Music is just like written language - it is used to 'say' specific things. "Guten Tag" and "Good day" mean the same thing, no matter what words you use to write them, they refer to the same concepts.
There is 'orchestral' music and 'solo' music and simle scores and tunes. The orchestral stuff is written specifically for an instrument, but in reality as long as your instrument has the same range of voice, nothing would stop you from playing, say, clarinte music on a flute or a violin. Most instruments that are able to chord have different mechanical limitations, you cannot play the same chords on a guitar as you can play on a piano. And most instruments cannot really chord - they are one note at a time kind of things. With HG, you want to simply look for the true melody in any piece of music. You can play anything the gurdy has notes for, it might not sound right, might not sound good. You might have to disengage all the drones and just play chanter. But if your instrument has the notes available, you can play them. I have recently begun to study plainsong notation, and even though it is less rigid, it still tells you what you need to know - what the relationship between one note and another is in tone and tempo. It is sorta like the difference between German and English - with the right context you can get the same meaning across with each. I would say that if you already have violin training, you are a step ahead of the game. They don't call this instrument a vielle for nothing - fiddle with a wheel. But the things you will want to play on your keys are really very close to the same notes you would play on your violin - you don't have to learn anything different except where to put your fingers and how to move them - it is just the different mechanics of the instrument, not different music. Hope this helps Chris *********** REPLY SEPARATOR *********** On 7/15/2008 at 1:40 PM Joe Mejia wrote: Hello, I've had my hurdy gurdy for about 4 months now, and things have been moving along just swell. I've been able to learn a handful of songs by ear, and I'm ready to move on to some harder ones. Unfortunately, some of them just seem too hard to play by ear, and I've finally broken down and decided I need to learn how to read musical notation. So, how do I do that? I used to be able to read music back when I was a little kid and I played violin in the school orchestra, but I've since forgotten everything about it. Is reading music for one instrument any different than reading for another? Say I found sheet music for a guitar... could I use that for the HG as long as it was within my playable range? Maybe this is a stupid question, but if anyone can help me out ), I would be very appreciative. - Joe Making the world a better place one message at a time. Check out the i'm Talkathon.
