WOMAN: Do you need to be able to read music to play it?
The answer is in the question itself.
There are so many people that can't read music that make music.
I wish I could read music. It takes me forever.
I'm like, "Every good boy deserves...fruit!"
OK. F!
It's mostly guitar tabs for me. Yeah.
I mean, it gets the job done.
MAN: Yeah, I know what chords I'm playing, I know the basics.
But often I don't know what key I'm in.
When I was learning the violin,
my teacher would be watching me playing.
I would be pretending to read the music,
but I'd be imitating him,
because I just couldn't read that well.
So he'd be like, "Well done!" (EXHALES)
WOMAN: Rather than having to take a couple of hours
to listen to something played over and over and over again,
it's cool that you can have this piece of paper
and you can turn it into a piece of music.
If you're, like, a classical player, and you can't read music,
then it's a bit of a disability.
I bluffed my way through an entire music degree
without really being able to read that well.
And take it from me, it can be done.
(CLASSICAL MUSIC)
Dan, I think that written sheet music
is actually very scary for a lot of people.
Yeah, I think especially when you're first learning music
it can be huge barrier.
But you don't have to read music in order to play it.
Like, I played music before, I've never learnt how to read it,
and a lot of people that I know that are artists don't read it either.
No, of course not.
And if there's one thing that we've shown on this show
it's that music is for everyone, regardless of ability or training.
I mean, we even asked an expert,
"Do you need to be able to read music in order to play it?"
No.
Well, that's it then. That is the episode.
Please go ahead and play music, whether or not you can read it.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa...
I think there's still a lot of merit to being able to read music.
Yeah, I guess.
It's safe to assume that for as long as humans have been around,
music has been around as well.
But what about musical notation?
Some say the earliest fragment of musical notation was found
on a 4000-year-old Sumerian clay tablet,
composed in cuneiform by ancient Hurrians.
But the earliest complete score archaeologists have found
is the Seikilos Epitaph,
with lyrics and melody written in ancient Greek musical notation,
dated to around 100AD.
But how did we get from that, to this?
Let's go to ninth century Europe,
where churches are notating chants and songs.
This form of musical notation is called a neume.
As you've noticed, they don't actually tell you what note to sing,
but only indicate whether the pitch of the note rises or falls.
It's not the easiest thing to read,
and so later on, a monk called Guido of Arezzo
tries to make life easier for everyone.
Guido helps create this thing, the staff.
No, it's not a stick to smack young singers over the head with,
if they get it wrong.
It's actually system where notes would be placed
across four lines and spaces -
a more accurate way of displaying pitch.
Speaking of, he also invented solfege,
which we know nowadays as,
do, re, mi, fa...and so on.
# Do # Re
# Mi # Fa
# So # La
# Ti # Do #
But a staff doesn't tell you how long to hold these notes.
So in the early 13th century, mensural notation developed.
And, as it evolved, notes had more precise rhythmic durations.
Then another line was added at some stage.
A few more other things happened, and voila.
By the 17th century, you begin to get scores
that are starting to look a lot like
the sheet music we commonly have today.
But now, this is only western sheet music.
If we take a sidestep to China or Japan,
there are completely different systems of notation,
using characters and numbers to represent music.
Then you have new modern shorthand systems, like guitar tabs,
figured bass, and chord charts.
And technology can also house notation.
If you use any software like ProTools, GarageBand,
Ableton, The Grid and MidiSystems can all count
as musical notation.
Basically notation is just a visual representation of music.
MAN: We've spent over a thousand years
working out how to write down something
which is incredibly abstract.
You know, music is sound passing through time.
You can't really explain a piece of music
by talking about it in words.
It's much better to listen to it.
But if you want to transmit that to someone,
and there is more than you can simply sing to them
and get to sing back to you,
then you need to write it down.
And that communicates how to make that piece of music
without necessarily having to go and learn it from someone.
So clearly, written music is way more complex and inclusive than we think.
Absolutely.
And also music notation evolves with technology and instruments
and also necessity.
Making music is one of the great joys of being human.
But for people with vision impairment,
there are some fundamental challenges.
Based in Melbourne, the Statewide Vision Resource Centre
is tackling these challenges
with one of the oldest tricks in the book - braille.
So why is it important to get kids who can't see or have reduced vision
to engage with braille music?
The question I'd throw back at you is
why would you teach print music notation to anyone?
Print music is a way of being able to represent music
that somebody else has composed.
You can also understand the dynamics and what the nuances of music are
if you're reading the details of the music.
What's a crescendo?
Those sorts of pieces of information are right throughout music.
So the braille cell is a set of six possible dots that could be raised.
The top four in braille music are the ones
that show you what note is being played,
and the bottom two dots are the ones that show you
how long you play them for.
I'll just put a C crotchet over here.
If this dot preceding a C crotchet is raised,
that tells you that you're in the fourth octave.
It's a really super code, and you can write crescendo,
and you can write decrescendo.
Anything you can see in your print gets represented in the braille.
If you cannot see, the only way you can find out about stuff
is by touching.
So these kids look with their fingers.
How do you play rock'n'roll? Well...
You go strum, strum. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I like to get the kids to hear music
and to touch the instruments that are making the music.
And then they can go away understanding what it is
that makes those sounds that come through their radio.
Braille music has helped Jordie Howell find a career in music,
and a really successful one, at that.
JORDIE HOWELL: I've used braille music all my life.
I sing as a soloist for oratorios and as a chorister
so I use it to keep track of my own part,
and to keep bars rest when I'm not singing.
I also teach and use it to read the music for my students.
And so what does braille music give you
that recordings and just copying off recordings doesn't?
It gives me dynamics, articulation, staccatos,
accents, tenutos, louds and softs.
It gives me the ability to be independent,
rather than learning by rote
what someone else's interpretation of something is.
I can interpret, rather than just learning from a recording,
and that may not be quite accurate.
It also gives me the ability
to learn something at the last minute, sometimes. (LAUGHS)
Whereas if I was learning by rote,
I would need more time to prepare and to learn.
I can turn up to a rehearsal, and although it's not ideal,
if there's a music score that's been given to me at the last minute,
I can read it along with my sighted choristers.
I can certainly participate fully in that way
in a mainstream setting.
(PLAYS NOTES) Oh, yeah!
OK, I am inspired!
I am ready to learn how to read music.
How hard is this going to be?
Oh, not super hard, because luckily,
I've just prepared a short video to show you how to read music.
OK, so you've got the staff with five lines.
Notes alternate on the lines and spaces -
going up the pitch is higher, going down is lower.
The symbol at the beginning is a clef,
and that tells you what notes the lines represent.
This is a C on the treble clef.
This is the same C on the bass clef.
Basically, different instruments have different clefs,
depending on how it's pitched.
The piano is one of the very few instruments that have both clefs
because it has heaps of notes.
From left to right is time.
This is the time signature.
It tells you how many beats are in a bar.
And these lines are bars.
A key signature tells you what key to play in,
and if you need to play certain notes as flats or sharps.
The way the note looks tells you how long to play it for.
This is a whole note.
Half notes are half the length of whole notes.
Quarter, eighth, and so on.
These have weird names, as well.
Crotchets, quavers, semiquavers, demiquavers, demisemiquavers.
Oh, and these are the rests.
It means you don't play anything.
They correspond to the same note values.
And usually there's a tempo marking at the top
to tell you how fast or slow to play.
Andante, allegro con spirito,
and then there are lots of other words
that add details and expression.
P means quiet and F means loud.
Most of these expressions
come from Italian,
so it's OK
if you mistake them for pasta.
Alright, Linda, do you feel confident now?
Yeah, so ready. Yeah.
I know the basics, kind of. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, look, we prepared this earlier for you.
This is the What Is Music theme written out for bass guitar.
The first thing you'll want to do is turn it up like this.
OK. Yes, I knew that. Yep, yep, great.
Alright, it's time to have a go.
Here's the bass. OK.
Hold on. So C, G, A, C. Mm-hm.
So even though I knew the basics,
it took me a long time to actually transfer what was on the page
to what was happening with my hands.
Open. Yep. Yep.
(PLAYS NOTES) Yep.
And that one.
(PLAYS NOTES)
That's it! That's it. You, too, can be this good.
(LAUGHS)
You little...you little shit!
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