Re: OT West African/African Diaspora rhythms: 3/4, 4/4, 6/8, 12/8

["Mark Showalter" <folkstone57@operamail.com>]

Hello,

Now for something completely different.....

Must disagree here with a caveat:

Any student of music should learn BOTH at the same time, with obviously 
the "ear" coming first. Once the student gets an idea of what the musical 
bit is, understanding how to notate or read it should follow immediately. 
Music is a language just like English or French or Hungarian, all of which 
I am learning. I've been a music student for over 40 years, starting out 
by teaching myself how to read music & I wish I had started even earlier 
learning to read. There are instances when it would be almost crucial to 
learn to read a musical bit first, get it into your head ( what I call 
auralizing ) then hearing or playing it. For instance, when I learned 
augmented sixths, they made absolutely no aural sense whatsoever until I 
could see what was happening in the music, & even then I still don't have 
a good grasp of the bloody things.

Keep in mind this entire comment is directed at "learning by ear", which 
usually is taken to mean that someone can play an instrument but not know 
how to read music or doesn't learn until much later. There's also the 
problem of how good a person should be learning by ear before beginning to 
learn to read music. This would be the same problem as learning Hungarian 
& having to wait until a certain proficiency is reached before starting to 
learn how to read the language. Not a good idea at all. Also, the 
assumption that people who play by ear are better performers or 
improvisers or have better feel is on par with an old wives tale. It's 
anecdotal & is usually promoted by people who also insist that learning 
music in some way ruins you as a musician, kills your creativity, blah 
blah blah yadda yadda yadda........

> The worst thing anybody can do when learning rhythm is to learn notation
> *before* learning to play by ear. A lot of people do that, and it's
> commonly taught that way , but it's easy to hear the difference in 
> their playing,
> and when someone can't play an offbeat without making
> some physical movement on the on-beat it's easy to see the difference 
>too.
> 
> 
> 
> andy butler

>



Mark Showalter
Minden Jot!

myspace.com/folkstone57
http://www.last.fm/music/Mark+Showalter
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