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Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 01:35:00 -0500
From: "jrross"
Subject: Re: Standard, vs. new notation

Interesting debate. Personally, I believe that traditional standard
notation is becoming less and less usefull (whereas tablature seems to
remain at the same somewhat minimal level of usefullness). Why do I say
this? Simple: standard musical notation is an abstraction of the music into
a visual representation rather than an aural representation. However, with
the invent and widespread usage of audio recording technology this
abstraction is not as absolutely neccessary as it once was. So, instead of
trying to recreate a piece from notation with no aural cues, you can now
listen to the piece as performed by it's author or such and construct your
version based upon this direct evidence, rather than the abstraction of
notation.

Now, both tablature and notation can help in the recreation/learning here,
but I don't believe that either is neccessary in an absolute sense--the
audio record can function as a tool for either documentation or learning
perfectly well without the addition of either tablature or notation.
Moreover, I would argue that the audio record functions in isolation far
better than either tab or notation do (though notation does have advantages
over tab in isolation, IMO).

Moreover, I have seen some analogies between written language and notation.
I would argue that these are not very usefull analogies as the relationship
between written language and "written" music is not the same. Much of
written language is created solely to be read, with no direct intent to be
spoken or translated into an aural realm whatsoever. However, all of
written music (to my limited knowledge) is written to be an instruction for
an aural performance--ie, it is written to be heard. As notation is not
written for it's own beauty without regard to the aural representation, but
rather as a representation of the intended or existing aural phenomena, it
seems to me that direct recording in an aural format is a superior
representationa and documentation of this phenomena than the abstraction of
written notation. Conversely (with the exception of some poetry and all
drama) most written language is not an abstraction but rather the thing in
and of itself--"Moby Dick" or "The Search for Modern China" were not written
to be representation of an aural presentation, but rather to be read--a
distinct difference from musical notation, IMO.

As to how this relates to harmonica, I think it is a case that much of what
is learned in the blues and folk canons is most accessible by directly
studying the existing recordings, rather than through books of notation or
tablature (though both can aide in the learning process). Moreover, I feel
that learning to decipher and recreate a piece from the performance itself
is no less of a skill than learning to read notation (indeed, for me it is
probably a more difficult skill to acquire).

All this said, I certainly encourage anyone who wishes to learn to read
standard notation, as it's not all that hard (at least to be able to
recognise the notes and time signatures, if not the sight-reading
capabilities, which certainly take practise to develope and practise to
maintain). I just feel that the purpose of notation, tablature and such is
both to help document and to help in the recreation of the actual music, and
that in the end the relatively new technology of audio recording ends up
doing the former significantly better than either tab or notation and the
latter at least as well as both pre-recorded methods. The idea is that the
best way to document and preserve DeFord Bailey's "Icewater Blues" is not to
translate it into either tab or notation, but rather to preserve and
maintain the audial record itself. Moreover, in many ways the best way to
learn IB may be to actually listen to this record(ing) itself in the first
place, and then use tab or notation to help in the deciphering rather than
the reverse, IMO.

.()(). J.R. "Bulldogge" Ross
() () And Snuffy, too:)
`----'