The Session >> Discussions >> I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
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I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
When I'm hearing a tune at session speed that I'm unfamiliar with, I'm able to hum the tune pretty much note-for-note after two times through. As soon as I put the whistle to my lips, I can barely play the tune at all.
So, I've got an idea. What if I, alone at home, start humming as I whistle? I wonder if I could strengthen the connection between my voice and my whistle. I know jazz pianists and guitarists who do this. Maybe there's something to it.
My other thought is to visit sessions, sit on the outer perimeter, and just hum along for the next year. When my head's full of tunes, I'll start whistling again.
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
i'd say practicing the whistle is the key. It seems to me that the connection between your brain and your fingers needs to be improved. Practice, practice, practice!
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
You obviously have a really quick ear. I think the key is probably just getting to know your instrument inside-out. Then when you hear a note you'll automatically know what position your fingers should be in!! Really interesting one though. Good luck! Lizzy x
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
When I got real good at typing, after years of banging away at the keyboard, I realized that sometimes I typed "here" when I meant "hear" and things like that which made me realize that a lot of the typing was being done by my subconcious without thinking about every keystroke.
I am not there with my musical instruments yet. But that is what I aspire to. At that point, what gets hummed can also be whistled, pretty much automatically.
Like the directions to Carnegie Hall, "practice, man, practice."
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
Dare I say it, *noodling* can be a good way to forge the desired neural pathways. When a tune, or a bit of a tune, comes into your head, try and play it - whether it's a traditional tune, a popular song, a bit of classical music, a nursery rhyme or a TV theme tune. Keep an instrument to hand whenever possible, so you can pick it up every time you feel the urge to hum a tune, and try and play it instead.
Needless to say, this is best done in the privacy of your own home.
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
It is an interesting question. My experience is very different to yours, in some ways at least.
If I think of the melody of an easy tune I know but I have never played it, say the theme to a tv programme I hear frequently, then I can often play it first time I try. I don't do this at all often, but I have done it often enough over the years that I know I can do it.
If I heard an Irish tune I didn't know played at session speed I couldn't possibly remember it immediately. If I want to learn a completely new tune I need to listen to it several times, then try to sing it on my own (silently will do), listen to it again to check, sing it to myself until I can do that without struggling, then play it on the instrument. Then I would need to solve whatever technical problems the tune presents.
All Irish tunes present me with some challenges. I record myself playing fiddle a lot, and I can't remember ever playing any tune note perfect, with good intonation, timing, tone, ornamentation, variation, consistency etc etc, even after years and hundreds of times through that tune.
Tunes take unexpected turns, that's part of their charm. I would never expect to sit and hear new tunes and immediately join in with them, I'm not sure anybody at all could do that on a consistent basis, I'd be interested to hear about anybody like that.
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
Oh yeah, I forgot to say, I have this idea that what you practice is what you do. So if you practice humming and whistling in the comfort and privacy of your own home you will then start to do it when you go into the outside world and move among other people. People will notice and will not think any the better of you. Yes, some jazzbos do hum and stuff, but they are a lot of show-offs with difficulties forming normal relationships, they do all kinds of absurd things to attract attention to themselves, sculptural facial hair , berets, pouting and so on. Just ignore them.
Play the whistle when you can, and when you can't, sing new tunes to yourself.
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
Bernie - you'd be interested to hear about anybody like that.
My late, great friend Peter Kennedy was one. He died in june this year, aged 82 1/2, but up until the last few months, if he heard a new tune he'd join in on the second time through, note perfect. He was a great fiddle player, though very few people knew that, because he didn't used to play it in public - he played melodeon in public and was the best I've ever heard. He actually made it sound musical ...
Seamus Creagh used to do it almost as a party piece "Play me a tune I don't know". I think there are plenty of people out there who can do it - of course, they're not mortal, like you and me ...
But were you looking for inhabitants of the mustard to own up to the ability?
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
Stephen, your bio says you've played whistle for 16 years now. Has that been 16 years steady, or on and off? How comfortable/proficient are you with whistle?
I ask only because the answer to your question will depend on whether you really think in "whistle," or still translate from sound to finger memory.
Being really good at learning and playing tunes by ear on an instrument depends on playing "by sound," rather than by technique. You hear or imagine a sound and your body and instrument reflexively act as one to produce that sound, without thinking about what your fingers, hands, lips, lungs, or anything else have to do to make that sound.
So music isn't a finger position or movement or anything else--it just *is.*
If you're not at that stage yet on whistle, there's your problem.
If you think you are at that stage, or darn close, then there are some exercises that can help. Learn to play familiar tunes in different keys on the same whistle, so that you hear a root tone and relative intervals, not just "this tune's in G and starts on the 3rd note of the scale." At the same time, learn to recognize the particular sounds of different keys and pitches--how a D whistle sounds different from a C whistle, say.
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
I have actually played whistle very little the last 16 years. It's really the last 12 months that I have been pursuing traditional Irish music with fervor.
I don't yet "think" in whistle, whoosis. When I hum, I actually see the tune as it would be played in the key of D on my main instrument, a lap dulcimer. I guess I think dulcimer. (In truth, I’m suffering from dulcimeritis.)
For example, if the group is playing a G tune I've never heard before, I start humming along and I begin to see the notes in my head as they would be played on a dulcimer in D.
I like whoosis's idea about playing a D tune in G and A on the whistle. I really just need to keep at it. It's just a dreadful feeling to have it in the head but not under the fingers.
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
I've learned lots of tunes by humming or whistling them before I play them on an instrument, but it's because I don't want to scare the other drivers by fiddling while I drive.
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
My fiddle teacher used to say you shouldn't play anything until you can hum or sing it - you should hear the piece in your head first.. I must admit I can't do that all the time though!
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
Coming from the flute, there are actually very good other reasons for singing or humming along with the note you are playing. It's a wonderful exercise for getting your throat in tune with what you're playing. Singing along in unison, thirds or fifths or even deliberately slightly out of tune can produce some great (non-traditional) effects too. And it will make your bottom octace a lot more secure.
And as a side effect, I now recognise notes played by other instruments far better - I hum along with them, then I recognise which flute note that would be and can play it much more directly than before. I used to have to try several notess before I could find the correct one.
All this only applies to single notes as far as I have been learning it, but there is no reason why it shouldn't work with whole tunes.
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
Hi Ben,
No, I wasn't particularly looking for people here to confess to being prodigies, and I am interested to hear there are people who could learn tunes instantly. I suppose they must have the musical equivalent of phtographic memory. Amazing.
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
Hi Bernie
Glad you weren't looking for confessions - could be embarassing. btw I can do it half the time, and half the time not - as I'm a moody b****r it rather depends on my mood ... but there are people around who can do it regularly, reliably, accurately and they are, as you say, "Amazing".
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
It isn't photographic memory, if you listen to enough ITM you get into the idiom and can often guess what is coming next in a tune. If you can do that, you don't need to learn as much of it.
I think that being able to play what you hum is a skill well worth learning. It makes transposing easier, and as a singer primarily, if I have the dots in front of me, I (silently) sing what I see and play along with what I sing - humming is the same analogy, I guess.
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
Also - don't be thinking ya gotta get it all - NOW! Often I get a snippet of something in my brain and then go and figure it out and play it. Then go back and get aother piece and start putting the puzzle together.
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
Actually, I followed the same path as Stephen, from lap dulcimer to irish flute. One of the exercises I found most helpful was to play fiddle tunes that I know on the dulcimer on the flute. When I started I found myself visualizing the first note on the dulcimer fretboard, and then going from there by ear. But more and more, I'm finding that my fingers sort of know where to start a tune...or at least can make an educated guess within a few choices. I also found it helpful to play simple tunes in several keys -- the D to G transposition is a good exercise and doesn't involve too many finger benders. Also playing tunes that have been in my head since forever, like Christmas carols and old folk songs. I've been working at it pretty steadily, and at an old time/bluegrass session this fall found that I was able to join in on my flute on tunes that I had always played on the dulcimer without really having to think about how to play them. I still can't do Irish stuff up to speed, but that's a matter of working on my flute technique and my Irish "vocabulary" for want of a better word.
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
Spoon usefully suggested "noodling". May I also suggest improvisation? It's a bit like noodling, but with a definite direction - you're inventing and constructing a tune, or part of one at any rate, on the hoof.
Improvisation is a centuries old skill, but seems to have gone a bit out of fashion now. Today it is mainly associated with jazz and church organists, but at one time any musician worth his salt was expected to improvise music as necessary. If you can improvise , then it can get you out of many a tight corner, as well as helping you to learn tunes.
There, I've leaked the secret of my survival in sessions
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
A couple of posts ago Geoffwright was saying about if you listen to enough ITM you'll get into the idiom. Very true, and it applies to all kinds of music. That was brought home to me last night when one of my Irish session colleagues (mandolin/fiddle) came along to my English session for the first time. He remarked on problems in getting to grips with some of the English tunes, not because they're intrinsically difficult (they're not) but because the finger patterns on the fiddle for English music were so different to the Irish finger patterns he'd become used to over the years.
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
If I hear a tune played (live, radio, CD, whatever) on a guitar in standard tuning, I can often "see" it being played on the fretboard as I hear it, and know what key it is in, what notes are being played etc. If I hear music on any other instrument, my "clueless" quotient increases exponentially. I think that the guitar familiarity is due to the tuning, tonal and fingering idiosyncracies of the guitar, and my relative familiarity with the instrument.
As far as ability to play by ear, I am only so-so, and way behind many of the contributors to this forum.
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
It doesn't hurt to actually practice playing by ear. Pull out a recording that you don't already play (but it helps to be familiar with it, of course). Try listening the first time through. Try humming it the second time through, and then try playing it the third time through. Then start over again.
As geoffwright mentioned, the more you listen, the more you'll be able to predict what comes next, even if you've never heard the tune before. And the more you practice picking out a tune that you don't already play, the better you'll get at getting your fingers to do what comes next. And you'll also get better at listening for the tough parts of a tune - the parts that don't go where you expect them to. The better you get at it, you can mostly just pay attention to those tough parts, which is easier than having to pay attention to the whole tune...
And whoosis had some great insight as well. So Will, do you "think in fiddle"? Do you "think in flute"? Do you "think in banjo" (scary thought ), or is "thinking in banjo" the same as "thinking in fiddle"?
I am starting to "think in banjo" (again with the scary...), but I don't consider it a different thought process from "thinking in mandolin"...
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
Yeah, Pete, I do think in different instruments. In fact, the first hurdle I had to get over when I started learning flute was to quit thinking in fiddle.
I'm still grappling with this a bit when I switch from one instrument to the other in the middle of a session--if my brain doesn't click into the new format, my fingering short circuits. thankfully, this seems to be diminishing.
And banjo think *is* different from fiddle think. The left hand fingers notes differently on some tunes ("fiddle" fingering vs. "guitar" fingering), the right hand motion is more confined on banjo, and the articulations (ornaments) are different. So I can play tunes on banjo just because I know them on fiddle, but if I really want a tune to feel at home on banjo, I tend to work up a banjo-specific setting and go from there.
But the flip side is also true. Playing banjo has improved my bowed triplets and opened my ears to new places to use them. Playing flute has changed how I hear phrasing on fiddle, more in tune to breathing and how I might lilt (sing) the melody (assuming I could sing ).
Playing fiddle for so long helped me think in flute and banjo more quickly than I might have otherwise. I'm sure I still have a long way to go on flute before I'm really fluent in its language, let alone playing it. But like learning a second language, it's easier if you've done it before, and adding a third or fourth isn't as daunting a challenge. And a simple system six hole flute is easier to play than fiddle, even with the unfamiliarities of embouchure and breathing management.
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
strangely enough, once I can actually hum a tune (which is rare - I'm very bad at singing and have only about an octave of tessiture), playing it on the whistle is just a question of noodling around until I find it. Sometimes, because my ear is still poor, I "settle" for less and know it's wrong but can't figure it. Descending in thirds becomes descending in seconds, a misplaced interval causes the whole tune to inadvertedly change pitch....
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
Here's something that might be of interest. I have been able to play basic simple piano since I was a kid, but I was never able to play jazz "properly". Then for about six years (quite recently) I learned to play jazz (by ear) on various saxophones.
Then I sat down at the piano for the first time in several years, and I was amazed to find that now I can play jazz piano properly! Not well, not well at all, but it does sound like jazz piano when it never did before, and this includes things like chord voicings, which have very little to do with the single line melody of the sax.
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
Yeah, Will, I can see where banjo think and fiddle think would be different, especially the bowing bits.
But I tend to finger the mandolin and the banjo the same. And the picking is similar - I might do some different triplets depending on the instrument. But I can finger the mandolin/banjo/zouk with both "fiddle fingering" and "guitar fingering", and I don't think of them as different. I can switch back and forth between the two more or less at will, even during a tune. (Although, some of my oldest tunes that I learned one way or the other still feel more natural the way I learned them).
But when I am thinking of the tune, I am not thinking of which finger to use - so it's not so much "muscle memory" as "position on the fretboard" memory. Weird.
I think that may apply to Bernie's situation somewhat too. The more you are immersed in a certain type of music, the more you understand it at its basic levels. That's why it is difficult to play Irish music, for instance, if you don't immerse yourself in it. You may be able to play the tune, but it won't necessarily sound Irish until you start understanding it subconsciously down at the base levels.
I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
When I'm hearing a tune at session speed that I'm unfamiliar with, I'm able to hum the tune pretty much note-for-note after two times through. As soon as I put the whistle to my lips, I can barely play the tune at all.
So, I've got an idea. What if I, alone at home, start humming as I whistle? I wonder if I could strengthen the connection between my voice and my whistle. I know jazz pianists and guitarists who do this. Maybe there's something to it.
My other thought is to visit sessions, sit on the outer perimeter, and just hum along for the next year. When my head's full of tunes, I'll start whistling again.
Have any thoughts along this line?
# Posted on November 7th 2006 by stephenseifert
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
i'd say practicing the whistle is the key. It seems to me that the connection between your brain and your fingers needs to be improved. Practice, practice, practice!
# Posted on November 7th 2006 by Backer
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
You obviously have a really quick ear. I think the key is probably just getting to know your instrument inside-out. Then when you hear a note you'll automatically know what position your fingers should be in!! Really interesting one though. Good luck! Lizzy x
# Posted on November 7th 2006 by Lizzy
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
When I got real good at typing, after years of banging away at the keyboard, I realized that sometimes I typed "here" when I meant "hear" and things like that which made me realize that a lot of the typing was being done by my subconcious without thinking about every keystroke.
I am not there with my musical instruments yet. But that is what I aspire to. At that point, what gets hummed can also be whistled, pretty much automatically.
Like the directions to Carnegie Hall, "practice, man, practice."
# Posted on November 7th 2006 by AlBrown
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
Dare I say it, *noodling* can be a good way to forge the desired neural pathways. When a tune, or a bit of a tune, comes into your head, try and play it - whether it's a traditional tune, a popular song, a bit of classical music, a nursery rhyme or a TV theme tune. Keep an instrument to hand whenever possible, so you can pick it up every time you feel the urge to hum a tune, and try and play it instead.
Needless to say, this is best done in the privacy of your own home.
# Posted on November 8th 2006 by CreadurMawnOrganig
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
It is an interesting question. My experience is very different to yours, in some ways at least.
If I think of the melody of an easy tune I know but I have never played it, say the theme to a tv programme I hear frequently, then I can often play it first time I try. I don't do this at all often, but I have done it often enough over the years that I know I can do it.
If I heard an Irish tune I didn't know played at session speed I couldn't possibly remember it immediately. If I want to learn a completely new tune I need to listen to it several times, then try to sing it on my own (silently will do), listen to it again to check, sing it to myself until I can do that without struggling, then play it on the instrument. Then I would need to solve whatever technical problems the tune presents.
All Irish tunes present me with some challenges. I record myself playing fiddle a lot, and I can't remember ever playing any tune note perfect, with good intonation, timing, tone, ornamentation, variation, consistency etc etc, even after years and hundreds of times through that tune.
Tunes take unexpected turns, that's part of their charm. I would never expect to sit and hear new tunes and immediately join in with them, I'm not sure anybody at all could do that on a consistent basis, I'd be interested to hear about anybody like that.
# Posted on November 8th 2006 by Bernie 29
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
Oh yeah, I forgot to say, I have this idea that what you practice is what you do. So if you practice humming and whistling in the comfort and privacy of your own home you will then start to do it when you go into the outside world and move among other people. People will notice and will not think any the better of you. Yes, some jazzbos do hum and stuff, but they are a lot of show-offs with difficulties forming normal relationships, they do all kinds of absurd things to attract attention to themselves, sculptural facial hair , berets, pouting and so on. Just ignore them.
Play the whistle when you can, and when you can't, sing new tunes to yourself.
# Posted on November 8th 2006 by Bernie 29
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
Bernie - you'd be interested to hear about anybody like that.
My late, great friend Peter Kennedy was one. He died in june this year, aged 82 1/2, but up until the last few months, if he heard a new tune he'd join in on the second time through, note perfect. He was a great fiddle player, though very few people knew that, because he didn't used to play it in public - he played melodeon in public and was the best I've ever heard. He actually made it sound musical ...
Seamus Creagh used to do it almost as a party piece "Play me a tune I don't know". I think there are plenty of people out there who can do it - of course, they're not mortal, like you and me ...
But were you looking for inhabitants of the mustard to own up to the ability?
# Posted on November 8th 2006 by ethical blend
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
Stephen, your bio says you've played whistle for 16 years now. Has that been 16 years steady, or on and off? How comfortable/proficient are you with whistle?
I ask only because the answer to your question will depend on whether you really think in "whistle," or still translate from sound to finger memory.
Being really good at learning and playing tunes by ear on an instrument depends on playing "by sound," rather than by technique. You hear or imagine a sound and your body and instrument reflexively act as one to produce that sound, without thinking about what your fingers, hands, lips, lungs, or anything else have to do to make that sound.
So music isn't a finger position or movement or anything else--it just *is.*
If you're not at that stage yet on whistle, there's your problem.
If you think you are at that stage, or darn close, then there are some exercises that can help. Learn to play familiar tunes in different keys on the same whistle, so that you hear a root tone and relative intervals, not just "this tune's in G and starts on the 3rd note of the scale." At the same time, learn to recognize the particular sounds of different keys and pitches--how a D whistle sounds different from a C whistle, say.
# Posted on November 8th 2006 by Will Harmon
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
One thing I've done occasionally for this is to record my humming and play along. This helps me not to "lose the tune".
# Posted on November 8th 2006 by enirehtac
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
I have actually played whistle very little the last 16 years. It's really the last 12 months that I have been pursuing traditional Irish music with fervor.
I don't yet "think" in whistle, whoosis. When I hum, I actually see the tune as it would be played in the key of D on my main instrument, a lap dulcimer. I guess I think dulcimer. (In truth, I’m suffering from dulcimeritis.)
For example, if the group is playing a G tune I've never heard before, I start humming along and I begin to see the notes in my head as they would be played on a dulcimer in D.
I like whoosis's idea about playing a D tune in G and A on the whistle. I really just need to keep at it. It's just a dreadful feeling to have it in the head but not under the fingers.
Thanks for your thoughts on the matter!
Stephen
# Posted on November 8th 2006 by stephenseifert
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
I've learned lots of tunes by humming or whistling them before I play them on an instrument, but it's because I don't want to scare the other drivers by fiddling while I drive.
# Posted on November 8th 2006 by Bob himself
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
My fiddle teacher used to say you shouldn't play anything until you can hum or sing it - you should hear the piece in your head first.. I must admit I can't do that all the time though!
# Posted on November 8th 2006 by Tarrantella
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
Coming from the flute, there are actually very good other reasons for singing or humming along with the note you are playing. It's a wonderful exercise for getting your throat in tune with what you're playing. Singing along in unison, thirds or fifths or even deliberately slightly out of tune can produce some great (non-traditional) effects too. And it will make your bottom octace a lot more secure.
And as a side effect, I now recognise notes played by other instruments far better - I hum along with them, then I recognise which flute note that would be and can play it much more directly than before. I used to have to try several notess before I could find the correct one.
All this only applies to single notes as far as I have been learning it, but there is no reason why it shouldn't work with whole tunes.
# Posted on November 8th 2006 by Crackpot
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
Hi Ben,
No, I wasn't particularly looking for people here to confess to being prodigies, and I am interested to hear there are people who could learn tunes instantly. I suppose they must have the musical equivalent of phtographic memory. Amazing.
# Posted on November 8th 2006 by Bernie 29
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
Hi Bernie
Glad you weren't looking for confessions - could be embarassing. btw I can do it half the time, and half the time not - as I'm a moody b****r it rather depends on my mood ... but there are people around who can do it regularly, reliably, accurately and they are, as you say, "Amazing".
# Posted on November 8th 2006 by ethical blend
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
It isn't photographic memory, if you listen to enough ITM you get into the idiom and can often guess what is coming next in a tune. If you can do that, you don't need to learn as much of it.
I think that being able to play what you hum is a skill well worth learning. It makes transposing easier, and as a singer primarily, if I have the dots in front of me, I (silently) sing what I see and play along with what I sing - humming is the same analogy, I guess.
# Posted on November 8th 2006 by geoffwright
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
Also - don't be thinking ya gotta get it all - NOW! Often I get a snippet of something in my brain and then go and figure it out and play it. Then go back and get aother piece and start putting the puzzle together.
# Posted on November 8th 2006 by flutedoog
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
Actually, I followed the same path as Stephen, from lap dulcimer to irish flute. One of the exercises I found most helpful was to play fiddle tunes that I know on the dulcimer on the flute. When I started I found myself visualizing the first note on the dulcimer fretboard, and then going from there by ear. But more and more, I'm finding that my fingers sort of know where to start a tune...or at least can make an educated guess within a few choices. I also found it helpful to play simple tunes in several keys -- the D to G transposition is a good exercise and doesn't involve too many finger benders. Also playing tunes that have been in my head since forever, like Christmas carols and old folk songs. I've been working at it pretty steadily, and at an old time/bluegrass session this fall found that I was able to join in on my flute on tunes that I had always played on the dulcimer without really having to think about how to play them. I still can't do Irish stuff up to speed, but that's a matter of working on my flute technique and my Irish "vocabulary" for want of a better word.
# Posted on November 8th 2006 by KateG
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
Spoon usefully suggested "noodling". May I also suggest improvisation? It's a bit like noodling, but with a definite direction - you're inventing and constructing a tune, or part of one at any rate, on the hoof.
Improvisation is a centuries old skill, but seems to have gone a bit out of fashion now. Today it is mainly associated with jazz and church organists, but at one time any musician worth his salt was expected to improvise music as necessary. If you can improvise , then it can get you out of many a tight corner, as well as helping you to learn tunes.
There, I've leaked the secret of my survival in sessions
# Posted on November 8th 2006 by Trevor Jennings
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
A couple of posts ago Geoffwright was saying about if you listen to enough ITM you'll get into the idiom. Very true, and it applies to all kinds of music. That was brought home to me last night when one of my Irish session colleagues (mandolin/fiddle) came along to my English session for the first time. He remarked on problems in getting to grips with some of the English tunes, not because they're intrinsically difficult (they're not) but because the finger patterns on the fiddle for English music were so different to the Irish finger patterns he'd become used to over the years.
# Posted on November 8th 2006 by Trevor Jennings
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
If I hear a tune played (live, radio, CD, whatever) on a guitar in standard tuning, I can often "see" it being played on the fretboard as I hear it, and know what key it is in, what notes are being played etc. If I hear music on any other instrument, my "clueless" quotient increases exponentially. I think that the guitar familiarity is due to the tuning, tonal and fingering idiosyncracies of the guitar, and my relative familiarity with the instrument.
As far as ability to play by ear, I am only so-so, and way behind many of the contributors to this forum.
# Posted on November 9th 2006 by ceciltguitar
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
It doesn't hurt to actually practice playing by ear. Pull out a recording that you don't already play (but it helps to be familiar with it, of course). Try listening the first time through. Try humming it the second time through, and then try playing it the third time through. Then start over again.
), or is "thinking in banjo" the same as "thinking in fiddle"?
As geoffwright mentioned, the more you listen, the more you'll be able to predict what comes next, even if you've never heard the tune before. And the more you practice picking out a tune that you don't already play, the better you'll get at getting your fingers to do what comes next. And you'll also get better at listening for the tough parts of a tune - the parts that don't go where you expect them to. The better you get at it, you can mostly just pay attention to those tough parts, which is easier than having to pay attention to the whole tune...
And whoosis had some great insight as well. So Will, do you "think in fiddle"? Do you "think in flute"? Do you "think in banjo" (scary thought
I am starting to "think in banjo" (again with the scary...), but I don't consider it a different thought process from "thinking in mandolin"...
Pete
# Posted on November 9th 2006 by Reverend
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
Yeah, Pete, I do think in different instruments. In fact, the first hurdle I had to get over when I started learning flute was to quit thinking in fiddle.
).
I'm still grappling with this a bit when I switch from one instrument to the other in the middle of a session--if my brain doesn't click into the new format, my fingering short circuits. thankfully, this seems to be diminishing.
And banjo think *is* different from fiddle think. The left hand fingers notes differently on some tunes ("fiddle" fingering vs. "guitar" fingering), the right hand motion is more confined on banjo, and the articulations (ornaments) are different. So I can play tunes on banjo just because I know them on fiddle, but if I really want a tune to feel at home on banjo, I tend to work up a banjo-specific setting and go from there.
But the flip side is also true. Playing banjo has improved my bowed triplets and opened my ears to new places to use them. Playing flute has changed how I hear phrasing on fiddle, more in tune to breathing and how I might lilt (sing) the melody (assuming I could sing
Playing fiddle for so long helped me think in flute and banjo more quickly than I might have otherwise. I'm sure I still have a long way to go on flute before I'm really fluent in its language, let alone playing it. But like learning a second language, it's easier if you've done it before, and adding a third or fourth isn't as daunting a challenge. And a simple system six hole flute is easier to play than fiddle, even with the unfamiliarities of embouchure and breathing management.
# Posted on November 9th 2006 by Will Harmon
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
strangely enough, once I can actually hum a tune (which is rare - I'm very bad at singing and have only about an octave of tessiture), playing it on the whistle is just a question of noodling around until I find it. Sometimes, because my ear is still poor, I "settle" for less and know it's wrong but can't figure it. Descending in thirds becomes descending in seconds, a misplaced interval causes the whole tune to inadvertedly change pitch....
# Posted on November 9th 2006 by Tirno
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
Here's something that might be of interest. I have been able to play basic simple piano since I was a kid, but I was never able to play jazz "properly". Then for about six years (quite recently) I learned to play jazz (by ear) on various saxophones.
Then I sat down at the piano for the first time in several years, and I was amazed to find that now I can play jazz piano properly! Not well, not well at all, but it does sound like jazz piano when it never did before, and this includes things like chord voicings, which have very little to do with the single line melody of the sax.
# Posted on November 9th 2006 by Bernie 29
Re: I can hum the tune a lot sooner than I can play it. How can I bridge the gap?
Yeah, Will, I can see where banjo think and fiddle think would be different, especially the bowing bits.
But I tend to finger the mandolin and the banjo the same. And the picking is similar - I might do some different triplets depending on the instrument. But I can finger the mandolin/banjo/zouk with both "fiddle fingering" and "guitar fingering", and I don't think of them as different. I can switch back and forth between the two more or less at will, even during a tune. (Although, some of my oldest tunes that I learned one way or the other still feel more natural the way I learned them).
But when I am thinking of the tune, I am not thinking of which finger to use - so it's not so much "muscle memory" as "position on the fretboard" memory. Weird.
I think that may apply to Bernie's situation somewhat too. The more you are immersed in a certain type of music, the more you understand it at its basic levels. That's why it is difficult to play Irish music, for instance, if you don't immerse yourself in it. You may be able to play the tune, but it won't necessarily sound Irish until you start understanding it subconsciously down at the base levels.
Pete
# Posted on November 9th 2006 by Reverend