Other music forums > Musician's Corner
Beatles' lack of formal music education: Help or hindrance?
Normandie:
Was the Beatles' lack of formal music education an asset or a deficit? I'm genuinely curious as to what the musicians on this forum think.
In reading Goldman's The Lives of John Lennon, I came across the following excerpt in a discussion of the very early days of the band (p. 69, hardcover):
Lennon claimed that by avoiding music lessons, the Beatles preserved the integrity of their imaginations, a trite and highly questionable idea that betrays his characteristic fear of being sucked into the normal world by absorbing its lessons. The truth was that the Beatles woud have had far greater strength and freedom if they had known more about music.
I must say, I resent Goldman's editorializing here, and I tend to agree with John, but then—I'm not a musician.
If anyone cares to share their thoughts on this, I'd love to hear them.
Moogmodule:
That’s an interesting question. It’s got lots of facets to it. Just as a quick response I’d say:
I think it’s always better to know more about any subject your working on then less. But the Beatles did pretty alright as they were. What more does anyone want from them? What greater strength or freedom would have shown in their records? John would have added more chords to Tomorrow Never Knows?
Not doing lessons (which they actually did do anyway in some cases) didn’t mean they didn’t know a lot about music. They knew it from listening to hundreds of records and reproducing them for their shows particularly in Hamburg. Not knowing the names of scales and the like doesn’t mean you can’t use them. You’re just relying on ear for what works. Something that the Beatles were unusually good at.
It’s often repeated (even by Paul) that they couldn’t read music. I’m sceptical of this. While no doubt they weren’t sight readers I’m sure at least Paul and George picked up some reading on the way.
Hello Goodbye:
Sight reading for guitar is very difficult unlike other instruments. I never became proficient at that but did learn to read music for guitar which helped me learn to play various songs and their arpeggios.
It's important to remember that The Beatles had the luxury of having George Martin to help them put their rough compositions together to form a proper piece of music. This is especially true later on when orchestration was added to their compositions.
Moogmodule:
--- Quote from: Hello Goodbye on October 07, 2021, 10:50:07 PM ---Sight reading for guitar is very difficult unlike other instruments. I never became proficient at that but did learn to read music for guitar which helped me learn to play various songs and their arpeggios.
It's important to remember that The Beatles had the luxury of having George Martin to help them put their rough compositions together to form a proper piece of music. This is especially true later on when orchestration was added to their compositions.
--- End quote ---
It’s a good point that they had George Martin. Maybe if they’d been more academically knowledgeable the they could have gone fine with another producer. But frankly even if they’d had reasonable intensive music lessons they weren’t going to get to the level of Martin in knowledge. And if they had they would have been very different musicians to the ones we got. There’s thousands of musically adept and knowledgeable people unleashed on the world each year from universities and music schools. But there’s only ever been one Beatles.
Moogmodule:
--- Quote from: Normandie on October 07, 2021, 03:45:27 PM ---
I must say, I resent Goldman's editorializing here, and I tend to agree with John, but then—I'm not a musician.
.
--- End quote ---
Yes Goldman’s editorialising is as facile as he accuses John of being.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
Go to full version