BillieBudd said:
Well, I pick the banjo so I guess I ain't one but good luck to you..I can't read a note, but I wonder if vaping helps you playing from printed scores...it sure enhances my kind of music
Me too, but I play a short scale tenor with Irish tuning and flat pick. I can read the notes, but only in relation to the instruments that I play- by that I mean I can read where my fingers go and the basic timing, but would have to work out the name of the note. So I don't consider myself a 'real' musician, just a folk musician- I can play all sorts of trad. tunes no bother off the sheet, but give me a piece of music for some other musical genre and I will sometimes struggle to get my head around it. But my tunes are usually and traditionally learned and passed on by ear. Are yours the same, BillyBudd, or do you just use tab instead?
I've got full respect for classically trained musicians- it's a whole other level from what I play. But I will also say that in my musical circles (mostly just open 'sessions' nowadays) they can sometimes be a little conceited- violinists particularly!
When trad. tunes (jigs, reels, polkas etc) are written on the sheet they're over simplified- it's just the bare bones of a tune that are noted- the 'life' of the tune comes from all the ornamentation and embellishments of the tune each time you play it through (they're usually played 3 times), not to mention the regional geographical variations on the way a tune can be played, and are learned by ear and experience. I've seen many classically trained musicians who see these folk tunes simplified on the page and think "wow, they're simple... I can do this" and then go and join in an advanced trad. session in public, often clutching the sheet music, and play their way through the tunes thinking they're doing a grand job and playing loudly, but it's very rudimentary if you know what you're listening to and can be something of a 'session wrecker'. Culturally it's a big no no in these circles to take sheet music to a session- you play from memory, and it's kind of preferred that you learn the tunes by ear first to learn the nuances and regional variations, and make sure that your playing style fits in. It's not all classical musicians that do this, of course some are sensitive, but it is something that I did notice quite often when I lived in Ireland playing a lot of sessions on the tourist trail and lots of musical tourists would drop in to join a session. Also, no matter how long a classical played has been playing the 'fiddle', their playing style nearly always marks them out as classically trained. Anyway, the spirit of an open session generally is that it's somewhat inclusive and gives folk the chance to gain that experience in the genre, so I shouldn't complain. I just wish sometimes they were more sensitive and didn't think these tunes were 'easy', and chose to participate in sessions of an appropriate standard lol anyway, rant over!
Like I say, I do actually think classically trained musicians are the real masters of the musical art and theory at the highest level, and I wish that I had had the technical talent to take that path. Good luck OP, life in an orchestra sounds amazing!
Oh, and vaping certainly helps me enjoy playing a lot more, although I do get the tendency to sometimes forget the rest of a tune I'm playing half way through. That's pretty disastrous (being allowed the sheet music would solve that!)
