Vocalist.org archive


From:  qed <qed@n...>
qed <qed@n...>
Date:  Thu May 10, 2001  2:46 am
Subject:  Re: [vocalist] reading skills or rather a lack thereof.........


Greypins@a... wrote:
Greypins@a... wrote:

> nande,
>
> it is a lot
> easier to become proficient at reading rhythm in a short time and requires
> less knowledge to do so. also, if you are in the right place at the right
> time, you'll have a good chance of stumbling onto the right pitch.

Ah, a person after my own heart. I have been preaching this to instrumental
students and choirs and music classes for more than twenty years. If you want
to
be the sort of musician with whom other people want to make music, if you want
to
be a *useful musician*, being in the right place at the right time is the key
(in
the music as well as geographically!). In the case of tricky rhythms, at least
being on the right beat, or at the beginning of the right bar, the first time
through might well be good enough. The other reasons I give my students for
sacrificing notes rather than rhythm if something has to give include:
1) it seems to be the case that if one is concentrating hard enough to get the
rhythm correct there is a good chance that many of the notes will also be
correct.
2) learnt wrong rhythms seem to be even more difficult to unlearn that wrong
notes
3) if the/a purpose of sight-reading is to get and overall impression of the
music, accurate rhythm with some correct notes will give a much better
impression
than accurate notes played very out of time.


> looking
> at it another way, if you have the right pitch in the wrong place, it IS the
> wrong pitch.

Why make two errors, when with correct rhythm there would be only one?

Regards

Helen Duggan







emusic.com