Singing and Playing and Reading

The NewNeo is a pretty interesting blog largely on policy matters but she often writes about music and dance. Here is an interesting discussion: Dancing and singing and drumming and bass playing in the rain: Part I

The idea that it’s hard to sing and play drums at the same time – harder than to sing and play another instrument – isn’t something I just came up with on my own. In fact, being neither a musician nor a singer, I don’t feel personally qualified to say. I find it all rather difficult.

But it’s something I’ve read about quite a bit. There’s a lot of discussion about it among people who play music, a kind of accepted wisdom, although that “wisdom” is also often challenged (as it was in our own discussion).

So, is it really so very hard? And what exactly is meant by “at the same time”?

Obviously, one can’t play a wind instrument while singing, although someone like Louis Armstrong would alternate the two and did a great job of it. The main instruments we’re talking about would be the piano (or other keyboards), the guitar, and the drums, and it’s rock and pop music in particular that we’ve been talking about.

I started my musical career as a bass player who also sang and I progressed to a rhythm guitar player who sang as well. So I have some familiarity with the topic. But I want to mention a related kind of challenge involving singing and playing.

First, some background. In the classical music world, reading music at sight, i.e. performing music while reading it from the score, is a highly-developed skill. If you have been to a film recently with an orchestral score, you might not be aware that it was likely recorded in less than two and a half hours, which is the standard duration of a musical "service" as defined by the musician's union. In other words, in most cases, the soundtrack to the film was recorded in one take! This is some high-level sight-reading. The studio musicians who specialize in this can read and play at sight virtually anything.

Second point, the classical music world has one main type of notation, often called "vocal notation" because it indicates the pitch you should sing. Of course instrumentalists use the same notation as they learn where the notes are on their instruments. But there are some exceptions. Apart from purely historical notation systems that are no longer used, we still find tablature, a system that does not show the pitch, but only where to put your fingers. This was used on the lute and guitar and related instruments up into the 18th century when it was superseded by vocal notation for those instruments as well. There were three main types of tablature, French tab, that used letters to indicate the frets, Italian tab that used numbers and German tab, a very peculiar version that used both in a very confusing way!

In the 16th and 17th centuries a great number of books of songs with lute accompaniment were published. Here is an example of the notation for one of the most famous of these, "Flow My Tears" by John Dowland:

Click to enlarge

The upper staff is the voice part in vocal notation (the C clef is on the bottom line). The lower staff is French lute tablature with the lowest string (or course) on the bottom and the highest string on top. The frets are indicated by a, b, c, d, etc. standing for the open string and first second and third frets respectively. Some lutenists and guitarists still use this notation today for various reasons. Just as a singer can become very skilled at singing from notation at sight, so can lutenists and guitarists.

But imagine that you are a guitarist or lutenist who also sings? Might it be possible to sight sing the voice part and sight read the lute or guitar part simultaneously? Two entirely different notations systems? Well, you can. I have even tried a few times, just for fun. But I had an excellent student that studied guitar with me for several years and then took up the voice. He made a specialty of singing lute songs and accompanying himself. And, of course, every time he learned a new song, he was simultaneously sight reading tablature and vocal notation.

And if you can believe it, I once knew a musicologist who swore she could sight sing from German lute tab! But I wouldn't believe that unless I saw it.

Just for comparison, no-one graduates from McGill University in music without passing a test where they are given an atonal melody, are allowed a couple of minutes to look at it--without the aid of a piano or other instrument--and then have to sing it at sight for the examiners.

Envoi, Dowland, "Flow My Tears"