Copyright © Mike Ellis 2013
Before we start, let me
introduce myself. My name is Mike
Ellis. I live in Dallas, Texas, and
have been a musicologist in the true sense of the word for fifty years. I have taught guitar, bass guitar, banjo,
keyboard and sitar, and have twenty-five years of full time teaching experience
and fifteen years of part-time teaching experience. I played by ear in numerous bands for ten years before I began
teaching. In 1972, I had the good
fortune to be taken under the wing of the late Mr. Terrill Gardner, who taught
me music and how to teach it. Terrill
took me from playing by ear to the completion of three volumes of “Modern
Method for Guitar” from Berkley College, in Boston. This was note reading to the fullest extent. Terrill told me that if I was going to
teach, I had to be qualified in all areas, not just playing by ear. He also taught me music theory and chord
theory in a manner that allowed me to author “Chordmaster Chord Theory for
Keyboard” and “Chordmaster Chord Theory for Guitar” in later years. Now, let’s get started.
How important is note reading?
So many parents are told the
necessity of note reading and the values of a “classical” approach to learning
music. Why is that? I won’t address that until later. First I want to ask you a couple of
questions. Who were the most successful
contemporary artists of the twentieth century (and maybe of all time)? The answer, of course is the Beatles. The second most successful and undoubtedly
the longest lasting artists are the Rolling Stones. How many of them could read notes during the peak of their
careers? Let’s see, there were four
Beatles and five Rolling Stones and NONE of them could read a note. They spawned the “British Invasion” of which
most of the artists couldn’t read a note.
How important, then, is note reading?
It’s certainly not necessary to write monster hit songs like
“Yesterday,” “Something,” “Satisfaction,” and a huge list of others. At one time, the Beatles held five of
the top ten hits on the charts all at the same time. And they couldn’t read a note.
So what is the
importance of note reading? Well, some
say it’s so you can communicate more ideas. A young musician can “read” the dots on the page and “play” the
music written by another musician. A
little dispute may be necessary here.
In the first place, terms like legato and pianissimo are used to try
to convey the mood and emotion of the author.
This is supposed to be true, but any “musician” who only reads dots on a
page is not a musician at all. Anybody
can play the piano like a typewriter, but very few (comparatively) improvise
well. The term jazz
implies improvisation on a theme. Its
roots lie in the southern United States where the local musicians would get
together and jam songs and blues progressions. Therefore, when my son entered “jazz band”
in high school and had to read the notes to play, I was appalled,
literally. This is the antithesis to
jazz as a concept and an art form and I taught him that, as well as how to
improvise.
So what IS the importance of
note reading? The answer is that it is
important for the musician-wanna-be’s.
It’s for people who can’t make music without a crutch, or without somebody
else’s ideas to read, instead of improvising and creating their own ideas. Now, don’t get me wrong. You don’t just spring forth with your own
unique ideas. All music is evolutionary
in that it is based on learning what others did. Therefore, note reading CAN be a useful tool in learning what
other artists composed, but you can never translate those dots on the page into
the absolutely true feel and meaning of the original artist. It’s just not possible without hearing
the original artist perform the piece.
In doing that, imitation becomes much more pure and inflections that
give music its true meaning can also be copied.
Should you skip note
reading? I didn’t and I don’t ever
recommend it. However, be careful how
you approach it and with whom you approach it.
The “worst” example I can relate is the graduate of the University of
North Texas who held a degree in music, but didn’t know where a middle C was on
the guitar. All the guitar note reading
methods I have ever seen “pretend” that middle C is on the 3rd fret
of the 5th string. This is
because if you say that middle C is truly on the 1st fret of the 2nd
string, all the notes on strings 3, 4, 5, and 6 would be in the bass
cleff. So what, you might ask, is wrong
with that? Well, in grade school, you
learn the treble cleff. Remember? Every Good Boy Does Fine and F-A-C-E? But most kids don’t learn the bass clef; so
the music community somehow agreed to all pretend that middle C is on the 5th
string, putting all the notes on strings 4, 3, 2, and 1 in the treble cleff.
Just a side note, did
anybody tell you that if you look at the “Every Good Boy Does Fine” and
“F-A-C-E“ notes sequentially through the lines and spaces of the treble cleff
that it turns out to be E-F-G-A-B-C-D-E-F?
That’s right, it’s just the alphabet.
But they never told you that. How
much easier would it really have been if you figured that out? It’s just simply the alphabet. That’s not so hard.
But there’s more. It must have been almost half a year of
piano lessons before I was introduced to the “un-natural” black notes; those hard
to play notes that were shorter and harder to reach had two names each! And you were supposed to memorize them, the
sharps and flats. I had no idea that
there was really a note between F and G, but not one between B and C. If somebody asked me (and when I ask my
students) the note above F, they always say G until I explain to them the way
the notes really move.
All this brings up the subject of key signatures and the
memorization of them and how many sharps and flats are in each key and more
complications. I first heard about the
circle of 5ths from Terrill when I was an eleven-year veteran of guitar.
While writing music on the
staff line, it is easier for the author to put the key signature at the start
of the piece instead of notating a sharp every time it occurs in the
music. This is supposed to be
easier. But the player has to remember
that when they see an F note in the key of G, for example, it’s not an F note
at all, it’s really an F# note, any time it occurs. Well, sometimes the author may want an F natural note, so on
those few occasions, they can add a natural sign preceding the F dot on the
staff line. More confusingly, this F
remains natural for the rest of the measure, but not the rest of the song. So an F in a previous measure is really F#,
but if the F in a particular measure has a natural sign in front of it, it is
played as F natural because of the natural sign, but the next F in that measure
that does not have a natural sign in front of it is not
played as an F#, it is played as an F natural, then it goes back to being F#
after that measure. Did you get all
that? Whew!
And all of this detracts
from the intent of the original musician’s creative idea. Believe me.
As long as you are thinking about how to play each note,
you are missing at least some of the feel of the piece. And I haven’t forgotten the question in the
first paragraph of this section. Why
are so many parents told the necessity of note reading and the values of a “classical”
approach to learning music? Let’s be
perfectly honest here. What takes
longer, showing a student where to put their fingers to get a cool sound or
running them through six months or more of “Mary Had a Little Lamb?” Mary’s lamb, of course. So what will take a week to complete and
what will take a semester to complete?
Can you say “More Money?” What
can they write a test on, how you play something or the memorization of lines
and spaces on the cleff?
Quite a few of the private teachers paid big bucks for their music
“education” and it had better pay off, even if you don’t know where
middle C is on your instrument. And what is up with blowing a trumpet with no valves pressed, sounding a B flat note, and calling that B flat note C? It's a B flat. Call it B flat. The title of this essay is
“A Teacher Speaks Out” and if you don’t want the truth, just stop reading
now. I tell my students the
complications of note reading to justify why I don’t start their lessons with
the staff line and note reading. We
play music first, then read notes if they ask me to teach them that. Most don’t. Lastly, consider one other
culture. In India, it is customary to
go and live with the master to learn to play the sitar. He shows you the physical attributes of the
instrument and then dictates the notes you are to play and how you are to play
them. Literally, he or she speaks the
notes without writing anything. You
repeat the process until you master each section of the music. Ours is not the only culture with music or
music training and reading notes is not a worldwide
practice. When the great Ravi Shankar
came to America to perform a piece he had composed in honor of the late George
Harrison, he brought about thirty musicians from India with him. They were to perform the piece with American
performers. He dictated to each of the
Indian performers their part. When he
tried to dictate the parts to the American musicians, there was a huge
problem. They had to get somebody who
could hear the dictation and write it down for them on the staff
lines. This was pretty frustrating to
Mr. Shankar, as he voiced his frustration in a subsequent interview (see the
DVD “A Concert for George”). Later,
when he wanted to make a correction or modification, he dictated the change to
the Indian musician(s) and it was done.
When he went to the Americans, you guessed it sort of, they not only had
to have the change written down, they had to re-write the whole piece to
include the change so it wouldn’t be scribbled in by hand. Mr. Shankar was more frustrated with this
and it embarrasses me to this day for all the American “musicians” that were
involved and all that would have made the same requirement of him. That’s most of the “educated
musicians” in America! Again…
whew! What about interval
studies? Do players really use them? Let’s be realistic. Of course players use interval
studies. You need to be able to tell
how far up or down one note is from another.
The problem with music educators is in the way that these studies are
presented. A quick example is that
selecting a note then using the note that is up a major third interval, and
then using the note that is up a minor third interval from the last note
creates the major trichord. Now did you
get that? How about this: playing a
note, then playing the notes that is four notes above it, then playing the note
three notes above that one gives you a major chord. I mean, trichord just means a three-note chord. Here’s a quote from an encyclopedia: “The
most commonly used chords in Western music, triads, are the basis of diatonic
harmony, and are tertian chords.” What? It continues, “That is, they are composed of a root note, a note
which is a third above the root, and a note which is a third above that note,
and therefore a fifth above the root.”
Well, actually the last interval is a minor third above the second note,
but who’s counting? Since the type of
third mentioned last was not specified as being a minor third then if you used
a major third, you would not have been making a major chord at
all. You would have been making an
augmented chord. If you don’t know what
I’m talking about, go through my Chord Theory books. If you do know what I meant, then you can easily
see that how things are said can be very important. So let’s drop the lingo and
talk. A major third interval really is
four notes up, but c’mon. If I don’t
have your definitions, I don’t know what you’re talking about. And yes, a minor third interval is three
notes up, but the same thing applies here.
A seventh chord is made by playing a note, then go up a major third,
then go up a minor third, then go up a minor third again. What?
How about taking a major chord and add the note that is two notes below
the root note (the note you started on)?
Isn’t that still true? Of course
it is. And what do thirds have to do
with sevenths? You could say that to make a
tetrachord (four note chord for all of the normal folks out there), such as the
dominant seventh chord (like G7), you make the major tertian
chord and add the note that is a major second below the tonic
note. What? You could say that the dominant seventh tone is five
major second intervals above the tonic. What? When was the last
time you needed to find the dominant seventh scale note by going up five major
second intervals? Ever? Well, interval studies dealing with ear
training are very useful. But to make a
written test full of “what are the major and minor intervals for so-in-so?” is
simply more stuff to take up a semester at school and get a “good grade” in
class. When I hear a flat seven scale
note followed by a lower flat third scale note, it is familiar to me because I
heard it used in a song and liked it, so I figured out how to play that sound
that I liked. Well, if you don’t know
what my lingo was talking about, you should go through my Chord
Theory books. There’s one for guitar
and one for keyboard shown at the bottom of this document. I concede on the fact that
you need definitions, like what a Root is and what a flat third is, and so on,
but it can be done so much easier than it is usually presented. “They” say that a minor third (or a flat
third) scale note is a major second and a minor second above the Root. Major and minor? Second? What the heck? It’s true, but a major second interval is
just two notes up and a “minor second” interval is one note up. Let’s hear that again… a minor second
interval means go up one note. Why not
say, “Go up one note?” So a minor third
note is really just three notes above the root. Oh, that’s too easy. You
can’t say it that way. A major seventh
scale note is a major third, a minor third, and a major third above the tonic
note. What? It’s a minor second below the tonic. What? Go down one note
from your Root. Oh… wait, that’s too
easy! So how interval studies are
presented is what I’m speaking out against, not the interval studies
themselves. I know that a major seventh
note is one note below the Root. That is
interval study at work, but in a practical layman’s way. This brings me to the next point. Who made music so hard? Is it really so complicated? There are, I’m sure, music
historians out there who actually know (or think they do) the answer to the
first question, “Who made music so hard?”
I have suspicions of my own. In
the early days of what we call “Western” music (I don’t mean Country and
Western), which is the music of Europe and North America, the music was
primarily formally composed for religious reasons, for the Holy Roman
Empire. Consider the Roman calendar
having twelve months, and the twelve disciples, and the “chromatic scale” having
twelve notes. There’s another one for
you, chromatic just means every note, and so what is chromatic about it? Consider the Roman calendar having seven-day
weeks, and the seven days of Creation, and our major scale having seven notes. Wait, it has eight notes. No, it has seven and you repeat the first an
octave higher as the eighth (get it, octave?).
Consider the Holy Trinity from the Roman Catholic Church and the major
chord (also called the major triad).
Now, I can’t say for sure that there is a relationship there, because
I’m not a music historian, but while the common man sang his little stories
while playing a lute or whatever, the guys writing for the Emperor and/or the
Church and were writing more complex music were getting paid big bucks! Would they want to share their knowledge and
lose that income? If not, how could
they protect their income? Maybe by explaining what they did
in such a way that the common man just couldn’t grasp it right off. Only with months of studying the lingo
they used and following the hugely complex rules and memorizations could they
ever get it. Well, the girls liked the
little story songs, so why get so involved with all of the rules and
complexities? The ethnomusicology
course I took in college said that the average person can retain in memory phrases
of about five to seven notes in length, and that’s all. Sure, people could hear and appreciate
complex music, but they couldn’t remember and reproduce it. This brings up another point. Our contemporary music is still simple
little stories, but now they have drums and bass and keyboard and synthesizers
and distortion pedals and other effects.
But they are still pretty much just simple stories set to music. The common man is still in the
majority. Ask yourself, “Is music in
other countries this complicated? How
about the music in Borneo?” It is
music, too. Now, for the second
question, “Is it really so complicated?”
If music were really necessarily so complicated, the “British Invasion”
would never have happened, the Delta blues players would never have existed,
and the minstrels would never have existed.
That was in reverse order on purpose.
We haven’t really changed, as said before. No, music can be really easy to understand and fun to play. You don’t need to read notes (see the
Beatles reference, above) and you don’t need to learn all of the extremely
complicated interval lingo, and you don’t need years of schooling to grasp
playing any instrument. You may need to
physically practice to become proficient on an instrument. Some people are naturals with the physical
aspects. But, if I can do it, you can
do it. If he or she can do it, you can
do it. Of course there is going to be
some complexity to it, but before you go enroll in your community college or
local university, try to find a teacher who will present music to you in
laymen’s terms. It may be hard to find
one, but they are out there. My son was attending Dallas
Baptist University on a music scholarship.
When writing out the G# major scale, he ran into an F## terminology. Since # means go up one note (hahahaha you
could say go up a minor second interval hahahaha), then ## means go up two
notes. Up two notes from an F note is a
G note. He called it G and his
professor said, “You must call it F##, John.”
John replied, “It’s a G.” The
professor impatiently said, “You have to call it F##, John.” John replied, “It’s a G,” emphatically. The professor said, “I’ll have to dock your
grade unless you call it F##, John.”
John replied, “It’s a G. Listen
to it. It’s a G note.” Well, he got his grade docked, but he never
called G by the name F## and I was never more proud. By the way, if they had been working on the A flat scale instead
of calling that scale the G# scale, to begin with, the F## note would have been
called a G!!! So, good luck, and I hope
you enjoy “CHORDMASTER Chord Theory for Guitar” and/or the piano version,
“CHORDMASTER Chord Theory for Keyboard.” You can also get “CHORDMASTER for
Beginner Piano Students.” All three are available at Amazon.com and Lulu.com. Closing remarks