Based upon the assumption that "something" triggers a sonic equivalent in your head when you're playing, what do you mentally "see" during a tune... notes or fingerings?
Notes, for sure. Even when I was a wee baby fiddler, new to learning by ear and my teacher would often assist me by telling me the fingerings explicitly, I somehow found it more natural to translate that mentally into notes and then my fingers would know what to do. For instance, he'd say, "Second finger in the high position on the D string...", and I'd think "Oh, F#...." and then place my second finger in the high position on the D string. It seems a roundabout way of doing things, but I guess this way I'm translating music into fingerings, rather than the other way around, which was doomed to failure when I first started learning, since I wasn't making anything recognizably akin to music in those early weeks, particularly when just learning a new tune.
I think it's more like intervals for me. So it is possible for me to play tunes in a different key (not particularly well, but I am getting better at it). It's a combination of that, along with positions on the fret board. I don't think of fingerings, because I can switch between the 3 and 4 finger styles without any issues. And I don't think of specific notes (by name, at least), so it really has to be more that I think of the intervals.
As for what I SEE, it's usually the TV in the corner of the pub, or everybody's feet until it's time to switch tunes, of course, and then it's the other players' faces.
I see demonic trickster leprechauns...some duck and peek behind the various objects in my vecinity, others dance freely out in the open...they provoke me to focus and play in a highly thoughtful, careful, and beautiful manner so as not to upset them and have bad luck fall my way.
Yeah, I thought about the Reverend's point too. I still *think8 it's notes. Doesn't mean I don't reasonably often start tunes in the 'wrong' key. By mistake, I mean. I did two last night - thought they felt funny under the fingers, but it can breathe new life into them.
Are we going to get onto synaesthesia here? 'Cos I get that. Otherwise, just notes.
This kind of goes along with what TD&M said, but in a slightly different sense. I remembered when I first started playing I was guilty of learning tunes from (*gasp*) written sources. I quickly realized though that when I tried to play these tunes I was visualizing the actual sheet music in my head. So instead of just playing a tune by feel/intervals/pitch, etc. I was having to first see the sheet music in my head, then "read" the music in order to play it. Didn't exactly probably make for the best sounding music. Once I realized what my brain was doing I quickly forced myself to learn to play by ear. Fortunately those days are long gone and I now definitely "see" pitches and/or intervals when I play.
Rev & llig - more 'intervals' discussion please? Expound!
I seem to have very little visualizing as trigged by hearing, which is why I was being a smart-ass up there. Oft times I'll close my eyes for a few seconds to center while playing, but that's actually more to block out visual imput (especially if some wise guy is making faces or the barmaid with the halter top came by with more pints), and I'm more actively seeking to do no visualizing at all and just make a clean connection between the ears, brain and hands.
Jason G: "I quickly realized though that when I tried to play these tunes I was visualizing the actual sheet music in my head. So instead of just playing a tune by feel/intervals/pitch, etc. I was having to first see the sheet music in my head, then "read" the music in order to play it."
I can relate, even though I learn by ear the vast majority of the time, rarely using sheet music at all. I don't want to derail the thread, but I'm curious, Jason G - do you do this with speech, too, or just music? I'm hyperlexic, having learned to read at around the same time that I learned to speak, and from my earliest memories I would visualize people's words typed out in front of me when they spoke, which would make them easier to understand. I don't do that as automatically anymore, but I do when I am having trouble following what someone is talking about, I freeze their words and then see them in front of me so that I can "read" them at my own pace. I used to think everyone did this. I actually don't do it to nearly the same extent with music (though sheet music does provide a nice way of getting a feel for the shape of the entire tune, all at once), probably because music is far more firmly grounded in the aural world than language is. Still, I do make the automatic "(aurally) higher in pitch <-> (visually) higher up on the musical staff" association when I listen to music, or when I look at sheet music. I can sing from sheet music pretty decently.
Usually my eyes are staring vacantly at something.
Sometimes I see musican notation, but not in clarity, more like the shapes it made on the page (whether it was centered, hand-written, sloppy, what book it was in, what page in the book, what other tunes were near it, was there a paragraph of next nearby. I got through college with straight As this way.)
Sometimes if I'm aware of the actual note I'm playing then my mind will sort of visualize a color because sometimes I associate colors with letters. Sometimes the feeling of the tune will give my mind a color as well. Mason's Apron is red. Old Joe's is orange.
I see my pint of Doom Bar in front of me. I think of the end of the set and my next big swig and the pleasure it will bring. Failing that, sex. This stops me from thinking of the effing great cock-up I made second time round so that I won't make the same mistake and worse third time round. And I am not taking the p*ss. I am being very serious. It's an approach I recommend.
I don't see anything, I just stare off into space and zone out. It almost feels like someone else is playing the fiddle.
If I stop to think about what I'm doing then I suddenly can't do it anymore and screw up. It's like Wyle E. Coyote running off of a cliff and just standing there, until he looks down and realizes there's nothing under him...
.
.
.
.
.
.
*
I don't really see anything (I guess I have too much of a pea brain to devote much processing to anything other than music when I'm playing), but I discovered that I "think" in intervals when I picked up the viola for awhile and tried learning alto clef. I'd be playing along quite nicely for minutes on end, and then all of a sudden I'd be completely lost - no idea where I was on the instrument, on the staff, what note I was playing, what note came next, etc. It was quite disorienting. I figured out that I'd been reading the intervals, and when I came across an unfamiliar interval my brain switched to trying to identify the note, which it couldn't do quickly enough in alto clef. I think my brain is working in intervals when I learn tunes by ear, too.
Exactly my point, everybody. It's interesting trying to actually account for the music you play, which, after a certain point in any musician's progression, is an extension of thought translated into sound which doesn't go through a CONSCIOUS process. We all "hear" it... it's slightly weird going backwards to figure out how you are processing it.
I don't know if it is photographic memory. It's not like I see all the words. I just see the page and that triggers my memory of the words, who said it, what book it was in, what part of the book it was in, whatever.
... and therefore what you "see" are most likely "associations" with what you hear, which to some extent, could be an element of everybody's hidden cerebral activity... yours just seems more developed, sbhikes. I could really use that handy photographic memory capability... pity, that.
I've just started playing the button box recently, and I'm already getting teased about the vacant and sometimes odd expressions that I put on during a tune. It's a particular kind of concentration related to the tactile/geographical nature of the task. So to connect this to the topic....I don't see anything!
I hear less the notes than the spaces between, if that is what they meant. I guess I am clumsily referring to the phrasing of tunes, including the accents, tempo, and "swing" for lack of better terms.
Perhaps the term would be something like structure, the way the different phrases are put together, the differences which give musicians latitude of interpretation while still being able to embrace traditional stylings and values.
Now, with eyes shut: nothing I can recall. With eyes open a sort of a detached view of what is around unless there is movement related to rhythm.
A year or so ago same as sbhikes says above - the page if thats how I learnt it. Having made an effort to learn by ear the page has gone away (even if that is how I learnt it) and it is more like TDM describes - hear the tune in head and the fingers do it. It may be related somehow related to fingers - hard to see the page without thinking fingers but playing flute I can't see my fingers and if I do see them in the mirror it puts me of if I pay attention to them. If I want to write down the ABC it is easiest to play whistle and read my fingers. Weird and fascinating.
To answer your question TD&M, I don't think I do the visualizing of words in speech, but I definitely do it when spelling words. In other words, if I'm asked to spell a word (as I often am, being a teacher), I can very vividly see the word in my head before dictating the letters to somebody or writing it myself. Again, I used to think this was something everybody did, but I've come to find out in recent years that this is not so much the case. I guess this is kind of the same phenomenon that was happening with the music: visualizing the concrete to make sense out of the abstract.
Jason G - yes, same here (only visualising for spelling) and surpised if its not most common. Am wondering if it is analogous to me having to read my fingers on the whistle. Plenty of times I have asked people the notes of a phrase and they have to finger it to tell me. Maybe I don't know the sort of musicians who can read the intervals out of their heads.
What do you see?
What do you see?
Based upon the assumption that "something" triggers a sonic equivalent in your head when you're playing, what do you mentally "see" during a tune... notes or fingerings?
# Posted on January 30th 2008 by drone
Re: What do you see?
naked women er is that just me?
# Posted on January 30th 2008 by upmine3
Re: What do you see?
Hmmm ... I just hear the notes.
# Posted on January 30th 2008 by benhall.1
Re: What do you see?
I clear my mind completely and become one with the tuniverse. OM.
# Posted on January 30th 2008 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: What do you see?
O
OM
OMG
Right on, man!
# Posted on January 30th 2008 by benhall.1
Re: What do you see?
Yep, I just hear notes too.
# Posted on January 31st 2008 by llig leahcim
Re: What do you see?
Imagine if you saw the notes instead of hearing them? Whoa dude...
# Posted on January 31st 2008 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: What do you see?
Notes, for sure. Even when I was a wee baby fiddler, new to learning by ear and my teacher would often assist me by telling me the fingerings explicitly, I somehow found it more natural to translate that mentally into notes and then my fingers would know what to do. For instance, he'd say, "Second finger in the high position on the D string...", and I'd think "Oh, F#...." and then place my second finger in the high position on the D string. It seems a roundabout way of doing things, but I guess this way I'm translating music into fingerings, rather than the other way around, which was doomed to failure when I first started learning, since I wasn't making anything recognizably akin to music in those early weeks, particularly when just learning a new tune.
# Posted on January 31st 2008 by Tall, Dark, and Mysterious
Re: What do you see?
I think it's more like intervals for me. So it is possible for me to play tunes in a different key (not particularly well, but I am getting better at it). It's a combination of that, along with positions on the fret board. I don't think of fingerings, because I can switch between the 3 and 4 finger styles without any issues. And I don't think of specific notes (by name, at least), so it really has to be more that I think of the intervals.
As for what I SEE, it's usually the TV in the corner of the pub, or everybody's feet until it's time to switch tunes, of course, and then it's the other players' faces.
# Posted on January 31st 2008 by Reverend
Re: What do you see?
I see demonic trickster leprechauns...some duck and peek behind the various objects in my vecinity, others dance freely out in the open...they provoke me to focus and play in a highly thoughtful, careful, and beautiful manner so as not to upset them and have bad luck fall my way.
# Posted on January 31st 2008 by Pete D
Re: What do you see?
Actuallly rev, you're right. I take it back, I don't hear notes, I hear intervals, both in pitch and in time.
My visual cortex is not connected to my ears.
# Posted on January 31st 2008 by llig leahcim
Re: What do you see?
Notes, scales and fingerings. At the same time I listen. Besides, I can´t hear notes, I hear tones/sounds.
# Posted on January 31st 2008 by Reelin´ man
Re: What do you see?
If something triggers a "sonic equivalent in my head" while I'm playing, it's going to be a car alarm going off outside the window.
And what I see with my mind's eye will be a German industrial heavy metal band bringing up the tools of their trade to reduce the car to filings.
# Posted on January 31st 2008 by nicholas
Re: What do you see?
Yeah, I thought about the Reverend's point too. I still *think8 it's notes. Doesn't mean I don't reasonably often start tunes in the 'wrong' key. By mistake, I mean. I did two last night - thought they felt funny under the fingers, but it can breathe new life into them.
Are we going to get onto synaesthesia here? 'Cos I get that. Otherwise, just notes.
# Posted on January 31st 2008 by benhall.1
Re: What do you see?
oops - *think*
# Posted on January 31st 2008 by benhall.1
Re: What do you see?
This kind of goes along with what TD&M said, but in a slightly different sense. I remembered when I first started playing I was guilty of learning tunes from (*gasp*) written sources. I quickly realized though that when I tried to play these tunes I was visualizing the actual sheet music in my head. So instead of just playing a tune by feel/intervals/pitch, etc. I was having to first see the sheet music in my head, then "read" the music in order to play it. Didn't exactly probably make for the best sounding music. Once I realized what my brain was doing I quickly forced myself to learn to play by ear. Fortunately those days are long gone and I now definitely "see" pitches and/or intervals when I play.
# Posted on January 31st 2008 by Jason G
Re: What do you see?
Rev & llig - more 'intervals' discussion please? Expound!
I seem to have very little visualizing as trigged by hearing, which is why I was being a smart-ass up there. Oft times I'll close my eyes for a few seconds to center while playing, but that's actually more to block out visual imput (especially if some wise guy is making faces or the barmaid with the halter top came by with more pints), and I'm more actively seeking to do no visualizing at all and just make a clean connection between the ears, brain and hands.
# Posted on January 31st 2008 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: What do you see?
I can't say that I hear anything but the music, but it certainly evokes memories of my late grandma's rhythm of speech.
# Posted on January 31st 2008 by millionyears_bc
Re: What do you see?
Between TD&M and Jason I see what your'e saying. I still don't "see things" but I'm a natural skeptic anyway. Should I try drinking more?
# Posted on January 31st 2008 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: What do you see?
Jason G: "I quickly realized though that when I tried to play these tunes I was visualizing the actual sheet music in my head. So instead of just playing a tune by feel/intervals/pitch, etc. I was having to first see the sheet music in my head, then "read" the music in order to play it."
I can relate, even though I learn by ear the vast majority of the time, rarely using sheet music at all. I don't want to derail the thread, but I'm curious, Jason G - do you do this with speech, too, or just music? I'm hyperlexic, having learned to read at around the same time that I learned to speak, and from my earliest memories I would visualize people's words typed out in front of me when they spoke, which would make them easier to understand. I don't do that as automatically anymore, but I do when I am having trouble following what someone is talking about, I freeze their words and then see them in front of me so that I can "read" them at my own pace. I used to think everyone did this. I actually don't do it to nearly the same extent with music (though sheet music does provide a nice way of getting a feel for the shape of the entire tune, all at once), probably because music is far more firmly grounded in the aural world than language is. Still, I do make the automatic "(aurally) higher in pitch <-> (visually) higher up on the musical staff" association when I listen to music, or when I look at sheet music. I can sing from sheet music pretty decently.
Fingerings don't even enter into the equation.
# Posted on January 31st 2008 by Tall, Dark, and Mysterious
Re: What do you see?
Usually my eyes are staring vacantly at something.
Sometimes I see musican notation, but not in clarity, more like the shapes it made on the page (whether it was centered, hand-written, sloppy, what book it was in, what page in the book, what other tunes were near it, was there a paragraph of next nearby. I got through college with straight As this way.)
Sometimes if I'm aware of the actual note I'm playing then my mind will sort of visualize a color because sometimes I associate colors with letters. Sometimes the feeling of the tune will give my mind a color as well. Mason's Apron is red. Old Joe's is orange.
# Posted on January 31st 2008 by sbhikes
Re: What do you see?
I see my pint of Doom Bar in front of me. I think of the end of the set and my next big swig and the pleasure it will bring. Failing that, sex. This stops me from thinking of the effing great cock-up I made second time round so that I won't make the same mistake and worse third time round. And I am not taking the p*ss. I am being very serious. It's an approach I recommend.
# Posted on January 31st 2008 by Steve Shaw
Re: What do you see?
I don't see anything, I just stare off into space and zone out. It almost feels like someone else is playing the fiddle.
If I stop to think about what I'm doing then I suddenly can't do it anymore and screw up. It's like Wyle E. Coyote running off of a cliff and just standing there, until he looks down and realizes there's nothing under him...
.
.
.
.
.
.
*
# Posted on January 31st 2008 by Marklar
Re: What do you see?
It turns out most of us can't see and play music at the same time:
http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/18/figaro-figaro-training-the-multitasking-brain/?hp
I don't really see anything (I guess I have too much of a pea brain to devote much processing to anything other than music when I'm playing), but I discovered that I "think" in intervals when I picked up the viola for awhile and tried learning alto clef. I'd be playing along quite nicely for minutes on end, and then all of a sudden I'd be completely lost - no idea where I was on the instrument, on the staff, what note I was playing, what note came next, etc. It was quite disorienting. I figured out that I'd been reading the intervals, and when I came across an unfamiliar interval my brain switched to trying to identify the note, which it couldn't do quickly enough in alto clef. I think my brain is working in intervals when I learn tunes by ear, too.
# Posted on January 31st 2008 by fiddlebliss
Re: What do you see?
Exactly my point, everybody. It's interesting trying to actually account for the music you play, which, after a certain point in any musician's progression, is an extension of thought translated into sound which doesn't go through a CONSCIOUS process. We all "hear" it... it's slightly weird going backwards to figure out how you are processing it.
# Posted on January 31st 2008 by drone
Re: What do you see?
Yep. I just hear it and know what notes to play. I'm a painter...so it's like painting with different notes. I more 'feel' than 'see'.
# Posted on January 31st 2008 by Jessica Conlan
Re: What do you see?
"I got through college with straight As this way."
Isn't that called 'photographic memory', sbhikes?
# Posted on January 31st 2008 by oldstrings
Re: What do you see?
I don't know if it is photographic memory. It's not like I see all the words. I just see the page and that triggers my memory of the words, who said it, what book it was in, what part of the book it was in, whatever.
# Posted on January 31st 2008 by sbhikes
Re: What do you see?
... and therefore what you "see" are most likely "associations" with what you hear, which to some extent, could be an element of everybody's hidden cerebral activity... yours just seems more developed, sbhikes. I could really use that handy photographic memory capability... pity, that.
# Posted on January 31st 2008 by drone
Re: What do you see?
I've just started playing the button box recently, and I'm already getting teased about the vacant and sometimes odd expressions that I put on during a tune. It's a particular kind of concentration related to the tactile/geographical nature of the task. So to connect this to the topic....I don't see anything!
# Posted on January 31st 2008 by Mairtin Lom
Re: What do you see?
Vibration and form.
# Posted on January 31st 2008 by Bodhi
Re: What do you see?
I've seen notes and heard colours, but so did lots of other people in 1967. It's all been back round the right way for many years now.
# Posted on January 31st 2008 by RichardB
Re: What do you see?
I believe i also agree with Rev and llig.
I hear less the notes than the spaces between, if that is what they meant. I guess I am clumsily referring to the phrasing of tunes, including the accents, tempo, and "swing" for lack of better terms.
Perhaps the term would be something like structure, the way the different phrases are put together, the differences which give musicians latitude of interpretation while still being able to embrace traditional stylings and values.
# Posted on January 31st 2008 by Rook
Re: What do you see?
chords - one or two per bar.
# Posted on January 31st 2008 by geoffwright
Re: What do you see?
The insides of my eyelids.
# Posted on January 31st 2008 by granama
Re: What do you see?
Now, with eyes shut: nothing I can recall. With eyes open a sort of a detached view of what is around unless there is movement related to rhythm.
A year or so ago same as sbhikes says above - the page if thats how I learnt it. Having made an effort to learn by ear the page has gone away (even if that is how I learnt it) and it is more like TDM describes - hear the tune in head and the fingers do it. It may be related somehow related to fingers - hard to see the page without thinking fingers but playing flute I can't see my fingers and if I do see them in the mirror it puts me of if I pay attention to them. If I want to write down the ABC it is easiest to play whistle and read my fingers. Weird and fascinating.
# Posted on January 31st 2008 by david_h
Re: What do you see?
To answer your question TD&M, I don't think I do the visualizing of words in speech, but I definitely do it when spelling words. In other words, if I'm asked to spell a word (as I often am, being a teacher), I can very vividly see the word in my head before dictating the letters to somebody or writing it myself. Again, I used to think this was something everybody did, but I've come to find out in recent years that this is not so much the case. I guess this is kind of the same phenomenon that was happening with the music: visualizing the concrete to make sense out of the abstract.
# Posted on January 31st 2008 by Jason G
Re: What do you see?
Jason G - yes, same here (only visualising for spelling) and surpised if its not most common. Am wondering if it is analogous to me having to read my fingers on the whistle. Plenty of times I have asked people the notes of a phrase and they have to finger it to tell me. Maybe I don't know the sort of musicians who can read the intervals out of their heads.
# Posted on January 31st 2008 by david_h
Re: What do you see?
Correction. Just realised I know a couple musicians who teach and they certainly can say what the intervals and notes are when asked.
# Posted on January 31st 2008 by david_h
Re: What do you see?
Bank notes.
# Posted on February 2nd 2008 by bodhran bliss
Re: What do you see?
people dancing often enough
# Posted on February 2nd 2008 by jig
Re: What do you see?
I go to a place and a time far away and "become" a fiddler
from bygone days, relating an emotion to receptive listeners.
# Posted on February 6th 2008 by hauke