Right, what counts is where you end up. Written notes can give you a head start. I play in another band a little like the one Jacob G mentioned, and none of us had an adequate background in Eastern European music to do without written parts (well, we don't write out drum parts.)TubaTinker wrote:With the Dixie and German groups I play with, we ALWAYS start with real music. After 'getting the feel' of it, we stray off a bit and add in our own stuff.
But it's like training wheels on a bicycle. Riding the bike the right way is a totally different thing, and training wheels don't teach you that, they just keep you from falling over early in the learning process. I don't know what the answer is, for our band. I think learning pieces note by note is probably going to continue to account for most of our repertoire for the foreseeable future, but we also need to develop the music past that point. Not necessarily adding our own extra notes (other than solo breaks), more like getting a feel that isn't adequately described by the notes.
