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 yelob |
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(06/23/09 9:43 AM) |
In my book that's anyone who can induce or provoke passion,emotion and feeling through
the medium of music.And that can be anyone from the Berlin Philharmonic to the guy banging his biscuit tin on the street corner and just about anything else in between. |
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 kydave |
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(06/23/09 9:50 AM) |
However, until you can read and write music, I think that calling yourself a musician is somewhat misleading.BS. There are many musicians who intuitively understand, know and feel more about chord structure and lead structure on an instrument and harmonizing vocally than many much more technically knowledgable "musicians" who can read & write music all day. These are true musicians. Kentucky Dave's Martins: 00-28H (2006 Custom); SP000-16R (1999 Special Edition);
Last Edited By: kydave
06/23/09 10:04 AM.
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datzus1 |
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(06/23/09 10:11 AM) |
A friend once shared a New Yorker style cartoon with me... with this caption:
"Son, someday you will make a great girl very happy, for a short period of time. Then she'll leave you and be with new men who are ten times better than you could ever hope to be. These men are called musicians." In the original contect, I think it was an interview working in a customer service for musical publishing. In *that* context, knowing something about musical theory and notation would have to be considered more "musical" than knowing that a I - IV - V chord progression is a staple of music. A musician indeed communicates many things musical. Some can sight read music, as Mr. Soul's friend can... some can read jazz charts and improvise tremendously. Some guitarists can play out of D with a capo on the third fret and call out chords to a mandolin player hanging on for dear life in his key of F. Some can put the most beautiful poetry to the simplest of melodies and take me far, far away. I've sung in choirs where the best directors "balance" the singers, placing great sight readers next to folks with great ears (they hear it once and they're good to go). The result: great sound by good, and complimentary, musicians. For me, it's the interpersonal relationship that makes the music come alive. ~ Burr
'00 000-15S, '04 DC16-RGTEP, '06 D-18-GE SB, '68 D-21, '04 D-41, D-76|Washburn F-5,
Schofield F-5|Fender Jazz Lite Bass|Regal RD-40V resonator
~ Suffering is inevitable; misery is a choice. ~ Another guitar is inevitable; my wife has little choice. |
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geeterpicker |
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(06/23/09 10:12 AM) |
I would strongly disagree that reading music is a requirement for one to be called a musician. I have played with classically trained people who could read
anything you put in front of them, but when asked to improvise, they were awful or extremely stiff. I think there are levels of musicianship, but I don't
think there are strict qualifiers to earn the moniker. If reading was the requirement, then we would have to say Oscar Peterson is a musician, but Django
Rheinhardt is not. Mark O'Connor is a musician, but Norman Blake is not. And that would be very wrong.
Brian
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RevGeo |
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(06/23/09 11:24 AM) |
Ok, I was being glib and making jokes in my first post. I have been a musician most of my life. At least for 40 years. Can I read and write music? Yes. Can I
improvise? Yes. Do those skills make me a musician? No. We seem to be defining the term in very strict and limiting terms in some of these posts. A
professional musician ( we argued this term some time back, I think) is obviously someone who makes money from playing music. Couldn't be simpler. The
ability to read and write standard western music notation can't possibly be a requisite for being a musician. That would exclude anyone from the
non-western cultures who perform music. How about musicians from China, Japan, Afghanistan, India, Arabia, Africa.........?
Is someone who welds, but maybe is illiterate, a welder? I think so. How about oral poets? What if they are illiterate? Are they still poets? I think so. Sometimes I think Americans put too much emphasis on formal training in any of the professions or trades. A view probably advanced by the people who have a vested interest in formal training professions. I have studied music for the entire time I have been a musician, both formally (univesity level) and practically. Every time I peruse this forum I learn something pertaining to music. I consider that studying. The best training I have ever recieved has been on the stage. Up there either you do it or you don't. Period. OJT, right? Sometimes I had written music in front of me (a guaranteed way to get an electric guitarist to turn down..), sometimes a chord chart and sometimes verbal instructions along the line of, 'Okay, it's just the rhythm changes in C and the bridge goes to the IV..watch me for when the vocals come back in.', or 'Three chords in the neighborhood of G, boys! Sears and Roebuck intro. Ok, hear we go, 1-2..' I constantly read or hear from somebody who denigrates classically trained musicians for not being able to play without written music. Or somebody denigrating musicians who can't read or write and play strictly be 'ear' (the fact that we guitarists spend a lot of time watching each other's hands makes me think we play a lot by 'eye'..) but does it really make that much difference? 'Music' is a vast field of endeavor. Different people use different methods to achieve what is, more or less, the same end. A 'musician' is someone who performs music, either with an instrument, their voice or maybe just clapping their hands. Being a 'musician' is more a state of mind, I think. If one thinks of one's self as a musician, then one is a musician. Oh, and by the way, Ray Charles could read music. He used braille. Rev George |
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blind owl 00 |
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(06/23/09 12:26 PM) |
IMO to answer your original question tosapicker, I believe both qualify under the moniker 'musician'. To quote my old Webster's here: musician - one skilled in music; esp.: a composer or professional performer of music. Leaves a lot of room for interpretational qualifiers I know. Also IMO Rev, "Can I read and write music? Yes. Can I improvise? Yes. Do those skills make me a musician?" I say yes. Now how good of a musician may be up for conjecture but just the same. Part of this ,to me, is about semantics, part is how musicians want to define themselves and each other, and part of this is can't we all just get along? |
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MrSoul |
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(06/23/09 12:35 PM) |
Who knew that musical literacy would be such a hotly debated topic.
I still encouage any person who wants to be a musican in the Western European tradition to learn how to read and write music. It's not that hard, and it will not stifle your creativity. If you are planning a career as a sitar player, or a Japanese koto player, then you better learn their traditions. I realize that in some traditions Flamenco and sitar music, students are taught by rote memorization. If I had to learn every song I know from a master and fix it permanently in my memory, I would probably stop playing. I would much rather be able to read music than have to learn songs by rote. There are people who succeed in the music business who have no formal education, but unless a person has the innate compositional skills of Irving Berlin (he could write only in the key of C) or the imagination and creativity of Jimi Hendrix, he or she is more likely to better his chances for success by learning to read and write music. Standard notation does have its limitations when it comes to certain kinds of guitar music. That's probably because the same notes can be played on different parts of the fretboard, and where you play them creates a totally different feeling. Then there is problem of notating hammers and bends. So we use tab, and we scrutinize videos to unlock the secrets of certain players. Those aids hardly make the ability to read irrelevant. When I was a teenager learning guitar back in the Sixties, the working musicians, guys who played standards and a smattering of rock, impressed upon me the notion that a real musician can (1) read and (2) play any style of musical without embarassing himself too much. Of course, us younger guys rejected our parents music and the counsel of the older musicians who we thought were the last remnants of the Big Band and Bop generations. And lets face it, a lot of Sixties bands were adamant about not sounding professional, a term that they equated with slick or commercial. I get the feeling that some of the posters are still experiencing this feeling of rebellion. Fortunately, my teacher did get me to read music, a fact for which I am forever greatful. Reading has provided me with the building blocks to develop as a guitarist, bass player and mandolin player. Of course, the ultimate test is playing before an audience. But, I don't think that I would have my current semi-occasional gigs, i f I couldn't read and did not learn the rudiments, at least of music theory. |
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kydave |
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(06/23/09 1:22 PM) |
I would much rather be able to read music than have to learn songs by rote.I would say that reading music is learning songs by rote, in that you are learning note for note what someone else has created. That has its place, for sure. But learning music - learning a song and making it your own - and much more so, creating music is certainly not confined to those who can write music notation. BTW, I grew up from early childhood in church choirs with full time paid music directors teaching us to read music. I learned more when I took a couple years of lessons when first starting out on guitar. I learned more in junior/senior high school choruses and music classes. However, I have never used written music in the least in the performance of music, singing and playing, that supported me for many years, nor in the creation, recording and sale of my own music. Kentucky Dave's Martins: 00-28H (2006 Custom); SP000-16R (1999 Special Edition);
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06/23/09 1:27 PM.
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MrSoul |
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(06/23/09 1:59 PM) |
Rote and reptition are an entirely different process from reading music. For example, Indian tabla players are taught to sing the drum pieces that they play,
and that's what they rely on instead of sheet music when they play. The teacher sings their parts for them and they memorize them. Traditional flamenco
players learned flamenco pieces the same way. It is a long and time consuming process, but I guess these guys never have to worry about forgetting to bring
their music to a gig.
Being abl e to read makes one less dependient on memory. Reading music is, for those who are really good at it, like reading a line of text. If you are really good at it, you play note for note what the author had in his or her head. If you are playing in a recording session or in a band where someone has taken the time, effort, and expense to write out your part, that is what you are expected to do. In some cases, putting your own spin or attempting to ad lib a line will cost you the gig. On the other hand, if you've got a nice tone, and a characteristic way of articulating a musical phrase with your guitar, and that's the reason you were hired for the gig, then everything is copasetic. Now I think that you are talking about a situation where a solo guitar player wants to play a song, and he or she is going to have create an arrangement. There the process is a lot less mechanical and deterministic then folks make out. In the first place, a guitarist may transpose the song to a more guitar friendly key. He or she may also reharmonize the tune (i..e. create a different chord sequence than the one the appears in the sheet music.). This undoubtedly involves creativity, but it also requires some knowledge of musical theory, and if you have a memory as bad mine is, it helps to write down the tune in the new guitar friendly key with the new chords and any other ideas or embellishments that I might add. I wish I could write music with the same facility that I make written notes when researching material for an article. I make my living by writing. I find that ideas evaporate and are irretrevably lost if I don't write them down. (Actually, this is a lesson that I learned from Joan Didion and her husband). If you saw my research materials, you would see sentences, and words and phrases scribbled down. This saves me time and makes me a better writer. Have you ever had the experience of playing a great line, and even with a recording of it, not being able to reproduce exactly what you did. I have had that problem. Even a few notes scratched out on a piece of manuscript would have preserved the original performance or helped me to recall it and reproduce it.
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06/23/09 2:02 PM.
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tosapicker |
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(06/23/09 6:04 PM) |
Thanks for all the heartfelt replies; I was hoping to get this kind of discourse. Here's another way to look at this. Even though I can't read music and have never played out, I have a couple YouTubes out there, with my own licks, demo-ing some guitars I bought. I would think that a viewer, if asked, would say that I'm a musician. Know what I mean? Relic'd Telecaster / '50s Harmony Montclair / '30s Kalamazoo Sport Model / Roy Smeck Vita Uke / '20s Supertone Parlor / Fender Squier 51 / Danelectro U2 / '70s Yamaki Custom
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06/23/09 6:51 PM.
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gfspencer |
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(06/23/09 6:19 PM) |
Can I read music? Well, if I'm looking at a piece of music and my choir director asks me what a particular note is I don't have a clue. If he asks me
to sing said note I can sing it.
1969 Brazilian Rosewood D-35
2001 D-41DF - Dan Fogelberg 2004 LXM - Little Martin 2008 JC-16ME Maple Aura 2009 Grand J12-40E |
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2d Wind |
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(06/24/09 12:12 AM) |
The world needs more people making music, and less people passively entertaining themselves on iPods, TV, etc
I would hope this group in particular would be ambassadors for the cause of encouraging people to feel good about taking up the guitar and developing as musicians Elitist attitudes are counterproductive to this purpose, and tend to discourage the people we all hope will carry on our tradition as musicians That's my soap box moment |
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Larry124 |
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(06/24/09 3:29 AM) |
2d Wind wrote:Good post. |
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Mac Mechanic |
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(06/24/09 10:04 AM) |
Buck wrote:Eubie Blake once talked about a piece of music he had written, and then corrected himself: "I mean I composed it. I didn't learn how to write music until later." Anyone who can write music can read it. I don't consider that Mr. Blake became more of a musician after he learned to write music. He may well have been a better musician, but he was still a performer, composer, and arranger of music. I can read and write music (even attended Juilliard), and come from a long line of musicians of varying ability. My mother and father both earned their livings as musicians (one an opera singer, one a pianist who can sight-read anything you put in front of her, a skill that is beyond my talents). FWIW, I am in the camp that considers that people can be musicians without being able to read music.
Paul
I may be wrong, but I'm not far from it...
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06/25/09 8:52 AM.
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gfspencer |
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(06/24/09 10:05 AM) |
2d Wind wrote:Good post! My wife asked me to make a "bucket list". Other than going to Romania to see Dracula's castle, I couldn't think of much. But then I remembered that I would like to teach one of my granddaughters how to play a guitar. I added that to my "bucket list". Back in the 60's - when I was about 16 years old - I bought a guitar and learned how to play folk music. I'm probably not much better now than I was then but music has kept me going all these years. I'm glad nobody discouraged me.
1969 Brazilian Rosewood D-35
2001 D-41DF - Dan Fogelberg 2004 LXM - Little Martin 2008 JC-16ME Maple Aura 2009 Grand J12-40E |
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blind owl 00 |
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(06/24/09 10:38 AM) |
My grandfather played guitar, my father played guitar, I play guitar and now I'm very proud to say my 16 year old son is coming along just fine on guitar after about four years of grabbing what he can from dad and working things out for himself. Just carrying on an old family tradition.
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06/24/09 10:42 AM.
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Jamada |
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(06/25/09 4:15 PM) |
This is a very thought provoking topic...to many maybe its just provoking
I go with the definition that a musician is a person who makes music. I don't believe it necessarily has anything to do with theory, educational level, or reading music. Disclaimer -- I have a music degree, I can read and write music, but I learned to read after I was already playing in garage bands. I learned to write long after that. I played professionally for many years but I no longer play out...been there, done that. There are many musics in the world and western classical music is just the one we are most familiar with. I have a friend who is a sitar player trained in N. Indian classical music. He does not come from a tradition where reading and western theory applies. The music is extremely sophisticated rhythmically and based on long rhythmic cycles. He and I jam when he is in town. I have to fake it rhythmically, but I can hear, for example he is playing a mixolydian mode (major scale with a flat seven). This is close to a blues scale so I can jam all night on that. Is he a musician? Most definately! IMHO learning more can help, but at the end of the day, the whole point is to make music. |
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