3 ms·
Right, to be able to sight-sing, you need either perfect pitch, or you need to 1) have a sufficient musical theory framework to describe what to sing without pe
by gwd 3y ago
Right, to be able to sight-sing, you need either perfect pitch, or you need to 1) have a sufficient musical theory framework to describe what to sing without perfect pitch 2) need to know how to translate the notes on the page into that musical theory framework. With #2 being the hardest bit.
Having a "simplified musical notation system" might enable many more casual people to be able to sight-sing. But how useful is that, practically speaking? After all, you can just ask your musician friend to play through the melody a few times and then you know it well enough that the full musical notation system can remind you.
In fact, one simple option would be to teach people basic music theory based on C being the root, then write the vocal parts transposed into C and on a C clef. No need for super fancy new notation.
But such a system would have the opposite issue if anyone wanted to play it on a real instrument -- then they'd need to have enough musical theory to be able to transpose whatever they were looking at into the specific key they were supposed to be playing.
Furthermore, if you're looking at music, you're almost certainly going to be playing with an instrument anyway; in which case, you ideally want to practice in the same key the instrument is going to be in. In which case, it's probably better to just teach singers enough piano to be able to plunk out the tune on the piano when practicing privately until they "get" it.
On the whole, it's not clear that any possible improvements to the current system of "Have the people who can't sight-sing listen to the instrument until they get the idea" will be worth the extra costs.
- zozbot234 3y ago> have a sufficient musical theory framework to describe what to sing without perfect pitch That's just solfège (Do-Re-Mi) and kids do learn it traditionally. Translating from sheet music to solfège is trivial once you know the piece's key, since both are based on the diatonic scale.
- vintermann 3y agoIt's telling you can only imagine "simplified" systems. We've had alternative systems for more than 150 years, and they have been undeniable didactic successes. So-called "moveable do" systems incorporate the "music theory framework" as you call it. But conservatories are refusing to build on it, all these things get accepted only as stepping stones to "real" music notation, not as something potentially transformative. The arguments you make could easily have been made against the teaching of regular literacy too, once: it would certainly not have been obvious before the fact what the fruits of "everyone mastering this" would be.
- BobaFloutist 3y agoMoveable do has nothing to do with notation, it's just a sight-singing strategy, and it's mostly the default one in the United States.
- vintermann 3y agoOf course it has. It's the basis for most of the alternative notation systems. The shape note systems of Sacred Harp are based on moveable do, for instance, and they were very successful in promoting music literacy in their culture for a good 100 years. Chinese notation is also moveable do. So is Roverud's cipher notation which I mentioned above (I think it has a common root with the Chinese one). So is the Kodály method. All these systems have been really successful in teaching where they were applied, but they always fall for the push to graduate to the "real" notation system.