As I have tried to suggest, the literature makes it clear (if only in passing) that popular musicians, while they may start learning their chosen instruments by ear, often adopt more formal practices as well. This may include learning to read notation, whether it be standard stave notation, chord charts, guitar ʻtabʼ or other forms of visual guides. This ability may be acquired in classical or popular instrumental lessons, classroom lessons, or be self-taught. Green stresses more than once that, in terms of her intervieweesʼ learning careers, reading notation was ʻsecondaryʼ to copying by listening, and goes on:
For all of them, printed materials were used as learning resources in the
early stages only and in all cases any form of written resource appeared to
have been dropped during the first months or first couple of years of
learning. (Green, 2002: 73)
Those that did not read felt this as ʻa lackʼ, though ʻthey all valued the ear- training which their lack of reading ability had forced on them (ibid: 71).
However, this view is not unanimous among researchers. Other writers
suggest that, while starting to learn by ear is crucial, many musicians in, for example, the fields of rock music (Walser, 1993) and jazz (Berliner, 1994) go on to acquire reading skills. The use of notation varied considerably among the musicians I spoke to. For many learners, their first instinct when acquiring a new instrument may be to buy an instruction book. As I have already
mentioned, this was the case for both Carl and Frank. Frank had had several years of classical trumpet lessons, working through a tutor book, so reaching for notation to learn the harmonica is understandable; he makes no mention of actually using it though, and found a teacher who worked by ear instead. Carl compared starting to learn an instrument with exploring a new piece of
preferring to learn through trial and error and through guidance from a teacher rather than from written instructions.
Andy was introduced to notation right from the start of his learning career on the piano. The constant emphasis on notation in lessons seemed to run counter to his musical strengths: ʻI found things so easy to play by ear I had little motivation to be bothered with all the stuff that was written downʼ. He may have passed grade 6 before his piano lessons were abandoned but he clearly valued his ability to play by ear considerably more than his ability to read.
Ed was the least interested in using notation. He had learned the cello up
to grade 2 at school, but there seemed to be no connection between these lessons and the enthusiasm for other forms of music which he developed as a teenager: ʻI couldnʼt link the two things togetherʼ. As such he initially learned to play the guitar and sing entirely by ear through trial and error. His aversion to notation led to a revealing misunderstanding when discussing positive
influences on his progress:
Ed: What else has been helpful - reading as well.
Q: Learning to read?
Ed: No, reading biographies [laughter].
Q: Oh, right, not reading music?
Ed: No, not at all. Iʼm not really concerned about the small details, itʼs the,
I dunno, itʼs just some things people said in some biographies about how
they approach music.
As an example of the irrelevance of notation he cited Bob Dylanʼs approach to songwriting:
I think heʼs quite similar in the way that he learned the guitar to me, actually...his kind of approach is that heʼll just create the vessel which he needs...for its purpose, and thatʼs exactly what I do as well. [Ed]
Thus the learning agenda is defined by the music one is trying to play, and
tunes become the vehicle for acquiring technique. However, while notation might have been a ʻsmall detailʼ for Ed it was central to the way Dave learned
the piano. After his brother had showed him the chords for some Beatles songs, his next project was Bachʼs Toccata and Fugue in D minor:
Dave: I got the full score, the organ score out of the library, and sat down and learned it note by note, every single part of it.
Q: How old were you?
Dave: About 16 or 17, I think.
He used recordings and notation in tandem, each explicating the other:
I think my mum told me “E(very) G(ood) B(oy) D(eserves) F(ootball)”, how
to work out the notes, didn't know much about timing, so I just figured that out from records, and if there was a classical piece I wanted that I didn't know how it went, I'd get the record out of the library and just listen to it,
and work out how it went. [Dave]
Listening to jazz, rock and blues were all major influences on his playing, and he while was learning riffs and songs from records and performing in bands, much of his facility on the piano was acquired in the process of passing Associated Board exams on his way to grade 8 and, subsequently, university. This was a goal he set himself when still a teenager at a time when lessons were not available: ʻI didn't have any lessons...I just got the books and learned the pieces from the booksʼ [Dave]. While his technique may have suffered from a lack of guidance, notation was a crucial resource throughout his learning career and one which he adopted on his own initiative.
In fact notation was seen as an important learning resource by several
members of the group. Graham had tried several instruments and learned some basic notation skills before getting a saxophone. His playing mainly developed through ʻa lot of just jammingʼ, playing live with others and learning ʻto fill really well and play behind peopleʼ. However, much of his proficiency was also acquired through dedicated study of written material: ʻI remember being on the dole for a year and that was eight hours a day of practising, that was my thing'. At the time he was working through the Charlie Parker ʻOmnibookʼ (which consists mainly of transcriptions of Parkerʼs solos) as well as a book by Otto
Langey: ʻold-fashioned manual, something with fingering charts and exercisesʼ [Graham].
Helen also mentioned the Charlie Parker ʻOmnibookʼ as a key resource;
though certainly not for beginners, it seems to be a seminal text for budding jazz saxophonists. This was introduced to her by a teacher, just as she progressed onto the saxophone after many years of playing the clarinet largely by ear:
She was like well youʼve been playing clarinet for years, and I was like
yeah, and she was like well, come on then, and just plonked in front of me
the Charlie Parker “Omnibook”, and I was like earghh [whimpering noise]
but she was like no, no, no, come on. And I just dived straight into it, and just started, thatʼs when I really focused on reading as well, was nailing his solos, learning them off by heart, for muscle memory as well, just cos itʼs
so handy to have all that stuff. [Helen]
She is thus suggesting that notation can be an aid to playing by ear, in that it can develop ʻmuscle memoryʼ and the ability to learn pieces ʻoff by heartʼ.
Bill however took a different view. He learned notation while playing the cello at school, and was the only one of the group (with, to some extent, Graham) to deliberately transfer his reading skills from formal tuition directly onto an instrument he was learning by ear (the electric bass). This was not to help him learn however; he was invited to perform in a play (for which he would be paid) and thus consciously ʻworked out where the notes wereʼ on the bass. Being able to read notation played an important part in his subsequent learning career on double bass, as it allowed him to draw on the well-established
pedagogical material available, and this skill was in any case essential for his professional career. However, he suggested that reading may not in fact be an aid to memorisation:
I find it difficult now, I mean if I hear something and learn it by ear first of all then it's there pretty much permanently, normally, keep refreshing it occasionally, if I read something in a piece of music I don't learn it, I can look at it 100 times and I still won't learn it. It's very odd. I don't know why that is. [Bill]
Graham suggested a complex relationship between improvising,
memorising and using notation. If he was working out a part from a record, he might use notation ʻas a crutchʼ specifically so he didnʼt have to memorise it; this would also keep his natural tendencies in check, since he was liable to ʻget lazy half way through working out something by ear, and start jamming againʼ.
However, different skills could influence and offset each other: ʻI think because I read well I don't memorise as readily as I should, and because I jam quite well I don't read as well as I shouldʼ [Graham].
Thus opinions differed as to how useful notation was. However, one thing
on which they all agreed was the value of being able to play by ear rather than being dependent on notation:
Iʼve got no problem with notation, my problem lies with the order in which
itʼs done, you know, Iʼd love to be able to read music now...I think itʼd be a very valuable tool - itʼs the tail wagging the dog thing, you know, Iʼm glad
that I learned to become a musician without reading it. [Carl]
Several examples were offered of musicians that they had met or played
with who were unable to function without notation, and these were viewed with a mixture of sympathy, respect and scorn. Helen had relatives who ʻwent to Cheethamʼs and...did everything incredibly “by the book”ʼ:
I used to try to play with them sometimes and just think: “you canʼt do that without the music can you?”, and like, literally: “go on, play Happy
Birthday! [laughter] Go on, you know the tune, no, donʼt look at it”. [Helen] Andy referred, somewhat disparagingly, to ʻthe sort of people that if theyʼre going to go and buy a piano theyʼve got to take a sheet of music to read to play on it when they get thereʼ.
While several of the group had learned primarily by ear and gone on to
acquire formal skills ʻretrospectivelyʼ as it were, there was a sense that when one starts by learning from notation, the effects may be irreversible:
I think itʼs easier to come from our way and then fill in the gaps than it is to learn things mathematically, rely on theory, reading, and then try and pick up an ear at the end of it, I donʼt think that you can really do that, do you?
[Helen]
Berliner offers an example to support this familiar idea. He cites the situation of a would-be jazz player who gradually realises the importance of listening to recordings as a method of ear training:
One older jazz student, upon recognizing the importance of this skill,
realized that his early training in Western classical music had emphasized
the supremacy of reading skills. It had never occurred to him, and certainly
had never been pointed out, that a recording could serve as a viable
alternative to a written score. It was not until he was immersed in his jazz
training that he discovered that his exclusive dependence on written music
had, in fact, undermined the development of his aural skills. As a result,
his retention of material learned from recordings greatly lagged behind
that of musicians who had grown up in the jazz tradition. It required
years of experience with the jazz communityʼs methods for him to close
the gap. (Berliner, 1994: 111-112)
Both Carl and Frank were scathing about the attempts of classically-
trained ʻstarsʼ such as Yehudi Menhuin and Nigel Kennedy to attempt popular styles, though Carl suggested that musicians might move more successfully in the opposite direction; Bela Fleck for instance was primarily known as a
bluegrass player, but had recently won a classical Grammy award. On a more personal level, Frank contrasted his own abilities as an improviser with the abilities of a fiddle player on a forthcoming gig:
She will play every single note as it appears on the page, and will never
deviate at all from that, and you can absolutely guarantee 100 percent that
she will catch all the repeat signs and all the things and it will be exactly in the right pitch...Now she will not improvise at all, it is completely outside her ability levels, is to improvise, if it's not written down, if she's not
reading it she cannot conceive of what to do at all...I'm going to be all over
the place, scrabbling around trying to keep up with the tunes, swapping
harmonicas and, you know [laughter] it's going to be a lot of fun...Sheʼs very rigid and Iʼm very open, and I will struggle to do what she's doing, and I'll give it my best shot, and she would not want to consider doing what I'm
Andy and Carl both recapitulated another familiar idea, in likening the relationship between playing and learning to read music to that between talking and learning to read (see, for example, Odam, 1995: 35-46); thus learning from notation the works of ʻgreatʼ composers from an early age was akin to reciting works of literature without knowing what the words meant. For Carl, music ʻat its sort of root levelʼ was about communicating. He was full of admiration for highly skilled classical sight-readers, but said ʻI think itʼs more important to have a nice little chat, musically, than to be able to recite Shakespeareʼ.
This group of musicians then, like the ones in Greenʼs study, were
unanimous as to the value of being able to play by ear. By contrast, they certainly did not stop using written resources ʻduring the first months or first couple of years of learningʼ (Green, 2002: 73); far from it. If anything, they tended to turn to notated material after they had been playing for some time, in a bid to develop further perhaps than their ear alone could take them. Some of them certainly did their best to avoid notation altogether, while others wished their reading was better than it was. However over half the sample spoke of written notation as an important and valued resource throughout their learning careers.
For this group, the experience of taking grade exams seems to have had
little effect on their own estimation of their ability to read. Bill took grade 5 on the cello (and the accompanying theory exam), and was quite capable of
transferring his reading skills, firstly onto electric bass and, subsequently, double bass, on which he later took grade 8. By then he was already a
professional player and was using his notation skills on a daily basis. Dave also took grade 8 (on the piano) but, even after three years at Leeds College of Music, said he ʻwasnʼt a comfortable readerʼ. Helen passed grade 5 on clarinet evidently without knowing the names of the notes she was playing:
I was never reading it by letters cos I never learned the letters, I knew the shapes of it, and the intervals...Letters is something Iʼve learned [voice drops to a whisper] in the last couple of years [laughter]. [Helen]
Graham saw himself as a good reader without having taken any grade exams at all; rather this skill developed as a result of his obsessive practice regime. Thus strong reading skills seemed to be the result of necessity (Bill) or preference (Graham), rather than the result of formal education; all of them preferred to emphasise playing by ear rather than from notation, and their skills developed accordingly.
However, theoretical knowledge did not seem to be necessarily tied to
notation. Ed and Carl had only minimal reading skills, and had learned their instruments almost entirely without notation. Nevertheless, Ed had studied music theory on his Access to Music course, while Carl had expanded his theoretical understanding through teachers he had encountered; both said that studying music theory had been very useful and even enjoyable.