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3. You don't recognize the progressions
4. You don't recognize the musical 'line'

What dou you mean by «don't recognize the progressions» and «don't recognize the musical 'line'»?


As for counting. I'm no sure if it is the most correct way, but I use reference notes, for exemple (and this is only an example, I know more than just the F and C obvious :P), I know where the "two" F and the C are in the F clef (F - below first line; fourth line | C - the first ledger line above staff; the space above the first line). Then I think, here is the F and there is the C, then this note is...

I suppose we should add one for, "You don't recognize the rhythm."

I tried to be as general as possible, and apply these axioms to a wide variety of printed music. Some may apply less to classical music than others.

Progressions can refer to:
-chord progressions
-variation progressions
-rhythmic progressions (as separate from rhythm as a whole)
-bass line progressions
-key change progressions
-etc

Unlike 'progressions', which can apply to several ideas, the musical line is very specific. This largely refers to interpretation. One who cannot "hear" the music usually falls into this category at the very least. It basically means you can't follow the melodic line in your head as it swells and subsides, ebbs and flows, speeds up and slows down. It requires you to 'actively' interpret the melody, instead of intrinsically 'understanding' it.

Think about a piece of music you know very well by ear. Perhaps Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, mvt 1. Once you learn the notes, you basically know how to interpret it because you've heard it so many times. If you approach a piece you have never heard before, do you have the same intrinsic understanding of melody? If not, that would most-likely be this issue.

2. You don't recognize the chords
3. You don't recognize the progressions
7. Your technique does not include the skills necessary for that particular passage/piece (quite often due to one of the above six, but there is a separate "playing" category, into which I lump this grouping)

I'll bite. And I may answer my own question.

Unlike the memory / aural players here, I'm an eye player with *crap* aural and weak memory. Aural / memory players, from my vantage point on the eye side (which I had to learn, perforce), I've got a great deal of envy for your gifts on the other side of the gulf.

With crap aural, all chords have the same 'colors'. This makes progressions mostly meaningless to me, except in a rudimentary gut sense.

I fear 2 and 3 make 7 harder to attain.

So, can an eye player do for 2 and 3? And by 2, I don't necessarily mean look at the printed shape and make a hand motion--that I sort of do automatically in my genre. But there's some sense of knowing where to go and... more importantly, knowing how to move when you botch a left hand figure or right hand figure that I worry I'll be blocked from if I just focus on a straight printed music approach.

Can my singing head connect up with my playing head at this point or should I try to somehow leverage eye strengths in a way that I haven't heretofore been able to see?

What would you recommend I do to broaden my musicality?

I assume we're not talking about classical, based on the context clues in your post? It might alter the way I approach the answer.. we talking blues/jazz lead sheets? Printed ragtime? Improvisational stuff?

Printed ragtime. But realize, like Baroque music, it has an improvisational tradition as well.

Let's take Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf, since it's a standard and I'm hoping you're at least familiar with it, even if you don't play it...

It's been mentioned a few times already, but I will offer what helped me tremendously. First, in order to read better, one must read. It falls in line with, "If you want to do anything, you have to actually do it (not think about doing it, or dream about doing it, or anything else)." Next, you have to practice it.

When thinking about reading music, there are really only a few reasons why you have difficulty:

1. You don't recognize the notes
2. You don't recognize the chords
3. You don't recognize the progressions
4. You don't recognize the musical 'line'
5. You can't find the notes on the piano itself without 'counting'
6. You can't find the notes on the piano itself without looking
7. Your technique does not include the skills necessary for that particular passage/piece (quite often due to one of the above six, but there is a separate "playing" category, into which I lump this grouping)

These are the really basic ones. Once you've identified which one(s) cause you trouble, you can attack them specifically...

The most important thing is to practice reading things you can actually read. In other words, if you're reading a book, and you have to stop every four or five words to look up the meaning of the word, you will get no satisfaction out of it, and very little practice reading for comprehension, understanding, fluency, and speed. You can't "skim" a book that has many words you don't understand. You have to read books one or two levels below your ability for this (though eventually you will 'catch up'). Same goes for music. Find something below your level that you recognize, can play, and understand and start there.

No worries, ragtime is one of my favorite genres. Were you part of the "ragtime" vs "stride" thread a while back?

Let's take Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf, since it's a standard and I'm hoping you're at least familiar with it, even if you don't play it.

If I'm looking to sight-read this score, I'm going to do the following

1. (identify key signature)
2. (identify themes)
3. (harmonic analysis)
3a. (plan hand positions)
4. (left hand patterns)
5. (right hand patterns)
...

So, that very basic, 2 minute overview of the piece tells me what chords, and what progressions, Joplin uses in the rag.

Now, I'll touch on improvisation..

...

So, if you have a technical difficulty, look at which one, and then take it over to the improv side. Don't try to solve it in the piece itself.. you'll screw yourself up.

Steer me from here.. what made sense? What didn't? More examples?

I suppose we should add one for, "You don't recognize the rhythm."

I tried to be as general as possible, and apply these axioms to a wide variety of printed music. Some may apply less to classical music than others.

Progressions can refer to:
-chord progressions
-variation progressions
-rhythmic progressions (as separate from rhythm as a whole)
-bass line progressions
-key change progressions
-etc

Unlike 'progressions', which can apply to several ideas, the musical line is very specific. This largely refers to interpretation. One who cannot "hear" the music usually falls into this category at the very least. It basically means you can't follow the melodic line in your head as it swells and subsides, ebbs and flows, speeds up and slows down. It requires you to 'actively' interpret the melody, instead of intrinsically 'understanding' it.

Think about a piece of music you know very well by ear. Perhaps Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, mvt 1. Once you learn the notes, you basically know how to interpret it because you've heard it so many times. If you approach a piece you have never heard before, do you have the same intrinsic understanding of melody? If not, that would most-likely be this issue.

No worries, ragtime is one of my favorite genres. Were you part of the "ragtime" vs "stride" thread a while back?

This is easiest to show if we were able to sit down at a piano and look at a piece. Let's take Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf, since it's a standard and I'm hoping you're at least familiar with it, even if you don't play it.

If I'm looking to sight-read this score, I'm going to do the following:

1. It's in Ab, except for one section in Db
2. The opening theme repeats 3 times, so I'm paying especially close attention to it
3. The opening is Ab, Eb7, repeat, Fdim, repeat, Abm, repeat, [Bm7, Ab, Fb maj (Emaj), Ab, Eb7, Ab], repeat bracket
3a. I can already see that I'm going to keep my index finger on the Ab in the bracket section, so the Bm7 to Ab change is very very small (half steps on thumb and pinky). Same thing for Fmb/Emaj and Eb7. All very small movements.
4. Look at the left hand beat.. octave, octave, chord, chord, repeat.. pretty standard stuff there
5. Now, I look at the right hand. Doesn't really change from notes actually in the chords represented. So, I look at what position. Ab is 2nd inversion, Eb7 is root. Fmb/Emaj is root, Abm is root. Bm7 is 1st inversion.

So, there really is nothing getting "throw at you" in the opening theme.

Looking at the 2nd theme, we've got some chromatic octaves and some arpeggiated stuff. But all standard, and nothing out of the ordinary.

Then, we repeat the main theme.

Then we get to Db. Not much different than Ab. In fact, the section starts in Ab7. So we're still dealing with I-V7, or in this case, V7-I. (Notice, I'm not getting overly complicated in chord names, naming every single change, etc.)

In the first 2 bars, the thumb changes position. In the next 2 bars, the 2nd finger goes up to a Db, and the thumb continues the change from the first two bars.

This whole thing repeats, then it modulates to Bb and follows the same pattern. Then, it does the same pattern in octave form (root-2nd-root that the thumb did before)

There's really only one odd measure out, with the syncopation in the LH. So, I look at that specifically and notice it's a Gdim6.

Last section goes back to Ab, but notice it starts in Db. In this section, you've got Db, Ab, Eb7. Notice it's all 1-4-5.

So, that very basic, 2 minute overview of the piece tells me what chords, and what progressions, Joplin uses in the rag.

Knowing ragtime like I do, I know that you're typically going to play a LH stride using either 1-3-5 octave, and then either root, 1st, or 2nd inversion of the chord. Typically, when you play the root octave, you won't play the root chord. The most common is root/5 with a 2nd inversion, and then probably 5/root with a root7.. so root-2nd-5-2nd.. or in a V chord, 5-root7-root7-root (octave lower). The reason for this is the octave there sets up the root of the I chord. (Look at 2nd measure of Maple Leaf for an example of this.)

Now, I'll touch on improvisation..

I actually believe the best way to learn to read ragtime is to improvise ragtime. (This probably goes for all music, but I have a real tough time improvising classical.)

You will get very comfortable with chord changes, little half-step raises and drops to get to the next chord in the progression, little ornaments that help make those changes, modulations of chords, etc.

Best part: if you don't have an ear, you can do it almost entirely academically. (Obviously I recommend some ear training, but if you just can't get the ear in line, it's not the end of the genre. It's highly academic at its root.)

To take the improv back to the music.. when I look at the rag, I see the following technical difficulties:

1. Stride bass
2. arpeggios
3. octave work
4. repeated chords
5. alternating octaves with notes/couples

That's about it. So, if you have a technical difficulty, look at which one, and then take it over to the improv side. Don't try to solve it in the piece itself.. you'll screw yourself up. (You tense up when you have to hit a "specific" note. When you improv, mentally, you accept mistakes and tend to correct them more fluidly. Then, when you go back to the piece, you weren't learning the technique while practicing the specific notes in the piece incorrectly.)

I hope this was a little helpful. Like I said, I wish we could just sit down and talk about it, but I tried to be thorough (without being long-winded) and give some examples that might help. Steer me from here.. what made sense? What didn't? More examples? Etc.

I haven't heard of it (Maple Leaf Rag) before. Is it very good?

Read? Or sight-read? Because...


I'm curious to what extent you are academically deconstructing the theoretical basis versus intuiting the progressions.

For example, when you glance at the bass line of first measure on the third line of the A section, do you immediately process it as "diminished chord, tonal center A flat, I chord"? Or is it a mental sound? A mental shape?

To what extent are you aware of where you are in a chord progression? Do you know where you are about to go and the relative direction and distance? Did you learn this starting from an academic approach or was this intuitive?

This wasn't clear to me. Are you saying that if a particular technique proves troublesome, one should attempt to improvise using that technique in some other piece, possibly one that is already known well?

It's one thing to decompose the harmonies and write them on the page. I've done this several times before, but during practice and performance, the written information doesn't seem to relate at all with the skill set I'm using during play.

When I work on variations, I essentially have to plan them in advance, note by note, and practice them in a more classical style.

What I'd like to be able to do is to organically know where I am and where I need to go well enough instinctively that I can instantly improvise a way to get there.

But this doesn't come to me instinctively.

So what I'm struggling with is where and how to start.

Another great post. I have found that classical training is highly academic. In other words, my kid can sit, hear, and play. I am lost without reading. I have been wanting to get lessons in improv as well, I think I just might... although, it will require having two different teachers... ugh. The dilemmas of the beginner

My advice is this: if you're going to learn ragtime, you're going to have to learn Scott Joplin. This is arguably his most famous rag. Definitely check it out.

Someone missed the whistle smiley...

Will respond in earnest later, when I have more time.

This takes years of practice. You can cut the time down if you can identify exactly what's slowing you down. I'm going to guess technique is a major issue. Not really a wild guess, though, because it tends to be an issue for everyone. The better your technique, and the more skills you know, the easier it is to put it into practice in an improv environment.

To steer you in the right direction, I would need to see and hear you play now, discuss what areas can use the most improvement, and then work towards solutions. If you can post up a video, we may be able to accomplish part of that process. If not, it is very tough to provide meaningful advice beyond a certain point.

Focus on music theory, technique, and application. Those are the "big three". If you know the theory, chances are you're short on one of the other two.