Posted by Kenneth Sloan on December 26, 2002 at 16:53:15:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Scanning Music? posted by Mary Ann on December 18, 2002 at 11:52:03:
Amateurs prefer to hand-transpose rather than learning to do it on the fly because they are generally at their musical limits while playing. They don't have any neurons to spare *while playing* - so they are willing to put in the extra time (offline, if you will) producing music that is easier for them to read.
Pros have been over this hump (several times), and are usually playing well within themselves - so they have some spare mental capacity to do the transposition on the fly.
For the amateur, it's necessary to transpose ahead of time simply to make it *possible* to play the music at all.
For the pro, the effort of transposing on the fly does not (noticably) impair their ability to play the music.
I am reminded of why I will never be a good tennis player. I learned to play tennis by buying a racket and a can of balls and finding a convenient brick wall to bounce them off. I developed a reasonable, but essentially inefficient technique. once I became competitive at the rank amateur level, I tried to take lessons. But, the lessons never took - because when I got into a competitive game it became more important to me to get the ball over the net than to miss the shot with perfect form.
The good is the enemy of the excellent.