# Are There Many Famous Musicians Who Can't Read Music? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 25, 2010, 7:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-many-famous-musicians-who-cant-read-music/547932 "2010-07-25T07:32:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/le_ministre_de_l_au-dela/32/12181_2.png) [@Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2010, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-many-famous-musicians-who-cant-read-music/547932/41 "2010-07-26T12:21:51Z")
Reading music isn’t a binary state, though - there’s a whole spectrum of levels of ability, from ‘able to sight-read full score with different clefs and transpositions’ to ‘able to figure out the basic shape of the melody and rhythm in treble clef and fake it from there’. In other words, I think there’s a distinction to be drawn between ‘uses written score as a primary means of musical communication’ and ‘reads a bit, but picks it up better by ear’. I read well, but I don’t remotely have the skill set that Musicat has. An analogy - I’m assuming most of us on the Dope read these messages rather than using voice recognition software. But how many of us would do well reading this thread out loud for the podcast? For the live telecast on MSNBC? I wouldn’t describe myself as being illiterate, but newscasters have a skill set that I’d need to develop. **squeegee** - you have a good point about ‘huge sites devoted to tabbing every song in the universe’, but you overlook the fact that TAB can be rendered in ASCII - most folks have a word processing program on their computer that can handle the text and the formatting required, whereas very few people have Finale or Sibelius programs with which to make PDF’s of their basic transcriptions… **Ximenean** - Published TAB (as opposed to the TAB online) does have its rhythm notated, as did the Renaissance music for lute and its cousins. There were, in fact, two competing systems of TAB - Italian tablature had the highest string on the bottom of the ‘staff’, French had it on the top of the ‘staff’. [Lautengesellschaft](http://www.lautengesellschaft.de/cdmm/userguide/node8.html) userguide article on TAB. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2010, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-many-famous-musicians-who-cant-read-music/547932/42 "2010-07-26T12:28:49Z")
When he was directing the Broadway musical _Two by Two_, the newspapers said that **Danny Kaye** couldn’t read music, which lead to interesting musical direction. Saith Wikipedia: > [@](#): > > Kaye was enamored of music. While he often claimed an inability to read music, he was quite the conductor, and was said to have perfect pitch. Kaye was often invited to conduct symphonies as charity fundraisers. Over the course of his career he raised over US$5,000,000 in support of musicians pension funds.[5] > **[Danny Kaye](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Kaye)** > > Danny Kaye (born David Daniel Kaminsky; Yiddish: דוד־דניאל קאַמינסקי; January 18, 1911 – March 3, 1987) was an American actor, comedian, singer, and dancer. His performances featured physical comedy, idiosyncratic pantomimes, and rapid-fire novelty songs. > Kaye starred in 23 films, notably Wonder Man (1945), The Kid from Brooklyn (1946), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947), The Inspector General (1949), Hans Christian Andersen (1952), White Christmas (1954), and The Court Jester (1955). His ... ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2010, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-many-famous-musicians-who-cant-read-music/547932/43 "2010-07-26T14:05:10Z")
> [@squeegee](#): > > > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > > > I have to admit to selection bias. -I- buy guitar magazines which are filled with sheet music and theory. I don’t generally buy the gearhead mags. So maybe you’re right. > > I think my response came off more jeeringly than intended, and sorry if I did. It’s just that in my experience the trade press, certainly for guitar-oriented stuff, has been fairly shoddy, but perhaps I’m doing my own selection bias. What mags do you like? Sam? Whatcha reading? What would you consider the better magazines, full of sheet music and theory? And what are the more decent gearhead mags? ---
**Author:** ![Sinisterniik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/51bf81/32.png) [@Sinisterniik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sinisterniik)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2010, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-many-famous-musicians-who-cant-read-music/547932/44 "2010-07-26T16:20:12Z")
> [@squeegee](#): > > I agree there’s an important distinction between knowing standard notation and sight-reading, but in my experience I think a large plurality of players really honestly have no idea how to read anything but tab and chords. Seriously. Otherwise, don’t you think there’d be a bunch of folks writing transcriptions of rock songs and putting them up online, vs. the existing [huge sites devoted to tabbing every song in the universe](http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/)? There are definitely more TAB transcriptions out there than anything else, but I’d still say there are about as many guitar solo transcriptions as any other instrument. > [@squeegee](#): > > But still others would learn from each other or tab sites. Or it’s a mix - I learned to play piano and read sheet music fairly young; in my teens, I took up guitar and just learned that by ear because at that time seemingly all the available sheet music for rock guitar _sucked_. Really terrible stuff, transcribed for easy piano with some chords above the staff for guitar, and a lot of that was wrong. I’m told things are much better these days, which perhaps says there really are a lot more players who can read notation, so maybe you have a point. The transcriptions in stores are still way off sometimes -especially if it’s a whole arrangement (or a piano reduction). > [@Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](#): > > Reading music isn’t a binary state, though - there’s a whole spectrum of levels of ability, from ‘able to sight-read full score with different clefs and transpositions’ to ‘able to figure out the basic shape of the melody and rhythm in treble clef and fake it from there’. > > In other words, I think there’s a distinction to be drawn between ‘uses written score as a primary means of musical communication’ and ‘reads a bit, but picks it up better by ear’. I read well, but I don’t remotely have the skill set that Musicat has. Since the OP concerns professionals, in my mind the bar is set by the other musicians. If you can read well enough to get hired again, then you read well enough. > [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](#): > > I recall Ray Charles reading music in “We are the world” and in the movie “Ray”. I doubt it, since he was blind before he started to learn how to play music. ---
**Author:** ![squeegee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/squeegee/32/14537_2.png) [@squeegee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squeegee)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2010, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-many-famous-musicians-who-cant-read-music/547932/45 "2010-07-26T17:08:52Z")
> [@Sinisterniik](#): > > Since the OP concerns professionals, in my mind the bar is set by the other musicians. If you can read well enough to get hired again, then you read well enough. Well, the OP referenced “famous” musicians, which encompasses professionals, but not all professionals are famous. In that light, I think my comments earlier about “most players” was probably too broad. Not necessarily wrong, mind you. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![antonio107](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7ea924/32.png) [@antonio107](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/antonio107)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2010, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-many-famous-musicians-who-cant-read-music/547932/46 "2010-07-26T21:22:52Z")
[quote=“Sinisterniik, post:21, topic:547932”] > [@ianzin](#): > > Further, not all classical musicians are trained to read and write music. Today that is mostly true (probably 99% or more professionals do, if I had to guess), but historically, many musicians did not. In particular, many Renaissance musicians learned everything by rote. This is in part because of the history of notated music. Notated music in the European tradition emerged with the church, and came out of the desire to memorize tunes, of which a given monk or learned person may have known hundreds, if not thousands. Thus, if you look at a neumatic manuscript from the 9th century, it resembles little more than a few messy scribbles atop a line of poetic verse. These were not the complete performance instructions we understand notation as today; they were more akin to crib notes. Notated music gained prominence because it greatly facilitated the use of polyphony, and because it was a marketable commodity - a composer in the 18th and 19th century could sell an organ fugue he wrote down as sheet music. The same could not be said for an equally virtuosic improvisation, which was gone as soon as it was performed. Fast forward to 2010. This hasn’t been the case for decades. Much of this, I would opine, has to do with the nature of the music being performed. “Musically illiterate” is as misleading a title as, say “lactose intolerant.” Most of the world is lactose intolerant, and its in fact only a minority of the world that isn’t - primarily in parts of Central and Northern Europe, which ironically enough are the same people that are supposed to be musically literate. 😃 Back to my point. For large polyphonic works such as Palestrina and Bach, notation makes sense. It becomes virtually \*\*impossible \*\*to conceptualize four or five voices moving in contrary motion without notation. If you’re doing a chord progression, you can give other musicians in your group hand gestures, or even say what you want to do out loud. Notation would just make it more complicated! ---
**Author:** ![ianzin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ed655f/32.png) [@ianzin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ianzin)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2010, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-many-famous-musicians-who-cant-read-music/547932/47 "2010-07-27T15:10:43Z")
[quote=“Sinisterniik, post:21, topic:547932”] > [@ianzin](#): > > First of all, I disagree with the assertion that Western notation lacks duration. I didn’t make that assertion. Nitpick all you like, but don’t accuse me of asserting something I didn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Duke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e8c25b/32.png) [@Duke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duke)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2010, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-many-famous-musicians-who-cant-read-music/547932/48 "2010-07-27T16:20:49Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > For example, Rock Band 3 is transitioning to real instruments - it will have a real MIDI keyboard and a real Fender Squier Stratocaster instead of a plastic 5-button guitar. To support that, they’ve invented a form of tablature that notates the real guitar part in full detail, but which is animated and flies down the note track like the older versions of Rock Band. A player in that game will be able to plug his instrument into an amp, shut off the audio to the game, and use the game as a form of sheet music to learn songs. Well…sort of. > [@](#): > > Mad Catz will be producing a new guitar controller, based on the Fender Mustang for the game’s Pro mode, where instead of five colored buttons, there will be 6 buttons across 17 different frets, for a total of 102 buttons; the player will be required to strike the corresponding buttons on the right frets similar to guitar strings. So it’s going to be closer to actually playing a guitar, but not precisely. Doesn’t mean I’m massively looking forward to it, though. ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2010, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-many-famous-musicians-who-cant-read-music/547932/49 "2010-07-27T19:01:34Z")
Actually, Duke, that’s the simpler of the two. The more complicated is a Squier Stratocaster. [![]( " - YouTube") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vILhdwHHHdw) I can’t hear it, at work, but I think that’s White Stripes he’s playing. The Mustang is the cheaper of the two ‘pro’ variants, and the only one currently priced. The Squier is a 22 fret full on guitar. ---
**Author:** ![Khaki\_Campbell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9de053/32.png) [@Khaki\_Campbell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khaki_Campbell)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2010, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-many-famous-musicians-who-cant-read-music/547932/50 "2010-07-27T19:09:59Z")
On a side note, this plastic guitar video game is not that bad, as it draws more and more kids away from the real instrument. In the 90’s and 00’s, the world was indeed full of kids strumming away on their Korean strat and taking themselves for geniuses. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2010, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-many-famous-musicians-who-cant-read-music/547932/51 "2010-07-27T19:18:31Z")
[quote=“ianzin, post:47, topic:547932”] > [@Sinisterniik](#): > > > [@ianzin](#): > > > > First of all, I disagree with the assertion that Western notation lacks duration. > > I didn’t make that assertion. Nitpick all you like, but don’t accuse me of asserting something I didn’t. Can you clarify your statement? I wasn’t exactly sure what it meant, either. Do you mean pitch is represented by height on the staff, but length isn’t analogously notated by, say, width of a note on the staff? (Like, say, in piano roll notation?) It’s odd–I don’t really find it illogical or nonsensical at all, but, then again, I have been raised in the system. Certainly, piano roll-type representation looks a hell of a lot more confusing to me. I really can’t think of an alternative notation system for scoring that would work better. What do you propose as more logical? I’m curious as to what competing systems there may be. ---
**Author:** ![Duke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e8c25b/32.png) [@Duke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duke)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2010, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-many-famous-musicians-who-cant-read-music/547932/52 "2010-07-27T19:48:28Z")
> [@E-Sabbath](#): > > Actually, Duke, that’s the simpler of the two. The more complicated is a Squier Stratocaster. > [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vILhdwHHHdw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vILhdwHHHdw) > I can’t hear it, at work, but I think that’s White Stripes he’s playing. The Mustang is the cheaper of the two ‘pro’ variants, and the only one currently priced. The Squier is a 22 fret full on guitar. Ooh. Gotcha. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2010, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-many-famous-musicians-who-cant-read-music/547932/53 "2010-07-27T20:18:52Z")
> [@E-Sabbath](#): > > Actually, Duke, that’s the simpler of the two. The more complicated is a Squier Stratocaster. > [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vILhdwHHHdw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vILhdwHHHdw) > I can’t hear it, at work, but I think that’s White Stripes he’s playing. The Mustang is the cheaper of the two ‘pro’ variants, and the only one currently priced. The Squier is a 22 fret full on guitar. I’ve heard the Squier strat. There’s a demo of a guy playing the White Stripes’ “Hardest Button to Button”, where at one point they turn the game audio off and turn up his guitar amp - and it sounds exactly like the song. The new Rock Band notation is a full, note-perfect transcription of the guitar part for each song. On ‘Pro Expert’, you’ll be playing everything the real guitarist plays, in exactly the same way. They even notate string bends and other dynamic information. Their notation style is very innovative, actually. They show barre chords as ‘shapes’ that you can memorize. They’ll show the fret number of the barre or the first finger position, and then the shape is relative to that fret. At the bottom of the screen, the shape is also shown as you fret the guitar. So you get a real-time indicator of how you’re setting up your chord and whether it matches what the game wants you to do. When the shape falls down the note track and lands on yours, it will match up perfectly if you did it right, and you’ll score points. Another cool thing they did was to show the chord name beside the shape, so you can actually learn the chords and ignore the shapes over time. So you’ll see “Fm7” in the margin beside the note track, then the shape of the chord. For fingerpicking and multiple changes on a single string, each fret number is shown on each string, like standard tab. But you are playing a real guitar, and you’re playing it in a real way. There are no shortcuts. ---
**Author:** ![ministryman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f6c823/32.png) [@ministryman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ministryman)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2010, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-many-famous-musicians-who-cant-read-music/547932/54 "2010-07-27T20:50:04Z")
Back the the post: George and Louis Johnson (aka The Brothers Johnson) - interesting when you hear some of the funky licks they lay down. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2010, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-many-famous-musicians-who-cant-read-music/547932/55 "2010-07-27T21:38:44Z")
> [@ministryman](#): > > interesting when you hear some of the funky licks they lay down. I guess this has puzzled me, especially as a musician who can read fluently in whatever clef you want to throw at me (though much more slowly with alto and tenor clefs): why do people think there’s a connection between proficient, creative musicianship with musical reading skills? In my opinion and experience, great musicianship is more about _listening_ and translating the sounds in your head to your instrument. This does not require any reading skills whatsoever, and I’ve long rued my musical instruction which I wish had much more training in aural skills, picking out melodies and harmonies by ear, teaching me to play what I hear and feel rather than what’s on a page. Eventually, I made up for my deficiencies in these areas, but I really felt I was significantly set back by the lack of attention in this department. Now, don’t get me wrong. I think there is definitely much to be gained from knowing how to read and write music. But there is little connection that I’ve seen between musicians who can read music well and musical creativity. At any rate, this thread can go on nearly forever. There’s a metric assload of famous musicians who have poor-to-no music reading skills. It’s not a necessary skill to be a great performer or songwriter/composer. ---
**Author:** ![Sinisterniik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/51bf81/32.png) [@Sinisterniik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sinisterniik)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2010, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-many-famous-musicians-who-cant-read-music/547932/56 "2010-07-28T05:38:34Z")
> [@ianzin](#): > > I didn’t make that assertion. Nitpick all you like, but don’t accuse me of asserting something I didn’t. > [@ianzin](#): > > In the classical music world, people are trained to read and write music using the traditional stave and dots. It’s a thoroughly illogical and nonsensical system (e.g. **pitch is conveyed analogously but duration is not** ) which is only the way it is because of centuries of traditions piled on top of one another. (My emphasis added) Am I missing something? If so, please elaborate your point. ---
**Author:** ![Sinisterniik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/51bf81/32.png) [@Sinisterniik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sinisterniik)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2010, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-many-famous-musicians-who-cant-read-music/547932/57 "2010-07-28T05:56:48Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > [W]hy do people think there’s a connection between proficient, creative musicianship with musical reading skills? In my opinion and experience, great musicianship is more about _listening_ and translating the sounds in your head to your instrument. This does not require any reading skills whatsoever, and I’ve long rued my musical instruction which I wish had much more training in aural skills, picking out melodies and harmonies by ear, teaching me to play what I hear and feel rather than what’s on a page. Eventually, I made up for my deficiencies in these areas, but I really felt I was significantly set back by the lack of attention in this department. > > Now, don’t get me wrong. I think there is definitely much to be gained from knowing how to read and write music. But there is little connection that I’ve seen between musicians who can read music well and musical creativity. I agree with the first paragraph, but this is akin to saying “you don’t need to learn your scales and permutations cold to be a good musician”. This may be true, but learning them sure helps. I feel that learning to read and write music helps us to order the music in our brain a different way. We are primarily visual animals (especially in comparison to other animals like dogs or snakes). Visual data is much easier to process for us (except for those of us with intensely accurate perfect pitch). And we can view a whole score at once, but not listen to it all at once. I definitely agree that with you that young musicians should receive more aural training, but those out of school should teach themselves to read, if even a small amount. I frequently gig in bar bands with great musicians who can’t read. They have a terrible time dealing with complicated forms. They also have slight difficulty starting in the middle of complex songs when we’re rehearsing. I don’t think it’s a coincidence. I know that you aren’t saying that reading/writing is useless. I just think that it has some unintended benefits. ---
**Author:** ![Theolderguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Theolderguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Theolderguy)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2011, 8:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-many-famous-musicians-who-cant-read-music/547932/58 "2011-10-26T08:33:06Z")
You cannot be a professional classical musician or opera singer without a formation. You have to be able to sight read and learn hour long musical pieces. Throughout history it is popular and traditional music which is filled with musician which do not know how to read music. ---
**Author:** ![Floater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/dc4da7/32.png) [@Floater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Floater)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2011, 10:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-many-famous-musicians-who-cant-read-music/547932/59 "2011-10-26T10:27:47Z")
> [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](#): > > I recall Ray Charles reading music in “We are the world” and in the movie “Ray”. > [@Sinisterniik](#): > > I doubt it, since he was blind before he started to learn how to play music. I also recall it it and he did it in Braille: [braille music - Google Search](http://images.google.com/search?q=braille+music&tbm=isch&hl=en&imgsz=&imgar=&imgtype=&imgsrc=&imgc=&imgcc=&cr=&safe=images&biw=1024&bih=619) ---
**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2011, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-many-famous-musicians-who-cant-read-music/547932/60 "2011-10-26T13:01:32Z")
Saw Andrew Bird Saturday night (wonderful concert, BTW, and he has a new album coming out this winter) – he mentioned that though he trained as a classical violinist, he learned that repertoire by ear. Not clear whether he can’t read music at all or whether it’s just not his preference. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-many-famous-musicians-who-cant-read-music/547932.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-many-famous-musicians-who-cant-read-music/547932.md?page=4)