The saxophone quartet I play in (I couldn't call it "my" quartet) has a number called "Black and White Rag." We had a disagreement about how to play it. One of us thought the eighths should swing, but the others said that was wrong for ragtime style, so I looked it up on Youtube. Sure enough, I found a recording based on the player piano roll, probably recorded by the composer himself, George Botsford, and the eights are played straight! Later on I found a recording of a sax quartet playing the piece, but I won't put in the link because the sound is very muddy, and they were playing it much too fast.
Now I take it for granted that I can( simply type in the name of a piece, a musician, or a composer, and almost without doubt I'll be able to hear what I want to hear in a minute or less. But when I started taking music lessons, to hear what you wanted to hear (Reginald Kell, say, when I was taking clarinet in high school), you had to have access to a good music library and go there, or a good record store, go there, and buy the record.
The abundance of available music changes everything (musically, at any rate). If you're learning a piece, you can hear a great musician play it, often more than one great musician in more than one rendition. This can be inspiring, instructive, or discouraging. I'll never be able to play a Bach sonata on the flute as well as the masters whose recordings I've listened to.
Performing musicians lose out on royalties for their CDs when people upload them to Youtube, and I don't imagine that streaming services like Spotify pay them very much. On the bright side, presence on the web can attract live audiences to concerts, and in any case a lot of people, like me, prefer live music to recorded music.
Right now I'm listening to a Canadian saxophone quartet playing ragtime arrangements. They're better than we are, and it's useful to hear just in what ways they outdo us. If we rehearse enough, maybe we'll get closer to their level.
Now I take it for granted that I can( simply type in the name of a piece, a musician, or a composer, and almost without doubt I'll be able to hear what I want to hear in a minute or less. But when I started taking music lessons, to hear what you wanted to hear (Reginald Kell, say, when I was taking clarinet in high school), you had to have access to a good music library and go there, or a good record store, go there, and buy the record.
The abundance of available music changes everything (musically, at any rate). If you're learning a piece, you can hear a great musician play it, often more than one great musician in more than one rendition. This can be inspiring, instructive, or discouraging. I'll never be able to play a Bach sonata on the flute as well as the masters whose recordings I've listened to.
Performing musicians lose out on royalties for their CDs when people upload them to Youtube, and I don't imagine that streaming services like Spotify pay them very much. On the bright side, presence on the web can attract live audiences to concerts, and in any case a lot of people, like me, prefer live music to recorded music.
Right now I'm listening to a Canadian saxophone quartet playing ragtime arrangements. They're better than we are, and it's useful to hear just in what ways they outdo us. If we rehearse enough, maybe we'll get closer to their level.
