[Musicians] Dots

[Erik Hoffman]

As a dancer, caller, contra & square dance musician, as well as a music teacher of fiddle, guitar, mandolin, I recommend highly memorizing tunes. As someone who learns both by ear and reading music, I can say, as others have told me, when you learn by ear it's easier to memorize a tune. But, two things:

1) As a leader of community bands in the San Francisco Bay Area, I say, anyway that gets you playing is good. Yes, work to memorize tunes! Develop your ear. Learn how to vary a tune. But do what you need to do to get out there and play. In my teaching I always remind students that dots on a page is the skeleton of the tune. It's up to us to put the flesh on it.

2) I do learn tunes from dots. But as someone who didn't focus on music until my twenties, and as someone who took up fiddle in my 30s, I didn't grow up reading music. Thus I'm slow at the reading of notes. Having worked with the likes of Shira Kammen, and lately, Audrey Knuth, it's quite evident that growing up with reading music makes dots so much more accessible. It's quite wonderful to stick the music of a tune you like or wrote in front of a band-mate and hear them take off with it. I've witnessed this with both Shira & Audrey. (And one could mention there are those of us who can see a piece of sheet music--even an orchestral score and hear it as they gaze. How I wish! See Oliver Sacks, "Musicophilia.")

I've also had the experience of writing a tune, Flopping Chicken, and had bands honor me with playing it at dances. That's a tune that has a lot of room for playing--improvisation. Hearing the band follow the page didn't do it justice. I felt totally appreciated that they learned my tune, loved having it played at the dance, and wished that fiddler could get off the page, even a little bit...

This comes down to ability and flexibility. 

So, my long answer says:
	For most of us, getting off the page is good.
	For all of us, learning to vary and improvise is good.*
	For many of us, dots as a reminder isn't bad
	For some of us, dots for new to us tunes are great!

For all of us, do what you need to take the next step in playing.

* Improvising: every genre of music has improvising rules. Here are a few I've noticed.
	Classical: rules are pretty constrained. the conductor or chamber musician can increase tempos, decide on dynamics, and a wee-bit more
	Irish, Scottish, Celtic: is it a held note, a bowed triplet, or a role? Or do we steal time from this note and give it to that note? And melodic variation is common.
	Old-Time: Steal time from many notes, hold them over the bar line, add in blue notes, add rhythmic shuffles
	Bluegrass: Improvise in myriad ways, just don't lose the sense of the melody.
	Jazz: Too many types of jazz to comment other than to say, it can get totally out of the box...

And, in the modern contra world, many of us do some of this to all genres...

I occasionally play for English dances. We have an open band dance in Berkeley (the one in California). There I wish sight reading was innate. I've gotten better at it. But there's a genre where the caller can put the music in front of you and you're expected to be able to play it.

~Erik Hoffman


-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Hinds
Sent: Friday, May 17, 2019 3:54 AM
To: musicians at sharedweight.net
Subject: [Musicians] Dots

I’d like to know people’s opinion of using music while playing for a contra dance.   Is it easier to create excitement if the musicians play by ear?  Thanks in advance for your opinion, Tom Hinds

Sent from my iPad