I saw a video where Dave Grohl was talking about how he can’t read music. How does that work if he’s writing and performing songs?
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Some artists who don’t play instruments but say they write their own music lie. Most artists use songwriters or ghostwriters. The ones who play instruments could also be played taught a new riff or tune and down pact the melody personally. I ghostwrote and songwriter in the past.
Everything everyone has said so far about playing by ear! Also the standard 5 line system of writing music isn’t the only option. Tab or chord charts are another. Also a lot of lead instruments will simply improv based on the key.
“Reading music” usually refers to sheet music, a specific system of writing down music but not the only one. In the genres of rock, folk, country, blues, and stuff like that, people who sing or play guitar, bass or drums rarely have to learn sheet music. Piano players and wind instrument players usually have to learn a bit of sheet music but it’s not strictly necessary.
I had to learn a bit of sheet music to play trumpet in school, but I played bass in the jazz band without learning how to read sheet music for it (I just improvised around the chord names) and I’ve never used sheet music for writing a rock song.
To learn a rock song on guitar, it’s often enough to look up a “chord chart”, which is just the lyrics of the song with the names of the chords written above them, and then if you want to sing it or figure out the melody/rhythm you just listen to the song and copy it by ear. An example: https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/foo-fighters/learn-to-fly-chords-1105893
There’s also “tablature”, which is a system of writing music specific to guitar and bass that’s very intuitive: the lines represent the strings and the numbers represent the frets you have to press down on. Example: https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/foo-fighters/learn-to-fly-tabs-45213
The same way people can speak English but not read. They just hear it, copy it, learn what goes well together, and go on.
Not the greatest example, but look up TheDooo on youtube. GRAPHIC CONTENT/LANGUAGE WARNING! Look up some of his guitar on omegle videos. He’ll literally listen to a song once, and then almost perfectly play it.
Instead of learning the pictures and symbols for the music. People can learn the tones and sounds and styles used to play the instrument equally as well as someone who plays it off of sheet music.
You rely on being able to hear music and then be able to play it back. Most good musicians can do that without ever having music written down.
You just play guitar until you play something that sounds good to you, and write lyrics that go well with it. Since Dave is a multi instrumentalist, he can also play the drums and bass and other things to it, record it on tape and then his band can listen to the tracks, and either play their parts the same way or improvise. There’s really no reason for them to write out the music.
Reading music is playing something that has already been written.
The process of creating (writing) a new song comes before the process of writing it down as sheet music, so can be accomplished without reading.
Playing an instrument does not require the player to read. One can learn by ear and by touch. A whole band can function like this. Many of the swing era big bands worked with ‘head’ arrangements, where the musicians played from memory what they had learned, rather than reading it each time
lol, FTR no one needs to read music to be able to play a Foo Fighters song. Can you hum a tune without reading the sheet music for it? Musicians can do the same thing on their instruments. Reading something off a piece of paper is not a prerequisite to being able to move your fingers on an instrument. It can help if your memory isn’t grea, if there is a ton to memorize, or if you’ve never played/heard the music before but it’s not required in all situations.
Think about speaking and language acquisition as an analogy for playing music by ear. Kids learn to speak before they learn to write. You can play a song or make one up without knowing how to write the notes down. Adults who can’t read and write can still understand verbal language and communicate well.
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