(I am not sure if this sort of question has been asked before or if I am able to convey in words the question that I am trying to ask)…
Is it possible to “hear” sheet music? I know there are musicians, perhaps many here, who have a trained ear and can be quite adept to be able to listen to a musical piece and transcribe it as manuscript. The amazing talents of good musicians is quite intimidating (and elusive) to me, but I am having fun with B2B at my own pace.
Is it possible for a musician to look at sheet music and inherently know how and what it will sound like before picking up an instrument or even hearing a recorded version of that sheet music?
If I were to give a skilled musician the sheet music for a particular guitar piece, albeit never hearing how it sounds, and asked it to be played back into a recording I am confident it could be reproduced faithfully…
…but will that musician be able “hear” what it sounds like in his brain? Will the musician actually know what it sounds like just by looking at some sort of a transcript?
Yes, absolutely, if they are experienced sight readers. For example singers (choirs, opera etc.) singing from sheet music must be able to do that. Beethoven famously composed most of his 9th Symphony whilst deaf.
I couldn’t do it but there are certainly plenty of people who can. My cousin is a opera singer and she can pick up a score and sing it accurately.
It probably isn’t much different than reading words? Once one learns the sound (pitch) of each note, it should be the same as reading a text and hearing the words in our minds.
It might take more time to learn as an adult than it takes as a child to learn how to read, because their brains at a young age are so fast at learning. But I believe hearing written notes is probably something most people can learn with time, practice and patience.
When learning a new song, I usually look at the tabs to know the place in the fretboard and I look at the notes to know the note length. But by looking at the tabs, I can hear the sounds in my head if it is a song I know and have played before. It takes more time to learn to remember the sounds of every note, because in the beginning they are in the short term memory, but they will at some point be in the long term memory.
I will at some point do the Simple Steps to Sight Reading course from TalkingBass, it should be very useful for that.
Yep, definitely possible from sheet music. Also possible from tabs, but that’s much more difficult. Easier audiation and being instrument agnostic are the two really good reasons for learning to read sheet music imo.
I will thank you twice for posting that movie clip. Yes, it visually describes the question I was trying to ask. Secondly, I had heard of the movie Amadeus, I now have it as part of my watch list. At the time it came out, it was not a priority to see. But in reading about it now, I see it was nominated for and won several Academy Award categories.
I see the “rofl” icon which adds perhaps some self deprecating jocularity… but you follow up with “to a certain degree.” To me this might means that you are capable of “hearing music” upon sight of some sheet music. I jealously commend you and anyone who can do this even in the slightest degree of ability.
Thanks for posting the movie clip.
Thanks for posting the movie clip.
Inside behind the scene. The actor who play Mozart actually learned to play each of the piano/ harpsichord scene for authenticity. That’s remarkable. I owned the DVD and the Director cut which is magnificent. It’s not historically 100% accurate but it’s very entertaining.
In a way, it is the reverse of transcribing. And as you get better at transcribing (mapping music to a notation system), then you probably also get better in hearing/deducing how music sounds from the notation it is encoded in.
(Just to be clear: transcribing does not need to include the actual writing out of the music; but it’s a good added exercise for sure, and probably a pre-requisite to becoming better at hearing music from a score.)
Yes it’s possible, especially if they know how to sight read. When its concert season in band and we go to compete to get sweepstakes one of the things we have to get graded on is sight reading a piece we’ve never seen before. While you read the music and as you play you can get an idea of what it sounds like based on the notes and rhythms on the page.
Although I’m not great at sight reading when it comes to rhythms, I’m terrible with reading rhythms but getting better.
My dad used to read opera scores and he could hear everything in his head as he read. So, yes. My dad could and did it for fun like you or I would read a novel.
This is when the notation really edge out the tabs. Maybe I’m not familiar enough with the tab but I can see further down and get much better picture with a sheet than a tab, too many numbers for me,
Probably most similar would be reading the script for a play and imagining what that would look like on a stage. You absolutely can do that. However, what gets imagined will be highly individual.
A fun exercise might be to read along to something you already know really well and have internalized. Get the sheet music for the bass and just follow along with it as you listen to the song.
It’s cool how you start to visually associate the intervals you are seeing on the page with the sounds you are hearing. And the rhythm notation starts to make sense. And you start to make connections, like seeing a note on the “and” of the fourth beat at the end of one measure, leading into the “one” of the next measure. How does that sound and how does it match up with what it looks like on the page? (This one for whatever reason was a revelation to me, LOL, so sharing this in particular.)
After doing that a few times, go back and just follow the sheet music without playing it and see if you can hear it in your head.
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