Musical Illiteracy
 

Are you musically illiterate?

No, I don't think so.....

No.But i am illiterate nonetheless.

What does that mean, "musically illiterate?"

Don't rape. It's a crime.

i'm ILL-literate.

from dictionary.com: Ignorant of the fundamentals of a given art or branch of knowledge: musically illiterate.

nice

But seriously.

well i can't read musical notation. and don't know many of those musical terms like stacato (although that one is one of the few i know)

staccato!

Da Capo al Fine!!!


It helps if you speak Italian.

heh heh. you said from the head is fine....head.

seriously, though. i'm a "classical" saxophonist, so i can read notation quite well. i can read a little for piano and a bit for oboe. i can read very simple bass lines, but mostly play by ear, so that doesn't really matter.

I know who Munehiro Narita is.

that sounds like one uh them fancy shmancy newfangled jap-o-neez names. is you with us or ain't with us? cuz these colors don't run!

I totally repped you for that.

he's musically illiterate apparently. or at least he's not a trained musician, which when i found out, suprised me, but in retrospect is less suprising

He told me he started out playing very straight blues and jazz.

it kinda bothers me when people have the notion that if you can't read music, then you can't contribute anything worthwhile to music.

really? the interview i read with him he said he'd had no training, i suppose a musician of his calibre could probably teach themself to play blues and maybe jazz, do you reckon? either that or he was trying to create a mythology about himself in the interview.

do you know what nanjo is up to now SC? it seems odd for a guy who was possibly the most prolific musician of all time to then disappear.

I can figure out notation, so I can write it (slowly), but I can't read it. I only read tablature.

The overwhelming majority of musicians that anyone has heard of cannot sight-read.

Here he speaks about his musical background.
http://www.squealermusic.com/reviews...interview.html

It's probably this one you read.

I can't read standard notation.

I can hold a guitar the way it's supposed to be held.

I can read a little notation and I can write it a bit. Tabs make up most of my learning though.

I'm very musical illiterate. When I started to play drums in 4th grade my teacher tought me quarter, eighth, and sixteenth notes....that's about it. Then he got sick and I never had a music teacher worth a damn ever again so I quit playing in the school band my 7th grade year. My middle school teacher would always yell at me for "playing to hard" and "hey, don't touch that set"......he basically said "no rocking." Uhhhh see ya. I don't really have any desire to read music even though it is a pretty cool skill.

T&B:
I could easily have misinterpreted his meaning. Language issue there.
I also have no clue about what Nanjo is up to, but have heard that Narita is working with some "younger musicians."

I can read music, but I don't utilize that in my own stuff. It's useful for being able to have a language to talk about what you want to do when collaborating with someone, but playing by ear is just as easy if you have a good intuition and some freaking taste.

I was actually very good at the alto sax (and instrument I now nearly always despise) in school, and know all that music stuff from that. I also learned it for guitar at first, but abandoned that approach pretty early on.
I don't think it's necessary, but like I said it is a common language and in some ways makes collaborations more efficient. I will say that a lot of musicians who are heavily trained in classical disciplines are the shittiest improvisors you can possibly imagine.

just wondering, but why do you hate the alto sax?

Because so many people use it in a tastelessly screechy way.
I hate the soprano sax more. I have heard about 2 people use it in a tolerable way. Coltrane and Brotzmann.
I have no issues with tenors and baritones, but high-pitched saxes (especially in free jazz) are extremely abrasive to me.

Ditto

i don't know shit musically but like Eazy E said .....(read my sig)

but do they put up your picture with silence, because your identity by itself causes violence?

i can see where you're coming from, but i love skronking. to me, it's a way to take away from that notion that the saxophone is a ladies man's instrument and puts it in a more powerful position. but, hell, if all you can do is skronk, then you might as well not play.

yes, also I'm known to participate in criminal behaviour and i'm a gangster but still i've got flavour.

All I know is that Sonic Youth do not transcribe any of their songs.

you're good. eazy would be proud.

I'm not.

I think it is a good practice not to transcribe your songs with the exception of lyrics.

I can't sight read, but I'd say I'm musically literate. I know what the different musical symbols on sheet music mean, and I know what note each line represents. I can't look and immediately tell you what key based on which lines are sharp and flat, but I could figure it out.

Literacy to me seems to be a really subjective term though and the line between who is musically literate and who isn't seems foggy.

Is musical literacy the understanding of musical concepts or the ability to read notation?

You have hit something there.
The ability to read music is a part of overall "literacy," but it is only a part, and and a small part at that.