Originally Posted By: eddie1261
I don't want to open that can of worms again so I will just make this statement and not elaborate, as this was discussed to death.

I believe that there is a subtle difference between a "musician" and "someone who knows how to play an instrument". And this thread is kind of about where I believe that line is.

Funny that you mentioned the horns and "flat" instruments.

When I took up the sax I bought an alto. I took it home, played a note on the piano and found it on the sax. I did that with a sax fingering book open and though I knew about it being an Eb instrument I had to hear for myself that the note that showed fingering and called F# was the top three keys closed and the middle key on the bottom hand closed, that note in my brain was A. I learned my sax in concert key. Then someone handed me charts written in Eb and before I did the gig I literally had to write new charts transposed to concert key. I have been playing sax now for over 30 years and still know it in concert key. Why that stinks is that if you hand me a tenor or a soprano I have to think about every note sine it is a Bb instrument, and that same F# on the paper, a concert A on the alto, is now a concert E. Totally messes me up. And if I have to think when I play, I can't play. I am too busy thinking.


Yes Eddie I know what you mean. My head is screwed too having been tought trumpet in Bb. At an early age I got an audition with a very fine orchestra. I had been playing in brass bands. They immediately handed me sheets in all sorts of keys to sight transpose. I just fell flat on my face and it killed me inside.
This notation stuff, this monk's spider scrawl, can get so distracting and so needlessly complicated and visually cluttered. I never got comforable with bass clef it always seemed so needless to put the C in the place where A is, and even then, if you do this on a transposing instrument the C your playing may be an Eb or a Bb or some other thing. Makes my brain hurt. I just think there must be easier ways to do all this. No wonder people fall over when you take their dot's away.







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