Messages Messages[ Main Chat | Search | Post | Reply | Next | Previous | Up ]
_____________________________________________________
From: Marie Rhines
Email: mrhines@wildapache.net
Remote Name: 209.145.197.129
Date: 31-Oct-2002
Time: 01:53 PM
Dear Ginny, Everyone has already answered your question very well, and I thought I'd just put an addendum note here.
The very first time I met Mickey he asked me to play with him within minutes. As it turned out we had both heard each other's music for years before this meeting, so neither one of us thought muich about reading notes. I knew instinctively what he wanted and so we sat down and played together without any written notes.
I don't remember Mickey needing to look at anything written down, except perhaps a scrawled list of tune titles. When we played it seemed that knowing what the chords and notes actually were, was an unnecessary bit of information, as Mickey breathed harmony notes with every breath. I could almost see the actual notes as if written out in black and white on manuscript paper coming out of his heart when I'd close my eyes.
The same thing happened when I first met Tony Rice. I had hired him as my back up guitarist. We both flew to Texas for our first concert together, and immediately began rehearsing fiddle tunes in tight harmony, etc. and gave an entire evening concert in Brownsville Texas the next night. Tony could not write or read music either but it certainly did no harm in our duos together.
Tony did ask me many times to teach him how to read music, but his patience would wear thin after a few minutes of attempting to connect theose black dots to spots on his fingers on the guitar. Tony really wanted to figure out how to play the Scottish-Irish music I had researched, and liked the strathspeys, but without actually reading these pieces, it would have been difficult to teach him. He said he felt too silly going so slowly after all the years he had played so fast, and didn't have the patience to work things out methodically.
This was before Tony played with Grisman. I imagine he eventually did learn more about music harmony and theory in California later on.
But Mickey's pieces flowed so easily that we never once brought out a piece of sheet music to work on. Even when we recorded the entire album in the studio, there wasn't a piece of paper around anywhere in the studio that I remember seeing. I just had to watch him closely to understand the expression on his face to know what to do next. I think maybe the notes were invisibly written on Mickey's face for all of us to see if we looked carefully enough.
Marie Rhines
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~