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The entire instrument transposition is really a historical artifact that should be abandoned for producing exactly the problems Gary described.

It dates to a time when trumpets and horns used crooks to change keys, and then the saxhorn family was invented and it was convenient to be able to change instruments and not learn a new set of fingerings.

Neither of those is really true today.

As a trombone player I'm expected to be able to read C bass, Bb treble, and tenor clef at least; if orchestral you must add alto and maybe mezzo soprano clef and if jazz you need C treble. For whatever reason, probably partly the way my engineer brain is wired to do math transformations and partly because I've spent a good bit of time working on it, this isn't difficult for me. But some people find it nearly impossible.

(I recently tried to record a choral duet in canon form with two trombones after the choir gave up. The other trombone player was more accomplished than I but he utterly crashed and burned trying to read a C treble part, even though he'd sung it correctly a moment before. The recording was so bad I didn't let him hear it.)

All of this would vanish if all music were written in concert pitch on the great staff. No more ledger lines (well, most of the time), no more switching clefs, no more wrong notes from the last guy who blew the transposition, etc. Need the tuba to cover the oboe cues or vice versa? no problem.

Yeah, people who play multiple instruments need multiple sets of fingerings - but they do anyway. Just ask a recorder player. F, C, German fingering, baroque fingering, trill fingerings, A=420 altos, etc.

My question about this didn't get an answer so I am asking again. Polyphonist, I don't think you are asking Tim if he understands - I think you are implying that there is a specific thing you expect him to understand, but that specific thing is not stated.

Some choir experiences:

Ch1 - They sang the same pieces for decades that had been drilled into them. A new piece was learned line by line by imitating the piano, and they associated melody with lyrics. Once it was memorized they could follow the choral director, with instructions repeated, reminders given.

Ch2 - Supposedly you had to read music to be accepted. In my audition they tested if I could imitate a line played on the piano: no score in sight. Rehearsal = imitation again, but more complex music.

In any case, a conductor can only be followed if you can get at the notes you are to sing. There is no use seeing how fast and with what rhythm and dynamics you should sing, if you don't know what to sing. The conductor can't give that part.

When it's brand new music, then being able to sight sing from the score is a great help (I can). But if you live in a practical world, Laguna Greg, you will be facing a choir (or be in one) where almost nobody can read music. That is the world that TimR knows and that I have known.

So are you talking about trained singers who understand enough about music that they can extrapolate and anticipate, as well as being able to sight sing?

What you get at the heart of in music for transposing instruments is two aspects of reading music. In one aspect, you associate a note with a sound and then aim to produce that sound. It's one step away from playing by ear. But another aspect of reading music involves associating a symbol on the page (location of a note on the staff) with an instant reflex that is physical --- do this action, push that piano key, upon stimulus of seeing that written note.

I have a treble and tenor recorder "in C" and an alto recorder "in F". Most scores for alto recorder are written in concert pitch. So if I see C, I have to put down 3 fingers which would give me G on the other recorders, but it will give me C. -- I also have a score for a Haendel sonata for flute or recorder. The alto version is a transposed score. It is written "in F" so that if I use "C fingering" I get the right pitch.

The score-to-physical works better for me than score-to-pitch. Otherwise I have to remember to put down all fingers for C on one instrument, and 3 fingers for C on the other instrument.

In contrast, other instruments like piano and violin are not finger-related. You can play C with any finger, but the location is constant. So in learning to play piano, associating a note with a location seems a very important skill, almost more important than being able to pre-hear.

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And how we hear is also not straightforward. A person with "perfect pitch" meaning a person who hears a pitch as a pitch will have a way different perception than someone who is in relative pitch. And then there are associations. Mine was Solfege. What about someone who is entrenched in things like blues scales or the riff-like things in Indian music?

Ah. Good insight, I had not thought of that.

On some classes of instrument - piano, guitar, recorder, handbells, etc., the connection is symbol to physical action. As long as you press the right key, you get the right note. It is not necessary to think the note first.

On other types - trombone or any brass instrument, voice, a few others - any given fingering produces many notes. You cannot produce the correct note without a prior mental image of the sound, and in fact if your image is strong enough you can sometimes override the wrong fingering and get the right note anyway.

In my thought process I was not distinguishing between these categories, but you're right it makes a difference.

Ideally we do learn to play by ear, I wonder if the paths to get there are different.

In fact, I had to get at the symbol-to-action mentality and it brought my reading of piano music up quite a few notches in accuracy. When I first encountered piano music and a piano as a child, I only had solfege and singing, and so I approached piano as a singer. I'd see a diagonal line of notes, see/hear a scale, have my starting note, and would then play the scale I heard in my head. That was how I "read" piano music. The symbol-to-location way of reading (how most pianists do it or start) was foreign to me.

In piano the trap then arises of symbol-to-finger, where a student has stayed in C position - G position - in 5-finger configuration for a very long time. He then associates the notation showing C to his RH thumb. This also creates a problem. On recorder I may have a single fingering to produce G (3 down + thumb) but I can play G with any finger. The same problem arises in violin for about the same reason. Eventually the student learns to shift. C on the G string, which was finger 3, is now played with finger 1, and it becomes massive confusion.


That is quite interesting. I suspect that by their nature, different instrument groups create a different way of experiencing music and how we relate to notes and notation. If so, then how reading music is approached would have to bear that in mind. Will what is good for singing necessarily apply to piano, for example?

If you want to go nuts thinking about what we hear: I ran into this today and have heard of it before

http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/tartini-temperament.html#more

I have relative pitch too but with the years I have started remembering where the notes are. I guess I've developed a note frequency memory but it's not perfect . Years ago I discovered that if I visualized myself listening to the tuning fork I could internally hear the A=440 and thus singing it back. using that as a reference i can find any note and sing it in tune .

I do not hear the low buzz of the Tartini note (and I was unaware of the term, thanks for finding that).

But on occasion I do adjust a chord away from Equal Temperament to more pure intervals. If three trombonists are playing a triad, and it's slow enough like in a chorale, one of them will automatically lower the third until the chord sounds good.

I don't have this experience often because players with intonation that good can be hard to find. But when I do, the results are unmistakeable. Your article describes the Tartini tone disappearing, but that's not what I hear (because I don't hear that tone anyway.) I hear a sudden almost 3 dimensional clarity appear in the chord.

This! So much!

It took me a while to realize, and then accept, that if I wanted to learn to sight-read at the piano, I had to stop trying to hear and start thinking in terms of physical location. You're the one who first turned on the lights for me in that regard, keystring. So thanks. It seems to be working for me.

But when I said more or less the same thing you just said, earlier in this thread, I sparked a new discussion on what it means to be a musician ...

I just found it and am responding now.


The quote is without context and doesn't take into account the whole of what Saranoya took great pains to write. Saranoya did not talk about what "makes a musician". She wrote about the skill of reading music.

We are talking here about the acquisition of basic reading skills. Is that on your mind in your response here? Do you yourself form students from the beginning stages, so that they learn how to read? Do you have thoughts or experiences to share in that respect?

I am with Saranoya on this. I was able to audiate like a singer when I saw written music, and "felt" things. It was not enough. I found it much handier, faster, and accurate to learn to associate a written note with a location on the piano.

If you talk about musicianship itself, this comes from applying skills and knowledge and maybe some degree of a "feel" for music --- but I guarantee that if you don't get those skills you can't do much. It will be amateurish, crude, and full of limitations regardless of how "inspired" you are.

Getting an efficient way of reading music is essential. It doesn't have to be musical or inspiring. Being able to get at the notes is a must. When Shakespeare learned to trace his A, B, C's -- circle stick, circle stick, for "d", there was nothing inspired or artistic about it. But he had to know how to form "d" on paper, and read it.

Keystring,
I completely agree with you. I was taking it for granted when I asked the solfege question. Of course,we are using many of our senses all at once. Reading, hearing, and then physically playing. What sense would that be?
It can be interesting to think of a score as a map of sounds or as a choreography for your fingers.
Being able to identify each note with a key on the piano without looking comes naturally after you have played a lot, though. Don't you think?

In recent years I have been involved in a teaching approach that aims to give this directly and early, and I'm rather convinced because everything I know and have seen or experienced points to getting this skill as being a good thing - especially for piano which is so "note heavy". I don't know how well developed reading skills truly are among people: do some compensate by memorizing new music early, for example?

But to answer your question, personally what I was able to do caused me to largely bypass the notes, and that connection never really developed until I forced it directly. Since then I've found one or two people with a similar experience, such as Saranoya. I'll try to explain. If you have a good ear and a sense of music, you'll catch on to patterns. Take a piece that is in ABA form, where B is the same as A but in the Dominant key. Let the piece be diatonic and simple. You'll anticipate where the music will go and hear that in your head, then play what you anticipate. If this happens over and over for every piece you encounter, you'll never get at the notes. You also won't know you are not reading notes until you get to music that isn't predictable and suddenly discover you're not really reading.

So the short of it is that you can play many pieces for a long time, with the music in front of you, and yet barely develop an association of note to piano key, or even of individual notes.

I would say that ANY missing basic skill will hamper a musician, and if that basic skill is acquired it will make a difference. This particular one seems to make a difference.