Why do you say "Of course Fred could read scores" Seb?
I'd be very surprised if he could sight-read at anything more than the most basic level. There was never any need for him to be able to sight-read during his career, and I suspect the only time he encountered the practice was during the piano lessons he took at a young age.
But being a proficient sight-reader involves a lot of work and practice, and if those skills are suddenly dropped from use at a youngish age it would be hard to easily recall them for use in later life.
We know that Fred used his own crazy form of notation, involving As Bs and Cs for the harmonies in the opera-section of Bo Rhap. If Fred was able to sight-read, he should have been able to write in standard notation, which would have been the best way of annotating the harmonies he had in mind for that opera section.
Sebastian · Member since
> I'd be very surprised if he could sight-read at anything more than the most basic level. There was never any need for him to be able to sight-read during his career, and I suspect the only time he enocountered the practice was during the piano lessons he took at a young age.
It's a good point. But I didn't mean that he could play a Rachmaninov's concert reading the score. I mean that he could read. On basic level? on an expert level? I didn't specify that. If what Freddie said is true - perhaps it is, perhaps it isn't, sometimes he's too humble about his own skills, maybe he wasn't Yngwie Malmsteen but I'm sure he knew more than three chords in the guitar - then yeah it's on a basic level - just like me, I guess.
Bohardy · Member since
I presume then that you have some kind of quote (as you normally do) where Fred said that he could sight-read.
Can we see that?
Sebastian · Member since
I have one in which he says he can't : "Very little. I don't need it".
But also he mentioned he sometimes has to go back to the musical sheets to work out old songs. As I said, I don't think he can read a piano concert by Rachmaninov and play it right away, but I think he went beyond "very little". Also, what's "very little" for him?
Btw:
> If Fred was able to sight-read, he should have been able to write in standard notation, which would have been the best way of annotating the harmonies he had in mind for that opera section.
You said it, he had them in his mind, and he was going to sing over 70% of them, so why would he write them in a score, it's not like he was writting it for a choir or something, same as the instrumental parts. Moreover, I doubt Roger could read them and if Brian could it'd be on a very basic level too.
