The Session >> Discussions >> Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
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Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
This discussion is primarily aimed at our more experienced players here but anyone can join in the fun.
We've had lots of great advice on the best way to learn Irish music including "Listen, listen, listen.." I'd actually agree with that, although I do use(and have used) other methods too, eg the dots. However, listening *is* very important.
What I would like to know is if the advice you give now about the best approach to learning Irish or any other traditional music is what you actually did yourself. Or did you learn the "hard way" before realising that your current way of thinking was best? Many of you might have had fiddle etc lessons imposed on you as a child, learned from the music, attended courses, or have been self taught from books etc. How many of you actually started to learn this music in your *now* preferred way?
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
I had no choice! It was listen, listen, listen since I grew up with a father that played box and flute and would host house sessions. I also heard many trad. albums that he had. So, later when I started playing, that was the most logical way for me to continue simply because I had all these tunes in my head and and knew how ornaments etc. sounded etc. I remember reading that a lot of the great old trad. musicians sometimes didn't start playing till their teens or early adulthood, but had many tunes imprinted in their mental circuitry from growing up with it in the house. Now, I still do things the same way to improve my playing. I found by having tunes playing on the stereo is almost a form of virtual practice. As I can hear how the recordings in my head and use that to (hopefully! not always) practice more effectively. Does that make sense?
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
I listened a lot as a beginner - it just seemed the right thing to do. "Saturation" listening, I called it.
Now I've got a permanent sound track running through my head all day long.
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
Nothing like it. I was put to piano lessons aged 6 with Miss Higgenbottom, Jedworth Avenue, Drumchapel. So, religiously, I would dae as telt, and practice my exercises, etc.... but my parents found it too noisy. My lessons stopped soon afterwards, alledgedly because I wasn't concentrating. Figure... Regarded as a late developer, I was discovered at age 11 to have the highest IQ (by several points) in my year. This is no lie. I don't care much for IQ's. But the whole thing is something I live with daily. BUt I will never, ever! discourage MY kids in their musical development.
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
Of course not. I was just plain bad. I was desperate to play. Once I got the bit between my teeth, I just galloped hell-for-leather towards tune nirvana. I would turn up at really good sessions, whip out the flute and play appalling and unrecognisable versions of risible tunes, thinking that this was the way forward. Listen? Huh! Are you mad?
Maybe I'm still just plain bad, but I think it's worth letting people have the benefit of the knowledge of my mistakes...
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
I didn't back then, but now I thank my parents every day for subjecting me to 10 years of lessons as a kid. I then put the fiddle down for 15 years, and when I decided to dust it off and try again, my fiddle teacher told me to start attending sessions. That's really where I learned most of what I know today, as well as from listening to CD's. She, of course, got me back on track and taught me the bowing style that I'm still using, but the sessions were the hook.
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
I learned to play fiddle by playing waltzes first, then jigs and polkas, and finally reels. I have to know the name of a tune and have the melody memorized before I can start to learn it on the fiddle. I learned the tunes by buying Walton's "Irelands best session tunes", with 110 tunes on 2 CDs, plus the sheet music of course. I also put all of Henrik Norbeck's (http://www.norbeck.nu/abc/) tunes into one huge master file, and use his ABCplay, and concertina.net's tune-a-tron, to print .pdf's of the tunes. I burn CDs of the tunes I want to learn, and play them constantly on my car CD player.
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
I listened alot (and have continued on since then) while I was learning the instrument and madly sawing away. It was really in my second year, when I got to play a couple times a week with a very nice box player from Galway, that I noticed that what I was listening to (and who) was starting to creep into my playing.
"The Listening" I think really started bearing fruit around that time, particularly with my rhythm.
I'd say that probably the most important thing that happens is that you are re-wiring your brain & ears to be able to really listen to a tune and hear its nuances. Remember how every tune used to sound the same? I had zero appreciation for the recordings of Michael Coleman and Bobby Casey then, and I'm sure that years from now I'll be recognizing new subtleties in them that I don't have the capacity to process even now.
My opinion on the matter can be summed up as this:
No matter what exercises you do, if you do not listen to this music and get it inside of you, how the hell is it ever supposed come out?
I was listening to Joe Ryan's rendition of the Piper's Chair today. It occurred to me that there's also the matter of this music being so much a part of the human condition that I feel like there are many layers of depth missing simply because I haven't been alive long enough. I get a glimpse of it sometimes when I'm playing a tune, and a certain memory will come back to me of someplace else I happened to be when playing that tune before, or I'm reminded of someone...extrapolate that to the span of your life, and the things that happen in it, and how *that* will shape your playing!
Wouldn't it be amusing to follow the progress of your life by choosing one tune, and making a few notes about where you're at in life after you come home from a session where you've played that tune? Maybe I will write a book when I am old and crusty entitled "The Pipe on the Hob & Me: 50 years of Magic!".
Chapter 1: Girl meets Pipe, Girl loses Pipe, finds Hob
Chapter 2: Pipe & Hob - Together At Last!
Chapter 3: Jealousy & Betrayal - Girl meets new Pipe & Hob
....
Chapter 278: The Swingin Golden Years - Girl takes both Pipes & Hobs out for a pint to her Local in the Retirement Village
Addendum: The Pipe on the Hob - The Funeral Dirge
You get my point. This is several other threads altogether I'm afraid!
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
I count myself lucky to have had a lot of music lessons (voluntary) as a kid. So that insured that my fingers are clever, I can read music at speed on sight etc.
I didn't hear much Irish traditional music until I was in my late teens. I did initially make the mistake of playing more that listening, and from dots at that. However, it was only when I began to get the chance to start hearing other players - both recorded and live - that I had any kind of breakthrough. That was 30 years ago, and I've listened incessantly ever since.
Like Bill Reeder says - I've got a soundtrack running permantly in my head now. But also in the house, in the car, etc.
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
I'm a school teacher first and foremost, so my way of teaching and learning takes in all the available learning channels. E.g. the visual, the auditory and the kinesthetic (e.g. doing).
These three relate to seeing how it's played,
hearing how it's played and
feeling how it's played, in other words getting the tune under the fingers.
I've been to workshops where they say you have to learn to hear the tune and then find it on your instrument. My view is that as we are all different learners, our learning channels will be different too.
I often wonder how many people are left unable to learn tunes because they are exiled from the dots. I use dots and listening and my fingers and then discard the dots.
I'm not saying anyone must use notation, but it CAN help to initially access the magic in the music.
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
Yes.
But my method of learning has completely removed me from the names of tunes, their histories and composers, and sometimes it slaps random A and B parts together.
Here's how I learn a tune: A fully fleshed out tune pops into my head that I've never tried to play before. I ask myself "Whose tune is that?" If I can think of where I heard it or who likes to play it it becomes even clearer as the tune in my head takes on nuances that I associate with that player. Then I just pick up my fiddle and play it. Sometimes I need to slow down to figure out an unfamiliar pattern, and sometimes I get parts of different tunes mixed in by accident and I can't get back on track, but that doesn't bug me much because I know I'll hear the tune again some day and I'll be paying closer attention. Sometimes the forgotten bits pop out in a while later while I'm thinking of something totally unrelated.
I don't even know how many tunes I know. It could be anywhere between seventy-five and three hundred. More if you count the really daggy ones.
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
It may help your general musical ability if you just do things and not deliberately try to learn something. E.g. you will find you are able to remember a complete tune and then put your fingers to it on your instrument. some day I noticed I could accompany most songs on the guitar without being given the chords or to play along to a given song and improvise at times. This came naturally with me being "where the music was".
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
I was a music major in art, and the next wing of the complex was where the music practice studios were located, and I would work on my art as I listened to people practicing piano next door. After class I would go watch the music students -- next thing I knew I had changed my major to music. Having this as my background was not necessarily the best thing when my attention was diverted to ITM. I approached ITM the same way I was taught to approach music in college. We did do a lot of ear training there, which was useful, but not in the same way. Also, the "rules" of music were quite different. I only wish that someone would have sat me down and explained that I should listen until the tune is playing in my head before I set out to learn it on my instrument. This realization has been one of the most important for my development, but before I understood this I wasted countless hours spinning my wheels.
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
Jack, burn that rubber!!!
My tires burned off years ago. just a greasy black slick on the long past road of life. Now I rattle along on the hubs, and God knows I try to listen more, but as soon as I hear something that grabs me, I want to play it! I say "No Mark, wait! Get it into your head FIRST!" But I want it now! I want to play those sweet notes! So (forgive me) I learn it and play it at the SAME TIME!
I know it's so wrong, but I'm weak. I am a pitiful, weak willed sinner.
But I know I'll be forgiven if I repent...
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
Applied listening for learning tunes: The two ways I do this now is...
1) the tunes that come up again and again at sessions I will find myself humming at some point, or when they come up I get the impulse that I know them. Then they're ripe for learning.
2) I'll have the same 6 CDs in rotation in my player that I listen to while I'm cooking, cleaning, etc. etc. and then I'll find myself humming a particular tune when the CD player isn't on. That tune is ripe for learning.
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
To add to the comments of Gentleman Jack Gilder, I have often commented to others that I don't pick the tune to learn--it picks me. But Jack--you cook? And clean? And ETC.???
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
Thanks for all the replies so far. As expected, not everyone has always practised what they now preach which is reassuring(for me, anyway). However, we all seem to be agreed that "listening" is extremely important. I'm still waiting for a comment from the man who inspired the thread.
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
I cook and clean in the all-together, Dow. The only clothing I have on IS my hat. (This really bad image in your head right now was brought to you by Dow.)
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
I started listening to the Bothy Band and Planxty when I was a kid. Started playing the mandolin and then the bazouki soon after. Kept listening and only picked up the fiddle in my early 20s. But by that time I'd listened enough to begin. Now, my ratio of listening to playing (not that I don't listen while I play) is about ten to one. If it ever fell under that, I know my playing would suffer.
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
For learning, there is listening and there is active listening.
At the beginning, I learned in any way that I could. Learning by ear was painful and learning from notes was painful. Eventually, I became better at learning by ear, and could play from the page too.
After a time, I found that whenever I tried to learn a tune from a book, I could never remember it. I did have some success with the Ceol Rince #3 book, which paired recordings with the dots.
I remember buying a tape player/alarm. I would listen to a tune right before going to bed, then rewind and set the alarm. That would be the tune I would wake up to.
I remember struggling and then having a breakthrough at Willie Clancy. I sat in a room with John Kelly Sr., Bobby Casey and Joe Ryan for a week. I did not have a tape recorder. I absorbed more music that week than I had in all my previous years combined.
Then, in a workshop I audited with Alistair Frasier, he mentioned that you can learn a tune by singing it, or whistling it. That link was made, and I was off.
Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
This discussion is primarily aimed at our more experienced players here but anyone can join in the fun.
We've had lots of great advice on the best way to learn Irish music including "Listen, listen, listen.." I'd actually agree with that, although I do use(and have used) other methods too, eg the dots. However, listening *is* very important.
What I would like to know is if the advice you give now about the best approach to learning Irish or any other traditional music is what you actually did yourself. Or did you learn the "hard way" before realising that your current way of thinking was best? Many of you might have had fiddle etc lessons imposed on you as a child, learned from the music, attended courses, or have been self taught from books etc. How many of you actually started to learn this music in your *now* preferred way?
# Posted on October 16th 2004 by John J.
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
I had no choice! It was listen, listen, listen since I grew up with a father that played box and flute and would host house sessions. I also heard many trad. albums that he had. So, later when I started playing, that was the most logical way for me to continue simply because I had all these tunes in my head and and knew how ornaments etc. sounded etc. I remember reading that a lot of the great old trad. musicians sometimes didn't start playing till their teens or early adulthood, but had many tunes imprinted in their mental circuitry from growing up with it in the house. Now, I still do things the same way to improve my playing. I found by having tunes playing on the stereo is almost a form of virtual practice. As I can hear how the recordings in my head and use that to (hopefully! not always) practice more effectively. Does that make sense?
# Posted on October 17th 2004 by meemtp
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
I listened a lot as a beginner - it just seemed the right thing to do. "Saturation" listening, I called it.
Now I've got a permanent sound track running through my head all day long.
# Posted on October 17th 2004 by Bill Reeder
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
Nothing like it. I was put to piano lessons aged 6 with Miss Higgenbottom, Jedworth Avenue, Drumchapel. So, religiously, I would dae as telt, and practice my exercises, etc.... but my parents found it too noisy. My lessons stopped soon afterwards, alledgedly because I wasn't concentrating. Figure... Regarded as a late developer, I was discovered at age 11 to have the highest IQ (by several points) in my year. This is no lie. I don't care much for IQ's. But the whole thing is something I live with daily. BUt I will never, ever! discourage MY kids in their musical development.
# Posted on October 17th 2004 by Rudall the time
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
Of course not. I was just plain bad. I was desperate to play. Once I got the bit between my teeth, I just galloped hell-for-leather towards tune nirvana. I would turn up at really good sessions, whip out the flute and play appalling and unrecognisable versions of risible tunes, thinking that this was the way forward. Listen? Huh! Are you mad?
Maybe I'm still just plain bad, but I think it's worth letting people have the benefit of the knowledge of my mistakes...
# Posted on October 17th 2004 by Ottery
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
yah ottery.... less listen listen listen, more play play play
one day eventually it does all come together
# Posted on October 17th 2004 by vboyd100
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
I didn't back then, but now I thank my parents every day for subjecting me to 10 years of lessons as a kid. I then put the fiddle down for 15 years, and when I decided to dust it off and try again, my fiddle teacher told me to start attending sessions. That's really where I learned most of what I know today, as well as from listening to CD's. She, of course, got me back on track and taught me the bowing style that I'm still using, but the sessions were the hook.
# Posted on October 17th 2004 by irishfiddler32
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
I learned to play fiddle by playing waltzes first, then jigs and polkas, and finally reels. I have to know the name of a tune and have the melody memorized before I can start to learn it on the fiddle. I learned the tunes by buying Walton's "Irelands best session tunes", with 110 tunes on 2 CDs, plus the sheet music of course. I also put all of Henrik Norbeck's (http://www.norbeck.nu/abc/) tunes into one huge master file, and use his ABCplay, and concertina.net's tune-a-tron, to print .pdf's of the tunes. I burn CDs of the tunes I want to learn, and play them constantly on my car CD player.
# Posted on October 17th 2004 by russellrapport
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
I listened alot (and have continued on since then) while I was learning the instrument and madly sawing away. It was really in my second year, when I got to play a couple times a week with a very nice box player from Galway, that I noticed that what I was listening to (and who) was starting to creep into my playing.
"The Listening" I think really started bearing fruit around that time, particularly with my rhythm.
I'd say that probably the most important thing that happens is that you are re-wiring your brain & ears to be able to really listen to a tune and hear its nuances. Remember how every tune used to sound the same? I had zero appreciation for the recordings of Michael Coleman and Bobby Casey then, and I'm sure that years from now I'll be recognizing new subtleties in them that I don't have the capacity to process even now.
My opinion on the matter can be summed up as this:
No matter what exercises you do, if you do not listen to this music and get it inside of you, how the hell is it ever supposed come out?
I was listening to Joe Ryan's rendition of the Piper's Chair today. It occurred to me that there's also the matter of this music being so much a part of the human condition that I feel like there are many layers of depth missing simply because I haven't been alive long enough. I get a glimpse of it sometimes when I'm playing a tune, and a certain memory will come back to me of someplace else I happened to be when playing that tune before, or I'm reminded of someone...extrapolate that to the span of your life, and the things that happen in it, and how *that* will shape your playing!
Wouldn't it be amusing to follow the progress of your life by choosing one tune, and making a few notes about where you're at in life after you come home from a session where you've played that tune? Maybe I will write a book when I am old and crusty entitled "The Pipe on the Hob & Me: 50 years of Magic!".
Chapter 1: Girl meets Pipe, Girl loses Pipe, finds Hob
Chapter 2: Pipe & Hob - Together At Last!
Chapter 3: Jealousy & Betrayal - Girl meets new Pipe & Hob
....
Chapter 278: The Swingin Golden Years - Girl takes both Pipes & Hobs out for a pint to her Local in the Retirement Village
Addendum: The Pipe on the Hob - The Funeral Dirge
You get my point. This is several other threads altogether I'm afraid!
# Posted on October 17th 2004 by _Steph_
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
I count myself lucky to have had a lot of music lessons (voluntary) as a kid. So that insured that my fingers are clever, I can read music at speed on sight etc.
I didn't hear much Irish traditional music until I was in my late teens. I did initially make the mistake of playing more that listening, and from dots at that. However, it was only when I began to get the chance to start hearing other players - both recorded and live - that I had any kind of breakthrough. That was 30 years ago, and I've listened incessantly ever since.
Like Bill Reeder says - I've got a soundtrack running permantly in my head now. But also in the house, in the car, etc.
# Posted on October 17th 2004 by kris
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
I'm a school teacher first and foremost, so my way of teaching and learning takes in all the available learning channels. E.g. the visual, the auditory and the kinesthetic (e.g. doing).
These three relate to seeing how it's played,
hearing how it's played and
feeling how it's played, in other words getting the tune under the fingers.
I've been to workshops where they say you have to learn to hear the tune and then find it on your instrument. My view is that as we are all different learners, our learning channels will be different too.
I often wonder how many people are left unable to learn tunes because they are exiled from the dots. I use dots and listening and my fingers and then discard the dots.
I'm not saying anyone must use notation, but it CAN help to initially access the magic in the music.
# Posted on October 17th 2004 by Susie-Lee
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
I really should say that the first stop is to LISTEN listen listen. I know it's been said many times before... but it really has to come first.
# Posted on October 17th 2004 by Susie-Lee
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
Yes.
But my method of learning has completely removed me from the names of tunes, their histories and composers, and sometimes it slaps random A and B parts together.
Here's how I learn a tune: A fully fleshed out tune pops into my head that I've never tried to play before. I ask myself "Whose tune is that?" If I can think of where I heard it or who likes to play it it becomes even clearer as the tune in my head takes on nuances that I associate with that player. Then I just pick up my fiddle and play it. Sometimes I need to slow down to figure out an unfamiliar pattern, and sometimes I get parts of different tunes mixed in by accident and I can't get back on track, but that doesn't bug me much because I know I'll hear the tune again some day and I'll be paying closer attention. Sometimes the forgotten bits pop out in a while later while I'm thinking of something totally unrelated.
I don't even know how many tunes I know. It could be anywhere between seventy-five and three hundred. More if you count the really daggy ones.
# Posted on October 17th 2004 by Kerri Brown
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
Ooh, and also, no. I did take classical piano lessons as a kid, resulting in the piano being pretty much the only instrument I can't play by ear.
# Posted on October 17th 2004 by Kerri Brown
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
It may help your general musical ability if you just do things and not deliberately try to learn something. E.g. you will find you are able to remember a complete tune and then put your fingers to it on your instrument. some day I noticed I could accompany most songs on the guitar without being given the chords or to play along to a given song and improvise at times. This came naturally with me being "where the music was".
# Posted on October 17th 2004 by kuec
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
I was a music major in art, and the next wing of the complex was where the music practice studios were located, and I would work on my art as I listened to people practicing piano next door. After class I would go watch the music students -- next thing I knew I had changed my major to music. Having this as my background was not necessarily the best thing when my attention was diverted to ITM. I approached ITM the same way I was taught to approach music in college. We did do a lot of ear training there, which was useful, but not in the same way. Also, the "rules" of music were quite different. I only wish that someone would have sat me down and explained that I should listen until the tune is playing in my head before I set out to learn it on my instrument. This realization has been one of the most important for my development, but before I understood this I wasted countless hours spinning my wheels.
# Posted on October 17th 2004 by Phantom Button
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
Jack, burn that rubber!!!
My tires burned off years ago. just a greasy black slick on the long past road of life. Now I rattle along on the hubs, and God knows I try to listen more, but as soon as I hear something that grabs me, I want to play it! I say "No Mark, wait! Get it into your head FIRST!" But I want it now! I want to play those sweet notes! So (forgive me) I learn it and play it at the SAME TIME!
I know it's so wrong, but I'm weak. I am a pitiful, weak willed sinner.
But I know I'll be forgiven if I repent...
How does that Siobhan O'Donnell's go again?
Mark
# Posted on October 18th 2004 by Ottery
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
"Give 'er"
# Posted on October 18th 2004 by Kerri Brown
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
Applied listening for learning tunes: The two ways I do this now is...
1) the tunes that come up again and again at sessions I will find myself humming at some point, or when they come up I get the impulse that I know them. Then they're ripe for learning.
2) I'll have the same 6 CDs in rotation in my player that I listen to while I'm cooking, cleaning, etc. etc. and then I'll find myself humming a particular tune when the CD player isn't on. That tune is ripe for learning.
# Posted on October 18th 2004 by Phantom Button
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
To add to the comments of Gentleman Jack Gilder, I have often commented to others that I don't pick the tune to learn--it picks me. But Jack--you cook? And clean? And ETC.???
# Posted on October 18th 2004 by woman of the house
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
Oh dear, Jack wearing a pinny and wielding a feather duster LOL. Jack I hope you at least take off your silly hat first otherwise it'd be too much
# Posted on October 18th 2004 by Dr. Dow
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
Thanks for all the replies so far. As expected, not everyone has always practised what they now preach which is reassuring(for me, anyway). However, we all seem to be agreed that "listening" is extremely important. I'm still waiting for a comment from the man who inspired the thread.
# Posted on October 18th 2004 by John J.
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
I cook and clean in the all-together, Dow. The only clothing I have on IS my hat. (This really bad image in your head right now was brought to you by Dow.)
# Posted on October 18th 2004 by Phantom Button
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
',:-⌡ The worrying thing is that, knowing what the hippies are like in SF, you're most likely telling the truth.
# Posted on October 18th 2004 by Dr. Dow
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
I started listening to the Bothy Band and Planxty when I was a kid. Started playing the mandolin and then the bazouki soon after. Kept listening and only picked up the fiddle in my early 20s. But by that time I'd listened enough to begin. Now, my ratio of listening to playing (not that I don't listen while I play) is about ten to one. If it ever fell under that, I know my playing would suffer.
# Posted on October 18th 2004 by llig leahcim
Re: Listen, listen, listen.... Great advice but was that how you learned to play in your earlier days?
For learning, there is listening and there is active listening.
At the beginning, I learned in any way that I could. Learning by ear was painful and learning from notes was painful. Eventually, I became better at learning by ear, and could play from the page too.
After a time, I found that whenever I tried to learn a tune from a book, I could never remember it. I did have some success with the Ceol Rince #3 book, which paired recordings with the dots.
I remember buying a tape player/alarm. I would listen to a tune right before going to bed, then rewind and set the alarm. That would be the tune I would wake up to.
I remember struggling and then having a breakthrough at Willie Clancy. I sat in a room with John Kelly Sr., Bobby Casey and Joe Ryan for a week. I did not have a tape recorder. I absorbed more music that week than I had in all my previous years combined.
Then, in a workshop I audited with Alistair Frasier, he mentioned that you can learn a tune by singing it, or whistling it. That link was made, and I was off.
# Posted on October 18th 2004 by Jode