Written Music: Anti-Ear Training

Check out this short video of Bill Watrous talking about his brief stint in the Ellington band:





He was "scared out of his shorts" because the majority of tunes the Ellington band was playing had no written parts. At best there was a 'head chart' that had a basic outline of what was to be played. As Watrous says, this was de riguer for many bands in that era, all the way back to Sousa.

Consider that bands like Ellington's were a primary source of entertainment in those days. No internet and no television. Radio and phonographs (in that era) didn't have nearly the sound quality of a CD or even a cassette tape. If you weren't playing it yourself, you were listening to someone else play it- live! It was reasonable for bands to protect themselves against the competition getting access to their charts, thus allowing them to play exactly the same thing. The 'head chart' was just a memory aid for performers, who had already worked out among themselves all the dynamics, articulations, phrasing, etc. Watrous says that sometimes even what was on the bare-bones written charts was deliberately played differently! Every band developed its own unique style this way.

As a consequence of this practice, musicians had to possess keen listening skills to play well as an ensemble. This normally wasn't a problem because band members had enough time to work it out and memorize their parts. Not so for Bill Watrous- he had to come in on short notice and quickly figure out everything without any written part at all. At the time, nobody really knew just where the printed 'head chart' was! Lucky for him somebody found it and also talked him through the tunes, or he would've crashed and burned pretty hard.

Fully written out parts are a double-edged sword. For all its benefits, it does us a disservice because we have the choice not to listen to each other. I also think there can be too much information crammed on the page as well: notes, dynamics, articulations, phrasing suggestions, tempo markings, etc. It's easy to bury your head in the written page and mistake the map for the territory. Too much mental bandwidth is used for visually processing the written music, and it comes at the expense of aurally processing what's going on all around us.

Just keep looking at the page, boy...
 Yessss, ignore those other sounds...

Given this, it's no wonder that so many of us in amateur bands routinely experience individuals or even whole sections who completely ignore that they've veered badly off track or have tuning issues that threaten to shake the fillings right out of your teeth. The seductive draw of the written page functions as a kind of ear training in reverse!


I'd like to experiment with a return to head charts- just a tune or two here and there. Maybe use them as a warm-up tool. Anybody out there know of bands that do this? Put it in the comments!