music readers inflexible?

[zuzu]

I am playing in a church band now with a quite young player who reads as he plays keys. He will tell you right quick that if it's not on the sheet, he can't play it.

In my most sweet grandfatherly way, I have tried to explain that the sheet may not be the exact rendering of the recording and besides that, whatever went on in the room as they made the recording with the players they were recording, that is not the room where we are nor the players they had...but we still gotta make it work in our room.

"But how will I know what to play?"...super kid, I like him and don't want to embarrass him, but I am sore tempted to just step over to the keyboard and demonstrate what he should play when our arrangement strays from the sheet. But he is young, I need to tread carefully, for I will NOT introduce negativity into anyone's musical development.

I have played with plenty of readers (one a conductor, "slumming" with us "folk musicians" and a fun gal!) but never one so inflexible.

Any ideas?

[Bob Womack]

We are talking about two sets of skills here:

Some musicians are taught to read a score and reproduce it. They often aren't taught interpretation. In that world, the phenomenal players learn to interpret the scores... and become conductors or soloistas. Rank and file are expected to play-as-written until a conductor instructs otherwise, and the conductor will often notate the score for the player. Of course, this is the classical world, and its popular analog, the film scoring world. Yes, those people have it drilled into them to not step out of their lane or they'll get their knuckles rapped with a rule.

Some musicians begin interpreting the moment they begin playing. They ask, "What's the point in note-for-note?" They construct parts or listen to recordings, figure out what is actually happening, and reproduce it.

These are not polar opposites. There is actually a continuum between them, and some people live in the grey area for most of their careers. The difficulty is teaching the people on either end of the continuum to inhabit the other end of the continuum, because the academic world has often created polar opposites of the two and scorned the end of the continuum theey don't live on.

If this is an ensemble, your first good bet would be to duct tape the keys player's left hand to the bench to keep him out of the bass player's realm. You could also Xerox his score and put electrical tape over the bass staff to lower his blood pressure. If he is clashing with the folks who are playing it like the recording and THEY are in the majority, it might be good to sit with him, work through the sheet, and say, "No, sharp that one. The rest of the band are playing that as a sharp so you don't want to clash. Nope, flat that one. You see that triplet? Everyone else is doing it as a couplet. It's cheesy, but the 100 person congregation can't navigate the triplet*," and let him notate his own score. With enough of that, he may catch on and start doing it himself.

Bob

*A typical monophonic P&W melody written for a soloista sounds like garbage when you try to get 100 semi-musically-literate civilians to sing it together, like trying to drive a school bus through a cone course designed for a sports car. Yecccchhhhh!

[egordon99]

Good response from Bob....

I'm a decent sight reader but what makes me "musical" is that I generally use the sheet music as a suggestion (unless I'm playing classical, which I am not very good at)...

Yeah, I'd say your keyboard player might not be a good fit for your group if he is stuck at THAT end of the continuum.

[TBman]

Simple answer. Everyone just plays what's on the sheet. If you want to do more, put it on the sheet.

[mr. beaumont]

Better to have someone who can read than someone who can't who you need to.

[FrankHudson]

A lot of wisdom in what Bob Womack wrote upthread.

Just another data point from my experience:

I can barely read music notation. Wanting to compose I tried to lean to be a more fluent reader and to notate a few decades back. For various reasons I failed to advance that skill. I'm not proud of that, there's days I'm ashamed frankly.

The problem that the OP is observing isn't the ability to read, it's a present lack in some areas of musicianship on the part of the keyboardist. They may develop those missing skills (or not). The only connection to the presented problem is that being able to sight read a score, has allowed the player to bridge over their lack of development in other areas. As others in the thread pointed out, those additional skills of being able to adjust an arrangement for the other players and instruments, or to add additional interpretation based on their own musicality would be useful for them to develop.

As regard to missing musicianship skills, humans have strengths and weaknesses. Making a band work is sometimes a Tetris fitment of how to mesh those.

I've worked with fluent music score readers who were able to improvise well and had the ability to re-arrange quickly. Even though I failed to develop that skill, I suspect that fluent reading may have even helped them develop those skills. I italicized the them there because there are also many examples of folks with abundant musicality and skills who never learned to sight read or never studied scores.

[zuzu]

A wealth of good advice here! Thank you all so much! I do not read...well, I know time marks, but several of your suggestions make perfect sense. Sitting down with him and speaking his musical language, to the point of letting him teach me some things, will likely be the path to greater harmony. (sorry)

The word "interpret", which was put forward here, may be particularly useful. Thanks a bunch!

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by zuzu

…I am sore tempted to just step over to the keyboard and demonstrate what he should play when our arrangement strays from the sheet. But he is young, I need to tread carefully, for I will NOT introduce negativity into anyone's musical development.

…Any ideas?

Hi zuzu…
Yes. I'd get together with him privately and show him some stuff (never in front of the group). Become an advocate and coach.