At 9:55 PM +0100 6/10/12, Lawrence Yates wrote: >I once played in a brass group with a brass band Eb tuba player who could >only read treble clef Faced with bass clef (in concert pitch) parts, we >told him to knock off 3 flats and play it as treble - no way, he couldn't >do it. I got a piece of paper and drew treble clefs on it and stuck it >over the bass clefs and key signature - guess what? - he could read it now >with no problem. > >Weird eh?
Not really. Many beginners--I'd go so far as to say almost ALL beginners--learn to read music as tablature rather than pitches. That is, they associate the note placement with a certain fingering, not with a pitch name. And some people never outgrow that. I played violin from around the age of 4 (according to family photos) and learned viola around junior high school age, but for at least a couple of years I read alto clef as tablature and didn't know what notes I was playing. (By this time I know the notes, and for musicology classes had to learn to read all 9 movable clefs!) The weirdest case I ever ran into was a modern flute player in my early music ensemble, whom I asked to play renaissance bass flute. She went through a series of mental gymnastics I couldn't even begin to describe in order to remember how to finger the notes, but eventually the right notes came out! And yes, the mental game of picturing a different clef and key signature SHOULD work, but for some people it simply doesn't. Individual variation in some cases, lack of practice in others. I'm currently playing Eb tuba (I learned BBb in school), and I read trumpet just fine, but I've never been able to THINK treble clef transposition on my tuba parts. It just doesn't work for me. I simply learned a new set of fingerings. (And a third set the summer I played a CC tuba.) That's what your Eb tuba player needs to do, just treat it as a new instrument with a new set of fingerings. John -- John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music Virginia Tech Department of Music School of Performing Arts & Cinema College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences 290 College Ave., Blacksburg, Virginia 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[email protected]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html "Machen Sie es, wie Sie wollen, machen Sie es nur schön." (Do it as you like, just make it beautiful!) --Johannes Brahms _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
