Ever since I’ve started playing around with ABC notation, I’ve found that my drive to continue learning to read sheet music has decreased considerably.
In fact, the more I learn about ABC, the more I find myself turning away from sheet music.
I can already play ABC from sight much faster and with greater ease after just a few days of practice than I can from sheet music… which I’ve been learning for four months.
Sheet music seems like such overkill to me now that I’ve found an easier alternative.
It’s like Deja Vu to me… I’ve played guitar for 15 years and I never learned to read sheet music during that time because TAB was so much easier.
I’m sure the very basic understanding of sheet music that I have learned will come in handy for me… and is almost certainly the reason I picked up on ABC so quickly.
Maybe I’ll continue with my lesson books and learn sheet music and ABC together, but I think ABC is all I really need to know.
As I said before, I now think sheet music is overkill for traditional music.
Anyone care to comment on this?
Well, some believe anything other than learning-by-ear is totally incorrect. As we’ve already had numerous long threads (including one recently) debating that topic, I’ll skip that entirely..
Among proponents of sheet music, there are differing camps as well. One one hand, you have those that feel that when you use sheet music, it should be transcribed in the ‘traditional’ manner: plain, with no ornamentation. This idea has merit, because it provides a bare-bones framework by which a musician can lay down his own ornamentation and interpretation on a piece. It has a drawback, too…beginners usually won’t have any idea what to do to make the bare-bones piece sound right. If you subscribe to this theory, I would say that there’s probably no advantage for sheet music over ABC.
However, some people (myself included) like to provide more such as accent marks, ornaments, etc. I feel it gives the beginner something more to work with, but shouldn’t really hamper the advanced player from adding their own flair to a piece. When you start getting really complex pieces of sheet music as a result, I personally think that there’s no real advantage to ABC over sheet music. In fact, the text-only format makes it more difficult to see things quickly (for exmaple, being able to take in an entire phrasing/legato at a glance). I think that once you start adding things like legato, grace notes, staccatto or accent marks and the like, the visual medium of sheet music is actually much easier to read.
My 2c.
Greg
[ This Message was edited by: Wandering_Whistler on 2001-07-29 21:24 ]
Don’t forget that music notation in Western Music originally evolved as a means of helping musicians remember the music they learned by rote or by ear. It was a tool. What tool works for one person may not work for another. If ABC works for you, go for it! The means is not as important as the end which is to have fun playing music.
Sue
Quote: “I can already play ABC from sight much faster and with greater ease after just a few days of practice than I can from sheet music… which I’ve been learning for four months.”
I’ll have to agree with Greg and further state that no better way exists to date for recording music on paper than with music notation. Musicians have been using it for hundreds of years and it has many advantages beyond just recording the notes. I think the visual aspect of seeing the direction of the melody and the intervals between notes is a great help in playing. Sight-reading, the ability to play music immediately from a musical score is not uncommon among people who read music. As Greg has stated the phrasing, ornamentation, accent marks and other performance instructions can also be indicated in the sheet music. So while ABC is a nice way to transmit the notes of a tune, music notation is a way to capture many of the nuances of a performance. And to capture on paper the performance of someone like Joanie Madden we need all the help we can get!
I hope you continue to learn to read music. It’s a great tool for any musician to have.
Best wishes, Tom
Learn it!! It will open up millions of tunes/songs to you. Definiely time well spent.
ABC is great for being able to input music quickly, and in a pinch I could play from it. If it had absolute note lengths – D4 for a quarter note, D8 for an 8th note, etc. – it would be even better. However, I would rather have the regular Western notation, particularly with a long piece or a piece that has ornaments, chords, 1st and 2nd endings, etc.
I can’t even remember learning to read music, so I can’t recommend any brilliant learning techniques, but is so useful! I have found that there can be problems with the ABC notations such as how to convay more complicated rhythms and even simple things like which note is the first beat of the bar can be confusing.
As someone who has been playing for almost 3 decades, I find ABC the simple method for remembering tunes. Just the first few bars usually does the trick. I admire anyone who can fluently read music, it is indeed a great tool. However…
I also believe that a musician who can ‘pick up’ a piece by ear and play it relatively well after only one or two listens, has a great advantage over other musicians. Most traditional players have this ability and they usually scribble down the ABC in a notebook to help them remember.
In my opinion becoming too reliant on sheet music, kills one’s ‘ear’ for music. I know great violins players who cannot play a piece of music they may have been playing for years, without the sheet music in front of them.
Obviously a mixture of both is the ideal.
Ciaran
Raindog,
I agree, continue to work on learning to read standard notation. One exercise that has helped me is to to have the notation and a recording of that notation. For example, Melbay’s 110 Best Irish Sessions book comes with a CD. Then play the CD and follow along reading the standard notation. This exercise is something you can do when you can’t actually practice playing. I catch a commuter train and can listen to a CD through the walkman’s headpones and follow the tune in the standard notation. This way I’m improving my music while I commute. I’ve gotten to the point where generally I can now read the music and hear the tune in my head with out the CD.
I also use ABC notation. After I’ve figured out a tune, I then need to start memorizing, making a cheat sheet with the ABC helps provoke me to remember more of the tune with less visual prompts. I start out with the whole tune in standard notation and then go to ABC for the first measure or so of each part. Usually this is enough to trigger my remember the rest of the tune.
Ciaran,
I, like you, am envious of those traditional musicians who can pick a tune after hearing it a couple of times. I’ve seen them make quick ABC type notes, too. Sometimes I think it not to remember the tune, but to remember the name of the tune they remember. My step- daughter has a memory like that, she hears a melody once and can hum it back to you; she hears it 2 or 3 times and she can hum it back to you next week. To make it worse she has the same talent for rhythms. I’m not generally an envious man, envy being a sin and all, but I am a sorely tempted one. 
).
ABC or Standard notation both serve to help each of us …
Dear Raindog,
Try not to neglect the tune for the notes. Sight-reading (whether ABC or standard) is the easy part. If you want to ultimately play the tune, to have it say what it has to say in your own voice, at some point you’ll have to leave notation behind. However, I agree that standard notation can provide more information, providing the tune was accurately notated. Keep in mind that the bulk of Irish tunes which have been notated are fiddle versions. Except for tutorials, no book will tell you when to breathe.
All the best,
Caffeina
(omigodshe’sback, an’ she’s got her opinions with her..)
All the best,
Caffeina
(omigodshe’sback, an’ she’s got her opinions with her..)
Nicetohaveyoubackyouropinionsareverywelcomewhereyoubinanyway? (Ah but is it really you? Wasn’t you spelled Caffiena last time? Or have you just started drinking coffee again?)
I am also quite new to whistle music, and realy cant read standard notation without counting the lines, lifting fingers as I go and then blowing. Not much of a way to get a tune out. That’s why I like way the D-trad pages display the tabliture & the notes. I get a sense of the duration of the notes, slurring etc but I dont have to struggle with my fingering so much. I have not used ABC notation but if I understand corectly if you dont know the tune every note winds up being played at equal value and there is no way to tell when to slur.
Nick
On 2001-07-31 15:52, NicksterNM wrote:
… I have not used ABC notation but if I understand corectly if you dont know the tune every note winds up being played at equal value and there is no way to tell when to slur.
Nick
Not really. Here is the ABC for a simple fragment of music with a slur and a grace note:
X:1
T:Foo
M:3/4
L:1/4
K:D
B3/2 (A/2 G) | E2 D | {E}D3 |
The slur is indicated with parentheses, and the grace note is indicated with curly braces (“{”, “}”). Note that you would not know the note durations without L:1/4, which specifies that any note without a duration is a quarter note.
Here is the same fragment in standard (Western) musical notation:
~ Thornton
[ This Message was edited by: ThorntonRose on 2001-07-31 16:20 ]