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Who is the greatest saxophonist who could not read music?

27K views 137 replies 52 participants last post by  datsaxman 
#1 ·
There are lots of famous rock and pop musicians (guitarists, keyboard players, drummers, etc.) who never learned to read music, but off the top of my head I cannot think of a single great saxophonist who is known not to have been able (or to be able, if still living) to read music. Obviously, classical players of any era would be excluded, and in jazz it's usually been important to be able to read charts. Even someone like Sidney Bechet, who never used printed music, actually could read it. And the way jazz has been professionally taught for at least the last half-century precludes nonreading as an option. Perhaps a blind saxophonist might qualify, such as Eric Kloss, but braille music exists, so I wouldn't assume merely because a musician is blind that he or she cannot read music. Maybe a rock or blues player is the most likely candidate, but I don't know of any by name.
 
#64 ·
but again, this turns into an argument of who could , can, can’t or couldn’t read.

With all due respect for the literate ( at various levels) music existed before its notation and there are many types of non western notations but music is performed by many players around the world who have no need to read or notate anything because the music is passed down from one musician to another and memorized in a oral or aural fashion.

All of this has been done since time immemorial in musical traditions which have a “ canon”.

Jazz is one of those tradition which uses an oral or aural tradition as well as a notated one.

Jazz players have several elements to use in their playing.

First there is a canon of musical pieces which we all more or less know and share, the so called standards. The standards came into use when this music was mostly dance music and people liked to recognise what they were dancing to.

Most of them were songs. You took a song and made it better! (Hey Jude? :) ) . If you knew the song you quickly got used to the changes and then using the form as a guideline the performer could easily perform a solo, exchange solos in various rhythmic forms.

Of course there were several ways to do this, most of this ways were rather intuitive and if not played in a “ big band” setting, required no too much reading skills or no reading at all.

Most non readers are melodic-rythmic improvisers which is a very primitive way to simply take the basic melody and turn it around in many different ways. As long as you stick to changes and form you are ok.

Come Be-Bop or Big Band arranged music you need different set of skills.

There is much to say in favor of literacy ( and not only musical one) , but , in all forms of arts we have learned that there are many ways to skin a cat and the literate way is not, necessarily, a better way.
 
#73 ·
but again, this turns into an argument of who could , can, can't or couldn't read.

With all due respect for the literate ( at various levels) music existed before its notation and there are many types of non western notations but music is performed by many players around the world who have no need to read or notate anything because the music is passed down from one musician to another and memorized in a oral or aural fashion.

All of this has been done since time immemorial in musical traditions which have a " canon".

Jazz is one of those tradition which uses an oral or aural tradition as well as a notated one.

Jazz players have several elements to use in their playing.

First there is a canon of musical pieces which we all more or less know and share, the so called standards. The standards came into use when this music was mostly dance music and people liked to recognise what they were dancing to.

Most of them were songs. You took a song and made it better! (Hey Jude? :) ) . If you knew the song you quickly got used to the changes and then using the form as a guideline the performer could easily perform a solo, exchange solos in various rhythmic forms.

Of course there were several ways to do this, most of this ways were rather intuitive and if not played in a " big band" setting, required no too much reading skills or no reading at all.

Most non readers are melodic-rythmic improvisers which is a very primitive way to simply take the basic melody and turn it around in many different ways. As long as you stick to changes and form you are ok.

Come Be-Bop or Big Band arranged music you need different set of skills.

There is much to say in favor of literacy ( and not only musical one) , but , in all forms of arts we have learned that there are many ways to skin a cat and the literate way is not, necessarily, a better way.
All true. However, none of this is a reason to deliberately not read. Why not just learn to read? It's easy.
 
#66 ·
Guitar Tabs are basic things set out in a way that might resemble written music but the lines represent the 6 strings of the Guitar and the notes are just fret markers for notes along the Guitar strings and usually contain no note length info and the player just fills in the rhythmic phrasing of the notes themselves based on their memory of the song/solo or by lining the tab up with a recording of the song/solo.

Guitar tabs are more like a string/fret grid system.
 
#72 ·
http://www.stangetz.net/bio.html

"...As he studied music, he was instantly good at sight-reading and seemed to have a photographic memory, as well as an instinctive sense of pitch and rhythm....."

".Four months into gigging, he met trumpeter Shorty Rogers on the bandstand one night. Stan knocked him out by playing famous jazz solos by Lester Young and Tex Beneke perfectly and reading charts flawlessly and fast.."
 
#79 ·
I doubt that there is any famous/great saxophonists out there who don't know a lot of the theory about why some notes work in a solo and some notes won't work. Here's a little of what tenorcat wrote on the hypothetical subject of working out where F# might fit into a tune that is in the key of C:- ..."It will be pretty jarring. But if you thought of it as the third of a D7 chord to the V7 of G7, so it's the third of V7 of V in C. You could also hear it as the 7th os Ab7 and resolve it around the circle to Db7, Gb7, B7, E7, A7, D7, G7 band to C. Theoretically you can relate any black note if you back up far enough in the circle to resolve. And you can cut through half the circle by re-spelling the tritone sub"...
My guess is there ARE many players out there who always give a great solo without knowing how to EXPLAIN how the notes work, but that doesn't mean that they haven't soaked up all the relevant relationships that each note has with each other along the way.
JL, +1 on that quote from Louis "I can read it as long as it doesn't get in the way of my playing the music." Good one, Satchmo.
 
#78 ·
I just recently saw an interview with Dewey Redmond on you tube. He mentioned an anecdote about Louis Armstrong. Someone asked Louis: "Can you read music?" Louis answered:

"I can read it as long as it doesn't get in the way of my playing the music."


I think that pretty much says it all.
 
#81 ·
As we know there are different levels to reading music.

I have not needed to "sightread" music for about 20 years so my ability to do so has diminished.

When I was mostly working as a session musician my reading skills were very high, ie I was confident about turning up to any session and sightreading quite complex parts. So when I was called for a session and asked if I could "read" I assumed it meant sightread amore or less anything I I could answer "yes". If I was asked now by a session booker if i "read" I would say "no", although my reading skills are still OK, ie you could put some sheet music of a tune oin front of me and I would read it, I could be asked to do a typical gig and I would read OK.

If I took a few weeks I would get my reading skills back up to where they were.

It's all a matter of degree.
 
#91 ·
I do not know if anyone has said this , but , it was not until Ellington arrived on the scene that musicians had to learn to read ,,, there are many great musicians that cannot read not just sax players the great Errol garner chet baker to name but two ,,, I have an understanding of reading being taught way back by Andy Hamilton of silvershine cd fame , but to be honest I use my ear, I go over a record till its done to death lol,also if I read a chart it takes longer to sink in ,the other reason I don't read is I suffer from myasthenia , which has double vision as a side effect , to add I have playd alongside good sight readers and I don't think they feel the music soul wise ,,
 
#92 ·
I do not know if anyone has said this , but , it was not until Ellington arrived on the scene that musicians had to learn to read
I think music notation exists from the ninth century, certainly by the fourteenth or fifteenth a musician would be mostly be expected to read music if involved "professionally", e.g. in church, court or military ensembles. Of course often they would improvise in those days also, but reading was important for both instrumental and singing musicians.

Later on in the classical and romantic periods any symphony players as well as dance orchestra musicians would need to read. Of course there would always be minstrels and what we might now call folk musicians who didn't need to read.
 
#97 ·
"Sight reading" music or , for that matter, any reading of music and performing it while reading it, is not unlike reading aloud for adults and children. Some who have done it for a long time are very good, and some not. At the Conservatory where I studied (briefly), there was a beautiful Turkish girl who was a very talented pianist. She borrowed a Hindemith book from me about reading 20th Century music because she could not sight read it very well. 20th Century composers did not use the stylistic rhythms or devices typical to what she had grown up reading and memorising, so she could not "speed read" groups of notes from memory and thus faltered in fast passages. People read to different levels of skill depending upon the material with which they are familiar and their ability to absorb the material. Great sight readers usually have much prior experience with similar material. The best reader of anything at our school when I attended was a Jazz Saxophone student who also studied clarinet. IMHO he was not the best Jazz player at the school and I still don't like his playing to date. The Turkish girl is still probably really beautiful though.
 
#98 ·
I hate the snobbery with some musicians ,, I have heard some great ear players that have been derided by musicians with perfect theory ,, at the end of the day if you have a good ear work with it , if you can read work with that , me I like to do both , , sometimes learning a song by ear gives it more life
 
#99 ·
There is reading and sight-reading. John Jeremy who directed "Born to Swing" a film about ex Basie sidemen told me that most of them were not very good readers and often had to hear the lines played before they could play. Being able to claim music illiteracy was at one time ,and still is with rock musicians a way of saying "look how clever I am." I think being able to play by ear is just as, if not more important than being able to sight read. look at the number of community big bands who play with their faces buried in their music stand ,not communicating with the audience or even each other.
 
#118 ·
There is reading and sight-reading. John Jeremy who directed "Born to Swing" a film about ex Basie sidemen told me that most of them were not very good readers and often had to hear the lines played before they could play. Being able to claim music illiteracy was at one time ,and still is with rock musicians a way of saying "look how clever I am." I think being able to play by ear is just as, if not more important than being able to sight read. look at the number of community big bands who play with their faces buried in their music stand ,not communicating with the audience or even each other.
1/ Burying of the face would indicate to me that their reading skills may not be the best.
2/ That I am not looking does not mean I am not listening.

I play regularly with people who can't read. They can be just as absorbed by their own part/thing as someone reading a chart for the first time.
 
#101 ·
My sight reading is garbage.

I can't read rhythms to save my life.

But I can read music and it's saved me a heck of a lot of time and helped me learn tunes.

I would think if someone were a real monster player they could learn everything by ear. I've got a couple friends who can practically listen to a fairly complex piece of music once and then play it again. I can't do that. And they can read way better than I can too......

Maybe I should have gone to University......
 
#103 ·
I think what little wailer is talking about is that he's able to decode written music, but he is not fluent in reading rhythms.

Most anyone can decode. Fluency comes with experience and practice. When we read music (or language), we memorize a certain number of common patterns (in reading these are called dolch or sight words). At that point, the cognitive load is less, and more thought can be brought to bear on novel or unusual patterns.
 
#110 ·
I suppose that you are both are not aware that music can be written in Braille and that the fact that a musician is blind says absolutely nothing, per se, about his ability to read music or any text in Braille for that matter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braille_music

I don't know about Rahsaan Roland Kirk, but Ray Charles certainly was taught to read music.

But blindness, in itself has no bearing in reading music or not.
 
#111 ·
I suppose that you are both are not aware that music can be written in Braille and that the fact that a musician is blind says absolutely nothing about his ability to read music or any text in Braille for that matter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braille_music
True, but I was thinking that when Ray was a boy and coming from a poor background it was probably likely that he played by ear.
 
#122 ·
I do get the feeling we have different interpretations of what is meant by "reading music"

IMO It is not:

Being able to identify the notes on the staff
Understanding the way note lengths are notated to form different rhythms

It is:

Being able to turn up for a rehearsal, performance, recording session, pit band and play what is put in front of you within the expectations of the leader/conductor/producer. This includes reading the notes, rhythms, phrase markings, dynamics and any other instructions.

In other words, when you get a call to play in a show, or a concert or a recording session and the booker asks if you read, you need to be able to say "yes" without dreading that you are about to make a complete fool of yourself.

If it takes you any amount of time to interpret what's on the sheet that is beyond the expectations of the job, then although you may be able to decipher what's on the page, unless you can do it quickly enough then this is not really "reading."
 
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