Quote:
Originally Posted by MusicTyro
I would like to get some input from the community about how you may have learned music theory and ear training.
Were you self-taught? Did you get private instruction or other instrument training?
Have you been fine without theory if you never formally learned?
Did you pick up on it right away, or did you have to really work at it?
What would've helped you pick up on it faster?
Was it a single method or did you learn from multiple experiences?
No need to answer the questions exactly as posted. Just some of the information I'm trying to gain.
I'd like to get as many different viewpoints as possible, as I'm going to be publishing a series of articles/learning tools on the subject.
Thanks!
Bret P.
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Hi Bret,
Your question is one that interests me and should give rise to a fascinating article, since people and their learning styles and abilities are so different! I grew up playing Suzuki violin beginning at age 8, where the emphasis as you probably know is on hearing music and playing what you hear, before learning to read music. My Susuki teacher never taught much about music theory (such as what it means to say music is in a certain "key," or why different keys are major, minor, or named as they are). However, I certainly learned how to read music. And though I've given half-hearted attempts to learn and remember what "A major" means, I actually have never really experienced a pressing need to know this, and have managed to play in an orchestra for over 15 years quite successfully! I can hear and feel the difference between major and minor, and I can tell when the music shifts keys, even if I don't know what key it is in!
My father, who learned violin late in life, is very different than I am in his approach to music. He is forever irked (slightly) when we read music together and I tell him I have no idea what key it is in...I just look at the sharps that are in the music, and then remember them as I play, by which I mean I remember the sound of, say, the F sharp, and so play it throughout the piece because it "sounds" right. This makes changing to keys that have, for example, 5 or 6 sharps not too difficult, because once I play the first several measures, I simply "feel" the sound of it and so continue to play along happily, completely oblivious to what key I'm in.
My father is a physicist, and so he knows musical theory like a physicist does: he know all about the frequencies and fifths and thirds, etc. Tell him a key, and he can tell you all the notes and which are sharp or flat. He also has perfect pitch, so you can tell him a note and he can hum it to you (although he is losing that ability with age). He just can't figure out how I can sight read or remember music without knowing any of that, which always amuses me.
The only case so far where I've wished I had spent time learning what notes are in different keys is while singing recently in a musical. We were tranposing a song into a different key to shift it into my vocal range, and the pianist told me to sing the song in key so-and-so. And so I had to say, uh, what note do I begin on? He told me the answer, and then (after being given the note on the piano) I could sing the transposed song just fine.
To summarize, while I know the music theory of reading music, I don't use knowledge of keys or scales to figure out what to play. I just read the music, "feel" the key (whatever it is), and add in accidentals when they occur. When making up music, I also just do it by "feel." I don't think, "Okay, I'm going to start in the key of this and then jump to the key of that."
I hope my (long) account helps you. As you can see, I'm someone who plays mostly by "feel" rather than by using intellectual knowledge. So, the Suzuki method, which emphasizes listening and making music to begin with, was a perfect fit for me...or perhaps it made me become the sort of "theory-lite" musician I am?
--Erica
EDIT: I also learned to play B-flat clarinet growing up, and my dad always said playing such an instrument would have driven him bonkers because the note you read on the page is not the one that you produce out of the instrument. Since I didn't have perfect pitch or much music theory, I wasn't bothered by this at all. I simply knew what fingering to use for whatever note was shown, and thus it made no difference to me that the note on the staff was a "C" and the note that came out of the clarinet was a B flat. Actually, heh heh, I didn't know that this was what was going on until TODAY when I just looked it up online...but that didn't prevent me from playing clarinet very well back in my clarinet-playing days! Back then I just had a vague notion that the sound wasn't the same as the actual note shown on the page. And since I was/am always quite good at math and continued on through multi-variable calculus and beyond in college, I don't think for me my lack of music theory knowledge relates to math ability. Perhaps it relates more to my tendency to forget people's names but remember their faces and voices?