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Pete Reading Music



> Piano isn't very hard to learn,
> especially if one already has some musical background (the opposite is
> true as well, it isn't so hard learning another instrument if you
> already play piano). It certainly helps to be able to read music, but I
> would think that anyone who could play the guitar without being able to
> read music could continue on and do the same with the piano.

That may be be true, if all one in is interested is playing "Mary Had a
Little Lamb" or some of that pop crap that saturates too much of today's
interest in the piano (i.e., anything out of a Disney movie). However,
on Pete's solo tour before the big Quadrophenia reunion, he was playing
some fairly sophisticated piano music, like "Embraceable You". Even though
Pete does have an extraordinary amount of genius in the way he hears and
responds to musical sound, it is nonetheless appropriate for such
pieces of jazz to consult the written music, because jazz-like pieces are so
marked by their distinctive harmonies and melodies that it is really going
far out of one's way not to learn how to consult the written page.
Of course, there are degrees to which one can read music. There are those
who know what everything means but can't process it into coherent sound
without arduously struggling with each note, and there are those who can
set down sheet music they've never seen and go tearing through the
Transcendental Etudes like they were butter. However, to play what he does,
Pete surely must at least be able to decipher written music.
I doubt Pete would read sheet music note for note at a concert, but at his
age, it couldn't hurt to keep it available in order to keep and eye as well
as a damaged ear on what the rest of the group is doing, and it's also a 
handy thing to have on hand if one gets lost. Then again, maybe Pete did
take twice the time needed to learn how to read music in order to pick
out by ear all the chords and melodies he heard in his jazz covers. After
all, he is an extraordinary musical mind, and his abilities are far
beyond the scope of most mortal musicians. Who can say?

Also, which book was it that someone was talking about inthe last 
newsletter that had chords tabbed for a lot of early Who songs?

- -Hart Deer
(deerdana@dekalb.dc.peachnet.edu)