McCartney doesn't read music

[rick-slo]

I simply take Paul McCartney at his word.

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by Mandobart

I think we can all agree the Paul McCartney is exceptional. That means he is an exception. I hope we can all realize that most of us are not exceptional musicians. What worked for someone like Paul McCartney is not likely to work for the rest of us mortals. How many hit songs have the rest of us written over the past 6 decades?

It just makes sense to avail yourself of every tool out there.

I agree. No one is saying - yet! - that because he couldn't read then none of us need to!

I could read music before I began learning guitar (mid-1960s), and it helped me immensely. My ear wasn't good, and I couldn't have taught myself without it.

[Denny B]

I'm not that surprised that Sir Paul doesn't read music...and I'm pretty sure that he understood the question that was asked of him and he answered it honestly...

I remember watching "History Of The Eagles" and Don Henley said that he took one quarter of Music Theory in college...and he flunked it with an "F"...while he was playing music to put himself thru college...

But then someone will say something like..."Oh, he KNOWS music theory, he just doesn't KNOW that he KNOWS music theory..."

[Greg Rappleye]

This explains that "Uncle Albert" song.



Greg Rappleye

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by Greg Rappleye

This explains that "Uncle Albert" song.



Greg Rappleye

Hey, all of his worst songs could easily have been written by someone well educated in music theory.
Sticking to the most basic rules tends to produce the cheesiest sounds. Maybe if he had been educated he wouldn't have come up with his best songs? 'Yesterday', for example, has a 7-bar verse. Maybe a little music education would have persuaded him to make it 8 (which would obviously spoil it)? And the G major chord in the chorus - a little diatonic theory would have told him it "should" be Gm; but G major is way better.

But it's a good point that he had an unfortunate predilection for cheesy old-fashioned sounds. It was arguably Lennon that stopped him going too far in that direction in the Beatles; Lennon that kept him on his toes, kept him curious about more "out there" sounds. (Paul likes to say how it was him who was into really avant-garde music in the mid 60s, more than John, but maybe he wouldn't have got there without John's provocative influence?)
Of course, Lennon himself was clearly impressed with McCartney's facility with melody and chords, and probably envious. They inspired each other to heights they probably wouldn't have reached individually.

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by Denny B

I'm not that surprised that Sir Paul doesn't read music...and I'm pretty sure that he understood the question that was asked of him and he answered it honestly...

I remember watching "History Of The Eagles" and Don Henley said that he took one quarter of Music Theory in college...and he flunked it with an "F"...while he was playing music to put himself thru college...

But then someone will say something like..."Oh, he KNOWS music theory, he just doesn't KNOW that he KNOWS music theory..."

That's a good point.
Some rock musicians (I don't believe McCartney is one of these) like to be disingenuous: pretending they know less than they do "yeah I just play what I feel, man...", because it makes their skills seem more like magic, like a rare gift. They're afraid that if they sound too educated it will put a big gap between them and their fans. They wear their fake ignorance like a badge of pride.

To be fair, most of them probably don't do it consciously or cynically. They just forget the study they've put in, even if that "study" is just copying all their heroes by ear. The skill has become "natural", and they know they didn't study theory, and it doesn't feel like their learning process was "hard work", like school - it was all fun.
They may not have "been to school" - but that doesn't mean they didn't study long and hard.

[Silly Moustache]

Don't really understand why this is a "thing".
The growth of popular folk and then "rock and roll music" replaced formal arrangements and trained singers and musicians.

Originally, record producers felt the need to have string and large orchestra accompaniments behind pop singers but times changed very quickly.

Session musicians may still need to sight read notation but composer of popular music don't.

Personally I totally agree with Paul's description: "I don't see music as dots on a page. It's something in my head that goes on"

I have learned aspects of music: different scales, harmonising the scale, common progressions, intervals etc., and I've tried a couple of times to learn notation and given up in frustration, - I'm also pretty "tabalature" blind
but I totally agree with Paul,

I "see" music in my head, but in no way that I can describe and it isn't visual.

[Nymuso]

I recently learned that Michael Jackson not only did not read music, but played nothing as well. He wrote by singing/humming into a recorder and the scribes took it from there.

Standard notation is but one form of communicating music; it is not the only form. Nor is it the sine qua non of a musician.

[815C]

I read an interview with McCartney where he was asked what type of strings he used on his bass. He answered, "Long skinny ones."

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by Silly Moustache

Don't really understand why this is a "thing".

Because a lot of people still seem to be in awe of a combination of three things: celebrity culture, successful musicians, and music education. The "talent myth" is part of that too.

Out culture likes to regard music as an activity that is only worth pursuing if one is "talented" and/or is making a living from it. It's similar with other arts, but music seems to be the most tainted with this view.

If one is pursuing music as a hobby, as recreation - not making any money from it (or very little) - one is often accused of "wasting time", because "you'll never be famous", or "you're too old to make it". We don't say such things to amateur footballers or golfers, or amateur watercolourists.

It seems to be a hangover from classical culture, where it's quite clear that musicians have to be trained to an exceedingly high standard - in a full-time academic environment - just to sit in an orchestra and play someone else's music. And the composers whose music they are playing are regarded as "geniuses" with a hotline to God.

In comparison, "vernacular" music (pop, rock, folk, blues, country, soul, R&B, hip hop, rap etc etc) is often dismissed as unworthy of consideration by serious critics. That's fair enough really - vernacular music gets by perfectly without critical attention! That's because the purpose of a critic is to explain complicated music (classical or jazz) to lesser mortals, to act as mediators between the geniuses and the "common folk". The common folk already understand and appreciate vernacular music perfectly well.

Even so, every now and then, a vernacular musician achieves significant and long-lasting success, seeming to rise above that level to (maybe) approach the "genius" level of the classical composer. How do they do that?? Without any "proper education"? It's a mystery! (Not.) We just see the graceful swan gliding on the surface; not the furious paddling going on beneath.

[colchar]

Originally Posted by Wooly

I saw an interesting interview with Paul McCartney on 60 Minutes yesterday. He admits that he nor any of the others Beatles could read music. "I don't see music as dots on a page. It's something in my head that goes on" he stated. He doesn't know theory.

This does and doesn't surprise me in a way. There are probably a lot of greats out there that don't read either but the songs flow out from with in and have the gift to be able to express it. But who would have thought.

I thought most people knew this. Lindsey Buckingham can't read music, and I've read in more than a few places that Clapton can't either.

[rick-slo]

Some people have a gift for music (playing and/or composing) and get much more results with less work and time spent than others.

[FwL]

Originally Posted by Hoyt

Lots of great guitarist did not read music -- Hendrix, Clapton, Tommy Emmanuel, Dylan, Chet Atkins, Eddie Van Halen, Jimmy Page, B.B. King, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Robert Johnson, Angus Young, Kurt Cobain, Bob Marley, just to name a few.

I'd like to have formal training; but, at this point, I'm not going to devote time to it. I do admire those who do.

I don't know about the rest of your list, but Eddie was training to be a concert pianist before he ever took up guitar. He certainly knew how to read and had a basic knowledge of how chords and scales work. I have no doubt that gave him a leg up when it came to figuring out how to operate a guitar.

.

[Dog Shape Cloud]

Some people claim only geniuses can learn to write without studying theory. Others claim theory kills your creativity. Often a member of either camp will sidestep the point by saying "oh, but [artist] doesn't really not know theory, because he/she/it does things that can be described theoretically, therefore they know theory."

The real problem is being conditioned to believe we're not "good enough," or that we need to be "exceptional" in order to create something and take pride in it. No matter how you approach learning/making art, it's much easier to believe you're not good enough (for what? for who?) than to believe you are, and harder every day, with the production and polish of most recordings we come across, and the ridiculous consensus effects produced by mass media, like rainbow halos around floating sewage. We should fetishize the Paul McCartneys and Michael Hedges(es?) of the world a little less, and learn to envy, say, Wesley Willis and Daniel Johnston a bit more--forget sight-reading or playing by ear, they know the secret of creation.

Or just play the music you like, and ignore everything you read online.

[ghostnote]

If he says he can't read, then he can't. No reason to doubt it. But he, and the other Beatle writers, certainly understood music, as others have said here. I was in a Beatles cover band for years - tons of fun, btw - and we all used the Complete Scores book to perfect the songs. When you see the chord voicings they used on some of their stuff, you begin to realize that they absolutely knew what every note on the fretboard was, and how it could be used. There is no way, considering the speed with which they had to write to fulfill their recording contracts, that they had the time to mess around on the guitar until they came up with those chords. They had to intrinsically know that "hey, that Bm would sound better if I played it like this."