Some play songs so wrong the notes
When I watch youtube I come accross some guys ( and it is not just harmonica )
who play songs with a lot of confidence and I see a lot of good comments down there but they play them so wrong.
So many notes are not correct and it seems they themselves are not aware either.
Is it because most harmonica players do not use music notes?
whocares:
Additionally, re your observation that "... most harmonica players do not use music notes." I'd be interested in knowing if anyone has ever surveyed harmonica players of different levels and interests to get an idea of what percentage can read music notation. I'm aware of a number of well-known harp players who read notation (starting with folks like Robert Bonfiglio and Howard Levy), but reading ability may not be as big a factor for harmonica players as for some other musicians.
It may be that it all comes down to one's ear. E.g., going back to your original post, if someone can't hear that they're hitting a wrong note, the ability to read music notation might not really help them.
It's interesting that among top-of-the-line musicians, there are many who have never read notation, and many that do. Certainly, if you're going to learn blues, or Celtic, or folk, by ear, and you hear and play well, you're never going to need to use notation. On the other hand, if you're hired to play harmonica in the pit band for a musical theatre production where the music is new, you'll be in trouble if you're not a good reader.
Also, if you're referring to reading sheet music while performing, whether one reads notation, or tab, or chord charts or lead sheets, it's always best to perform from memory. Nothing gets more in the way between a performer and his or her audience than a music stand. (On the other hand, if you're in a band that is playing behind a featured front-of-stage performer, music stands aren't generally a problem. And they're certainly not a problem in an orchestra pit, where the audience is suppposed to barely see the musicians anyway.)
And I don't think that one's mark as a musician is dependent upon notation-reading skills. As an example on another instrument, piano: For years I was the official songleader for a service club's weekly lunch meetings. Over the decades I worked with two pianists, each with 40-50 years of experience (both older than me, and both now sadly gone). One could essentially only play if he had sheet music in front of him. But you could plop down in front of him the complicated score for a contemporary classical piano concerto that he'd never heard, and he'd play it perfectly at first sight. On the other hand, if you asked him to just play a I-vi-IV-V pop progression in Eb, he'd be totally lost. And he couldn't improvise to save his life. The other pianist never learned to read music. But if he'd ever heard a song just once in his life (or if you could hum the first 12 bars), he could nail it from memory. In any key. And he could improvise and vamp in any style. Both pianists were in demand as entertainers for events, weddings, at restaurants, etc. And both were equally popular. Non-musicians in the audience never knew the difference.
And perhaps some of it goes to how much the brain can store. If you're playing pieces that are only 2-3 minutes long, no need for sheet music. Your ear will guide you as you memorize, whatever your instrument. But if you're in an orchestra playing a symphony (or harmonica concerto), doing 40 minutes from memory alone might be a challenge. You'll be happy to have sheet music in front of you.
Finally, some harmonica players I've met are resistent to learning even notation basics. I think they're missing an opportunity. Even if one is never going to primarly learn from, or even use, sheet music, It can be very handy to at least know the basics of how pitch and rhythm are written out on the page. (And it's come in handy for me when I've discovered the very, very small number of typos in some of David's sheet music, where the tab numbers and the notation on the staff don't match - typos he's readily admitted to. Or where I've been learning something of David's by listening, and playing octaves that didn't sound the same as his recording, and then printed out the notation and seen that he'd called out "fake" octaves, e.g., major or minor 6th intervals, completely different animals sound-wise.)
Fortunately for subscribers here, David's series on music theory is really, really helpful for getting a handle on the basics of music notation.
An entertainer does not need to know music theory, does not need to tell a story correctly, does not need to be funny, does not need to be realistic in their acting; an entertainer, only need to convince the unknowing audience they are what they are trying to be.
Brian in Tennessee
whocares:
When you ask about "wrong" notes, are you talking about melody lines that differ from an original tune, or differ from the composer's sheet music? Or are you talkiing about intonation problems?
Re the former, there's no rule that when performing a piece, a musician must follow the notation written by the composer. This results in a lot of cool interpretations of classic songs.
Or in some cases, a performer may want to "simplify" the musical line, for one reason or another. E.g., there are a lot of Gershwin songs where George Gershwin wrote out some pretty complicated voice bits (often a challenge when trying to get in the complicated lyrics his brother Ira wrote), and some singers will cope by simplifying the vocal melody. No harm done, tho' I tend to favor singers who meet the challenges George set out.
On the other hand, there are "wrongs" related to harmonic structure that are sometimes hard to follow. E.g., the move from the IV to the iv in the typical "Careless Love" changes. There are people that miss that, and while whatever song they're performing that uses those changes may not be as interesting when they miss that change, it just means that the performance isn't as interesting as a performance that uses those changes. I've seen this taken to the limit in some song circle groups where Lennon/McCartney songs that use 10-11 different chords based on their musical experience get "dumbed down" to three chords by the group because there are folks in the group who would get up and walk out rather than learn the string fingering or wind instrument arpegios for a minor seventh chord with a flatted 5th in it. (See, e.g., dumbed-down versions of "I Will.")
Or are you taking about folks who just peform out of tune? E.g., they don't tune their instrument, or if playing harp, can't play a single note cleanly? Unless the performer is specifically and intentionally performing a ragtime piece on an ancient out-of-tune tacks-on-the-hammers abandoned piano in a vacant saloon, posting the out of tune performance on social media should result in jail time! Or at least probation.