Reading Music

Hoppy Hopkins (London Band leader in the 50s onwards) told how he got started in the music business.   It was wartime and Hoppy says it was much smarter (safer) to be in a service band than on the front lines. (Nobody could dispute that.)

As the story goes, the Army needed musicians for these bands who's function it was to do military parades, play shows to entertain the troops and participate in War Bond drives etc.

Well, Hoppy applied for a position in a band in answer to a "recruiting" advertisement.  They were looking for clarinet players (sax players) that could "read."   I don't blame Hoppy for feeling qualified. After all he could read but as he told it, only newspapers and such.  

Well, as I understand it, the ruse almost backfired. Hoppy got into the band and had to really struggle to actually "read" the music.  Apparently the other musicians were very helpful and taught him daily the rudiments of this skill.
The rest as they say is history. 

Reading music seems to be an ability that is a perplexing challenge for a lot of musicians. There are excellent readers and other readers that still have difficulty even after many years of playing.

It's been concluded that sight-reading is based on nothing more than remembering (recalling) the same figures from a previous experience. The more one read, the more this skill was likely to improve. Maybe there aren't any shortcuts to becoming a good reader. Maybe it's just a lot of dedicated effort.

However, there are some great examples of great artists who weren't good readers.   Buddy Rich is probably the most famous world-class musician who was a very marginal reader.  

When he tackled a new arrangement at his rehearsals, he had another very good drummer play the chart a couple of times.  That's all it took for him to memorize the nuances of the piece.  

Apparently he had astounding recall (memory).  It's an amazing feat when you consider how complex these arrangements were. He was an amazing player.

Some years ago when we ran a music school in London (Canadian Music Associates) many of our students competed in the yearly Kiwanis Festival.   Our students always scored well in these competitions.

One year there was a trumpet player from another school and he was going to be performing "A Trumpeter's Lullaby". However he didn't have anyone to accompany him.   Well, it so happens that one of my students, who was competing in the open class was also an excellent pianist.   She volunteered to help him out.

Well it turns out he didn't read very well.  He seemed to understand the style of the piece but he made up "most" of what he was playing. (Actually he was a pretty good player.)  

He played the correct notes of the chords but the figures only resembled what was actually written.  I find it difficult to understand how his teacher didn't hear this discrepancy. Maybe the student played it so well that it sounded correct even to his teacher. Hmm?

I don't know the outcome of the test.  I doubt the student even placed. However, he should have gotten points for being creative and inventive. If you got past the humour of what and how he played, you had to admit he was an emerging trumpet player.

That same non-reading student might have eventually learned to read and would go on to become a proficient professional.  Who knows maybe he is a recording studio player in New York today.   Many musicians have such humble beginnings. It would be nice to hear that this turned out to be the case.

In another generation (the 1920's) Bix Biederbecke (world famous Jazz trumpet player) was also a marginal reader.  (I might add that in order to join the Union in those days you had to be able to read music. Apparently they (the Union) tested you before you could join.) After several tests, Bix managed to pass the Union's requirement.  However, we can assume he was still only a very marginal reader.

Paul Whiteman's Band (which was the most significant "modern" band in those days used him on performances and recordings.   Bix just sat there through the chart till it was his time to play the solos. (It was said that one section player's duty was to "wake up Bix".)  Whiteman was apparently satisfied with these limited contributions and overlooked his "reading" shortcomings.

Whiteman recognized his artistic qualities, which were significant. However, it should be noted that these musicians like Bix, displayed enormous creative abilities to offset their lack of reading acumen. However, in Bix's case there weren't too many bandleaders who would accommodate his practically total lack of reading ability.

I remember James Stamp (famous trumpet teacher in Los Angeles) telling me that a trumpeter was visiting him for ten days and was a significant player in some mid-west Symphony.  He came to "Jimmy" to improve his reading. Stamp remarked to me, "How do you do that and in just ten days?"

A few weeks later Jimmy and I got talking and he divulged his success with this Symphony professional. As Jimmy put it, "I just made him a better player which "allowed him" to be a better reader."

The trumpet player went back to Minneapolis (or where ever) quite satisfied that his trip was worth the effort.  

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