“Brainstruments”

Fascinating subject. In a podcast interview from this past June, Todd Parrott talked about the same sort of thing, and how he visualizes sheet music when he plays, based on his own musical experiences. I tend to think of notes on a page as well, even though it's more a vague picture of intervals rather than actual pitches. This probably goes back to my first musical training on a classical instrument in elementary school, through college experience playing cello and piano, and sight-reading vocal music in a chorus. So, e.g., when I sing "Over the Rainbow," with that iconic octave jump at the start of the melody, I don't actually visualize as written out the actual notes that I'm singing, but I do sort of visualize two dots on the score, with a bunch of empty staff lines between them. And in the cabaret pit band in which I play plectrum banjo, sometimes in lieu of a lead-sheet or score, our music director passes out a bare-bones chicken-scratch chord chart, and if the chart says to strum a Bb diminished chord for two beats, I visualize a stack of four dots vaguely each a flatted third above the note below it, but without any sharp or flat marks, and without reference to what the notes in the chord are, pitch-wise. With this sort of visualization, David's melody charts for his lessons can be interesting, as, e.g.: For the most part he shows the notes as written out in the key of C-major, but with sharps or flats written next to that note, if necessary. But, e.g., for a study song in G for second position, where one uses a C harp, the actual key of the song is in G, with one sharp (F#) ordinarily in the key signature (but not in the blues scale used, where the F is natural, i.e., a "flatted 7th" in the G scale), but David's chart shows no sharps or flats, just the actual notes. Then, when he uses the same system for a second-position song using the A harp, the song's actually in E, where the key signature would be four sharps (F#, G#, C#, D#), but the notes on the page are still as though using a key-of-C chart for a song in the key of G. Which means that if the player is actually following the pitch of fhe notes in his or her "brainstrument," he or she has to transpose in his or her head, on the fly. I often practice one or another of the study songs while sitting at the piano, so that I can use it to check to see whether or not my bends are anywhere near acurate (which they usually aren't), and transposing the actual notes from the study song charts is a fun mental exercise. But ocassionally it makes me envious of players who have never used sheet music, and for whom the harmonica is the first time they've learned a musical instrument.