom being hopefully lazy. There's absolutely no correlation between practice/learning-to-read and stunted expressiveness. It is true that some practiced musicians have absolutely no expression, but I suspect if you took the same number of non-practiced musicians you'd find the same thing.

 

Brought to you by the same people who tell their kids Einstein was bad at Math (hint: he was very good at math).

" but I'm sure there are folks that read well and express well, so! All sorts of skills in music.."

 

the guy I study with talks about classical players mostly, who play with no feeling..and some jazz players too! .. he's a bebop guy basically (3 years at Berklee, MA, 27 + w/ Sal Mosca both play/ played alot of Classical ) but well versed in the classics, (I am not, but some Bach, Chopin, Beethoven) .. half his students are classical players only...

half all improvisation students...His pet peeve is that the jazz world has unveiled some amazing musical ideas and innovations ala: Bud Powell, Lester Young, Bird ... innovators even the classical players in NYC could learn from but he says in NYC the classical folks for the most part dis jazz and jazz players..35 students, teaching for well over 50 years ....he is about 80 years old now.

 

Not to many big innovators in classical music per say in terms of expression, and I hear even less now.... yes their is 'interpretation' in classical music, but they are still other people's notes and you are given the notes.....there is an art to improv and expression, and writing music where the great classical composers were at that is very akin to jazz expression in essence in the player/composer/improviser..where even the great classical music comes from before Neo Classical....how do you deal with expression and improv. in terms of generating something new and fresh even if you are going to notate it later?!... I'm just expressing the 'Koan' of it all.... the sound of one hand clapping about reading verses not! There are skills that are not reading per say, that just use the raw materials of music's nuts and bolts...Improvised music (be-bop) is not necessarily 'reading-centric'.even the classical cats, use the raw materials to compose or improvise... which is his point about the expressiveness vs people who can read well! Anything can be a hindrance to anything else, even good things....

 

Yet still he and I, studying with him, spend a fair amount of time with classical music and reading, maybe 30 percent of the study...so! I'm working on a Chopin Mazurka right now... Just trying to balance the equation on the topic I guess...

I read in the intro to 'Tropic of Cancer' by Henry Miller that cautions the reader about how Miller's points through his books seem contradictory.... but through his books it's said, even in the trilogy of his that basically he is just trying to discern the answers to the various questions life poses.... so he's just wiggin out the different views on things... like the politic of the day, the answers are there for you and where you are at! Good to know both sides of the arguments though! I believe

List and a few other composers were in fact 'slow' readers...you (I) have to figure out where we are at with all that and find ways to move forward. There are always ways to move forward! Even reading slowly or just charts and Harmony knowledge and getting around!

 CP-50, YC 73,  FP-80, PX5-S, NE-5d61, Kurzweil SP6, XK-3, CX-3, Hammond XK-3, Yamaha YUX Upright, '66 B3/Leslie 145/122

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Mostly it's a skill gained from practice and repetition. If you read enough music you've eventually seen it all (that is all possible two-hand note combinations or subsets at any point on the score) and your hands automatically go to the notes on the page. Another thing that comes along with this skill is the ability to "hear" the piece just by looking at it.

 

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I'm mostly an improviser. Started there, then took music lessons for many years, can read, write, etc. But now that I'm playing rock/pop gigs, I'm mostly a chart reader. My sight reading is definitely rusty, but that's on me. No one plays like Jazzers. I melt when faced with a half-decent jazz pianist. Concert pianists can't hold a candle to them, IMO. But they're all great skills to learn, and there are NO down sides to learning any skill. Anyone who tells you otherwise is just justifying their own laziness.

Puck Funk! :)

 

Equipment: Laptop running lots of nerdy software, some keyboards, noise makersâ¦yada yada yadaâ¦maybe a cat?

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Yes, people are wired differently with music. Some people, especially people who grew up with no music in their lives, don't even grasp music. They don't hear it, they don't understand it. So starting from that position, there are many ways that people can be wired differently with music. I knew a piano bar player who could play any tune if she had heard it before. She couldn't read and she couldn't improvise but if she knew the song she could play a perfect piano bar rendition. I sat with her and showed her how to play basic chords and melody for Angel Eyes. She couldn't do it because she didn't already know the song. She was just wired differently. Other people I know can't carry a tune because they can't even hear the notes. Then there are keys players I know who can do grooving LH bass while soloing over the top in the RH. I am in awe. And classical players who can memorize whole concertos when I'm trying hard to learn a simple jazz chord progression. And jazz players who take a solo so far outside that it sounds like they will never get back to this planet, then they land on the last bar and tag it for the next soloist. I have a singer-songwriter friend who is constantly writing songs and lyrics. Of course people are wired in many different ways with music, some don't get it all, some are living music all the time.
These are only my opinions, not supported by any actual knowledge, experience, or expertise.
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Then there are keys players I know who can do grooving LH bass while soloing over the top in the RH. I am in awe.

Yeah, see, for me that's second nature, it's how I started out playing and do as my default, since I just played solo in my home as a kid and didn't really play with others until much later. For me, it's cats who can do complex chord subs and splat occasional accents in the LH while soloing, that's the holy grail. My LH is a bass (a good bass, but still mainly mono-phonic) but not a rhythm guitar. To learn that well, that requires playing with bass players in a sparse improv setting for a long time. It's a skill only the very best have.

Puck Funk! :)

 

Equipment: Laptop running lots of nerdy software, some keyboards, noise makersâ¦yada yada yadaâ¦maybe a cat?

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