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Yes. That is a skill that you spend around the first two years of a music degree learning and perfecting. In your solfege class you learn to read in all keys, and clefs. You learn to identify all intervals by ear and learn to sing them. You even do dictations where you have to write down music you hear.
After that study, yes you can know what the music will sound like by just looking at it.
Interesting thanks. It seems like it takes a lot of practice! It makes me wonder if it's possible for an "earworm" song to get stuck in your head if you've only ever heard it with your "mind's ear"
i learned this when i was ~8, then lost it, and now i miss it like hell
Musicians well trained in music theory can correctly sing intervals given a first reference note (relative pitch). Then a small portion of them also have the ability to not need a reference note to find the correct pitch, it's called absolute pitch (there's a debate if it's an innate ability, and it is a superpower with downsides).
So the answer is yes, at least with a first reference note. But it may take years of practice.
I think all professional classical musicians have this ability.
What are the downsides?
Choirs are really good at being in tune with one another, but not necessarily in tune with absolute pitch. So if you’re a singer with absolute pitch, your life is looking at a note on a page, knowing what that note SHOULD sound like, but then singing a slightly off-pitch note to be in tune with everyone else. Or even a completely different note if the group has shifted enough.
Or if a group decides that a piece isn’t in a good range for someone, and they decide to sing in a different key, for most people it’s really easy. Take the new starting note and go. But if you have absolute pitch you have to transpose on the fly if you’re sight reading.
That said, I think given the choice I’d take absolute pitch. My wife has it and she can sight read so much better than I can.
That’s super interesting. A blessing and a burden
Baroque musique for example is often played at A = 415 Hz as opposed to 440 Hz, so someone who has their absolute pitch set on A = 440 Hz, because it is the current international standard, may be very disturbed.
More details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_pitch#Possible_problems
Also yes. My wife says that to her, Baroque tuning sounds basically like a half-step below what’s written (which is pretty close).
This explains, IMO, why so much well-loved Baroque music is in D major. D♭ major is such a beautiful key, after all! 🙂
Kind of? If I'm looking at a trombone part: sure, no problem. If I'm looking at the full orchestral score: no, not really. As the music becomes more complex and involved, my ability to hear it drops off. And I only have relative pitch -- if you ask me to sing it I'll start on the wrong note but I'll sing it correctly relative to that pitch.
I wonder if anybody can do it for an orchestra? I suppose Beethoven was composing symphonies while he was deaf so he must have been able to!
Edit: Deaf not dead 😅
Composers totally do, they practice this. The skill is called audiation.
I originally studied music in uni and have aphantasia and no inner monologue. I never heard anything in my head.
I wonder if there's different kinds of aphantasia for sound and vision (mind's ear vs mind's eye)?
Apparently, most people with aphantasia also lack an inner voice. Not sure about the other way around.
For the most part yes, but everything sounds like a guitar.
For me it depends on how well I know the song. If I know how it should sound like, I can almost hear the notes in my head. If I font know it that well, it gets a little bit more tricky.
A skilled musician can convert sheet music notes to "do rey mi" type sounds almost second hand. It just takes me awhile and doesn't come naturally to me.
Yes. And i can see the parts that will be annoying to play
Bozner Bergsteiger Marsch. Grrrr!!!
Der Bozner ist eigentlich echt sehr schön, aber hat durchaus seine Tücken.
Er ist schön. Aber als Hornspieler mit dem Nachschlag, und nicht in der Nähe der Schlagzeuger sondern Saxophone zu hocken, das ist so ein graus!!
Ja, dann ist das verständlich. Ich persönlich bin großer Fan von dem Mittelteil, wo man als zweite Trompete mit den Hörnern zusammen spielt.
Er ist schön. Aber als Hornspieler mit dem Nachschlag, und nicht in der Nähe der Schlagzeuger sondern Saxophone zu hocken, das ist so ein graus!!
Yes. Classically trained, degrees and all. I always had good aural skills; it came naturally to me and formal training just made me better at it. Now I sing and singers absolutely have to know how to do it if they’re sight reading. No instrument to rely on. Some can’t do it; they have to hear it first. Singers get a bad rap by other musicians honestly.
I don't do music often (except for messing around with some MIDI software things), but reading sheet music is something they taught in school, so I can read it and figure out the rhythm and notes of a song quite easily, and theoretically play it on piano as they also taught that.. but I haven't used one in years now
i've always been envious of people with good aural skills. i can sight read on a few instruments but ask me to sing it- even just in my head- and i'll be lucky to get a quarter of it right. rhythms are no problem but tones, there's just no way, even after years of attempts at ear training
it's funny how in some folk and rock communities, being able to read is seen as this advanced (and unnessicery) skill. meanwhile without the dots in front of me or muscle memory, i can't play shit!
meanwhile without the dots in front of me or muscle memory, i can't play shit!
Take my notes away from me and I become unable to play in an instant.
It really is the only way I could read sheet music by sight; hearing DO-RE-MI, etc, in my head as I look at it. I wonder if that would have been actual instrument sounds if I had learned to read music from playing an instrument instead of choir, tho.
Interesting! It sounds like you might be in the minority. Does it work both ways? Like can you hear a note immediately know what it is?
No, unfortunately. I do not have perfect pitch.
No, not really. I can't speak for everyone but I have some background in sight singing and ear training from studying music in university and for me it's mostly logical.
I'm mainly thinking about the key that I'm in and the intervals at play.
yes
I can read tabs or my own preferred similar notation system. I can't "sight read".
I get an understanding of the mood emphasis of the notes. I can also corrolate which part goes with what the music sounds like..
Fun fact: you know how you can maintain a conversation while listening to music, but it's awful hard to do so while reading text? Well, musicians trained to do so can read a music sheet while talking because "reading music" triggers the same brain bit that is used to process music, so they're effectively "listening" to the music while talking.
Also, I've heard 3 different orchestra conductors say that no orchestra performs better, no matter the piece, than the one in their minds.
Back when I sight read, I was more of an up and down sound kind of reader. Like, I wouldn’t think of the exact sound of a middle C, but I would have a sound that I called the C and go up and down from there as the piece went up and down the scale. Somewhere in there I’d also think about where the note that I’m seeing on the page would be played on the instrument.
