This is Vic Lawson. As Bob noted in the last newsletter, if you ask 100 people about sight-reading versus playing by ear, you’ll get 200 opinions. That’s certainly what we got. Some people get extremely excited about the subject. We wanted to share some of the replies we received. After all, it’s important to get different points of view.
EXCELLENT!!!! As a music major (sax and voice) in college, I learned to sight read like a bandit. When I played Tenor Sax in a touring funk band that skill served me well. When disco hit I quit the band and have played Pedal Steel ever since. While the things I learned in school remain the basis for all things musical, steel guitar (for me at least) is more of a “feel” thing. It’s also (once again imho) an instrument that “ya either got the feel and touch required, or ya ain’t”. Brecker and Vaccari and all them cool Tenor giants can still bring me to my knees with their hot and cool licks. Give me Lloyd Green or Buddy Emmons any day of the week for pure musical bliss! Keep up the great work.
Dan Chambers
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Hi Bob, it’s Ron again.
I started learning guitar at the age of 5. I couldn’t read English, hardly knew the alphabet, but would not quit asking my parents about guitar lessons. So, they found a teacher that agreed to give it a try. The method he taught was “notes on staff” or music in the classic sense. Since I couldn’t read English yet, he devise a method of fractional numbers. 0/1 was the open 1st string, 3/1 was the 3rd fret on the first string, and so on. I eventually learned to read both English and music.
Fast forward to the steel guitar. I believe I could learn to read on a lap steel. The moving notes on a pedal guitar really complicate reading music. The sheet calls for an E, but is it the one forth string or is it at the first fret with the E lowered? Sheet music doesn’t convey that.
What I concluded is for pedal steel guitar a musician needs a deeper reading of the music. If you notice the chord at the moment is a C, then the E in the melody can tell you which bar position to most likely find a pocket to work. Might be 3rd fret, might be 8th, depends on what you want to do and where the song is going next.
The same works for C6.
Example: I mentioned before that I had used fake books to figure out some jazz tunes. The first tune I broke the code on was “Night and Day”, the old Sinatra hit. The chart called for a D-7b5 chord (D minor seventh with a flatted 5th) with a G for the first note of the melody. Hmm? Where to start? I went to my D-7 position at the 5th fret and started counting notes up from the root on the minor scale (starting on the 8th string). When I got to the 5th note of the minor scale on the 6th string, I realized I could flat that note with my 6th pedal. Wait a minute! That’s what I would normally call a Bb7 chord. (for those of you working on the C6, that’s why strings 10,9, & 8 are tuned the way they are. By changing the low note (root) you change the color and name of the chord). Having convinced myself that this was indeed a D-7b5, now where do I find the melody note?
I had started using the D as a first string because a lot of people were doing that and it gave me some E9 riffs on the C6 tuning. Now I discover it gives a different opportunity when playing those altered chords used so much in jazz. The first note of “Night and Day” was right under the bar on the 1st string, and that’s pretty handy for steel guitar player.
Warning: Discovering a Bb7 has the same spelling as D-7b5 leads to a whole new study of substituting a chord you know for the one on the sheet. I have found it to be one of the most important elements of C6, and what your learn there is fun to use on the Kroger neck too.
I can still read music like flypaper on guitar, it was my first language. My experience on steel is this. I can’t sight read. I can find the notes, but it takes more time. But, and it’s a big but, there is a lot more information on the sheet than just the melody and reading that can add to the steel player’s knowledge of what the whole band is supposed to be doing. That one chord, D-7b5 tells you where the bass, piano, horns if you have them, or fiddles are supposed to be. And the melody says where the soloist is in all the mix. It’s interesting and quite a challenge.
I had always heard that Hal Rugg could read. That and many other reasons I assumed was why we always would see him on awards night playing with the Orchestra. I asked him about that. He never verified his reading ability, but stated modestly he had been gifted with a good ear.
My take on that is if you can tell where your supposed to be from the sheet music and you have a good ear, there may be a place for you occasionally with the big band.
Written music is the original language music was written in. It’s handy, but not the only way. The numbers system (scale degree), both for chords and melody work as well. Numbers don’t communicate timing very well, but music doesn’t transpose (change keys) as easily as numbers. Neither are perfect. Still, I will run across a guy that just started playing a few months ago, doesn’t read either music or numbers, and that guy has found something I haven’t been able to figure out. Like John Hughey’s solo on “Look at Us”. Music is the kind of thing where all are welcomed and able to make a contribution.
Take care,
Ron Carpenter
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From: David Mason
Hi! I’ve never answered one of these, but I felt it necessary. There’s a huge range of music-reading ability, all the way from the sight-reading you describe to the act of picking out one single note at a time, one after another, counting up bar lines, remembering Every Good Boy Does Favors (treble clef line) and F-A-C-E – treble clef spaces). What I have to quibble with is the idea that you can either sight-read – or not. And there’s nothing in-between that can be of any use to you. This is off-target, because very, very few musicians overall use sheet music with total sight-reading proficiency. I’m sure that living in Nashville you’ve got an extremely weird & biased bump in the bell curve, where you really can dial up a sight-reading keyboard, bass or guitarist player in an instant – but out here in the sticks you’d better get your sheet music to the musicians a few weeks ahead of the gig!
When you put the “ideal” sight-reading model up on a marble column and worship it, you mostly tell steel guitarists to not even bother, it’ll never help them to even start. Which is ridiculous, and becoming ever-more-wrong with the publication of more and more transcriptions and music all the time. One of the most common questions – “Where do I start?” is so easily answered – you start by reading the music for nursery rhymes and Christmas carols, because it’s already in your head and you right away start to associate the contour map of the little dots with correct-sounding notes. Some of the time… It’s just a code, or another language. Once a bit of it starts to make sense, you can try tackling more complicated material – I always tell my guitar students to find something hard that they LIKE to play, not abstract non-music “exercises.” And the world is so full of beautiful music that is encoded in a basically simple other language, you just have to START. I would be lost (or at least, much less fun) without my 12-Real-Book CD-ROM and “The Classical Fake Book.” It’s actually fun for me to approach each problem-solving task – I do like practicing.
One thing’s for certain with the all-or-nothing approach – if you ever visit a foreign country, you’re going to end up piddling your pants for quite some time before you starve to death, simply because you “can’t” speak perfect Portuguese or Mandarin or Russian. And you refuse to grab your crotch jumping from foot-to-foot and making randomized distress noises, because anything less than fluent, idealized multi-lingual perfection isn’t worth the bother..
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From: Thomas Keel
Mr. Hempker, this is some of the best advice I’ve heard on the “reading” subject. When I’m asked I say “yes, I know how to read, and yes, I recommend every serious student of music learn how to read, and how to play by ear. There are some things about music which can’t be learned without reading, and some things which can’t be learned by reading”.
I love to use steel on my stuff. And you’re right that I wouldn’t have the foggiest idea how to write music for it. I simply depend on my player to get me something that fits. A lot of the time I like to put steel on first before strings, horns, etc because I get good ideas from the player and incorporate “communication” like you say.
I met Bobbe in 1969 and he is one of my all-time favorites. He and I have lots of friends in common, too. I don’t get back home too often but I’d like to pop in and meet you if I do in the next decade or so 🙂
Thanks for carrying this on.
That’s it. We thank everyone for their input and hope this stimulates and inspires you.
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