minstrel: Re: minstrel digest, Vol 1 #130 - 6 msgs

[Jennifer Friedman]

Tibicen comments:
>Any suggestion that instrumentalists should be taught, not in the
>method instrumentalists *have* been taught in, but instead in the
>method that *vocalists* are taught in, had better come packaged with a
>*very* compelling argument as to why the traditional vocalist method
>would somehow work much, much better on instrumentalists than it has
>on vocalists.

Let me quickly clarify that I was not suggesting instrumentalists should
learn to read music by distinguishing intervals.  From what little I know
of instruments in general, there are few instruments that lend themselves
to this technique, and the flute isn't one of them.  (I'm attempting to
learn plucked psaltery by visualizing intervals, but it's going slowly.  Or
maybe that's just because I keep forgetting to practice. ;) )  Nor was I
suggesting that judging intervals is a better way to read music.  It just
happens to be the way I do it.

My point was that too many amateur choral singers assume (as I did for many
years) that one is only REALLY reading music if one is able to pick up a
piece of sheet music and reproduce the pitches notated there exactly.  It
took me five years of singing to realize I was actually, functionally
reading music.  I remember feeling constant confusion in those years over
what I was supposed to be doing--I had no confidence in my skills.  It
would have helped me to know that there are other ways to accomplish
sightreading, and I was learning one of them.

Eliane

p.s.--Ariel, don't I wish everyone learned to read music at age 7...!  I
had excellent but low-impact and non-demanding music education in
elementary and middle school.  We learned intellectually what a quarter
note was, etc. but did not practice sightreading.  By the time I got to
high school, I'd been singing for years but had never been asked to sing
anything without having heard someone play it on the piano first.  There
was no reason to learn to sightread!


----------------------------------------------------------------
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/