I just read a reply to a post where someone was asking for sheet music and was told they could learn it by ear. I'm not usually a confrontional person but here it comes.
I'm a little tired of people on this board who feel that you just CAN"T play ITM if you learn it from "the dots." I can certainly apprciate all that can be learned by listening, watching and discussing but do you think some of your favoirtes don't use sheet music to learn new tunes?
I played around with the fiddle for a time and just couldn't get it. Maybe I'm just stupid. I decided I needed lessons and didn't care what form they came in. Johnny Cunningham was my first teacher and GUESS WHAT? He started me right in using sheet music. I would arrive at his house for lessons and find him playing from sheet music. I've read that Natalie MacMaster said she uses sheet music to learn new tunes and even has it in her own handwriting on her website. Kevin Burke and the rest probably use it too.
There is great merit in both playing by ear and reading the dots even if you just use them for a guideline. I couldn't play one tune by ear no matter how much I tried before learning from the sheet music. Now that I know the instrument I'm 1000 times better at learning by ear. The fiddle is hard enought to learn, stop making people feel like they'll never amount to anything if they use sheet music.
I can feel the blistering heat already. Ok, you can let me have it..........if it will make you feel like a bigger person.
You're not alone. For me, I think dots helps me build my reportoire, but listening makes me a better player. I don't get to play with people enough to reach a point where I would know a hundred tunes. But I can easily learn a tune a week through dots, so I'm glad for them.
I play fiddle and whistle, and it was my whistle teacher that taught me to use dots to learn the most basic version of the tune. She would even re-write them using notation like D E F G A A A to capture the pure bottomline melody. Then you'd learn the tune from the ground up and add your own ornamentation. Her thought was that many of the dots you see are people's interpretation of the song, not the song itself. She said you need to learn the tune, not the way someone else plays it.
It made a lot of sense to me. And since I've joined a few sessions now, I'm glad I know the stripped down version of the tunes, as it allows me keep up with the speed.
"I couldn't play one tune by ear no matter how much I tried before learning from the sheet music"
Mary,
Really, I can't see how sheet music would help you any more if you were a beginner. Unless, of course, you were already conversant with sheet music in some other area.
I never really read sheet music at all until relatively recently but always played by ear before that.
The notion of someone not being able to play be ear is something which I can't really understand at all(though I believe some have this problem). If you know where the notes (or the sound of the notes) are on your instrument and you have the "tune in your head" surely it's a fairly easy matter to transfer the notes from your head on to the instrument? The only problem is "the mechanics" which comes with practising but I can't see how being able to sight read helps with that.
Having said all that, I have no problem with sheet music at all. It's a very useful tool but only in conjunction with playing by ear and listening.
I've learned loads of tunes from sheet music but have always found this process easier if I've already heard the music or I'm able to listen to it as I'm learning.
Again, I'm sure good experienced players can learn a completely unknown/unheard tune from the dots and interpret it in their own style or as it would normally be played by Irish/Scottish musicians. However, most written tunes are just the "bare bones" so somebody who was unfamiliar with "the music" would be unable to do this effectively.
Amen, John J. Nothing wrong with learning from the dots- I'm sure most of us have done or are still doing so. It's just that *playing* without the dots seems to bring out the best (and the zest) in the music. If you can't sight read, you don't have much choice, anyway.
I have come to realize that when people express disapproval of learning from sheet music, they are actually expressing disapproval for certain sorts of practices which just happen to involve sheet music -- things such as:
- sight reading or playing from sheet music without actually paying attention to the tune you are playing
- playing tunes exactly as notated without the necessary interpretation, style, variations, etc, to make it sound right
- learning and/or playing only from sheet music, not listening to other players, live or recorded
So these practices, which just happen to involve sheet music, are a recipe for a style of playing which lacks that Nyah. But surely it's not the sheet music's fault, it's the fault of the player for relying overly much on the sheet music, and not developing their ear or a deeper sense of how this music is supposed to sound.
This is such a simple point that I don't know why there is so much sound and fury over the issue of sheet music. I guess sheet music is an easy target.
People have different brains....... they learn by different methods. If it's easier to learn with the dots, who cares? You can develop your ear training over time.
When I was a kid I had to struggle terribly with reading dots, it was always so much easier to just hear it and play by ear. Other people are the exact opposite. What is the problem here??????
Johnny Cunningham taught with sheet music? That's so cool. Not terribly surprising, now that I think about it, because he also used to listen to a lot of the old fiddlers of many other traditions, which all had an influence on his playing, even though it was fundamentally Scottish in style. It seems to me that that is what any good musician would do---take advantage of any and every resource and learn as much as possible from it, and develop your own style as you go.
Kennedy, you are my hero. I agree that all resources should be used.
And, yes John J. I couldn't play ONE thing by ear. I think learning by written music first helped me by putting everything in order...the ol' brain didn't have to struggle with so many things at once and I didn't have to re-learn it the next time I picked up the fiddle.
I do play be ear now and LOVE it.
As for Johnny teaching with written music when I started with him he was teaching out of George Brittan Folk Studio here in PA. Maybe it was their requirement as they also sold music books. However when he left there and was teaching from his home he also used the written music.
Anyone logging onto TheSession you should be allowed to ask for sheet music. That is one of the reasons for this site. Perhaps those who have always read music can benefit from 'learning by ear' & vice versa. (In an ideal world)
When learning a new tune I prefer to use all the available resources. In an actual session I want to be prepared to 'play w/out the sheet'
Many of the people who claim that they "can;t learn by ear" are not being truthful. Learning by ear is a *skill*, not a talent, that takes practice to develop just like anything else. Many people do not or choose not realize this.
Just a guess (because I played by ear from age 3 to age 8 before learning to read), but for a beginner, the dots show the direction of the melody and the size of the interval between adjacent notes in a visual way that corresponds pretty well to what the fingers have to do to play it on many instruments. Probably many beginners don't have a built-in grasp of intervals and can't quickly figure out how far it is from one note to the next. The dots show it.
If you're a fiddle player I think a useful way of learning a tune from the dots is to use a source* that is a reasonably accurate transcription of the tune as played on a different instrument such as a banjo or button accordion. Because these instruments play tunes in a different way to the fiddle (and sometimes a button-accordion version can be quite awkward on the fiddle) this will encourage the fiddle player to make his/her own version of the tune to suit their fiddle. In other words, you're forced to think about the tune and that makes you get away from learning it by rote from the dots.
Thinks ... I only wish I could do this sometimes in my orchestral playing while still remaining a member of the orchestra
* One such source I have in mind is Matt Cunningham's transcriptions of the tunes he plays on the first 10 CDs of his set dancing collection "Dance Music of Ireland: Vols 1-10" - see the Recordings Section for further details.
GaryAMartin, and ceolachan recently on another thread, have made this useful point about the shape of tune being revealed by the dots on the page. I used this to good effect a few days ago when I was sorting out the tune names on one of Matt Cunningham's CD (the only one where the tunes do NOT correspond to the dots in his tune book, for reasons that are unnecessary to go into here), and in addition to doing an ABC search for the tunes or the tune names I didn't know (a fair number, btw) I also trawled through some tune books looking for the shape of the tune ina particular key. It worked.
I don't know about that, wormdiet. Certainly anyone can learn to do it, but it does come more easily to some. For me, it comes easily and it's fun. But that's only on fiddle, which is weird. I've tried picking out tunes on piano and flute and guitar before and it was much more of a slog. There is something about the way the fiddle works, with the four strings tuned in fifths, and each octave just four notes on each of two strings, that the tunes just come out of my fingers without my having to think about it too hard. It was never that easy with the guitar, with all those strings and frets and chords *shudder*.
Anyway, I think some people are more naturally inclined to one way of learning or another, but you build on your strengths and painstakingly work on the weaknesses.
And Mary, any time you want to tell us stories about the things Johnny Cunningham taught you, please feel free! Will has done that a lot here with some of the things he learned from Kevin Burke and it's incredibly educational and inspiring!
As a boy I lived on a farm in the North of England(1940s). There most Friday nights musicians gathered to play, a variety of instruments some played by ear ,some used music books ..But all of them stressed to me as a boy of 6yrs that it was importent to learn to read music. It is worth remembering that many of the tunes we play today were origionally writen down in the many manuscript books which have been found in Record Offices and Museums round Britain. Think of the Vickers Manuscripts for example. The important thing is to learn to play the tune, it matters not how... then to "make it your own"as old Shepherd Tom Atkins would tell me.
I don't dispute the idea that certain people are more naturally predisposed to ear learning than others. But it's a skill that the vast majority of us can pick up with work.
I was primarily paper trained myself as a kid, because I started with GHB's. Because absolute unison is required in a band setting, you really do need to notate every ornament and variation in a way not necessary for most Irish stuff.
I had a relatively plainful transition to ears myself. What I am saying is that a lot of people never make the leap, even though they could and should.
Kennedy I was about to post something similar regarding learning by ear on different instruments. I played classical euphonium for years and although I now haven't played in quite some time, when I tried back then to pick a tune out by ear....it just never went anywhere. I could play beautifully from music, but the ear skill was not one that I developed nor that came easily for me on that instrument.
On fiddle though...I've been playing for about a year with varying degrees of intensity and can pick up tunes easily enough that at times I surprise myself. Of course I've only been learning to play fiddle by ear, but still...it's suprising to me.
Sorry, Kennedy theres not much to tell. I started with Johnny in January and he moved out of the area that summer. I was so new at fiddling it was all very basic stuff. He was very entertaining though making jokes and clowing around when I got tense during the lesson.
I used to see him at the local watering holes from time to time.
Don't get me wrong we weren't great friends but it was a privledge to know him and be his student for a short time.
i use both. its how my teacher at the flute lessons does it. i generally learn the tune by ear and use the dots to make sure im doing it right. (im prone to slips all over the place).
Learning by ear requires two abilities--one is to recognize pitches and intervals. Most of us figure out how to do that with our voices, so we can sing along at birthday parties, or to the raadio, etc.
The second ability for any instrumentalist is the ability to reproduce those pitches and intervals accurately and consistently on the chosen instrument. The more skilled you are on your instrument, the easier it is to play tunes by ear.
Conversely, if you're a total newcomer to an instrument, it can take a while to sort out where the notes are, how the intervals are arranged, along with all the other technique (embouchure, holding the bow, pumping a bag and bellows, etc.).
In my experience as a music teacher, most people new to playing music struggle enough with all the technical aspects of an instrument that adding sheet music *or* learning by ear is too much at first. So I usually start off with basic kinetic learning--"this finger goes here and makes this sound"--step by step, until the student grows familiar with the instrument and technique. Then I introduce ear concepts and sheet music/abcs/tablature.
Mary, it doesn't surpise me at all that Johnny Cunningham played and taught from the dots. Most accomplished, experienced musicians use all the tools available to them. But Johnny grew up hearing and playing the music. The dots merely corresponded to what he already knew. What some people here have railed against is the notion that beginners with little to no listening experience of this music can simply buy a book of tunes and start playing them. I've run into folks who try this, and years on they haven't progressed. Their playing is mechanical, robotic, and often unrecognizable as dance music.
Thankfully, many classically trained musicians now get their start with Suzuki or some similar method, where ear training is introduced very early, so they know how to listen even when they rely on sheet music.
Which is the big answer to this whole situation: sheet music is just another way to get the sounds into your head. "Sight reading" is a redundant misnomer--it's really sight *hearing,* being able to hear a tune just from seeing the dots. In short, when used to its true potential, even sheet music is an aural tool.
Well put puddy tat. I'd been listening to ITM for about 20 years before I started playing. I think the whole thing of trying not to make the instrument sound like a wounded puddy tat and finding the notes overwhelmed me.
I still like being able to read the music. When I see those dotted notes I can just hear the swing in those hornpipes.
Anybody besides me object to written music being referred to as "the dots"? Is that supposed to be clever? It just sounds derisive and immature.
Without written music, much of the music we all love would be long lost. That's why it exists. In fact, that's the only reason it exists. To disparage that betrays an insecurity borne of not knowing how to read music. Every form of music has to be heard to be played properly; ITM has no exclusive on that fact. But wherever you come down on the issue, show some class and refer to it properly. I've never seen "the dots" anywhere but on ITM sites. Doesn't speak well for those of us who want to be known as musicians, does it?
Ailin, much of the music we play in this tradition was kept alive aurally, not through the written collections. Yes, O'Neill's and all the others helped in their way, but without the musicians playing them and passing them down generation to generation, no one today would know what the dots were supposed to sound like. We'd all be playing jigs straight.
And I use "the dots" as short hand--shorter than typing out "sheet music" or "written notation" every time. I think of it more as a nickname, not disparaging, but also a reminder not to take them too seriously--they are, after all, just a graphic model of an aural art form, not the art form themselves.
I'm not a musician because I can read the dots--I can read the dots because I'm a musician.
P.S. Leonard Bernstein called them "dots," and also "ink stains" and "heiroglyphics."
And before anyone bites my head off, yes, notation can be an art form in it's own right, but it's a graphic art form and does not have to be played to be appreciated.
The 'dots' we have for traditional music aren't the same as the sheet music for classical music. They are just a pointer to the way the tune goes. They are only an indicator of one setting of the tune, and the tune will undoubtably have many settings. Some of those settings will place the tune closer to a tune with a different name than the name above the dots. That's one reason why the dots can be a dangerous thing. If they are used as a teaching aid by a skilled musician, you can be sure he/she will not be teaching you those dots, - you'll be shown the way the notes pointed at by those dots lean and bend and become the music. The important thing is to learn the vernacular first.
Compare the basic notation of tunes in O'Neill's with this properly notated piece of classical music, if you don't believe me: http://www.well.com/user/bryan/waltz.html
Mary, my hunch is that you can learn and play by ear just fine, and the real roadblock in the beginning was simply being unfamiliar with the fiddle. In fact, most of us go through just such a period of being overwhelmed by the technique requirements and nuances of making sound on an instrument, so that real music isn't possible until you reach some basic level of ability. I remember it took me a couple of weeks on flute before I could get something other than a squawk or whisper--there wasn't much point in trying to play a tune even though I had hundreds of tunes in my head wanting to come out on the flute. Then, being able to label each fingering hole with the pitch it produced gave me a frame of reference for sussing out some tunes. Now, after just a few years of playing, I don't think in those terms--the notes are simply where they are, and my fingers do whatever they need to make the note I want to play.
It took longer for me to work all that out on fiddle--some instruments are more complicated than others. Keyless flute has six finger holes. Once you can produce a decent tone and can change octaves, the technical needs are pretty simple. Fiddle has many more fingering options, and there's the whole "truckly how" of using horsehair tied to a stick to make the strings vibrate (must've been Rube Goldberg's great-great-great-grandfather who invented that).
My older brother was Bernstein's musical assistant for 15 years. Helped with scoring and arranging for orchestras. "LB" was passionate about music (and many other things, inclkuding anagrams), and very playful too.
"The dots" can be a term of endearment. I've heard Itzak Perlman talk about his "fiddle," as well.
I've started using the term "dots" to distinguish standard musical notation from ABC notation, which is also a form of written music. Nowadays, and especially in Irish music, ABC is very commonly used in place of standard notation. "Written music" is now an ambiguous term. In my post earlier in this thread, the distinction was essential, as ABC does not reflect the shape of the tune or the intervals graphically.
I use the term 'the dots' *in order* to be disparaging. I mean, they're not the music, are they?
I've got a perfectly decent music degree. I still call my fiddle a fiddle - always have, always will - and I still call the dots the dots. 'Cos they are.
I'm so glad to see some voices here who use dots to learn and play tunes. I'm also glad to see that there's an appreciation for variations on how a tune will go -- as llig would say, "as well." A good example of this is the George Petrie book I have, which will sometimes have three or four variations on one tune. Um...all in dots, too.
I also use dots to learn the tunes, but find myself more and more playing without once I've got the idea of how the tune goes...but then find that I don't play often enough to do the "without dots" scheme enough justice, and end up forgetting some parts of tunes. So, I have to go back to the dots to refresh the few remaining brain cells.
Firstly, you cannot learn this music from the dots. There is universal agreement here for this and for that I am truly thankful.
Secondly, anyone who thinks they can learn a tune from the dots is tragically deluded. The dots carry only a miniscule of the information that is a diddley tune. A recording is better, but still woefully inadequate. Even a very good recording by a good player is only three times through on a particular day in a particular mood. To know a tune is to have many many years of playing and listening to it, and understanding and knowing its relations.
Thirdly, this diddley music has a lot of notes in it, most of which are not represented in your average dots. Your average dots are often described as being the skeleton of the tune that the musician can then put the flesh onto. I profoundly disagree with this analogy, I think it's much more accurate to take a more holistic view where every bit of the sound is equally important and flexible. However, I think it's reasonably straight forward that this, so called, skeleton bit is the easy bit, compared to the twiddly diddley bits, not to mention the so called variations. So the killer point is, if you have trouble getting the easy bit by ear alone, you haven't a feckin cat in hell's chance of getting the rest of it.
I'm being taught the fiddle both by dots and by ear. Even when I was a kid , singing, it was both. I went to an public elementary school here in California that beleived musical education was important. I sang in chourus up till the end of high school. Singing by ear for me is easy. However learning fiddle by ear was not.
Think this is due to the fact I learned singing first and didn't start with the fiddle till a couple of years ago. It's been like finding a whole new world that I don't know the geography of.
But as I have been exploring and getting to know the terrain it has become increasingly easier. I find that the tunes I know well singing (particularly the ones I sing in the band I'm in) are easier to learn on the fiddle aurally now.
Oh BTW technically all violins are fiddles. Fiddle just means a bowed stringed instrument (OED, New Grove dictionary of Musical Instruments). So though all violins are fiddles not all fiddles are violins.
Mary why not try tunes by ear that you know well singing?
The conductors of the two orchestras I play cello in often refer to the "dots", and the word "fiddle" is in general circulation.
If you look at the original printed scores of music from the Baroque period (1610-1750) - not the later "edited" versions - you'll notice that there are virtually no instructions to the players. Occasionally, you might come across a "forte" or "piano" sign, and that's about it. Almost no other dynamics, no phrase markings, no bowings, and often no indication of speed. And vibrato, if used, was generally treated as an ornament on the same level as other ornaments. The players were expected to know these things from their experience and from what the orchestra leader/conductor told them during rehearsal - all of which they had to remember because pencils were far too expensive for the ordinary musician. If you were a solo fiddle player you'd extemporise large parts of a slow movement, putting in all sorts of ornaments, runs, and what have you. This was rarely notated, but one or two instances of notated solo parts do give a fair indication of what happened - probably not unlike a slow air being played on the fiddle today by a top player.
Ottery, - that "properly notated piece of classical music" (http://www.well.com/user/bryan/waltz.html) you referred to is said by the composer to be based on a "Cro-Magnon skinning chant". Now the Cro-Magnons were around in Europe from about 40,000 - 10,000 BC. I understand there is currently a dearth of archaeological evidence relating to written music or recorded music dating from that period, although there may possibly be evidence of some music making from flutes or pipes made from bones. I wonder where the composer got that Cro-Magnon chant - probably under meditation induced by appropriate means, I shouldn't be surprised , if the rest of his "score" is anything to go by.
Ahem, harrumph, ah well, indeed, Mr. Gill, we DO all agree that you can't learn music of any variety from the dots. We also all know, deep down in our primal selves, that we have music in us, or we wouldn't be wasting time with the care and feeding of this habit. The liberating moment comes when you realize that the dots are merely the sticky notes, the reminders, the PDAs, of our chosen addiction.
So now remind me. Since we all agree, why are we whacking this particular dead horse again?
Michael is talking total crap again, and once again has misspelled minuscule. Some people just never listen, which is very surprising considering how much they advocate learning by ear.
So here is my alpha and omega. Only mine, not yours. No portentous prattle about having to master your instrument first, etc., and definitely no Irish residential qualifications. Underlying it, nay, thoroughly pervading it, is my view that playing ITM is all about having fun. Those who play it whilst having fun are assuredly the very best players. Those who proselytise about how you should or shouldn't learn it, tell you how hard it is unless you're master of your axe, etc. ad nauseam, are not good players. For who would want to play WITH them save those of like mind and what a miserable bleedin' crew they are. Probably all vegan teetotal scientologists who grow their own veg by the light of the full moon whilst sprinkling tiny amounts of strange substances on the soil in druid costume. So.
Listen to ITM as much as you can. In the car, at home (just turn Holby City off and whatever you do NEVER listen to Mike Harding), at work, on your bike, at gigs, in sessions. Listening to it is everything. Get the tune book out if you can read music and need to learn tunes fast. I'm fifty bloody five and I need to learn tunes fast. Download some midis. Have a gander at Youtube. Compare your tunebook dots with TheSession dots. Have a go on your own. Have a go with your friend. Have a go in a session. Make a CD. Did I mention listening. You will then not need any w*nk*r on this site or anywhere else to tell you that you will not be learning the tunes right because you are using the dots, because you will realise from all your listening that the dots are only the start. A damn good start, but only the start. Rules, what rules? Pity the man of self-fulfilling prophesies who can only ornament a tune not learned from dots!
because the original poster said:
"I'm a little tired of people on this board who feel that you just CAN"T play ITM if you learn it from "the dots."
I'm more than a little tired of those who feel they can learn it from the the dots. However, my love of this music is such that my stamina, hopefully, will continue.
Poor Steve, he feels he needs to learn tunes fast. The faster you try to learn them, the more you'll miss. He has a repertoire, but he must only know a miniscule amount of each.
Is anybody really advocating the straw man position that you can learn tunes in an authentic manner just by reading sheet music? I highly doubt it.
Is anybody advocating the extreme position on the other side, that sheet music has no legitimate use, that is always harmful, damaging, etc? I highly doubt it.
Steve, smiley faces don't make up for your aggro, ugly words. Can you disagree without resorting to calling people names and distorting their statements, disparaging people for things they didn't say?
Learn tunes slowly.
I used to learn tunes fast, now I try to know less tunes, but I'm trying to do something with them. Dots are fine, but they don't tell you much.
Right at the beginning of this thread, nofrets said, "I'm glad I know the stripped down version of the tunes, as it allows me keep up with the speed."
That sort of worried me all day.
Anyhows, time to pull up a pile of fishbones and snuggle down...
Excuse me if I haven't read this thread closely enough, and maybe someone has already pointed this out, but surely the "properly notated piece of classical music" at (http://www.well.com/user/bryan/waltz.html) is a spoof? It's given me my best giggle for several days! Just actually read the annotations!
No aggro or ugly words. You can be direct, as I recall, and that's all I'm being. It's a topic routinely suffused with bullsh!t when it comes up and the same old sanctimonious rubbish from the fun police about the evils of learning from the dots is always trotted out. Delicacy is not called for. I mean, Michael is involved! But, my man, if it's for me to be kicked off the list you want, just keep pointing up my flaws as you perceive them. You were good at it a few years ago and I'm sure your talents are undiminished. I do not doubt your wisdom and scholarship, as you display both in abundance, but don't forget that, like me, most people who read this list want to play ITM for fun. Serious fun we hope, but fun. I detect little advocacy of fun in your posts. Sincerely yours.
I think the general tenor of my comments about the "properly notated piece of classical music" (I'd really like to see it done in ABC) indicated that I was well aware that it's a spoof! Perhaps it was an April 1st joke, like the Piotr Zak broadcast on Radio 3 many years ago, in the days when it was called The Third Programme, when an eminent music critic got thoroughly wound up by a live (spoof) performance of a percussion work by "Piotr Zak" (who was a figment of the producer's imagination), which was in fact nothing more than a technician banging away at random on a selection of percussion instruments in the studio.
The dots only show a small part of the story for a skilled folk musician. The dots only show a small part of the story for a skilled classical musician, too. If the dots showed enough information to actually replicate a piece, there would be too much information to take in. All musicians have to use their brains, eyes, and tradition to figure out what is represented by notation.
In my teaching, at any rate, I teach a few sounds, then the dots for them, then more sounds and more dots. The first trad tune is always by ear, and when the kids figure out 80% of it or so, I give them the dots. Later, I give them some by dots and some by ear, and they do all right. Moderation in all things
Didn't mean to make you worry. I said that because I've only been playing fiddle for three years and ITM for one. The speed at the session I have access to is such that I need to drop the ornamentation that I use at home at slower speeds. Isn't that kinda normal when you get started?
Mary- I feel your pain. I go to Mike McHale for whistle lessons, and from day one he has taught me using dots. There was a similar argument where I advocated for the use of sheet. While I recognise that learning by ear is an invaluable talent, it is one that is acquired, not instantly learned. When you start out there is already enough confusion without having to guess what notes to play. Also, seeing as some of the top players in the field teach using dots, I don't see where anyone thinks they can get away with bashing this. If using music helps, by all means use it!!!!! Would you start a fire with two sticks if you had a lighter?!
Can't be bothered to read the whole thread, but my take on it is that when people here complain about learning from the dots, they mean that you can't learn *the art of playing Irish music* from the dots.
And they're right - you can't.
However, once you've learnt the art of playing Irish music, then you can learn tunes in whatever way you please, whether that be from recordings, dots in tunebooks, scrawled notation that's someone's idiosyncratic way of writing tunes down, or whatever. For example, I learnt a John Brady tune like this a while back from a photocopy of some weird-looking pseudo-abc he'd written in his own hand - I figured out his system, then played the tune as written, then changed a couple of bits so that it was comfortable to play on my instrument, added some variations, bassnotes, chords, ornamentation for extra danceable rhythm, and then played it again and again and again in sessions, and now I have the tune.
The session.org website lists 6398 tunes in the database.
The Comhaltas books (1 and 2) give 220 tunes.
Dow lists 50, pared down from 60.
I am 56 years old. I will never live long enough to learn these tunes by ear. While I agree that it is a great achievement to learn these tunes by ear, I am glad I can get a good head start by reading the notation. I know it's only the beginning, but it's a very good beginning.
Hang on a minute Steve. Is it my imagination or were you the one who was saying a few years back that you found all the "fun" tiresome and railed against what you called the "Glee C lub"? Obviously you have a memory like a goldfish.
Having been an excellent sight reader on the piano and mandolin on other types of music...it's been a complete challenge and very confronting to my "I'm a fast learner" ego to come to terms with giving up the dots, and that I could only ever fake 'playing' ITM if I was going to rely on sheet music.
Which might be great progress except it's a bit disheartening to know I have to go back to being completely crap and getting things wrong for a few months whilst I try and train my brain in the ear/fingerboard relationship. So every now and again I break out and play things by sight, knowing I'm not embedding them in my brain the same way...just for a dose of that" yes I'm playing what I love" rush.
As a sight reader, if I got the correct sequence of pitch changes right by visual clues, I used my ears and body to figure out the timing...and it sounded like music, and like I could play, something musical quite quickly.
Without the dots....I can tap you out the rhythm and sing or lilt you the tune....but what comes out of my fingers is only 50 to 70% right at the moment...... I guess it's a YET.....
And I LOVE the spoof sheet music....looks a LOT like the instructions my mandolin orchestra conductor used to give.....!
Dow, it sounds like you are a "skeleton of the tune plus added ornamentation and variations" man (at least for the John Brady tune you learned.) If so, fair play to you. Sounds entirely sensible.
I'm sure when you play it, appreciative listeners would come to the conclusion that you can't separate the ornaments and variations from Dow's playing of this lovely tune - they all form an indivisible whole and to separate them would mar its beauty. And they would be right.
Hi Nofrets, sorry, I read that again and it sounds like I was being patronising. I never really finished the post off, as a rather large glass of Jamesons finished me off first(!)
The reason it had me worried was that it reminded me of what I used to do, and it brought me out in a cold sweat...
I used to be in such a hurry to learn tunes, because I wanted to 'join in', that really only half learned the bare bones of them. It didn't take too long before I had quite an impressively large 'repertoire'.
Everything I played seemed to mesh in nicely with the fairly large, open sessions I used to play in, and I was a happy bunny (or Otter). But the one thing that worried me at the time was the amount of tunes I DIDN'T know! So instead of working on improving the tunes I knew, I just continually crammed myself with NEW tunes. It didn't help - every time I turned up with the tunes played last week in my head, a whole new slew of tunes would be trotted out, so off I would go again...
Then one day I turned up at a session, but the usual people were late to arrive. Gradually I realised they weren't coming at all - there was just me, a very quiet mandolin player, and a formidable and accomplished guitarist. We sat there sipping the landlord's beer and watching the door, until yon guitarist said, "Right, I guess we should play some tunes!"
It was in the next couple of hours that I learned the folly of going out with only stripped down tunes under your belt......
And Bellman,
thanks so much for pointing out that the "properly notated piece of classical music" at (http://www.well.com/user/bryan/waltz.html) is a spoof. I can't believe that the charlatan who recommended that my string quartet learn it to play at the May Fete still has the gall to show his face in the village. We're now down to a string duet since the Viola player and The Banjo player committed suicide during our last practice.
Shame, Dow. You posted like a man after my own heart then you post disingenuous eyewash about my disapproving of fun. Since every post I ever posted was deleted you can't prove a thing, and what's more I've always been very consistent about playing the music being fun. It was the pigging around and the sneery hijacking of threads that I railed against at that time. It wasn't my finest hour come to think of it but quite a few people here (most of whom don't post any more which is why I'm back ) could say the same thing. Fair dos, eh, old boy?
Ottery: I remember it well. Did you ever manage to round up all the penguins in the end?
But back on topic. It says right here: "The exchange of tunes is what keeps traditional Irish music alive. This website is one way of passing on jigs, reels and other dance tunes.". How are we supposed to exchange tunes on a website without the use of notation? Perhaps the Tunes section should be replaced with a audio chat room so we can play them to each other.
"Dow, it sounds like you are a "skeleton of the tune plus added ornamentation and variations" man (at least for the John Brady tune you learned.) If so, fair play to you. Sounds entirely sensible."
Hmm, not so sure. I sway more towards Michael's thinking on this one. I don't think of it being bare bones that you add to. I rather think that the whole thing with the ornamentation and variations the way I want to hear it - and the way I feel the tune should sound - *is* the tune. The sheetmusic is just a shorthand representation of it, and not a very good one at that.
But as long as you know that...and the way to know it is to do a ton of listening to ITM. I've learned nearly everything by repeated hearings and have used dots to sort a few little things out in tunes here and there. But I've learned a few just from dots and I can't tell the difference or remember which ones. It's all grist to the mill.
If you don't have access to other players or sessions, the spots are a necessity. Also getting up the learning curve on a new instrument.
But if you have used them alot, when you get involved with other players, or more experienced players, the spots are not exactly what is being played.
I try to a.) listen to recordings to get a sense of how other players do a tune b.) use the spots for a bit until I have it hummable and have a grasp of the fingerwork c.) commit to memory asap d. refine from memory only.
Then when playing with others, you know it well enough to get in, but may have to step back a bit and relearn once you work with others.
They are a start.
Just to reiterate, since the point seems to have gotten lost, I think you can't play ANY form of music well without hearing it. I use The Amazing Slow Downer all the time to learn music by ear. I was an ear musician all my life before ever coming to ITM. But using notation is valuable, and once you know the character of ITM, you can play any notated tune very well indeed without having heard it. I do this all the time, especially with my Vincent Broderick book, since I don't have the recorded versions of these tunes.
And I still maintain that using the term "dots" is more often than not meant to be disparaging. As several have pointed out, there is no real argument here: notes are good; ear is good. The topic wouldn't come up at all if so many did not constantly put down written music as if it were some sort of barrier to being a good trad player.
Well, *I've* learnt every tune I know from the dots, and it seems to me I play them *much* better than people who've learned them by ear. *They* keep going wrong and playing different notes every time we repeat the tune.
When you eat, do you hold the fork in your left hand with the prongs pointing down and cut with your right hand and pick things up with the fork still in your left hand with the prongs pointing down... or do you set the knife down and shift the fork to your right hand and pick things up with the prongs pointing up? And what do you do with the spoon?
Can't see where you're going with this, but I'll play along:
I'f I'm eating food that requires a knife, I'll hold my fork in my left hand, though I pick up the food with prongs pointing up. If the food doesn't require a knife, I usually use a spoon in my right hand. (though I quite enjo chop sticks, and fingers)
Dow, -- "I don't think of it being bare bones that you add to. I rather think that the whole thing with the ornamentation and variations the way I want to hear it - and the way I feel the tune should sound - *is* the tune."
I read that as semantics. Yes, the tune you end up playing is indeed the whole thing the way you want to hear it, and cannot be disassembled without destroying it. But I still say you started with a very useful skeleton and put meat on it.
If we must persist with this skeleton/flesh analogy, let's look at it more closely. For starters, skeletons cannot live and stand on their own any more than mere flesh can. They are interdependent, together with organs, nutrients and stimulus etc.
Also, and this is the interesting one. Skeletons are not simple props. If you look at a skeleton closely, you can see the very detailed shapes in the surface of the bones where the muscles attach. A skilful palaeontologist can reconstruct what a long extinct animal could have looked liked via years of knowledge of other skeletons, and, most importantly, the study of the skeletons of living creatures. But remember. these people are experts. And no amount of the study of skeletons alone will give you any sort of clue as to the shape of complete animals. Also, there are still plenty of very important characteristics of animals that, even for experts, no amount of the study of there skeletons will ever point you too. Their colour, for example.
However, and this is more pertinent to this discussion. the analogy has a fundamental flaw. Where as the dot readers might consider their dots to be the skeleton, the reality of the way tunes are does not stand up to this. The fact is that with tunes you cannot differentiate as to what is flesh or bones. You might have a preconception of a part of a tune that it is rigid bone, but some one will come along and show you that that bit can quite happily be squidgy flesh. And vice versa.
Damn, the palaeontology of tunes. The only trouble with that approach to reconstruction, and some musicians do participate in a similar resurrection, is that all it is trully good for in the end, if that, is to be placed behind glass in a museum, or in a museum's basement in drawers or cupboards...
What's missing? Well, keeping with this analogy of body parts ~ the warmth and vitality of flowing blood, and that takes a beating heart, nerve tissue and working, fired up and firing brain cells ~ 'LIFE!'... Now, going beyond the mere Mechano or Lego way of things ~ breathing life into it, getting the pulse going, driving it along, making it dance, now that's the craic...
Flippin' Nora, I'm giving up the will to live here. Can we accept that skeletons and bare bones and other such convoluted allusions are horrendous clichés and find a more imaginative way of saying what we think. And osmosis is similarly banned.
"And no amount of the study of skeletons alone will give you any sort of clue as to the shape of complete animals."
Dow, you said you did this:
"...learnt a John Brady tune like this a while back from a photocopy of some weird-looking pseudo-abc he'd written in his own hand - I figured out his system, then played the tune as written, then changed a couple of bits so that it was comfortable to play on my instrument, added some variations, bassnotes, chords, ornamentation for extra danceable rhythm, and then played it again and again and again in sessions, and NOW I HAVE THE TUNE." (My capitals)
Fine, we won't call the pseudo-abc a skeleton. However I believe your success in doing this contradicts Michael's implication that " no amount of the study of [DOTS] alone will give you any sort of clue as to the shape of complete [TUNES.]"
It sounds to me like it gave you a very valuable clue in this case.
And why do I care? I think Michael (intentionally or not) puts down the process Dow describes above as one which cannot possibly produce a "real" tune. And this flies in the face of my experience where I have seen several good players do just that.
Sorry Grego, I said "no amount of the study of skeletons alone." Meaning you must also study live animals and the way their muscles etc work, and transfer this knowledge to the recreation of your fossil. And I also said, "But remember. these people are experts". I'm not doubting Dow's ability to resurrect tunes from fossils. he is an expert. But the whole point of my argument here is to try to dissuade people from attempting it when they are not experts.
Okay, so I have been misunderstanding your argument for some time. You do agree than that an expert player can take a page of dots and use his or her expertise to transform it into a real tune.
We won't call the dots a skeleton, if you like, but you will agree they can be a very useful framework for the expert to create a tune without first having heard someone else play it.
And yes, the expert becomes an expert through listening and learning by ear, not from dots.
Michael. I should like to investigate a little more deeply your scholarship in this matter. May I respectfully ask you some penetrating questions? What is an ITM "expert?" How would you know? Are you one? If so, who told you that you were one? Have you questioned every player of ITM that has passed your stringent requirements as to expertitudinousness as to whether they ever learned tunes from dots? And even if they had, would they look into your eyes in fear and fail to confess anyway? Are you scared that people who resurrect tunes from fossils will actually make a damn good job of it and thus rain on your parade? I actually know a few such folk myself - bejabers, I may even be one of them but as humility is my middle name I wouldn't be so presumptious...Do you ever encourage people instead of putting up barriers and, quote, dissuading? Do you have fun at your sessions?
The only caveat I would add to grego and Michael's synopsis is that all of this matters only if your aim is to play this music in a way most trad players would recognize and welcome in their circles.
In other words, if you want to go and play jigs and reels from the dots without ever listening to them played by someone at least familiar with (if not immersed in) the tradition, that's fine. Just don't expect your local session to welcome you with open arms.
The point is that some people's idea of fun is just making music--any sort of music at all. And other people's idea of fun is playing this music with a well-informed understanding of the tradition. For these latter people, *how* the music is played--in terms of style, context, even attitude--is what makes it Irish trad music, not just playing rhe notes with no sense of the lilt or pulse or traditional articulations.
And lots of people and situations fall between these two ends of the spectrum.
Will, you are quite right. Everyone is free to do what ever they want with any music. As you say, what ever makes them happy. Steve Shaw clamours for repertoire and is comfortable with getting only portions of what tunes are, then moving on to more. And that's fine. But as you say, others have the aim of playing this music in a way most trad players would recognise and welcome.
He asks questions and expects written replies. He's done this before and it's a deliberate attempt to corner me. But he knows that the real answers to his questions can only come from listening to the music. And if he wasn't so paranoid, he'd recognise a great deal of encouragement from me.
Well, I had my paranoids operated on years ago and I no longer sniff like I do. You don't answer my very pertinent questions because you can't. You corner yourself with your supercilious attitude - you don't need me to do it for you. Your remarks are very discouraging to those who would like to get involved in ITM as you put up barrier after barrier. I can only hope that all those enthusiasts who are desperate to get into playing this music see you as the old fogey you seem doggedly intent upon painting yourself as and don't take your ill-informed advice seriously. Michael, send me six quid and I'll mail you a copy of my CD. You positively slander me with your unjustified remarks about my repertoire and my acquisition of portions of tunes. You are dishonestly giving the impression that you know my playing, which you do not, unless that is you've had your intelligence agents out at The Tree Inn on Fridays, which I doubt somehow. You seem singularly unable to confine your pejorative remarks to things you know about but seem merely content to spray your contumely in the direction of anyone who dares to disagree with Michael The Guru. I can assure you that I aim to play the music in a way most trad players would recognise and welcome, and, from the reaction I get universally from all who hear me, I make a good honest fist of it, genius though I am not. You really can't know otherwise, and your post is a naked ad hominem. I have had angry emails from Jeremy and have given undertakings to him, but, by God, you could goad a saint. I do not, unlike you, tell people to "feck off" (the first time I've ever typed that word on an internet forum) or to go and have a toss. Put up or shut up, Michael. Answer my reasonable questions or just knock it off. p*ss or get off the pot, as they say. And not a smiley face in sight this time, Will.
"And do you agree that unless you are an expert, you should avoid attempting it?" (llig leahcim)
I'm sometimes in the situation, as most other players may be, of starting to learn a tune from the dots because there is no other accessible source at that time. I try to remember the shape of the tune and build it up a couple of bars at a time (the "question and answer" approach), and I'll probably make changes as I go along. These may very well be because I can see that the tune was transcribed from a box, for example, and some collections of notes would be more comfortable, and just as effective, on the fiddle if one or two little changes were made. And then I might do something to utilise the sonorities of my instrument, like going to a lower register which a flute couldn't. And I'd think about likely places in the tune to put something "interesting" (i.e. an ornament), based on what I've heard in sessions and from other players in similar passages (I do try to immerse myself in The Music, and rarely listen to other sorts now). The result is "my" version of the tune, and it is likely to be a departure from the dots here and there.
I've been playing Irish music for only 6 years, so there's no way in which I would describe myself as an expert in the music, so on the basis of the quote at the beginning of this post I presumably should not be learning a tune starting from the dots in the way I have described. How else can someone become proficient in an art without trying to do things, albeit at a much lower level, which only the "expert" is apparently entitled to? Isn't this how writers, composers and artists start off down the path to their chosen careers?
On a different note, I was attending a committee meeting at work some years ago and someone (the company lawyer) gave a thoroughly pragmatic definition of an "expert" as the one person in the room who knows more about a particular subject than anyone else present, ... and would I therefore explain to the meeting the details of a particular chemical process. Caught me on the hop that did, but I just about managed
Remember, an amateur is someone who continues doing what they love even though the results are often disappointing.
But doing that in the privacy of your own home is different than playing this music straight from the dots without ever listening to it ***and then waltzing into a session, playing in public, or producing a recording, expecting everyone to enjoy your lifeless, inarticulate, uninformed tunes.****
My guiess is that lots of beginners use the dots to help them understand what they're hearing (or not hearing). Nothing wrong with that--if it's part of that integral feedback loop about ***listening.***
A couple of things here. Firstly, the final objective is to play the music well, not to play the music well from the dots, this is a side issue. As I've said, if you can already play well, then the chances are you will be able to play it well from the dots. Trevor says, "How else can someone become proficient in an art without trying to do things?" Yes, but remember the objective. It's to play the music, My advice is simple, and what's more it is in the best possible sense on encouragement. If you can't play the music, avoid the dots.
The second thing is related. Will says, "lots of beginners use the dots to help them understand what they're hearing". If you are listening to good music, the dots are quite simply not what you are hearing. So any reference to them can only confuse
That's where I disagree, Michael. The dots can help people whose ears aren't yet up to speed. In my early years with this music, I might take a transcription of a tune and sit down with a recording to fill in all the blanks. I'd ink in where the notes were different, where cuts, rolls, and triplets occurred, etc. And doing that helped me listen more closely to all the nuances.
Granted, I ended up with my own transcription, which was always more detailed and accurate (to a specific recording) than what I'd started with. And even then, it didn't include some details--I was training my ear and aural memory afterall, so I simply remembered a lot of the nuances. And I'd use those dots only long enough to get the whole tune in my head, and then play by ear.
Looking back, I used the dots this way similar to how a speaker might use a powerpoint slideshow. Each slide features the key talking points, but the speaker fills in the nuances and details, weaves them into a rich and compelling story. That's all the dots were for me--a short-term memory aid as I was first coming to grips with all the intricacies of this music. Reference to the dots did not confuse me--it helped me understand and remember how all the pieces fit together to breathe life into what I was hearing.
I am all for everyone grabbing this music in whatever ways they can. The most important thing is to listen to lots of it 'til you're blue in the face, then listen some more. If you love it you'll go through a prolonged phase of doing this. It's the way to get it under your skin, and it doesn't matter if you're listening to solo performers on CD (untraditional), supergroups on CD (untraditional), players at sessions (very untraditional and very dodgy as you really don't know where they've been) or some feller who really loves the stuff and plays it to you in your kitchen (you got it!). If you do all this you can learn tunes from dots if you want and you'll be absolutely OK, because all that listening you've done out of sheer love and enthusiasm for ITM will have put everything into perspective for you. Anyway, because you've done all that listening you'll be whistling tunes all day - hey presto, you're learning by ear, and you didn't need all these flippin' "experts" to tell you how to do it! Don't listen to the grudging types who want to make you feel that it's impossible to learn ITM unless you follow a carefully-prescribed path. It's total cobblers. These people forget that we're all different and we grab knowledge in our own individual ways. I have met many wonderful players of ITM and not one of them, to my knowledge anyway (and I do talk about these things with them) ever got there by following the advice of gurus who are basically all theory and not denizens of the real hairy-arsed fun-filled world of ITM. You really have to decide when you come to lists like this which ones are on an ego trip and which ones are here because they want to convey their love of ITM to the world and get as many people playing it as possible. It can be hard to make the distinction at first but you get wise pretty soon! Listen tons and do your own thing. You don't need much other advice, really. Well, practise your instrument as well, I suppose...
The dreaded dots
The dreaded dots
I just read a reply to a post where someone was asking for sheet music and was told they could learn it by ear. I'm not usually a confrontional person but here it comes.
I'm a little tired of people on this board who feel that you just CAN"T play ITM if you learn it from "the dots." I can certainly apprciate all that can be learned by listening, watching and discussing but do you think some of your favoirtes don't use sheet music to learn new tunes?
I played around with the fiddle for a time and just couldn't get it. Maybe I'm just stupid. I decided I needed lessons and didn't care what form they came in. Johnny Cunningham was my first teacher and GUESS WHAT? He started me right in using sheet music. I would arrive at his house for lessons and find him playing from sheet music. I've read that Natalie MacMaster said she uses sheet music to learn new tunes and even has it in her own handwriting on her website. Kevin Burke and the rest probably use it too.
There is great merit in both playing by ear and reading the dots even if you just use them for a guideline. I couldn't play one tune by ear no matter how much I tried before learning from the sheet music. Now that I know the instrument I'm 1000 times better at learning by ear. The fiddle is hard enought to learn, stop making people feel like they'll never amount to anything if they use sheet music.
I can feel the blistering heat already. Ok, you can let me have it..........if it will make you feel like a bigger person.
Usually docile
Mary
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by Antikhntr
Re: The dreaded dots
Mary,
You're not alone. For me, I think dots helps me build my reportoire, but listening makes me a better player. I don't get to play with people enough to reach a point where I would know a hundred tunes. But I can easily learn a tune a week through dots, so I'm glad for them.
I play fiddle and whistle, and it was my whistle teacher that taught me to use dots to learn the most basic version of the tune. She would even re-write them using notation like D E F G A A A to capture the pure bottomline melody. Then you'd learn the tune from the ground up and add your own ornamentation. Her thought was that many of the dots you see are people's interpretation of the song, not the song itself. She said you need to learn the tune, not the way someone else plays it.
It made a lot of sense to me. And since I've joined a few sessions now, I'm glad I know the stripped down version of the tunes, as it allows me keep up with the speed.
Hope that all makes sense.
Take care and go gently...
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by nofrets
Re: The dreaded dots
"I couldn't play one tune by ear no matter how much I tried before learning from the sheet music"
Mary,
Really, I can't see how sheet music would help you any more if you were a beginner. Unless, of course, you were already conversant with sheet music in some other area.
I never really read sheet music at all until relatively recently but always played by ear before that.
The notion of someone not being able to play be ear is something which I can't really understand at all(though I believe some have this problem). If you know where the notes (or the sound of the notes) are on your instrument and you have the "tune in your head" surely it's a fairly easy matter to transfer the notes from your head on to the instrument? The only problem is "the mechanics" which comes with practising but I can't see how being able to sight read helps with that.
Having said all that, I have no problem with sheet music at all. It's a very useful tool but only in conjunction with playing by ear and listening.
I've learned loads of tunes from sheet music but have always found this process easier if I've already heard the music or I'm able to listen to it as I'm learning.
Again, I'm sure good experienced players can learn a completely unknown/unheard tune from the dots and interpret it in their own style or as it would normally be played by Irish/Scottish musicians. However, most written tunes are just the "bare bones" so somebody who was unfamiliar with "the music" would be unable to do this effectively.
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by Johannes J
Re: The dreaded dots
Amen, John J. Nothing wrong with learning from the dots- I'm sure most of us have done or are still doing so. It's just that *playing* without the dots seems to bring out the best (and the zest) in the music. If you can't sight read, you don't have much choice, anyway.
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by P-K
Re: The dreaded dots
I have come to realize that when people express disapproval of learning from sheet music, they are actually expressing disapproval for certain sorts of practices which just happen to involve sheet music -- things such as:
- sight reading or playing from sheet music without actually paying attention to the tune you are playing
- playing tunes exactly as notated without the necessary interpretation, style, variations, etc, to make it sound right
- learning and/or playing only from sheet music, not listening to other players, live or recorded
So these practices, which just happen to involve sheet music, are a recipe for a style of playing which lacks that Nyah. But surely it's not the sheet music's fault, it's the fault of the player for relying overly much on the sheet music, and not developing their ear or a deeper sense of how this music is supposed to sound.
This is such a simple point that I don't know why there is so much sound and fury over the issue of sheet music. I guess sheet music is an easy target.
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by crazy_fingerz
Re: The dreaded dots
People have different brains....... they learn by different methods. If it's easier to learn with the dots, who cares? You can develop your ear training over time.
When I was a kid I had to struggle terribly with reading dots, it was always so much easier to just hear it and play by ear. Other people are the exact opposite. What is the problem here??????
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by morning star
Re: The dreaded dots
Johnny Cunningham taught with sheet music? That's so cool. Not terribly surprising, now that I think about it, because he also used to listen to a lot of the old fiddlers of many other traditions, which all had an influence on his playing, even though it was fundamentally Scottish in style. It seems to me that that is what any good musician would do---take advantage of any and every resource and learn as much as possible from it, and develop your own style as you go.
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by kennedy
Re: The dreaded dots
Kennedy, you are my hero. I agree that all resources should be used.
And, yes John J. I couldn't play ONE thing by ear. I think learning by written music first helped me by putting everything in order...the ol' brain didn't have to struggle with so many things at once and I didn't have to re-learn it the next time I picked up the fiddle.
I do play be ear now and LOVE it.
As for Johnny teaching with written music when I started with him he was teaching out of George Brittan Folk Studio here in PA. Maybe it was their requirement as they also sold music books. However when he left there and was teaching from his home he also used the written music.
Mary
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by Antikhntr
Re: The dreaded dots
Anyone logging onto TheSession you should be allowed to ask for sheet music. That is one of the reasons for this site. Perhaps those who have always read music can benefit from 'learning by ear' & vice versa. (In an ideal world)
When learning a new tune I prefer to use all the available resources. In an actual session I want to be prepared to 'play w/out the sheet'
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by Random_notes
Re: The dreaded dots
OK, here goes.
Many of the people who claim that they "can;t learn by ear" are not being truthful. Learning by ear is a *skill*, not a talent, that takes practice to develop just like anything else. Many people do not or choose not realize this.
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by wormdiet
Re: The dreaded dots
Just a guess (because I played by ear from age 3 to age 8 before learning to read), but for a beginner, the dots show the direction of the melody and the size of the interval between adjacent notes in a visual way that corresponds pretty well to what the fingers have to do to play it on many instruments. Probably many beginners don't have a built-in grasp of intervals and can't quickly figure out how far it is from one note to the next. The dots show it.
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by GaryAMartin
Re: The dreaded dots
If you're a fiddle player I think a useful way of learning a tune from the dots is to use a source* that is a reasonably accurate transcription of the tune as played on a different instrument such as a banjo or button accordion. Because these instruments play tunes in a different way to the fiddle (and sometimes a button-accordion version can be quite awkward on the fiddle) this will encourage the fiddle player to make his/her own version of the tune to suit their fiddle. In other words, you're forced to think about the tune and that makes you get away from learning it by rote from the dots.
Thinks ... I only wish I could do this sometimes in my orchestral playing while still remaining a member of the orchestra
* One such source I have in mind is Matt Cunningham's transcriptions of the tunes he plays on the first 10 CDs of his set dancing collection "Dance Music of Ireland: Vols 1-10" - see the Recordings Section for further details.
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by lazyhound
Re: The dreaded dots
GaryAMartin, and ceolachan recently on another thread, have made this useful point about the shape of tune being revealed by the dots on the page. I used this to good effect a few days ago when I was sorting out the tune names on one of Matt Cunningham's CD (the only one where the tunes do NOT correspond to the dots in his tune book, for reasons that are unnecessary to go into here), and in addition to doing an ABC search for the tunes or the tune names I didn't know (a fair number, btw) I also trawled through some tune books looking for the shape of the tune ina particular key. It worked.
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by lazyhound
Re: The dreaded dots
"learning by ear is a *skill*, not a talent"
I don't know about that, wormdiet. Certainly anyone can learn to do it, but it does come more easily to some. For me, it comes easily and it's fun. But that's only on fiddle, which is weird. I've tried picking out tunes on piano and flute and guitar before and it was much more of a slog. There is something about the way the fiddle works, with the four strings tuned in fifths, and each octave just four notes on each of two strings, that the tunes just come out of my fingers without my having to think about it too hard. It was never that easy with the guitar, with all those strings and frets and chords *shudder*.
Anyway, I think some people are more naturally inclined to one way of learning or another, but you build on your strengths and painstakingly work on the weaknesses.
And Mary, any time you want to tell us stories about the things Johnny Cunningham taught you, please feel free! Will has done that a lot here with some of the things he learned from Kevin Burke and it's incredibly educational and inspiring!
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by kennedy
Re: The dreaded dots
As a boy I lived on a farm in the North of England(1940s). There most Friday nights musicians gathered to play, a variety of instruments some played by ear ,some used music books ..But all of them stressed to me as a boy of 6yrs that it was importent to learn to read music. It is worth remembering that many of the tunes we play today were origionally writen down in the many manuscript books which have been found in Record Offices and Museums round Britain. Think of the Vickers Manuscripts for example. The important thing is to learn to play the tune, it matters not how... then to "make it your own"as old Shepherd Tom Atkins would tell me.
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by alexboydell
Re: The dreaded dots
I don't dispute the idea that certain people are more naturally predisposed to ear learning than others. But it's a skill that the vast majority of us can pick up with work.
I was primarily paper trained myself as a kid, because I started with GHB's. Because absolute unison is required in a band setting, you really do need to notate every ornament and variation in a way not necessary for most Irish stuff.
I had a relatively plainful transition to ears myself. What I am saying is that a lot of people never make the leap, even though they could and should.
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by wormdiet
Re: The dreaded dots
Kennedy I was about to post something similar regarding learning by ear on different instruments. I played classical euphonium for years and although I now haven't played in quite some time, when I tried back then to pick a tune out by ear....it just never went anywhere. I could play beautifully from music, but the ear skill was not one that I developed nor that came easily for me on that instrument.
On fiddle though...I've been playing for about a year with varying degrees of intensity and can pick up tunes easily enough that at times I surprise myself. Of course I've only been learning to play fiddle by ear, but still...it's suprising to me.
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by matan_fiddler
Re: The dreaded dots
Sorry, Kennedy theres not much to tell. I started with Johnny in January and he moved out of the area that summer. I was so new at fiddling it was all very basic stuff. He was very entertaining though making jokes and clowing around when I got tense during the lesson.
I used to see him at the local watering holes from time to time.
Don't get me wrong we weren't great friends but it was a privledge to know him and be his student for a short time.
I miss him.
Mary
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by Antikhntr
Re: The dreaded dots
i use both. its how my teacher at the flute lessons does it. i generally learn the tune by ear and use the dots to make sure im doing it right. (im prone to slips all over the place).
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by Kevo32A
Re: The dreaded dots
Learning by ear requires two abilities--one is to recognize pitches and intervals. Most of us figure out how to do that with our voices, so we can sing along at birthday parties, or to the raadio, etc.
The second ability for any instrumentalist is the ability to reproduce those pitches and intervals accurately and consistently on the chosen instrument. The more skilled you are on your instrument, the easier it is to play tunes by ear.
Conversely, if you're a total newcomer to an instrument, it can take a while to sort out where the notes are, how the intervals are arranged, along with all the other technique (embouchure, holding the bow, pumping a bag and bellows, etc.).
In my experience as a music teacher, most people new to playing music struggle enough with all the technical aspects of an instrument that adding sheet music *or* learning by ear is too much at first. So I usually start off with basic kinetic learning--"this finger goes here and makes this sound"--step by step, until the student grows familiar with the instrument and technique. Then I introduce ear concepts and sheet music/abcs/tablature.
Mary, it doesn't surpise me at all that Johnny Cunningham played and taught from the dots. Most accomplished, experienced musicians use all the tools available to them. But Johnny grew up hearing and playing the music. The dots merely corresponded to what he already knew. What some people here have railed against is the notion that beginners with little to no listening experience of this music can simply buy a book of tunes and start playing them. I've run into folks who try this, and years on they haven't progressed. Their playing is mechanical, robotic, and often unrecognizable as dance music.
Thankfully, many classically trained musicians now get their start with Suzuki or some similar method, where ear training is introduced very early, so they know how to listen even when they rely on sheet music.
Which is the big answer to this whole situation: sheet music is just another way to get the sounds into your head. "Sight reading" is a redundant misnomer--it's really sight *hearing,* being able to hear a tune just from seeing the dots. In short, when used to its true potential, even sheet music is an aural tool.
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by Will CPT
Re: The dreaded dots
Isn't there also sight *playing*, where you need the notes to tell you where to put your fingers? Or is it more complicated than that?
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by kennedy
Re: The dreaded dots
Well put puddy tat. I'd been listening to ITM for about 20 years before I started playing. I think the whole thing of trying not to make the instrument sound like a wounded puddy tat and finding the notes overwhelmed me.
I still like being able to read the music. When I see those dotted notes I can just hear the swing in those hornpipes.
Mary
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by Antikhntr
Re: The dreaded dots
Anybody besides me object to written music being referred to as "the dots"? Is that supposed to be clever? It just sounds derisive and immature.
Without written music, much of the music we all love would be long lost. That's why it exists. In fact, that's the only reason it exists. To disparage that betrays an insecurity borne of not knowing how to read music. Every form of music has to be heard to be played properly; ITM has no exclusive on that fact. But wherever you come down on the issue, show some class and refer to it properly. I've never seen "the dots" anywhere but on ITM sites. Doesn't speak well for those of us who want to be known as musicians, does it?
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by Ailin
Re: The dreaded dots
Ailin, much of the music we play in this tradition was kept alive aurally, not through the written collections. Yes, O'Neill's and all the others helped in their way, but without the musicians playing them and passing them down generation to generation, no one today would know what the dots were supposed to sound like. We'd all be playing jigs straight.
And I use "the dots" as short hand--shorter than typing out "sheet music" or "written notation" every time. I think of it more as a nickname, not disparaging, but also a reminder not to take them too seriously--they are, after all, just a graphic model of an aural art form, not the art form themselves.
I'm not a musician because I can read the dots--I can read the dots because I'm a musician.
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by Will CPT
Re: The dreaded dots
P.S. Leonard Bernstein called them "dots," and also "ink stains" and "heiroglyphics."
And before anyone bites my head off, yes, notation can be an art form in it's own right, but it's a graphic art form and does not have to be played to be appreciated.
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by Will CPT
Re: The dreaded dots
Really? Leonard Bernstein called them "dots"? No sheet?
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by Phantom Button
Re: The dreaded dots
The 'dots' we have for traditional music aren't the same as the sheet music for classical music. They are just a pointer to the way the tune goes. They are only an indicator of one setting of the tune, and the tune will undoubtably have many settings. Some of those settings will place the tune closer to a tune with a different name than the name above the dots. That's one reason why the dots can be a dangerous thing. If they are used as a teaching aid by a skilled musician, you can be sure he/she will not be teaching you those dots, - you'll be shown the way the notes pointed at by those dots lean and bend and become the music. The important thing is to learn the vernacular first.
Compare the basic notation of tunes in O'Neill's with this properly notated piece of classical music, if you don't believe me:
http://www.well.com/user/bryan/waltz.html
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by Ottery
Re: The dreaded dots
I guess we should all be playing violins not fiddles too.
Mary
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by Antikhntr
Re: The dreaded dots
Mary, my hunch is that you can learn and play by ear just fine, and the real roadblock in the beginning was simply being unfamiliar with the fiddle. In fact, most of us go through just such a period of being overwhelmed by the technique requirements and nuances of making sound on an instrument, so that real music isn't possible until you reach some basic level of ability. I remember it took me a couple of weeks on flute before I could get something other than a squawk or whisper--there wasn't much point in trying to play a tune even though I had hundreds of tunes in my head wanting to come out on the flute. Then, being able to label each fingering hole with the pitch it produced gave me a frame of reference for sussing out some tunes. Now, after just a few years of playing, I don't think in those terms--the notes are simply where they are, and my fingers do whatever they need to make the note I want to play.
It took longer for me to work all that out on fiddle--some instruments are more complicated than others. Keyless flute has six finger holes. Once you can produce a decent tone and can change octaves, the technical needs are pretty simple. Fiddle has many more fingering options, and there's the whole "truckly how" of using horsehair tied to a stick to make the strings vibrate (must've been Rube Goldberg's great-great-great-grandfather who invented that).
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by Will CPT
Re: The dreaded dots
My older brother was Bernstein's musical assistant for 15 years. Helped with scoring and arranging for orchestras. "LB" was passionate about music (and many other things, inclkuding anagrams), and very playful too.
"The dots" can be a term of endearment. I've heard Itzak Perlman talk about his "fiddle," as well.
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by Will CPT
Re: The dreaded dots
We are all very human. Yo Yo Ma has a wonderful Italian cello named Petunia.
Mary
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by Antikhntr
Re: The dreaded dots
I've started using the term "dots" to distinguish standard musical notation from ABC notation, which is also a form of written music. Nowadays, and especially in Irish music, ABC is very commonly used in place of standard notation. "Written music" is now an ambiguous term. In my post earlier in this thread, the distinction was essential, as ABC does not reflect the shape of the tune or the intervals graphically.
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by GaryAMartin
Re: The dreaded dots
I use the term 'the dots' *in order* to be disparaging. I mean, they're not the music, are they?
I've got a perfectly decent music degree. I still call my fiddle a fiddle - always have, always will - and I still call the dots the dots. 'Cos they are.
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by benhall.1
Re: The dreaded dots
Dot your ayes, and, if necessary, eye your dots.
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by drone
Re: The dreaded dots
I'm so glad to see some voices here who use dots to learn and play tunes. I'm also glad to see that there's an appreciation for variations on how a tune will go -- as llig would say, "as well." A good example of this is the George Petrie book I have, which will sometimes have three or four variations on one tune. Um...all in dots, too.
I also use dots to learn the tunes, but find myself more and more playing without once I've got the idea of how the tune goes...but then find that I don't play often enough to do the "without dots" scheme enough justice, and end up forgetting some parts of tunes. So, I have to go back to the dots to refresh the few remaining brain cells.
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by pn5jn
Re: The dreaded dots
What an ornery lot we are. At least we have good taste in music.
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by crazy_fingerz
Re: The dreaded dots
Right then, here we go again ...
Firstly, you cannot learn this music from the dots. There is universal agreement here for this and for that I am truly thankful.
Secondly, anyone who thinks they can learn a tune from the dots is tragically deluded. The dots carry only a miniscule of the information that is a diddley tune. A recording is better, but still woefully inadequate. Even a very good recording by a good player is only three times through on a particular day in a particular mood. To know a tune is to have many many years of playing and listening to it, and understanding and knowing its relations.
Thirdly, this diddley music has a lot of notes in it, most of which are not represented in your average dots. Your average dots are often described as being the skeleton of the tune that the musician can then put the flesh onto. I profoundly disagree with this analogy, I think it's much more accurate to take a more holistic view where every bit of the sound is equally important and flexible. However, I think it's reasonably straight forward that this, so called, skeleton bit is the easy bit, compared to the twiddly diddley bits, not to mention the so called variations. So the killer point is, if you have trouble getting the easy bit by ear alone, you haven't a feckin cat in hell's chance of getting the rest of it.
# Posted on April 19th 2007 by llig leahcim
Re: The dreaded dots
I'm being taught the fiddle both by dots and by ear. Even when I was a kid , singing, it was both. I went to an public elementary school here in California that beleived musical education was important. I sang in chourus up till the end of high school. Singing by ear for me is easy. However learning fiddle by ear was not.
Think this is due to the fact I learned singing first and didn't start with the fiddle till a couple of years ago. It's been like finding a whole new world that I don't know the geography of.
But as I have been exploring and getting to know the terrain it has become increasingly easier. I find that the tunes I know well singing (particularly the ones I sing in the band I'm in) are easier to learn on the fiddle aurally now.
Oh BTW technically all violins are fiddles. Fiddle just means a bowed stringed instrument (OED, New Grove dictionary of Musical Instruments). So though all violins are fiddles not all fiddles are violins.
Mary why not try tunes by ear that you know well singing?
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by Pirate-Fiddler
Re: The dreaded dots
The conductors of the two orchestras I play cello in often refer to the "dots", and the word "fiddle" is in general circulation.
If you look at the original printed scores of music from the Baroque period (1610-1750) - not the later "edited" versions - you'll notice that there are virtually no instructions to the players. Occasionally, you might come across a "forte" or "piano" sign, and that's about it. Almost no other dynamics, no phrase markings, no bowings, and often no indication of speed. And vibrato, if used, was generally treated as an ornament on the same level as other ornaments. The players were expected to know these things from their experience and from what the orchestra leader/conductor told them during rehearsal - all of which they had to remember because pencils were far too expensive for the ordinary musician. If you were a solo fiddle player you'd extemporise large parts of a slow movement, putting in all sorts of ornaments, runs, and what have you. This was rarely notated, but one or two instances of notated solo parts do give a fair indication of what happened - probably not unlike a slow air being played on the fiddle today by a top player.
Ottery, - that "properly notated piece of classical music" (http://www.well.com/user/bryan/waltz.html) you referred to is said by the composer to be based on a "Cro-Magnon skinning chant". Now the Cro-Magnons were around in Europe from about 40,000 - 10,000 BC. I understand there is currently a dearth of archaeological evidence relating to written music or recorded music dating from that period, although there may possibly be evidence of some music making from flutes or pipes made from bones. I wonder where the composer got that Cro-Magnon chant - probably under meditation induced by appropriate means, I shouldn't be surprised
, if the rest of his "score" is anything to go by.
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by lazyhound
Re: The dreaded dots
Ahem, harrumph, ah well, indeed, Mr. Gill, we DO all agree that you can't learn music of any variety from the dots. We also all know, deep down in our primal selves, that we have music in us, or we wouldn't be wasting time with the care and feeding of this habit. The liberating moment comes when you realize that the dots are merely the sticky notes, the reminders, the PDAs, of our chosen addiction.
So now remind me. Since we all agree, why are we whacking this particular dead horse again?
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by Batlady
Re: The dreaded dots
Michael is talking total crap again, and once again has misspelled minuscule. Some people just never listen, which is very surprising considering how much they advocate learning by ear.
So here is my alpha and omega. Only mine, not yours. No portentous prattle about having to master your instrument first, etc., and definitely no Irish residential qualifications. Underlying it, nay, thoroughly pervading it, is my view that playing ITM is all about having fun. Those who play it whilst having fun are assuredly the very best players. Those who proselytise about how you should or shouldn't learn it, tell you how hard it is unless you're master of your axe, etc. ad nauseam, are not good players. For who would want to play WITH them save those of like mind and what a miserable bleedin' crew they are. Probably all vegan teetotal scientologists who grow their own veg by the light of the full moon whilst sprinkling tiny amounts of strange substances on the soil in druid costume. So.
Listen to ITM as much as you can. In the car, at home (just turn Holby City off and whatever you do NEVER listen to Mike Harding), at work, on your bike, at gigs, in sessions. Listening to it is everything. Get the tune book out if you can read music and need to learn tunes fast. I'm fifty bloody five and I need to learn tunes fast. Download some midis. Have a gander at Youtube. Compare your tunebook dots with TheSession dots. Have a go on your own. Have a go with your friend. Have a go in a session. Make a CD. Did I mention listening. You will then not need any w*nk*r on this site or anywhere else to tell you that you will not be learning the tunes right because you are using the dots, because you will realise from all your listening that the dots are only the start. A damn good start, but only the start. Rules, what rules? Pity the man of self-fulfilling prophesies who can only ornament a tune not learned from dots!
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by Steve Shaw
Re: The dreaded dots
Actually, I typed "b0ll0cks," not "crap," and I much prefer it. Flippin' 'eck.
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by Steve Shaw
Re: The dreaded dots
because the original poster said:
"I'm a little tired of people on this board who feel that you just CAN"T play ITM if you learn it from "the dots."
I'm more than a little tired of those who feel they can learn it from the the dots. However, my love of this music is such that my stamina, hopefully, will continue.
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by llig leahcim
Re: The dreaded dots
Actually, you're more than a little tired of anyone who disagrees with you. What a bleedin' pompous post!
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by Steve Shaw
Re: The dreaded dots
Poor Steve, he feels he needs to learn tunes fast. The faster you try to learn them, the more you'll miss. He has a repertoire, but he must only know a miniscule amount of each.
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by llig leahcim
Re: The dreaded dots
What is the actual disagreement here?
Is anybody really advocating the straw man position that you can learn tunes in an authentic manner just by reading sheet music? I highly doubt it.
Is anybody advocating the extreme position on the other side, that sheet music has no legitimate use, that is always harmful, damaging, etc? I highly doubt it.
Criminy this is tedious.
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by crazy_fingerz
Re: The dreaded dots
Very, very unwise, Michael. Know thy enemy, pal!
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by Steve Shaw
Re: The dreaded dots
THINE enemy?
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by Ottery
Re: The dreaded dots
Steve, smiley faces don't make up for your aggro, ugly words. Can you disagree without resorting to calling people names and distorting their statements, disparaging people for things they didn't say?
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by Will CPT
Re: The dreaded dots
Learn tunes slowly.
I used to learn tunes fast, now I try to know less tunes, but I'm trying to do something with them. Dots are fine, but they don't tell you much.
Right at the beginning of this thread, nofrets said, "I'm glad I know the stripped down version of the tunes, as it allows me keep up with the speed."
That sort of worried me all day.
Anyhows, time to pull up a pile of fishbones and snuggle down...
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by Ottery
Re: The dreaded dots
Excuse me if I haven't read this thread closely enough, and maybe someone has already pointed this out, but surely the "properly notated piece of classical music" at (http://www.well.com/user/bryan/waltz.html) is a spoof? It's given me my best giggle for several days! Just actually read the annotations!
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by Lingpupa
Re: The dreaded dots
No aggro or ugly words. You can be direct, as I recall, and that's all I'm being. It's a topic routinely suffused with bullsh!t when it comes up and the same old sanctimonious rubbish from the fun police about the evils of learning from the dots is always trotted out. Delicacy is not called for. I mean, Michael is involved! But, my man, if it's for me to be kicked off the list you want, just keep pointing up my flaws as you perceive them. You were good at it a few years ago and I'm sure your talents are undiminished. I do not doubt your wisdom and scholarship, as you display both in abundance, but don't forget that, like me, most people who read this list want to play ITM for fun. Serious fun we hope, but fun. I detect little advocacy of fun in your posts. Sincerely yours.
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by Steve Shaw
Re: The dreaded dots
I think the general tenor of my comments about the "properly notated piece of classical music" (I'd really like to see it done in ABC) indicated that I was well aware that it's a spoof! Perhaps it was an April 1st joke, like the Piotr Zak broadcast on Radio 3 many years ago, in the days when it was called The Third Programme, when an eminent music critic got thoroughly wound up by a live (spoof) performance of a percussion work by "Piotr Zak" (who was a figment of the producer's imagination), which was in fact nothing more than a technician banging away at random on a selection of percussion instruments in the studio.
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by lazyhound
Re: The dreaded dots
The dots only show a small part of the story for a skilled folk musician. The dots only show a small part of the story for a skilled classical musician, too. If the dots showed enough information to actually replicate a piece, there would be too much information to take in. All musicians have to use their brains, eyes, and tradition to figure out what is represented by notation.
In my teaching, at any rate, I teach a few sounds, then the dots for them, then more sounds and more dots. The first trad tune is always by ear, and when the kids figure out 80% of it or so, I give them the dots. Later, I give them some by dots and some by ear, and they do all right. Moderation in all things
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by reenactor
Re: The dreaded dots
Ottery,
Didn't mean to make you worry. I said that because I've only been playing fiddle for three years and ITM for one. The speed at the session I have access to is such that I need to drop the ornamentation that I use at home at slower speeds. Isn't that kinda normal when you get started?
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by nofrets
Re: The dreaded dots
Mary- I feel your pain. I go to Mike McHale for whistle lessons, and from day one he has taught me using dots. There was a similar argument where I advocated for the use of sheet. While I recognise that learning by ear is an invaluable talent, it is one that is acquired, not instantly learned. When you start out there is already enough confusion without having to guess what notes to play. Also, seeing as some of the top players in the field teach using dots, I don't see where anyone thinks they can get away with bashing this. If using music helps, by all means use it!!!!! Would you start a fire with two sticks if you had a lighter?!
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by rob_handel
Re: The dreaded dots
Can't be bothered to read the whole thread, but my take on it is that when people here complain about learning from the dots, they mean that you can't learn *the art of playing Irish music* from the dots.
And they're right - you can't.
However, once you've learnt the art of playing Irish music, then you can learn tunes in whatever way you please, whether that be from recordings, dots in tunebooks, scrawled notation that's someone's idiosyncratic way of writing tunes down, or whatever. For example, I learnt a John Brady tune like this a while back from a photocopy of some weird-looking pseudo-abc he'd written in his own hand - I figured out his system, then played the tune as written, then changed a couple of bits so that it was comfortable to play on my instrument, added some variations, bassnotes, chords, ornamentation for extra danceable rhythm, and then played it again and again and again in sessions, and now I have the tune.
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by Dow
Re: The dreaded dots
Here's my two cents, for what it's worth-
The session.org website lists 6398 tunes in the database.
The Comhaltas books (1 and 2) give 220 tunes.
Dow lists 50, pared down from 60.
I am 56 years old. I will never live long enough to learn these tunes by ear. While I agree that it is a great achievement to learn these tunes by ear, I am glad I can get a good head start by reading the notation. I know it's only the beginning, but it's a very good beginning.
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by Greg the Piano Tuner
Re: The dreaded dots
No fun in my posts, Steve? Maybe it's a cultural thing. Your attempts at "cleverness" certainly land flat on my ears.
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by Will CPT
Re: The dreaded dots
Hang on a minute Steve. Is it my imagination or were you the one who was saying a few years back that you found all the "fun" tiresome and railed against what you called the "Glee C lub"? Obviously you have a memory like a goldfish.
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by Dow
Re: The dreaded dots
Having been an excellent sight reader on the piano and mandolin on other types of music...it's been a complete challenge and very confronting to my "I'm a fast learner" ego to come to terms with giving up the dots, and that I could only ever fake 'playing' ITM if I was going to rely on sheet music.
Which might be great progress except it's a bit disheartening to know I have to go back to being completely crap and getting things wrong for a few months whilst I try and train my brain in the ear/fingerboard relationship. So every now and again I break out and play things by sight, knowing I'm not embedding them in my brain the same way...just for a dose of that" yes I'm playing what I love" rush.
As a sight reader, if I got the correct sequence of pitch changes right by visual clues, I used my ears and body to figure out the timing...and it sounded like music, and like I could play, something musical quite quickly.
Without the dots....I can tap you out the rhythm and sing or lilt you the tune....but what comes out of my fingers is only 50 to 70% right at the moment...... I guess it's a YET.....
And I LOVE the spoof sheet music....looks a LOT like the instructions my mandolin orchestra conductor used to give.....!
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by TheCurvyFiddle
Re: The dreaded dots
What if you can play a tune by heart?
What the hell does that mean?
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by Frunobulax
Re: The dreaded dots
Dunno fisarmonicha.....as long as there isn't an interpretive dance that goes with it we'll all be safe
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by TheCurvyFiddle
Re: The dreaded dots
Dow, it sounds like you are a "skeleton of the tune plus added ornamentation and variations" man (at least for the John Brady tune you learned.) If so, fair play to you. Sounds entirely sensible.
I'm sure when you play it, appreciative listeners would come to the conclusion that you can't separate the ornaments and variations from Dow's playing of this lovely tune - they all form an indivisible whole and to separate them would mar its beauty. And they would be right.
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by grego
Re: The dreaded dots
Hi Nofrets, sorry, I read that again and it sounds like I was being patronising. I never really finished the post off, as a rather large glass of Jamesons finished me off first(!)
The reason it had me worried was that it reminded me of what I used to do, and it brought me out in a cold sweat...
I used to be in such a hurry to learn tunes, because I wanted to 'join in', that really only half learned the bare bones of them. It didn't take too long before I had quite an impressively large 'repertoire'.
Everything I played seemed to mesh in nicely with the fairly large, open sessions I used to play in, and I was a happy bunny (or Otter). But the one thing that worried me at the time was the amount of tunes I DIDN'T know! So instead of working on improving the tunes I knew, I just continually crammed myself with NEW tunes. It didn't help - every time I turned up with the tunes played last week in my head, a whole new slew of tunes would be trotted out, so off I would go again...
Then one day I turned up at a session, but the usual people were late to arrive. Gradually I realised they weren't coming at all - there was just me, a very quiet mandolin player, and a formidable and accomplished guitarist. We sat there sipping the landlord's beer and watching the door, until yon guitarist said, "Right, I guess we should play some tunes!"
It was in the next couple of hours that I learned the folly of going out with only stripped down tunes under your belt......
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by Ottery
Re: The dreaded dots
And Bellman,
thanks so much for pointing out that the "properly notated piece of classical music" at (http://www.well.com/user/bryan/waltz.html) is a spoof. I can't believe that the charlatan who recommended that my string quartet learn it to play at the May Fete still has the gall to show his face in the village. We're now down to a string duet since the Viola player and The Banjo player committed suicide during our last practice.
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by Ottery
Re: The dreaded dots
Shame, Dow. You posted like a man after my own heart then you post disingenuous eyewash about my disapproving of fun. Since every post I ever posted was deleted you can't prove a thing, and what's more I've always been very consistent about playing the music being fun. It was the pigging around and the sneery hijacking of threads that I railed against at that time. It wasn't my finest hour come to think of it but quite a few people here (most of whom don't post any more which is why I'm back
) could say the same thing. Fair dos, eh, old boy?
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by Steve Shaw
Re: The dreaded dots
Ottery: I remember it well. Did you ever manage to round up all the penguins in the end?
But back on topic. It says right here: "The exchange of tunes is what keeps traditional Irish music alive. This website is one way of passing on jigs, reels and other dance tunes.". How are we supposed to exchange tunes on a website without the use of notation? Perhaps the Tunes section should be replaced with a audio chat room so we can play them to each other.
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by JerryH
Re: The dreaded dots
I was not paying proper attention when I mentioned that the notated sheet was a spoof. It's obvious now that you all knew that anyway
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by Lingpupa
Re: The dreaded dots
"Dow, it sounds like you are a "skeleton of the tune plus added ornamentation and variations" man (at least for the John Brady tune you learned.) If so, fair play to you. Sounds entirely sensible."
Hmm, not so sure. I sway more towards Michael's thinking on this one. I don't think of it being bare bones that you add to. I rather think that the whole thing with the ornamentation and variations the way I want to hear it - and the way I feel the tune should sound - *is* the tune. The sheetmusic is just a shorthand representation of it, and not a very good one at that.
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by Dow
Re: The dreaded dots
But as long as you know that...and the way to know it is to do a ton of listening to ITM. I've learned nearly everything by repeated hearings and have used dots to sort a few little things out in tunes here and there. But I've learned a few just from dots and I can't tell the difference or remember which ones. It's all grist to the mill.
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by Steve Shaw
Re: The dreaded dots
If you don't have access to other players or sessions, the spots are a necessity. Also getting up the learning curve on a new instrument.
But if you have used them alot, when you get involved with other players, or more experienced players, the spots are not exactly what is being played.
I try to a.) listen to recordings to get a sense of how other players do a tune b.) use the spots for a bit until I have it hummable and have a grasp of the fingerwork c.) commit to memory asap d. refine from memory only.
Then when playing with others, you know it well enough to get in, but may have to step back a bit and relearn once you work with others.
They are a start.
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by zippydw
Re: The dreaded dots
Just to reiterate, since the point seems to have gotten lost, I think you can't play ANY form of music well without hearing it. I use The Amazing Slow Downer all the time to learn music by ear. I was an ear musician all my life before ever coming to ITM. But using notation is valuable, and once you know the character of ITM, you can play any notated tune very well indeed without having heard it. I do this all the time, especially with my Vincent Broderick book, since I don't have the recorded versions of these tunes.
And I still maintain that using the term "dots" is more often than not meant to be disparaging. As several have pointed out, there is no real argument here: notes are good; ear is good. The topic wouldn't come up at all if so many did not constantly put down written music as if it were some sort of barrier to being a good trad player.
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by Ailin
Re: The dreaded dots
Well, *I've* learnt every tune I know from the dots, and it seems to me I play them *much* better than people who've learned them by ear. *They* keep going wrong and playing different notes every time we repeat the tune.
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by benhall.1
Re: The dreaded dots
When you eat, do you hold the fork in your left hand with the prongs pointing down and cut with your right hand and pick things up with the fork still in your left hand with the prongs pointing down... or do you set the knife down and shift the fork to your right hand and pick things up with the prongs pointing up? And what do you do with the spoon?
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by Phantom Button
Re: The dreaded dots
Can't see where you're going with this, but I'll play along:
I'f I'm eating food that requires a knife, I'll hold my fork in my left hand, though I pick up the food with prongs pointing up. If the food doesn't require a knife, I usually use a spoon in my right hand. (though I quite enjo chop sticks, and fingers)
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by llig leahcim
Re: The dreaded dots
Dow, -- "I don't think of it being bare bones that you add to. I rather think that the whole thing with the ornamentation and variations the way I want to hear it - and the way I feel the tune should sound - *is* the tune."
I read that as semantics. Yes, the tune you end up playing is indeed the whole thing the way you want to hear it, and cannot be disassembled without destroying it. But I still say you started with a very useful skeleton and put meat on it.
The skeleton isn't the tune - no argument there.
# Posted on April 20th 2007 by grego
Re: The dreaded dots
If we must persist with this skeleton/flesh analogy, let's look at it more closely. For starters, skeletons cannot live and stand on their own any more than mere flesh can. They are interdependent, together with organs, nutrients and stimulus etc.
Also, and this is the interesting one. Skeletons are not simple props. If you look at a skeleton closely, you can see the very detailed shapes in the surface of the bones where the muscles attach. A skilful palaeontologist can reconstruct what a long extinct animal could have looked liked via years of knowledge of other skeletons, and, most importantly, the study of the skeletons of living creatures. But remember. these people are experts. And no amount of the study of skeletons alone will give you any sort of clue as to the shape of complete animals. Also, there are still plenty of very important characteristics of animals that, even for experts, no amount of the study of there skeletons will ever point you too. Their colour, for example.
# Posted on April 21st 2007 by llig leahcim
Re: The dreaded dots
However, and this is more pertinent to this discussion. the analogy has a fundamental flaw. Where as the dot readers might consider their dots to be the skeleton, the reality of the way tunes are does not stand up to this. The fact is that with tunes you cannot differentiate as to what is flesh or bones. You might have a preconception of a part of a tune that it is rigid bone, but some one will come along and show you that that bit can quite happily be squidgy flesh. And vice versa.
# Posted on April 21st 2007 by llig leahcim
Re: Beyond the dots
Damn, the palaeontology of tunes. The only trouble with that approach to reconstruction, and some musicians do participate in a similar resurrection, is that all it is trully good for in the end, if that, is to be placed behind glass in a museum, or in a museum's basement in drawers or cupboards...
What's missing? Well, keeping with this analogy of body parts ~ the warmth and vitality of flowing blood, and that takes a beating heart, nerve tissue and working, fired up and firing brain cells ~ 'LIFE!'... Now, going beyond the mere Mechano or Lego way of things ~ breathing life into it, getting the pulse going, driving it along, making it dance, now that's the craic...
# Posted on April 21st 2007 by ceolachan
Re: The dreaded dots
Flippin' Nora, I'm giving up the will to live here. Can we accept that skeletons and bare bones and other such convoluted allusions are horrendous clichés and find a more imaginative way of saying what we think. And osmosis is similarly banned.
# Posted on April 21st 2007 by Steve Shaw
Re: The dreaded dots
"But I still say you [Dow] started with a very useful skeleton and put meat on it."
I still say I didn't.
# Posted on April 21st 2007 by cian
Re: The dreaded dots
I mean, *I* still say I didn't.
Goddamit I keep doing that. It's not like cian can even talk yet.
# Posted on April 21st 2007 by Dow
Re: The dreaded dots
No, but his bio is longer than average. Typing like that at such a young age predestines him for the piano accordion, eh?
# Posted on April 21st 2007 by Will CPT
Re: The dreaded dots
"yping like that at such a young age predestines him for the piano accordion, eh?"
Heh - over my dead body
# Posted on April 21st 2007 by bb
Re: The dreaded dots
Knew I'd get a rise outta ya on that...
# Posted on April 21st 2007 by Will CPT
Re: The dreaded dots
I wish I could find his March diary entry, which I deleted by accident.
# Posted on April 21st 2007 by cian
Re: The dreaded dots
I'm not very good at this, am I?
# Posted on April 21st 2007 by Dow
Re: The dreaded dots
Don't worry. It'll be our little secret....
# Posted on April 21st 2007 by Will CPT
Re: The dreaded dots
"And no amount of the study of skeletons alone will give you any sort of clue as to the shape of complete animals."
Dow, you said you did this:
"...learnt a John Brady tune like this a while back from a photocopy of some weird-looking pseudo-abc he'd written in his own hand - I figured out his system, then played the tune as written, then changed a couple of bits so that it was comfortable to play on my instrument, added some variations, bassnotes, chords, ornamentation for extra danceable rhythm, and then played it again and again and again in sessions, and NOW I HAVE THE TUNE." (My capitals)
Fine, we won't call the pseudo-abc a skeleton. However I believe your success in doing this contradicts Michael's implication that " no amount of the study of [DOTS] alone will give you any sort of clue as to the shape of complete [TUNES.]"
It sounds to me like it gave you a very valuable clue in this case.
# Posted on April 21st 2007 by grego
Re: The dreaded dots
And why do I care? I think Michael (intentionally or not) puts down the process Dow describes above as one which cannot possibly produce a "real" tune. And this flies in the face of my experience where I have seen several good players do just that.
# Posted on April 21st 2007 by grego
Re: The dreaded dots
Sorry Grego, I said "no amount of the study of skeletons alone." Meaning you must also study live animals and the way their muscles etc work, and transfer this knowledge to the recreation of your fossil. And I also said, "But remember. these people are experts". I'm not doubting Dow's ability to resurrect tunes from fossils. he is an expert. But the whole point of my argument here is to try to dissuade people from attempting it when they are not experts.
# Posted on April 21st 2007 by llig leahcim
Re: The dreaded dots
Okay, so I have been misunderstanding your argument for some time. You do agree than that an expert player can take a page of dots and use his or her expertise to transform it into a real tune.
We won't call the dots a skeleton, if you like, but you will agree they can be a very useful framework for the expert to create a tune without first having heard someone else play it.
And yes, the expert becomes an expert through listening and learning by ear, not from dots.
Fair summary?
# Posted on April 21st 2007 by grego
Re: The dreaded dots
Yes. Thanks Grego. However, even the expert can't do it straight away. They have to live and breath it for a while first.
And do you agree that unless you are an expert, you should avoid attempting it?
# Posted on April 21st 2007 by llig leahcim
Re: The dreaded dots
Michael. I should like to investigate a little more deeply your scholarship in this matter. May I respectfully ask you some penetrating questions? What is an ITM "expert?" How would you know? Are you one? If so, who told you that you were one? Have you questioned every player of ITM that has passed your stringent requirements as to expertitudinousness as to whether they ever learned tunes from dots? And even if they had, would they look into your eyes in fear and fail to confess anyway? Are you scared that people who resurrect tunes from fossils will actually make a damn good job of it and thus rain on your parade? I actually know a few such folk myself - bejabers, I may even be one of them but as humility is my middle name I wouldn't be so presumptious...Do you ever encourage people instead of putting up barriers and, quote, dissuading? Do you have fun at your sessions?
# Posted on April 21st 2007 by Steve Shaw
Re: The dreaded dots
The only caveat I would add to grego and Michael's synopsis is that all of this matters only if your aim is to play this music in a way most trad players would recognize and welcome in their circles.
In other words, if you want to go and play jigs and reels from the dots without ever listening to them played by someone at least familiar with (if not immersed in) the tradition, that's fine. Just don't expect your local session to welcome you with open arms.
The point is that some people's idea of fun is just making music--any sort of music at all. And other people's idea of fun is playing this music with a well-informed understanding of the tradition. For these latter people, *how* the music is played--in terms of style, context, even attitude--is what makes it Irish trad music, not just playing rhe notes with no sense of the lilt or pulse or traditional articulations.
And lots of people and situations fall between these two ends of the spectrum.
# Posted on April 21st 2007 by Will CPT
Re: The dreaded dots
Will, you are quite right. Everyone is free to do what ever they want with any music. As you say, what ever makes them happy. Steve Shaw clamours for repertoire and is comfortable with getting only portions of what tunes are, then moving on to more. And that's fine. But as you say, others have the aim of playing this music in a way most trad players would recognise and welcome.
He asks questions and expects written replies. He's done this before and it's a deliberate attempt to corner me. But he knows that the real answers to his questions can only come from listening to the music. And if he wasn't so paranoid, he'd recognise a great deal of encouragement from me.
# Posted on April 22nd 2007 by llig leahcim
Re: The dreaded dots
Well, I had my paranoids operated on years ago and I no longer sniff like I do. You don't answer my very pertinent questions because you can't. You corner yourself with your supercilious attitude - you don't need me to do it for you. Your remarks are very discouraging to those who would like to get involved in ITM as you put up barrier after barrier. I can only hope that all those enthusiasts who are desperate to get into playing this music see you as the old fogey you seem doggedly intent upon painting yourself as and don't take your ill-informed advice seriously. Michael, send me six quid and I'll mail you a copy of my CD. You positively slander me with your unjustified remarks about my repertoire and my acquisition of portions of tunes. You are dishonestly giving the impression that you know my playing, which you do not, unless that is you've had your intelligence agents out at The Tree Inn on Fridays, which I doubt somehow. You seem singularly unable to confine your pejorative remarks to things you know about but seem merely content to spray your contumely in the direction of anyone who dares to disagree with Michael The Guru. I can assure you that I aim to play the music in a way most trad players would recognise and welcome, and, from the reaction I get universally from all who hear me, I make a good honest fist of it, genius though I am not. You really can't know otherwise, and your post is a naked ad hominem. I have had angry emails from Jeremy and have given undertakings to him, but, by God, you could goad a saint. I do not, unlike you, tell people to "feck off" (the first time I've ever typed that word on an internet forum) or to go and have a toss. Put up or shut up, Michael. Answer my reasonable questions or just knock it off. p*ss or get off the pot, as they say. And not a smiley face in sight this time, Will.
# Posted on April 22nd 2007 by Steve Shaw
Re: The dreaded dots
Sniff like I used to do.
# Posted on April 22nd 2007 by Steve Shaw
Re: The dreaded dots
"And do you agree that unless you are an expert, you should avoid attempting it?" (llig leahcim)
I'm sometimes in the situation, as most other players may be, of starting to learn a tune from the dots because there is no other accessible source at that time. I try to remember the shape of the tune and build it up a couple of bars at a time (the "question and answer" approach), and I'll probably make changes as I go along. These may very well be because I can see that the tune was transcribed from a box, for example, and some collections of notes would be more comfortable, and just as effective, on the fiddle if one or two little changes were made. And then I might do something to utilise the sonorities of my instrument, like going to a lower register which a flute couldn't. And I'd think about likely places in the tune to put something "interesting" (i.e. an ornament), based on what I've heard in sessions and from other players in similar passages (I do try to immerse myself in The Music, and rarely listen to other sorts now). The result is "my" version of the tune, and it is likely to be a departure from the dots here and there.
I've been playing Irish music for only 6 years, so there's no way in which I would describe myself as an expert in the music, so on the basis of the quote at the beginning of this post I presumably should not be learning a tune starting from the dots in the way I have described. How else can someone become proficient in an art without trying to do things, albeit at a much lower level, which only the "expert" is apparently entitled to? Isn't this how writers, composers and artists start off down the path to their chosen careers?
On a different note, I was attending a committee meeting at work some years ago and someone (the company lawyer) gave a thoroughly pragmatic definition of an "expert" as the one person in the room who knows more about a particular subject than anyone else present, ... and would I therefore explain to the meeting the details of a particular chemical process. Caught me on the hop that did, but I just about managed
# Posted on April 22nd 2007 by lazyhound
Re: The dreaded dots
"And do you agree that unless you are an expert, you should avoid attempting it?"
Perhaps, but I've failed miserably and had lots of fun doing so. Something to do with being in the middle of Will's two ends of the spectrum
# Posted on April 22nd 2007 by grego
Re: The dreaded dots
Remember, an amateur is someone who continues doing what they love even though the results are often disappointing.
But doing that in the privacy of your own home is different than playing this music straight from the dots without ever listening to it ***and then waltzing into a session, playing in public, or producing a recording, expecting everyone to enjoy your lifeless, inarticulate, uninformed tunes.****
My guiess is that lots of beginners use the dots to help them understand what they're hearing (or not hearing). Nothing wrong with that--if it's part of that integral feedback loop about ***listening.***
# Posted on April 22nd 2007 by Will CPT
Re: The dreaded dots
A couple of things here. Firstly, the final objective is to play the music well, not to play the music well from the dots, this is a side issue. As I've said, if you can already play well, then the chances are you will be able to play it well from the dots. Trevor says, "How else can someone become proficient in an art without trying to do things?" Yes, but remember the objective. It's to play the music, My advice is simple, and what's more it is in the best possible sense on encouragement. If you can't play the music, avoid the dots.
The second thing is related. Will says, "lots of beginners use the dots to help them understand what they're hearing". If you are listening to good music, the dots are quite simply not what you are hearing. So any reference to them can only confuse
# Posted on April 22nd 2007 by llig leahcim
Re: The dreaded dots
That's where I disagree, Michael. The dots can help people whose ears aren't yet up to speed. In my early years with this music, I might take a transcription of a tune and sit down with a recording to fill in all the blanks. I'd ink in where the notes were different, where cuts, rolls, and triplets occurred, etc. And doing that helped me listen more closely to all the nuances.
Granted, I ended up with my own transcription, which was always more detailed and accurate (to a specific recording) than what I'd started with. And even then, it didn't include some details--I was training my ear and aural memory afterall, so I simply remembered a lot of the nuances. And I'd use those dots only long enough to get the whole tune in my head, and then play by ear.
Looking back, I used the dots this way similar to how a speaker might use a powerpoint slideshow. Each slide features the key talking points, but the speaker fills in the nuances and details, weaves them into a rich and compelling story. That's all the dots were for me--a short-term memory aid as I was first coming to grips with all the intricacies of this music. Reference to the dots did not confuse me--it helped me understand and remember how all the pieces fit together to breathe life into what I was hearing.
# Posted on April 22nd 2007 by Will CPT
Re: The dreaded dots
I am all for everyone grabbing this music in whatever ways they can. The most important thing is to listen to lots of it 'til you're blue in the face, then listen some more. If you love it you'll go through a prolonged phase of doing this. It's the way to get it under your skin, and it doesn't matter if you're listening to solo performers on CD (untraditional), supergroups on CD (untraditional), players at sessions (very untraditional and very dodgy as you really don't know where they've been) or some feller who really loves the stuff and plays it to you in your kitchen (you got it!). If you do all this you can learn tunes from dots if you want and you'll be absolutely OK, because all that listening you've done out of sheer love and enthusiasm for ITM will have put everything into perspective for you. Anyway, because you've done all that listening you'll be whistling tunes all day - hey presto, you're learning by ear, and you didn't need all these flippin' "experts" to tell you how to do it! Don't listen to the grudging types who want to make you feel that it's impossible to learn ITM unless you follow a carefully-prescribed path. It's total cobblers. These people forget that we're all different and we grab knowledge in our own individual ways. I have met many wonderful players of ITM and not one of them, to my knowledge anyway (and I do talk about these things with them) ever got there by following the advice of gurus who are basically all theory and not denizens of the real hairy-arsed fun-filled world of ITM. You really have to decide when you come to lists like this which ones are on an ego trip and which ones are here because they want to convey their love of ITM to the world and get as many people playing it as possible. It can be hard to make the distinction at first but you get wise pretty soon! Listen tons and do your own thing. You don't need much other advice, really. Well, practise your instrument as well, I suppose...
# Posted on April 23rd 2007 by Steve Shaw