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 tokinman21
Stranger
Registered: 07/28/10
Posts: 2,021
Last seen: 10 years, 7 months
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 Have any great guitarists actually read music? 
#15628740 - 01/07/12 03:35 AM (12 years, 3 months ago) |
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I just noticed something...it seems all the truly great guitarists did not read music. Eric Clapton had the ability to read, which was shown when he learned the recorder in school, but he then "forgot" it when he learned guitar. Is even learning to read music in the first place a hindrance to the creative process? Would anybody learning the guitar be better off exploring it on their own and simply seeing how far they can get into their own creative understanding and trying to minimize the integration of externally developed patterns by learning only by ear? Or can one learn how to read music and learn conventional styles and still be able to forge their own truly unique style at the same time?
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 Macavity224
Ubermensch
Registered: 06/09/11
Posts: 719
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Re: Have any great guitarists actually read music? [Re: tokinman21]
#15628853 - 01/07/12 05:24 AM (12 years, 3 months ago) |
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I could actually read music pretty well when I used to play piano back when I was younger, but as soon as I picked up guitar and bass, I just went right to tablature.
Honestly, I don't think it matters at the end of the day. Knowing more and writing music "according to a formula" (ie. using certain chord progressions under a melody that follows a certain scale) can never really be a bad thing. Besides, there are chords, modes, etc. for a specific sound you want. A maj7th and a sus2 chord sound completely different, but you know you want that specific sound, so even if you couldn't read music and never learned a chord in your life, you'd end up with it.
That's the way I see it at least. But my advice is to take shrooms, shut the fuck up, and play guitar until your fingers bleed.
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"O my soul, I taught you to say "Today" as well as "Once" and "Formerly," and to dance your dance over every here and there and yonder."  Everything I post here is not true. Do not believe a single word of it.
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Shroomopotamus
Happy Mushrooming
Registered: 09/27/09
Posts: 18,757
Loc: Funkotron
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Re: Have any great guitarists actually read music? [Re: Macavity224]
#15628913 - 01/07/12 06:31 AM (12 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
Macavity224 said:
That's the way I see it at least. But my advice is to take shrooms, shut the fuck up, and play guitar until your fingers bleed.
rinse,wash,repeat
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*
Live by the mushroom, die by the mushroom
    
This is a trap! A trap! You are all busted! Busted! You fools!
If a time comes where I fail to appear I've been abducted and I will miss you all
Please smile and pet puppies as often as possible
Be happy
Be nice
(<3);}
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SomeGuy
I feel better now :)
Registered: 04/18/10
Posts: 7,496
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Re: Have any great guitarists actually read music? [Re: Shroomopotamus]
#15628973 - 01/07/12 07:23 AM (12 years, 3 months ago) |
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certainly many of the greats can read music. eddie Van Halen can read music, John Williams(the classical guitarist) Andre Segovia. There is definately nothing wrong with learning to read. You can't play tab to a song you never heard because there is no timing notation. A pianist can't play guitar yab on the piano, but they can play sheet music. The art of learning to read sheet music will teach you a lot about music and music theory. A serious guitarist can read, I can
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Subconscious
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Re: Have any great guitarists actually read music? [Re: SomeGuy]
#15629088 - 01/07/12 08:27 AM (12 years, 3 months ago) |
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Learning how to read notation or understand music theory will help you in most cases. You just have to learn how to apply the knowledge in your own way...
I played by ear for about 3-4 years. Then I got a book and taught myself all of the scales/chords and my playing improved more in the next 4 months than it did in the past 4 years.
I still jam out and do my own thing by ear, but knowing all the scales and chords gives me a huge color pallet of things to experiment with while playing.
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Shpongle1
Registered: 10/20/09
Posts: 3,163
Loc: Above The Clouds
Last seen: 2 years, 8 months
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Re: Have any great guitarists actually read music? [Re: tokinman21]
#15629635 - 01/07/12 11:32 AM (12 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
tokinman21 said:
I just noticed something...it seems all the truly great guitarists did not read music. Eric Clapton had the ability to read, which was shown when he learned the recorder in school, but he then "forgot" it when he learned guitar. Is even learning to read music in the first place a hindrance to the creative process? Would anybody learning the guitar be better off exploring it on their own and simply seeing how far they can get into their own creative understanding and trying to minimize the integration of externally developed patterns by learning only by ear? Or can one learn how to read music and learn conventional styles and still be able to forge their own truly unique style at the same time?
I taught myself guitar without being able to read music. I could play better than most of my friends who did take lessons and could read and all of that. I was pretty content with my abilities...
However, if you're serious about it, eventually you almost HAVE to know how to read. Like say you can shred jazz, blues, have a creative style or whatever, you're never going to be able to get gigs and go play shows with people if you don't understand the theory. I mean the bottom line is people who play out, professionally or otherwise, will need to be able to read lead sheets, sight read melodies, understand chord markings to play through the changes.
Also, I think what you said about it helping be more creative is not very accurate. This was my thought initially too, and why I didn't want to take lessons. I've always been fairly gifted musically so I knew I'd be able to pick it up and didn't want to be hindered by anyone else. I was cool with it for a while, but eventually all that initial creative really slows down and you NEED to learn the theory. Listening to some really awesome jazz albums made me determined to understand music theory and stuff because I desperately wanted to understand the music on a deeper level and know what these musicians knew in order to create that music.
It was a little easier for me because I could already read drum music and had been doing so for years. But after I started learning the theory (which honestly was only fairly recently), I feel like a whole new world has opened up. I can still go be creative playing freely and only by ear, or I'm beginning to be able to sit down and think about ideas in terms of musical structure and interesting things to do with chord changes and stuff. You really are limiting yourself by not learning the theory, some can still blow you away within these limitations but there is NO reason not to learn all you can.
*What the heck is this doing in psychedelic experience?? Haha whatever!
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There are more people imprisoned for the commission of drug offenses in the United States - close to 500,000 - than are incarcerated in England, France, Germany, and Japan for all crimes combined. Examined in another way, the United States has 100,000 more people incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses than all the countries of the European Union combined, despite the fact that the European Union has 100 million more citizens. 
 - "Drugs and Drug Policy: The Control of Consciousness Alteration, 2007.
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Nyarlethotep
Expanding minds think alike
Registered: 12/16/11
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Loc: california
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Re: Have any great guitarists actually read music? [Re: Shpongle1]
#15629989 - 01/07/12 01:02 PM (12 years, 3 months ago) |
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The reason Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix and all those guys didn't bother to learn to read music is because you really don't need to know how to play classical guitar to be able to play the blues. The blues was designed this way. Hell, if you know any blues scale, you can play the blues. Learning sheet music is irrelevant to playing rock music these days, because most guitarists these days will just use tablature instead.
However, learning to compose would have possibly taken those men to even greater levels. It's not that the rules of music aren't meant to be broken, it's that they introduce you to concepts like "tension", legato, staccato, pizzicato, marcato, key, time signature, chord progression, scale, etc.
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 curiousity killed the cat but people forget that cats have nine lives.
Go on, get curious.
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muirileD
Living in Blissful Delirium
Registered: 02/11/11
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Loc: in the woods
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Re: Have any great guitarists actually read music? [Re: Nyarlethotep]
#15630452 - 01/07/12 02:40 PM (12 years, 3 months ago) |
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Why must one's creative expression through sound need to be reflected though linear mediums?
I'm not saying an advanced background in theory and function of music doesn't help, but it's not a necessity.
Also I know he doesn't play guitar, but Phil Lesh in his youth was a trained classic musician who used to compose complex works as his job. That is, until LSD became popular 
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InfiniteTrip13
Psychonaut
Registered: 07/15/10
Posts: 344
Loc: USA
Last seen: 12 years, 1 month
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Re: Have any great guitarists actually read music? [Re: muirileD]
#15630476 - 01/07/12 02:49 PM (12 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
muirileD said:
Also I know he doesn't play guitar, but Phil Lesh in his youth was a trained classic musician who used to compose complex works as his job. That is, until LSD became popular
I took lessons from the age of 13-16 and I WISH NOW I WOULD HAVE PAYED MORE ATTENTION!!! I have been thinking of finding my old teacher and kicking it back up, I'm very rusty. Its all about loveeee.
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 Ignorance is Bliss.
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Shpongle1
Registered: 10/20/09
Posts: 3,163
Loc: Above The Clouds
Last seen: 2 years, 8 months
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Re: Have any great guitarists actually read music? [Re: muirileD]
#15630534 - 01/07/12 03:07 PM (12 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
muirileD said:
I'm not saying an advanced background in theory and function of music doesn't help, but it's not a necessity.
Please keep in mind that there is a HUGE difference between advanced background in theory and being able to read music, which is the title and point of the thread. I'm not saying that knowledge of advanced theory is necessary, but if you want to be able to go sit in with a group of musicians and play a set, as opposed to just take a solo or play a basic 12 bar blues, you are going to need to know how to read music. They hand you a sheet of music with a melody on it and some chords. You are expected to be able to read and play that melody and be able to follow along playing the chords as written as well as any appropriate chord substitutions.
And if you are not referring to playing with other people and simply mean composing music on your own, it is of course not mandatory to have this skill. However, your playing and composition skills WILL suffer greatly without proper knowledge. This, in my opinion and from experience, is a fact. You may play and write great stuff, but that doesn't mean that you are not limited by not having the additional knowledge.
Being educated in the field of biology does not mean that I cannot suspend that knowledge and write a completely fictional, creative myth of divine creation. It simply ALSO allows me, to compose creative theories of the origin of life based on scientific information as well. I think it's exactly the same. To think that having musical knowledge or being able to read music means that you're forever going to play the old tried and true chord progressions or something is quite absurd in my opinion. Look at jazz music, in my opinion those are the guys breaking the rules and really progressing things in terms of musicality and different composition and "wrong" changes or notes. And if you check, the vast majority of the dudes doing that are HIGHLY educated musically. Being educated doesn't mean you can't or won't break the "rules", it just means you are more likely to accomplish your intended goal you had in mind when you decide to do so.
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There are more people imprisoned for the commission of drug offenses in the United States - close to 500,000 - than are incarcerated in England, France, Germany, and Japan for all crimes combined. Examined in another way, the United States has 100,000 more people incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses than all the countries of the European Union combined, despite the fact that the European Union has 100 million more citizens.
- "Drugs and Drug Policy: The Control of Consciousness Alteration, 2007.
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Shpongle1
Registered: 10/20/09
Posts: 3,163
Loc: Above The Clouds
Last seen: 2 years, 8 months
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Re: Have any great guitarists actually read music? [Re: Shpongle1]
#15630567 - 01/07/12 03:15 PM (12 years, 3 months ago) |
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If that did not persuade you, I have a hard time believing this won't:
Consider collaboration with other musicians. You have no ability to communicate ideas with other musicians. Say you are out a bar discussing, no instruments around. Someone with musical knowledge of terms and theory could write an entire song with someone based only on an abstract idea while just sitting around chatting having a drink. Without those skills you'd be lost as hell and have to say "I'll just show you what I mean tomorrow when you can watch my fingers."
There are lots of great musicians, and two musicians from different backgrounds collaborating with each other can lead to some ground breaking shit. If you want to collaborate with a trumpet play and you play guitar, you are SHIT out of luck. This is a horrible limitation! Learn to read music, learn theory!! NO reason not to, you will only gain knowledge and ability. 
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There are more people imprisoned for the commission of drug offenses in the United States - close to 500,000 - than are incarcerated in England, France, Germany, and Japan for all crimes combined. Examined in another way, the United States has 100,000 more people incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses than all the countries of the European Union combined, despite the fact that the European Union has 100 million more citizens.
- "Drugs and Drug Policy: The Control of Consciousness Alteration, 2007.
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