I can read sheet music, like… I know what the symbols mean and the scale and timing etc… I can’t hear it when I am reading it though. I’ve sometimes wondered if that’s common or if I am a freak.
I guess it is a matter of how “fluent” you are in the language. With some foreign languages, e.g. when I started learning a bit of Japanese, I could recognize some kanji, understand some bastc sentences, but still had no idea what it would sound like. Maybe it’s similar to that. We get good at recognizing patterns and interpret them just enough to accomplish what we need, and if we haven’t had any use for “knowing exactly what it sounds like” (maybe just enough to recognize we are missing some notes while playing), we save the energy needed to learn more.
But a conductor would definitely need to know what it should sound like (or how they would want the orchestra to make it sound), so it is part of the interpretation of the pattern.
Same for lords patrician and other intra-audiophiles.
I think this might come down to what instrument you used. I played clarinet for several years and could never hear the notes in my head, I just associated them with fingerings. Now, I could tell if a note was in tune, but only by hearing it.
On the other hand, if you’re a vocalist of some kind, you need to be able to sing the correct note based on the sheet music. The closest I ever got was getting the correct key and then basically shifting pitch based on whatever key I’m in.
I never took any music theory classes so I’m mostly just talking from my own personal experience
I never took music theory either… 🤔
Maybe I should find a class on it, just for the sake of learning it. Personally, I don’t really see the point other than that. I’m of the mind that you can create good music without knowing jack about it. Just start making sounds that make you feel things. Eventually you’ll make a banger; even if you’re the only one who thinks so.
This image has been reposted so many times now that the notes can’t even be seen anymore lol
The image requires additional jpeg milord
Das Lied vom roten Jack - “The Song of the Red Jack”
Probably a banger
Dang, how’d you find such a crisp version
It’s Red Jack himself.
Vetinari IRL. From Soul Music by Terry Pratchett:
Besides, Lord Vetinari, the supreme ruler of Ankh-Morpork, rather liked music.
People wondered what sort of music would appeal to such a man. Highly formalized chamber music, possibly, or thunder-and-lightning opera scores.
In fact the kind of music he really liked was the kind that never got played. It ruined music, in his opinion, to torment it by involving it on dried skins, bits of dead cat, and lumps of metal hammered into wires and tubes. It ought to stay written down, on the page, in rows of little dots and crotchets all neatly caught between lines. Only there was it pure. It was when people started doing things with it that the rot set in. Much better to sit quietly in a room and read the sheets, with nothing between yourself and the mind of the composer but a scribble of ink. Having it played by sweaty fat men and people with hair in their ears and spit dribbling out of the end of their oboe… well, the idea made him shudder. Although not much, because he never did anything to extremes.
I am a conductor and pianist with a decent level of absolute pitch who reads sheet music to myself like this all the time, and this description captures the synesthetic experience really well!
The weirdest part in my experience is that it’s easy to listen to an audiobook at the same time because the sections of the brain that process each of those things are totally separate, just how you can listen to music and study at the same time.
it’s easy to listen to an audiobook at the same time
This blows my mind and shows what a different experience this must be, compared to what I was imagining. I suppose you’ve been reading sheet music for a long time now? Almost like a second “language.” Do you enjoy reading sheet music?
I had a music teacher who would read sheet music like this. He said he could hear it, and he prefered it to actually listening to a recording because his imagination was so much richer than what could be captured by a recording.
I thought it was amazing and really envied this ability.
It’s not uncommon among high level classical musicians apparently.
Personally, I prefer Spotify.
Fun Fact: They used to print jingles for products as sheet music, so people could play it or simply hum and get the idea of what it sounds like.
