Jammer playing - reading music scores

Translating a traditional musical score; simplifying it.

Reading the score

Now I’m going to show you how to use a simple trick to make a music score readable – and it’s a trick that every musician should know. 

 

Jammer Navigation

Like changing keys on a jammer, this trick is easier to do than it is to describe, so if you prefer to skip the description and theory part, just page down to Highlighting the Root Line. 

Navigation

The jammer key layout matches the way the ear hears music: there’s a root (key center) and associated notes; there’s a “secondary key center” called the dominant (and indeed it does sound like it dominates over the root) and it’s buddies; and the octave above the pattern repeats.
(I’ll get to the sub-dominant later).

Music often seems to do a little dance around the root, then tease one’s ear with a little dance around the dominant.

 

Jammer sight reading

 How musical notes relate to the score.

First here’s how the piano, score and jammer notes inter-relate, shown above.

You can see that the white-keys-only keyboard came first, while the score, second, and the black keys (“accidentals” they labeled them – one can just hear the craggy old musicians’ contempt for these strange and exotic new notes dripping from the word) came last.

But the underlying pattern is totally simple: 3 root-key notes, then a jump to 4 dominant-key related notes.  This pattern is the same in all keys, it’s just the notation (and the keyboard) that makes it look hard; it hides the pattern.  

The "learn by rote" school of music

This notation forces musicians to play by rote, that is, to indicate the key is in G instead of saying the key is G, a mark that says “when you see a F in the score, play the F# just above. Only after  some music significant theory is the key known.  

Jammer Score reading 0 and 4 sharps

Here you can see the pattern revealed.

  

Highlighting the Root Line

So below I’ve shown how to markup a musical score for easy jammer playing, using only a ruler and a few highlighter pens of varying widths. I suggest you expand the picture for clarity.

Jammer Score reading

 

Note - there is an error in the last score - the flat should be on B, not F

In effect this is a way to reveal the underlying structure; to convert it to standard notation.

Step 1) Naturally, you’ll first have to find your root. Count the flats/sharps in the score, and use the  playing-in-any-key technique.

Step 2) Mark the root with a squiggle.

Step 3) Highlight the root line and the 2 lines above it. Highlight all parts of the score you think helpful.

Step 4) look over the music, and visualize the fingering. Perhaps this will help:

Jammer Chord fingering examples

 

Do you need to always do this?

No, this is just a handy bridging technique, especially if you are playing just melody, you won’t need it for more than a month. It's still very handy when playing chords, as it shows where the line jumps are and tells you the chord shape, as shown here:

 

Comments

[MusicLearner]

Hi MSG

You must see this!

http://www.c-thru-music.com/cgi/?page=home

They also have a YouTube video.

Cheers

Music Learner

[MusicScienceGuy]

the "side buttons" are special buttons, as posted here in making a virtue out of necessity , They are pitch shift keys. 

[MusicLearner]

You meant the number of accidentals on the keys? Yes, it is easy to see the actual accidental on the Jammer keyboard. I guess the reason to do that is to find the root note as your starting point. Jammer provides better hints on finding the key.

 

I have a little memory trick for doing that: "GD AE BF (F#)". They come in pairs and move from one to another.

 

What is the "side button" that you mentioned at the end of the post?

 

[MusicScienceGuy]

Can you count the sharps and flats as posted  in playing-in-any-given-key?

Ken, MSG

[MusicLearner]

Hi MSG

I can only thinking of some kind of scripting/programming.

I thought about adopting the script I have done in Harmony Assistant for Digital Common Notation to do exactly that.

 

It  is easy to for me to mark or change the color of the 1st 3 notes of every octave as I currently mark every note with octave bar. It is harder to add the highlight background.

 

The trouble is really with the standard notation a root note could start in the space or on the line. It could look complicated.

Not sure I said anything that is useful.

Eric, MusicLearner

 

[MusicScienceGuy]

Thanks, the error is corrected.
Now all we need is a way to print scores with the highlighting printed on them. Do you have any ideas?
Ken,  MSG

[MusicLearner]

[this is good]

Hi MSG

My apology for suggesting that highlighting the 3 notes only works for the Jammer.

This would work on any keyboard that has consistent tonal centre layouts for all 12 notes including the 12-piano I try to describe else where.

What I need is a small hightlighter and a ruler.

Cheers

Eric

Music Learner

 

 

 

[MusicLearner]

Hi MSG

Well done!

This blog has made things much clearer.

In standard notation, a note may be on a space or at the line. So I think in Step 3 of "Highlighting the Root Line", you are talking about highlighting 3 notes not 3 lines. This seems to be what you have done on the diagram. I guess the idea is to show the point where you change line on Jammer.

BTW, in G, we have F# not C#. It is up one line in the same octave on the PC keyboard :-)

For a moment, I thought you have solved my sight reading problem.....

But well done for moving clarifying how the Jammer fingering works with the standard notation.

Eric

Music Learner