Everybody's points on this topic are correct !!! especially given the materials that were available to them in their period of greatest music development.

Bob - I lean toward strongly agreeing with the points you make, even though I realize and acknowledge the benefits of reading music fluently; I've experienced that the amount of time I've had to spend trying to learn to read music fluently across the neck requires too much time given it's payback. Here are some relevant points, I think:

1.) the flamenco pieces I study cannot be read and played properly without speciffic fingerings and positions notated on the music; also, the voicings and fingerings are so unlike anything you've come across, chances are reading the tab and not having to translate it to fingerings/positions would be faster for most people, even those that read fluently

2.) the 'feel' or swing, and the timing and rhythms used in flamenco are pretty difficult to notate accurately; generally speaking, you HAVE to hear the performances to do the music justice

3.) Is not music harmony and rhythm and SOUND - and the transmitting of such to the written page, as well as the subsequent energy to decode it, unnecessary steps for your brain ? ...that energy maybe can be better spent on the 'music' as I've defined it. Reading music should be considered not literally reading what's on a written page, but as Bob says, internalizing the harmonies, rhythms and phrasing so you can reproduce it at will. The other creative aspect outside reproduction is the tasteful creation of your own expressive sequences of harmony, rhythm, and phrasing; again, no reading of written material required. The best musicians can focus on these things without wasting energy on translations of sound to written form, and the reverse. As Bob said, some of the best musicians in the world cannot read music on the written page - but you bet that many of them can probably hear and immediately copy anything that is played for them.

Written music was ABSOLUTELY indispensable when audio recordings (e.g. phonograph, tape recorder, MP3s) were unavailable to everyone at such low cost. It's also absolutely INDISPENSABLE when recordings are completelyl available (e.g. as in music that was written before the availability of recording technology). Written music on the staff is INDESPENSIBLE when musicians that play stringed instruments would like their lines played by other instruments; of course - that's the beauty of the 'universal language' of the staff - it can be played by all instruments. But for musicians that play stringed instruments, tab that includes rhythms can get your fingers to the right place (at least for fretted instruments) much faster than having to translate the musical staff to your instrument, especially if you didn't grow up at a time when you HAD to learn to read due to the absence of recordings.

Last edited by Joe V; 02/10/13 05:50 PM.