Wow: I just finished reading 50 comments on the sight reading vs ear learning thread.
My confession: I use sight reading as a tool, roughly, to jog my memory. Much more comfortable with ear work, but am curently in lessons and realize that others actually figure out /want to know what key a tune is in, whereas I, being more intuitive than analytical, just feel out the notes of a tune, and as I play either the fiddle or accordion, look at my instrument and develop a spatial memory of a tune vis-a-vis the buttons/fingerboard.
I guess that means I'm a kinesthetic learner. I do seem to function well this way, but am debating whether I should do the work of key memorization.
My accordion teacher will say to start a tune - in the middle say, on the G, and I can get there, but its making me put another step into learning the tune. But if he says to start say at the beginning of the B part, or the last phrase of the A part etc I can jump there quite quickly...because I have that spatial relationship of the tune to the instrument. The spatial sense works without looking at the instrument after I have burned the tune into my brain.
Is there anyone out there who just feels it out like I do?
I guess the maybe real question is: how do people feel about using music theory to enhance learning.
Re: Figuring out the keys of tunes/ learning styles
In general I'd say anything that helps you get started in the early stages, anything that helps you get a handle on a tune, is good - even music theory, why not!
If you rely more on your ear than sheet music, good - much better than the other way around.
But your talk of kinesthetic learning and burning the tune into your brain sounds little alarm bells. I once had a fiddle student who like you had difficulty starting a tune anywhere except at the beginning of the various parts - extreme difficulty in his case.
I soon realized that he learned the tunes more as mechanical sequences of finger movements than anything else. The problem with this is not only that you cannot pick up halfway through, or recover from a mistake, but that changing what you play at will (so important in this music) becomes almost impossible.
I stopped teaching this man over 10 years ago and he hasn't really progressed in that time despite hours and hours of dedicated practice. I'm convinced it's because he wasn't - and isn't - really using his ears to learn.
Obviously a spatial relationship with your instrument is vital, but keep your ears in the driving seat. Otherwise you might as well be typing!
Re: Figuring out the keys of tunes/ learning styles
I think no matter what the task is, everyone has an individual way of learning. Some things we learn very easily, some things not so. I also believe that when we have been playing an instrument for a long time we learn to "hear" a note and your fingers automatically go there. If you were to break down the process that your brain went through to get there we would fill several pages. I've played flute for a long time and can usually figure out the key of a tune in a few seconds. I've played fiddle for a rather short period of time and despite the fact that the key of "D" is a pretty good guess for most tunes (at my stage anyway), it takes longer for brain and fingers to get together. If you were to ask the same questions regarding learning a different speaking language for example, Gaelic. The words as written on a page bear little correlation to how they sound for a person who has spoken only English. You couldn't possibly learn to speak Gaelic by only following phoenetics or the theory behind the pronunciation. You have to hear it spoken to grasp the nuances.
Re: Figuring out the keys of tunes/ learning styles
The 'kinaesthetic' method is an essential phase in the process of learning any instrument - after all, the physical action of putting the fingers in certain places at certain times is what causes the instrument to produce the sounds which make up the tune. People differ in their mental makeup, and I would think that some need to concentrate more on this aspect of learning than others. But it is all too easy to lean too heavily on it, and neglect to concentrate on correlating physical actions with the sound they produce, so thast this too becomes second nature.
Re: Figuring out the keys of tunes/ learning styles
I think that learning music theory is just as important as learning how to play the tune/memorization, etc. It helps you understand how tunes are structured, thus aiding your overall understanding of Irish music (or whatever style you're learning). Plus eventually you'll need to know what key to yell out to the guitar/bouzouki player in the middle of a session.
Learning kinaesthetically is good. Everyone has different learning styles. As David was saying, if you rely too heavily on one style of learning, you'll never really have a grasp on how your instrument works as a whole. For example, if you rely really heavily on learning tunes in relation to their finger patterns, it becomes much more difficult to change your fingering for spontaneous variations and/or changing the key of the tune. A visual learner may never be able to pick up tunes by ear because they rely so much on the sheet music....you get the idea.
It's a good idea to recognise all the different styles of learning/playing, while still using your strengths to help you learn. I would suggest making sure that you can sing the tune before you sit down to try to play it. If you can sing it, you can play it in any key, any instrument, etc. Since you use sight reading as a tool (are you familiar with solfege at all?), try writing the tune out in ABC format instead of "dots," which will force you to read the actual letter names rather than the finger pattern which might have become familiar to you when you read dots.
Get in touch with a theory teacher or read a little about the basics. It's pretty simple to tell what key a tune is in, and after a while you'll begin to hear it yourself.
Figuring out the keys of tunes/ learning styles
Figuring out the keys of tunes/ learning styles
Wow: I just finished reading 50 comments on the sight reading vs ear learning thread.
My confession: I use sight reading as a tool, roughly, to jog my memory. Much more comfortable with ear work, but am curently in lessons and realize that others actually figure out /want to know what key a tune is in, whereas I, being more intuitive than analytical, just feel out the notes of a tune, and as I play either the fiddle or accordion, look at my instrument and develop a spatial memory of a tune vis-a-vis the buttons/fingerboard.
I guess that means I'm a kinesthetic learner. I do seem to function well this way, but am debating whether I should do the work of key memorization.
My accordion teacher will say to start a tune - in the middle say, on the G, and I can get there, but its making me put another step into learning the tune. But if he says to start say at the beginning of the B part, or the last phrase of the A part etc I can jump there quite quickly...because I have that spatial relationship of the tune to the instrument. The spatial sense works without looking at the instrument after I have burned the tune into my brain.
Is there anyone out there who just feels it out like I do?
I guess the maybe real question is: how do people feel about using music theory to enhance learning.
# Posted on November 28th 2002 by lees
Re: Figuring out the keys of tunes/ learning styles
In general I'd say anything that helps you get started in the early stages, anything that helps you get a handle on a tune, is good - even music theory, why not!
If you rely more on your ear than sheet music, good - much better than the other way around.
But your talk of kinesthetic learning and burning the tune into your brain sounds little alarm bells. I once had a fiddle student who like you had difficulty starting a tune anywhere except at the beginning of the various parts - extreme difficulty in his case.
I soon realized that he learned the tunes more as mechanical sequences of finger movements than anything else. The problem with this is not only that you cannot pick up halfway through, or recover from a mistake, but that changing what you play at will (so important in this music) becomes almost impossible.
I stopped teaching this man over 10 years ago and he hasn't really progressed in that time despite hours and hours of dedicated practice. I'm convinced it's because he wasn't - and isn't - really using his ears to learn.
Obviously a spatial relationship with your instrument is vital, but keep your ears in the driving seat. Otherwise you might as well be typing!
Good luck,
Steve
# Posted on November 29th 2002 by Jeeves Tones
Re: Figuring out the keys of tunes/ learning styles
I think no matter what the task is, everyone has an individual way of learning. Some things we learn very easily, some things not so. I also believe that when we have been playing an instrument for a long time we learn to "hear" a note and your fingers automatically go there. If you were to break down the process that your brain went through to get there we would fill several pages. I've played flute for a long time and can usually figure out the key of a tune in a few seconds. I've played fiddle for a rather short period of time and despite the fact that the key of "D" is a pretty good guess for most tunes (at my stage anyway), it takes longer for brain and fingers to get together. If you were to ask the same questions regarding learning a different speaking language for example, Gaelic. The words as written on a page bear little correlation to how they sound for a person who has spoken only English. You couldn't possibly learn to speak Gaelic by only following phoenetics or the theory behind the pronunciation. You have to hear it spoken to grasp the nuances.
# Posted on November 30th 2002 by ANNY
Re: Figuring out the keys of tunes/ learning styles
The 'kinaesthetic' method is an essential phase in the process of learning any instrument - after all, the physical action of putting the fingers in certain places at certain times is what causes the instrument to produce the sounds which make up the tune. People differ in their mental makeup, and I would think that some need to concentrate more on this aspect of learning than others. But it is all too easy to lean too heavily on it, and neglect to concentrate on correlating physical actions with the sound they produce, so thast this too becomes second nature.
# Posted on November 30th 2002 by ragaman
Re: Figuring out the keys of tunes/ learning styles
I think that learning music theory is just as important as learning how to play the tune/memorization, etc. It helps you understand how tunes are structured, thus aiding your overall understanding of Irish music (or whatever style you're learning). Plus eventually you'll need to know what key to yell out to the guitar/bouzouki player in the middle of a session.
Learning kinaesthetically is good. Everyone has different learning styles. As David was saying, if you rely too heavily on one style of learning, you'll never really have a grasp on how your instrument works as a whole. For example, if you rely really heavily on learning tunes in relation to their finger patterns, it becomes much more difficult to change your fingering for spontaneous variations and/or changing the key of the tune. A visual learner may never be able to pick up tunes by ear because they rely so much on the sheet music....you get the idea.
It's a good idea to recognise all the different styles of learning/playing, while still using your strengths to help you learn. I would suggest making sure that you can sing the tune before you sit down to try to play it. If you can sing it, you can play it in any key, any instrument, etc. Since you use sight reading as a tool (are you familiar with solfege at all?), try writing the tune out in ABC format instead of "dots," which will force you to read the actual letter names rather than the finger pattern which might have become familiar to you when you read dots.
Get in touch with a theory teacher or read a little about the basics. It's pretty simple to tell what key a tune is in, and after a while you'll begin to hear it yourself.
Hope this helps!
Cara
# Posted on November 30th 2002 by carafiddle