I was mucking around with my daughter (a far better musician than me, Grade 8 violin, grade 6 Piano, grade 5 flute just doing A level music). So we where mucking about with a standard blues progression, she was on violin, so I suggested playing a minor 3rd over the major chords dropping 2nd and the 6th.
She looked at me with a blank face. So I then said Drop the B, play C instead of C# and drop the F#. And boom she could improvise over the chord progression.
Now she is classically trained in reading the dots and knows where every note is on the instrument she picks up but doesn't think in intervals.
Now when I get to jam with other, if somebody shouts out a note to play I have to fumble around working out where that note is, but if they should out the interval (and I know the key) I can find it immediatly.
So are you a note player or an interval player? Depending on what type you are, do you read music or have you learnt by ear.
Comments
depends what you are trying to communicate though
This happens when I play guitar and my wife plays piano or violin.
She's a good level on both, but can't play by ear or improvise. Fantastic at sight reading though like most classical musicians
Studio: https://www.voltperoctave.com
Music: https://www.euclideancircuits.com
Me: https://www.jamesrichmond.com
I really should stop procrastinating and learn to sight read at some point
Twisted Imaginings - A Horror And Gore Themed Blog http://bit.ly/2DF1NYi
once I tried recording some of GF Haendel's Fireworks Suite. Reading the parts in treble or bass clef was fine, then I came to some inside parts which were written with a C clef. At first it freaked me out but soon I was doing it because instead of reading the name of the note and knowing where to find that note on the instrument, I was reading the pitch difference between a note and the note next to it and playing the interval. A fair bit of it was either scale fragments (notes on line space line space etc) or arpeggios (all lines or all spaces), which made it quite easy.
Seriously: If you value it, take/fetch it yourself