How can musicians who can’t read music still write songs and play music?

Question

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?

In: Other

Answer 1

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.