I realise this is a tongue-in-cheek title but for anyone unaware, sheet music is a very clinical and skeletal approximation of music. Like the difference between reading I Have a Dream and actually hearing MLK deliver the speech. It’s why you can have 1,000 different recordings of a Mozart piano concerto – and why they’re all superior to a PC playing a MIDI file (most accurate representation of sheet music).
Having said that, and despite sheet music being about as far from ‘lossless’ as a stickman drawing, musicians are particularly good at ‘visualising’ music. So much so, that a brain scan can’t distinguish between a musician actually listening to music and a musician merely replaying music in their head.
I would argue it’s more like the difference between reading a book and watching a stage play of the same story. The difference is level of literacy. At a certain point, you learn the language well enough to be able to use your imagination to create the color of the story for you as more than just words (notes) on the page. Up until then you might know what the word is, what it means, and even how to speak it out loud, but it could be difficult to internalize how that word fits in with the work as a whole.
Those who haven’t honed that skill or haven’t had the opportunity, however, are best served with a performance of the work. There is no shame in this. Experiencing a performance can be just as beautiful, maybe even more than what your imagination creates from what’s on the page with facets you hadn’t even considered in your own interpretation, but making that interpretation is a skill, just like literary analysis.
Lord Vetinari, the supreme ruler of Ankh-Morpork, rather liked music.
People wondered what sort of music would appeal to such a man. Highly formalized chamber music, possibly, or thunder-and-lightning opera scores.
In fact the kind of music he really liked was the kind that never got played. It ruined music, in his opinion, to torment it by involving it on dried skins, bits of dead cat, and lumps of metal hammered into wires and tubes. It ought to stay written down, on the page, in rows of little dots and crotchets all neatly caught between lines. Only there was it pure. It was when people started doing things with it that the rot set in. Much better to sit quietly in a room and read the sheets, with nothing between yourself and the mind of the composer but a scribble of ink. Having it played by sweaty fat men and people with hair in their ears and spit dribbling out of the end of their oboe… well, the idea made him shudder. Although not much, because he never did anything to extremes.
But remember, autism wasn’t invented until 10 years ago.
You know this is an excerpt from a fiction story written by Terry Pratchett, right? This isn’t about a real person.
The implication being that it was Terry Pratchett who created autism
Autism is stored in the hat
bits of dead cat
I feel like I’m missing a huge part of music lore.
Probably catgut
Violin strings, and other bowed string instruments, were traditionally, and some still, made with livestock intestines. They’re called catgut strings, they’re not actually made from cat intestines, but the name has lead to the common belief that they are made from cats. I’ve been told by people who use them that they resonate better and they like the tone.
Strings for stringed instruments were at one point traditionally made out of “catgut,” which is animal intestinal material. Though to my knowledge, pretty much never actually from cats.
This is exactly like when we sat in the car on the way home from the shop, reading the manual of the video game we just bought, already practising in our heads the button presses.
We often used to get video games for Christmas, but wouldn’t be allowed to play them straight away because we were spending quality time with family etc. Then we’d get up early on the 26th and pack the car to go on a 2 week camping trip, still not having played our precious new game.
We would take the instruction manual with us on the trip and spend those 2 weeks intensely studying the controls, the lore, everything. By the time we returned home we were fucking ready.
Reading the manual, unfolding the map, messing with the little extras. When software came in a box.
But sometimes you get it wrong, like when I read the manual for Super Mario Bros. 3 and thought that power-ups would be added to your inventory if you collected them twice rather than needing to get them from specific places like mushroom houses or princess letters.
I left the store as a willing and eager adventurer. I got home a zealot who understood the generational cycle of wisdom, power, and courage as well as my part to play in defending against the corruption that came with Power.
I knew a young guy who was very much on the spectrum and part of the church youth group took musical score to read at a camp we took them to. You could just tell he was hearing the music he was reading, even humming and tapping out the beat.
My god. As a musician who really wishes someone had been interested enough in my talent as a kid to try to teach me how to actually do it, I envy those people so much.
I had people like Paul McCartney reassuring me, he and other musicians who couldn’t read music.
Now that I’m older, though, I really wish that I could just tune into it all. I’ve tried, but I just don’t fucking know where to start.
I come from a family full of musicians. My grandfather had one grandchild out of 17 grandkids who wasn’t a musician. He never played, but he was always singing and whistling.
None of us read music.
A lot of it has to do with the kind of music or instrument you play. If you’re playing guitar in a rock band, a lot of guitarists can’t read music. Hell a lot of guitar sheet music specifically has the tabs attached. If you’re playing trumpet for a jazz band or orchestra though, you’re pretty much required to read music.
Oh yeah I play everything. I was a kid with severe adhd, got kicked out of band rather than taught.
I mean, not the end of the world. Some girls liked my music and I was stuck in home economics where Sarah and Sue sat on either side of me and fondled me. God their names sound made up and typical. Looking back, what I was making was so cheesy, I don’t understand how anyone liked it.
As a 13 year old boy, I went from hell to heaven when I got kicked out of band.
I wasn’t heartbroken about it then haha. Sarah broke my heart when an older friend took me to see her and I ended up waiting around at the park while they hung out in a car without me. I probably dodged a bullet, but I cried myself to sleep that night.
I see her around town from time to time. I don’t think she even knows that she broke my heart. :p Doesn’t even have a clue. She thought I was as wild as she was. I guess that’s why it pays to be yourself. Tell that to a teenager though.
You’re bad at masking that ADHD ;D (tone indicator friendly ribbing)
Lord Vetinari irl
If anyone’s wondering why you would do this as a musician.
Obviously you can visualize how you’d play something, but skipping the obvious things…
You can do music theory analysis on pieces you’re interested on, it’s something that helps later with improvisation or composition
It also helps you understand the style you’re studying a bit more, it takes a lot of effort although with years of experience you can probably analyze a piece of music fairly fast, and on the bus even
the picture is compressed to smush, but looks like a piano+voice piece, could be memorizing the lyrics + rhythm+ intervals, useful if you’re expected to sing by memory
As a former singer I used to bring my sheet binder with me to do exactly this. Id memorize lyrics, work on pronunciation, rhythm, cues, etc. there’s a lot you can do to silently work on a piece of music.
A man of culture
You know he can’t wait to get home and try that shit out.
So often,
“Pssh. As I thought.”
Sometimes,
“Oh, wow.”
The analog method of playing a MIDI file.
I thought he saving a PNG image
He also looks like John Williams from this angle.
Headcanon accepted. I choose to believe that John Williams spends his time on some bus in (what looks like, judging from the surrounding ten pixels) some central European city reading sheet music.
I was kinda thinking Charles Dance
You just have to stand out from the crowd a little and they will immediately take a photo of you and upload it to the Internet. Although if it is generation then everything is probably fine.
