minstrel: Reading music

[Jennifer Friedman]

Tibicen wrote:
>It comes down to "When I see this symbol on the page, and I'm holding
>that instrument, what do I do with my hands and mouth?"

I'd like to point out (not that this is relevant to the discussion of flute
playing) that this is not how everyone reads music.  As a vocalist who has
next to no experience with instruments (2 miserable years of piano), I
sightread the way I learned in choir, freshman year in high school: by
knowing what intervals look and sound like.  Seeing two notes with an
interval of a perfect fourth between them (W+W+H, in Brendan's notation),
and already knowing the pitch of the first one, I hear a fourth up from the
previous note in my head, and sing it.

After years of experience, I can do this pretty fast and pretty accurately,
esp. if the piece is in a familiar style or genre.  But, having no sense of
absolute pitch, I MUST be given a starting note first.  This always
startles my instrumentalist friends when we are all sightreading together
and need to start on the same beat.

A lot of inexperienced singers believe that being able to sightread equates
to being able to look at a notated A and produce it, as an instrumentalist
does with an instrument.  I'm sure there are people who can do this, but
I'm not one of them.  When (as in the SCA) a big portion of one's ability
to participate in choral activities depends on one's confidence in
sightreading, informing someone that they DON'T have to be able to
reproduce pitches right off the page can be very liberating for them.  And
may get more singers to participate in a choir!

Eliane
choral/bardic wonk
My least favorite conversational exchange:
Me: "I don't play any instruments, I'm a singer."
Other person: "Oh, I thought you said you were a musician."
*muffled sounds of strangling*



----------------------------------------------------------------
Lady Eliane Halevy, AoA, OC, OW, OPF, mka Jennifer Friedman
Provost, Bardic Madness XIII (2003)
Shire of Rokeclif, Principality of Northshield, Middle Kingdom
http://www.gflower.org/                jfriedmn at PressEnter.com
1920 Victory St. #10, La Crosse, WI 54601   (608) 788-8781
Shire of Rokeclif webpage: http://rokeclif.n3.net
Northshield Choir webpage: http://www.gflower.org/nscmidis.htm
Northshield Bardic College webpage: http://www.minstrel.com/ncb/