I noticed the discussion about asking someone to stop playing. When I first started playing last year, the best advice I got was to listen to the music and let the music play you, rather than the other way around. I don't read music and figured that was a handicap, but, as it turns out, it's not. If you don't read music you have to listen, figure it out and remember it.
I am teaching myself to read music, seems like a good skill to have, but I still find that those who read have trouble remembering the tunes and cannot get by without their music.
I'm in the same boat. I keep meaning to make a determined effort to learn the dots but I never get round to it.
It's taking me years to learn the session standards played in my region. This is pretty frustrating, but at least I'm getting there ...slowly.
I meet quite a lot of very nice people who can't play anything without the music sitting on the table. They're just too afraid to make the jump to playing by mechanical-memory.
Even worse are the people that complain that you don't 'play the tune properly' if you don't follow the version that they learned from the dots.
Complety crazy, but not that unusual in my part of the world.
Your approach seems just about right, I wish I had the self-discipline to do the same.
HBM, I am a work in progress, and slowly learning to read, but I, too, have been told I am changing chords at the wrong time according to the music. When I say, listen to the music, I get a glazed over, the music says you change here, see, it says so.
I play with a lot more confidence when I have music, but learning to figure it out by ear is turning out to be a skill that some "musicians" cannot master because of their reliance on dots.
You have to feel the music and gain an instinct of how to play, strumming patterns, when not to strum, be in the flow.
Your onto something there. I learn tunes by ear and by dots - depends on the time, tune, situation etc. I must say though, the tunes I learn by I never forget, even the names of them. But the ones I learned from dots seem to be forgotten quicker!
You've got a good point there session savage....I know that whenever I learn tune by ear, I don't forget it. The ones I've learned from the music tend to vanish faster. There's one piano song I learned, it isn't Irish or anything, but I learned it by ear, and that was probably at least 10 years ago....I still know that song.
Unfortunately for me, my learning by ear is not what I'd like it to be, I'm still working on it, so I end up learning a lot by the notes and then once I know the tune, listening to other people play it so I can figure out how it should sound....
Reading and writing scores is one skill amongst others, it's a way of documenting tunes and a point of reference. I can read charts but always prefer to hear a tune I want to learn.
When there is no audio reference dots become a valuable reference and can allow you to play the tune in your own way, whether it's good or bad, since many phrasing nuances and other subtleties cannot easily be put in a written score.
Also, I found that many musicians who learned to play by ear find it difficult to read dots and play because they don't know where the notes are on their instrument!
Learning to read charts takes time and practice, it's not complicated at all. Take a score (not too complicated) and then read aloud each note by saying its name (A, C, E, etc). Study your instrument and find out where the notes are if you don't already know (this may be a bit challenging on a diatonic instrument, use a keyboard layout).
The real skill to develop is to have your brains see a note on a score and automatically find it on the instrument, without thinking about it. This is the part that takes most practice, but it can be done with time and patience.
I agree with you, Q, espcially the part about knowing where the notes are on your instrument. I didn't learn that part of the guitar until I started to teach myself to read the dots.
I also wanted to learn to read the dots so I could play the first few notes of a tune so I could remember it, though I have also downlaoded midi files from The Session as another way to refresh my memory.
So, I can read the dots pretty well not, though I do not have the time signatures down at all. All great comments!
I started going to Irish sessions because I wanted to learn how to play by ear. Prior to this I had played piano up to grade 8 standard (mostly classical, some jazz/boogie woogie etc) and always learnt from music. I've been going to various sessions for about a year and half now and can do rythm/chords/bass lines easily enough and can pick up simple stuff (waltzes/marches maybe a polka or 2) after hearing it a few times. I'm getting there with reels and the rest but I must admit I still find it easier to:
1) Ask the name of a tune
2) See if I can get hold of some notes for it and play that through a couple of times
3) listen again to the person I heard playing it and other versions if I can (recording or youtube) then
4) take what I like and possibly amalgamate the 2 together.
5) hey presto, you've another tune learnt.
Now I know many of you will scorn this but the simple matter is (for me), if your reading skills are better than your listening ones, it is more than reasonable to use sheet music ALONGSIDE what you have heard at a session/on a recording, to learn a tune. as long as you don't have the music sat on the table at the session itself, and you are still using/honing your listening skills to play with the rest of the musicians, then why the problem?
Oh yeah, and I play Piano accordion, so you can all lay into me for that as well if you really want.
When I play with others I'd rather know where the sounds are on the instrument than the notes.
When I read the notes, I don't take the time to identify what the name of it is. I skip that part as it takes to long. I just make a connection between where the note is on the staff and where that falls on the instrument.
On the mandolin, for example, a note on a line of the staff is covered by 1st or 3rd finger. A note in between lines of the staff is always open, 2nd, or 4th finger.
I used that bit of knowledge to read music for mandolin (slowly) in a day. I walk through the scale a few times so my fingers know what frets to go to and away we go.
Of course after I have played a tune from notes, it is still a revelation to hear the tune played by someone who really knows it.
One side of me is as non ITM musician-I play godawful Catholic Church music. (there is another thread on another site for that)
Anyway. My other side played folk for years before movingto ITM, which has now become my primary area.
The earlier comment about spot musicians having trouble remembering tunes w/o spots is right on, but in my case, it is one of insecurity. When I played the folk tradition more than the church stuff ages ago, ear and memory were fine.
Since '99 when our church had a 'format change' to mainline Catholic tripe, I was forced to become an exclusive sight reader because I didn't know the stuff. So when I decided not to be frustrated and focus on my ITM, the ear and memory were severely challenged.
Now I am almosst back to the point where ear and memory are dominant. Like anything else, the harder you work at it and seriously focus, the mind adjusts.
The more important thing about the spots is that with the globalization of everything, iincluding ITM, there is no one to do the word-of-mouth tradition. For many, spots are the only way to communicate the 'bones' of a tune.
They are increasingly a necessary evil for ITM players.
Repeat after me...'Every Good Boy (damn that's sexist) deserves favour". Just kidding
Timing is another issue. My box teacher pulls what's left of his hair out with me on that! Standard musicians sometime 'got no rythym' with ITM as it were! Speaking of dots (or dotted).
I'm in the same boat as Daniel. After starting classical and learning tunes from tunebooks (comparing them to albums to see how the pros do them), I've started trying to learn session tunes with no sheet music at all. The first few, I cheated and looked here for some tricky fingerings, but there's one I love and can't find a name for!
Ideally, I'd like to be able to pick up tunes entirely by ear, but that's probably a long way off.
With you 100%. You need to have that instinct though, ability to feel the music.
I struggle reading music, but have learned enough on whistle to be able to check if I have the tune right! This after recording a tune with Part B wrong.... yet people ask where the lovely setting came from, LOL. I was mortified. Anyway, tune memory can go awry and I like being able to double check this way... and then revert to ear once more.
I am learning harp though now, and while I try to read, I revert to ear every time. After 45 years of ear playing this old doggie finds new tricks hard! It seems the natural way for me. I do envy those who have both abiltiess, that's ideal. Someone who can sight read a tune with ease is lucky... but I do think you should take it away after and develop your own nuances and bit of style in the interpretation of the tunes.
While I can read notation, it was never my strong point, I learn all my tunes by ear, and once Ive learnt a tune, thats it, I have it. I learn by listening to CDs (mostly in car) and listening to radio (clare FM) and playing along with same at home when I get the chance, also more recently with lessons once a week, and then of course, by going to sessions.
I have a friend who plays tin whistle by ear. He also listens to music in his car, though it is a bit un-nerving when he plays in the car. Look, ma, no hands!
This discussion is really good. I am trying to blend my novice dot reading with the music, but as I get better learning by ear, my confidence grows that I can go to any session and pick up the tunes.
"They are increasingly a necessary evil for ITM players." That's shear and utter nonsense. Right now there are more readily available, high quality recorded examples of ITM than there ever have been at any point in history. That may pale beside learning it right from the horse's mouth, but it's a hell of a lot better than skipping right to the dots.
I'd also like to point out that it's not learning by ear that's magical. It's learning by ear from someone who knows how to play the tune properly. The big advantage to learning by ear is picking up all the nuances that the dots necessarily leave out.
I HEAR a tune I like and look up the DOTS to learn it. I have no problem remembering the tunes I learn from dots. I can learn several a week. The only thing that bothers me about sheet music is when it is brought to sessions.
It is possible to Hear with your Eyes. I recall a scene from Amadeus where Salieri picks up Wolfie's written music from the floor and 'hears' it as he looks at it.
I know people who learn by ear and they have little problem remembering their tunes. That's because they only know 5. I know others who learn by ear and can't remember them. I know others who learn stylized versions of tunes from CDs and think that is the way they are played.
I too have to agree with Daniel (post way up there). It was very comforting for me to hear he has the same methods as I do in learning tunes. I don't bring sheet music to a session and am getting better and better at learning the music by ear, but sometimes looking at the music for a tricky part saves me literally hours. I know that's the "wrong" way to do it, but that is how it is easiest for me after umpteen years of reading music. I do agree too with the post about "hearing" music with your eyes -- after so many "sight-singing" classes, I can "hear" the intervals and sometimes don't even have to pull out my instrument to say, ah, so that's what note I couldn't hear. Again, for me, as a beginner in ITM, it is a learning process. My goal is to some day not to have to look at another piece of sheet music again, but I'm just not there yet.
The trouble with learning tunes by ear is the session is twice a month and so that's the only chance I get to hear it. Sometimes they don't play the same tunes each time either. It takes a long time.
The recordings don't work so well because they get all fancy and tricky and don't play in the same key or the same way as at the session. If I want to play what the session people play I have to listen to them, not to Mr. Fancy-pants Irish flute guy who squeezes in a hundred million rolls and varies the tune so much it may as well be jazz.
Still, I listen to Mr. Fancy-pants and whoever else all day long to help seep the music into my brain. I just don't kid myself I can learn to play like that at my stage of ability.
And also there's something nice and low-tech about using written music. No batteries required.
Don't forget that for a lot of us, Irish music isn't our first musical language. I can play the music of my childhood by ear with little difficulty. But the Irish music isn't the music of my childhood so my ear can't really hear all the notes or intervals without a lot of training. The sheet music helps demonstrate the music and helps form the pathways into the ear and into the brain. The more I've learned the easier it is to hear it and the less I need the sheet music.
Another good learning tool rarely mentioned is to pick up a second instrument. That way you don't get stuck in your mind about where or what any of the notes are. The learning process gets more fluid if you can do both a string and a wind instrument, for example.
Well put (at least for me), sbhikes. Used to live in Santa Barbara, but that was in my "classical" years -- didn't know a thing about ITM then, but am glad to hear there are sessions there.
In my opinion the best talent you can have is to be able to pick up music by ear.Iv only learnt to read notated music recently,without a doubt its useful but its my opinion that nothing beats by ear you can pick any tune up by listening to the radio.
Allissa, how I wish that had been my upbringing, as I'd love to be able to have learned entirely by ear. People who learn to read music later in life can't understand how it is when you've been reading music from when you were a small child -- it's like trying not to read signs in front of you and is a hard thing to break out of -- do-able though, as I'm getting a little better at learning by ear all the time, just not as easy as if you'd been learning by ear all your life. That's my feeling on it anyway.
I can understand how hard it is because when I decided to do music for my leaving I had to learn noted music which was totally alean to me,I had to compose basic melodys which I found realy difficult as it took me ages to figure out the dots.Stick with it and it will become easier
Here's another beginner checking in:
I, too started out with no ability to learn by ear. I was determined to learn, but not determined enough to ditch the sheet music altogether - I started out with the sheet music, but memorized each tune as soon as I could, never bringing sheet music to sessions. It was HARD at first... tunes would take many, many repetitions before they would stick at all, and would often be gone the next day. I discovered that listening to the tunes incessantly helped tremendously, as well as humming (lilting?) them. In about 5 months of playing, I'm encouraged by my progress so far (although it's entirely possible I would have progressed faster had I given up sheet music altogether): I can now pick up simple tunes in sessions, learn them directly from recordings, and when learning from sheet music it takes far fewer times through before the tune is in my head and I can ditch the sheet music.
So to any beginners who are hesitant to learn to play by ear: go for it! It does get easier after not too long, and really makes playing this music more fun.
Thank heavens. After a whole two days without a heated sheet music debate I was beginning to fear that there was nothing left to be said on that topic.
Just think, without sheet-music and fiddle-technique arguments, we'd all probably have to find something else to do with our time...
After being a musician for more years than is good for me, I would like to say that I think it is almost magical how some people are able to look at a page of music and bring it to life just by playing it. However, on the other hand, I also believe equally strongly in being able to play by ear without any music in front of you.
My mother (who was a music teacher) began teaching me how to play the piano when I was seven and I will turn fifty next year so I guess that means I have been a musician for thirty-one years now. I am still playing the piano whenever and wherever I can and I have also learned to play bass (both acoustic and electric).
When I began school band in the seventh grade (at age twelve), on the first day the band director gave all of us a test to determine which instrument each of us should play. According to the results of this test, the band director assigned me to play the tuba and that is the instrument I played for the next six years all of the way through junior high and high school until I graduated from high school in 1977. Somewhere in my twenties, I switched from tuba to electric bass guitar and learned how to play it. When I could afford it, I bought a three quarter size bass fiddle and taught myself how to play it also.
Once a week, I play my bass fiddle with a mandolin and guitar group who do a lot of so-called "classical" music. Besides this, I usually sit in and play one instrument or the other at various local jam sessions (Irish, old-time, blues, and other types of music) almost every week. With the mandolin and guitar group, we play from sheet music but at the jam sessions, I always play by ear. In addition to all of this, once a month I play my electric bass with the "praise band" at my sister-in-law's Pentecostal church.
I also have a bachelor's degree in music history from a local college. In order to earn that degree, I had to take some ear training classes as well as accompanying voice majors during their lessons.
As a result of all of this training and experience, I am equally comfortable both sight reading from music and playing by ear. I believe that anyone else can get themself to this point but you must be willing to work at it, be persistent, and don't give up--no matter how difficult it seems to be. If you succeed, I believe that you will be able to enjoy playing music more than you do now.
Yes, learning how to read music can seem like trying to learn a foreign language but I believe that the effort is worth it.
I am sure that CG will attest to this since I play at the session where he's the leader.
I have read music since I was 10 years old, but I have never been good at playing notes on any instrument. Many years ago I learned folk finger picking (pima style). Having music does help me anticipate the chord changes, but not all the time. (It also helps my memory - which fails me at times.) But how to play a tune doesn't always have to do with how the tune is written. So, that's when listening needs to be done. Plus, I think written down tunes are forcing the tune onto paper.
I wish I had a better ear and could just play by ear. I am listening to more and more tunes to get the feel of the timing and remembering the melody. But, I am also trying to hear the chord changes - figure out where the progression should be. That's the challenge.
sbhikes wrote:
Another good learning tool rarely mentioned is to pick up a second instrument. That way you don't get stuck in your mind about where or what any of the notes are. The learning process gets more fluid if you can do both a string and a wind instrument, for example.
# Posted on March 13th 2008 by sbhikes
I was really interested to read that as I've recently started playing D/G box on top of the whistle/flute. Though I was only in the early stages of building up tunes on the whistle, I am able to sightread at nearly fullspeed on that instrument and this was a problem. It was just too easy to keep reading the dots while trying to memorize the tune - I'd go too fast too soon, and as others have said, the tunes didn't seem to stick as well as they should have.
Playing box feels totally different. While I can pick out a tune on it from the dots, it's nowhere near as easy, and never will be given the variety of fingerings on the D/G that I gradually sort out as I get the tune down. Maybe it's the greater physicality of the thing, or just by reason of it being the 'second' instrument, but I find I leave the dots behind very easily, and soon don't associate what I'm playing with theory unless I really try to.
So now I find I'll play tunes from the dots or on whistle briefly just to fix it in my head, then move on to the box and start to etch it into my muscles. I reckon it's made me less attached to the dots when I wat to learn a tune on flute/whitle too.
"When I play with others I'd rather know where the sounds are on the instrument than the notes.
# Posted on March 13th 2008 by abuteague"
As someone who has been playing and dabbling in various instruments and a huge variety of music since the '50's, and earlier than that singing in the local church choir, I feel certain that abuteague has hit the nail on the head here.
I think in the beginning when learning an instrument, if you play a relatively small number of tunes enough and also play the dreaded scales regularly, then a seemingly instinctive connection develops between the hearing senses and motor senses.
At some point in time (and don't ask me how long), in the same way as any other instinctive reaction occurs, fingers/bow hand or whatever instinctively move to the stimulus of a particular note/phrase and the correct position on the respective instrument.
A rather amusing example was a friend of mine way back in the early sixties. He played a huge double bass in a jazz combo and loved his beer. To such an extent that I have seen him many times falling asleep as he was playing. Even in situations where he needed to play a new tune, his instinctive ear-motor sense connection remained in control and he continued with barely a wrong note.
In my own experience, (admittidly I'm an old g*t with 50 years of playing and listening to music) I find that if I hear a tune I know (but never played it) then actually playing it becomes relatively easy.
The advice almost always given on the board is to listen, listen, listen...... to ITM and that's where the ear paints a picture of many colours and emotions. Eyes see dots and they are what they say "dots" (and in black and white). My advice to anyone wanting to learn by ear is thus :-
1. Learn the scales of your instrument and run through them every time you pick it up. (not necessarily over and over again though)
Listen, listen, listen... to trad
2. Learn a small number of tunes in the common keys and play them repeatedly until heard notes and instrument positions become fluid and instinctive.
Listen, listen, listen... to trad
3. Develop your tune repetoire and tempo.
Hope this is not too boring, anyway that's my take.
Playing by ear is a very important musical skill and the skill has to be practised and developed. Experienced ear players can reproduce much larger chunks of music than beginners who often have trouble finding the second note.
Reading is also a very useful musical skill, perhaps more useful in some musical spheres than others. However, in no sphere of music can dots totally represent the music to be played without looking impossibly complicated. But dots can be a great memory aide.
I have "learned" tunes by ear and been able to play through the whole tune, only for an hour later to have totally forgotten the tune. In reality I hadn't learnt the tune, I had only learned how to play it. If you have learnt a tune by ear you should be able to sing it. With tunes you really know well you should be able to transpose them into other keys (say D to F, or vice-versa) pretty easily, without needing to work out the names of the notes. That's what playing by ear means.
sbhikes wrote:
Another good learning tool rarely mentioned is to pick up a second instrument. That way you don't get stuck in your mind about where or what any of the notes are. The learning process gets more fluid if you can do both a string and a wind instrument, for example.
# Posted on March 13th 2008 by sbhikes
I'll third that (Mairtin Lom already seconded it). It forces you to learn the tune as a sequence of sounds, instead of relying solely on muscle memory. And the great thing is, you slip up in different ways, in different places, play different bum notes and take different melodic shortcuts on different instruments, all of which help you discover and develop variations and your own personal style.
Hackneyed though it may be, I would like to mention the oft-made comparison between learning music and learning a language. Most language teaching systems involve a textbook and either a real live teacher or some kind of sound medium. If you were to try to learn, say, Polish or Italian from a book alone, no matter how dilligently, with out any auditory reference, you would get some amused, if not bemused, looks when trying your skills on the natives. If, on the other hand, you moved to Poland or Italy without any prior knowledge of the language, you would, no doubt, pick up enough for the most basic communication in a very short time but, without the aid of a book, it would take years or decades to pick up all the nuances of grammar and syntax. A combination of the two approaches, however, would accelerate your learning considerably.
Having made that comparison, I will make the disclaimer that, unlike many languages, music does not exist in a self-standing written form - musical notation is merely a way of encoding and recording what is to be played or sung. Whilst it is possible to learn to read a language to a high enough standard to appreciate great works of literature, without necessarily having more than very basic speaking skills, sheet music makes no sense without understanding all the sounds that the dots represent.
I'm not sure if I have stated anything other than the obvious in the last two paragraphs, but I quite enjoyed writing it. I think the basic gist is, use the dots if necessary to fill in the details you might not have picked up by ear, but be guided primarily by your ear. Reading too much music will give you red eyes - listening to too much won't give you red ears.
Love the very insightful posts on this thread. I am about to start actual Irish fiddle lessons and know I won't be able to read music much and will also have my playing completely turned around and starting back at square one, and I can't wait to start the destruction...
I'm of the opinion that everyone is a different type of learner and we each find different ways of learning a tune easier. I don't believe that there is one *right* or *wrong* way to learn the music. For people that learn things more easily by hearing them, then perhaps learning tunes by ear is going to come more naturally than someone that is a visual learner and needs to see something like the notes on a page for the tune to stick.
I don't think that someone should be stigmatized for learning a piece of music from the notes, as long as they are able to go beyond the notes and breathe life into the music.
Don't get me wrong, I have total respect for someone that is able to pick up a tune just from hearing it a couple of times. I think that's awesome, but I would just like to say that some of us can learn pieces from the "dots" and hold our own doing it.
Anyone can learn to pick up a tune from only hearing it a couple of times if they practise that skill by learning everything by ear. You have to be prepared to put the effort in though and believe that you'll be rewarded for your hard work.
"hard work" sounds like it's something unpleasant, but I don't mean it that way. I mean you have to concentrate and listen hard, and put your mind to it.
"I'm of the opinion that everyone is a different type of learner"
No, sorry, but that's a cop-out. It's an excuse for not putting the effort in. What you just said is like saying that some people learn to speak a language fluently by listening and copying, and some do it by reading books. Of course we all know that to get fluent in a language, you have to immerse yourself in it and listen and use it as much as you can until you get it right. There's absolutely no other way.
Coming from the experience of being a teacher, Dow, I *know* that people are different kinds of learners. I am also a classically trained musician and I know myself. I don't think it's a cop-out at all to know thyself and know that you may learn one way or another better. I think it's judgmental of you to assume that there is only one way for EVERYONE to learn. It's got nothing to do with the amount of time that one immerses in the music.
You are clearly from one school of thought and I am from another.
I didn't think Dow *was* saying that there is only one way to learn. I interpreted what he said as being that, if they put in some effort, everyone *can* learn to pick up tunes by ear, and that that was a skill that was worth the effort putting in.
I'd agree wholeheartedly with that, with one small exception. I have found that there is a group of people who *think* they're musicians but who consistently prove they're not by being completely unable to develop aural skills. These people will never be able to pick up tunes by ear, and they won't fully 'get' the music either.
I think it is very unlikely for beginners to 'get' the music without giving up the dots and just using their ears. Yes everyone learns differently, but in my experience it is easy to discern people who learn tunes from dots - and those who don't. I can hear it in myself. There is a massive progression that seems to happen when free of the dots and in my experience, those who continue to learn tunes from them, stay in the same place.
I acknowledge that my learning of tunes by ear is slow - much lower than if I learned them dots - but they sound right. The ability to pick it up by ear will improve... if I play from learned sheet music.... nothing will.
I'll wade back in about Dow's and Acaretta's comments. I do believe that people learn differently, but I think an important distinction is what happens after someone learns a tune. Whether you learn by ear or from the dots, it is still important to listen to the music and learn how to play in harmony with the session you are at. There is no right way to learn the music except by listening to it. Whether by ear or dots, you still need to listen and play.
If you learn by the dots, at some point you have to be able to play without the dots as most traditional music has been handed down without music. I made it a priority to learn how to read sheet music because I thought it was important for my own development, but bear in mind that there a lots of different versions, at least for guitars, of what chords to use.
That's where the listening comes in. I play the chords that sound the best to me. If I am playing in a session and my chords don't sound quite right, I try to find new ones.
I have a question for guitar players in particular. A lot of the time I get some music and play the chords and they sound fine, but, invariably, there a places where I think there should be another chord and I cannot figure it out. Most of the time what I am playing sounds fine, but finding that one more chords woud make it even better. Has that happened to any other guitar players?
Yes, people may be different types of learners, but that doesn't mean that it's reasonable (or even possible) to learn traditional music in each one of those ways. In the end, listening (and learning by ear) is really pretty much mandatory. If you really find it that much harder to learn a tune by ear, then it's all the more reason to work on improving your ability to do so.
I'm a olfactory learner myself... I would prefer to learn traditional music by smell. But I still learn tunes by ear.
Perhaps my point is getting misconstrued. I absolutely agree that it is important to listen very carefully and diligently to the music. That's a non issue. A person is never going to get the point of the music and the emotion behind it if they don't spend time listening. I get that. I'm all for that. I subscribe to that 100%.
My point with learning from the sheet music is this: Sometimes, people need the notes to reinforce the tunes that are in their heads. Sometimes people don't. I have seen students that can sit down and play a piece of music only after hearing it once - amazing. That same student struggled in band because he couldn't read a lick of music. I've also seen students that were amazing players, but needed someone to show them visually what each of the notes were before they could conceptualize everything.
That being said, I know that ITM is an aural tradition and is basically learned by ear. I get that. What I'm saying is, don't knock people that learn in different ways. As long as the musician can get past the notes and play beyond them, (which a lot of them can't) then I don't believe they should be stigmatized.
"As long as the musician can get past the notes and play beyond them, (which a lot of them can't) then I don't believe they should be stigmatized."
The problem here is that many people (especially those with classical training) approach this music as though they know everything about it already (because of their training), and they think they can shortcut since they can simply read the music. This leads them to "play beyond the notes" (as you put it) by altering what they see on the page to something that they *think* is authentically trad (justified because they've altered it themselves, so that's their personal stamp) whereas in fact what comes out doesn't sound like trad at all to a proper trad musician who has spent years immersing themselves in the stuff and learning by ear. A classical musician will naturally put emphasis on the "emotion" (your word) in the tune than the particular kinds of demands trad music makes in terms of rhythm and accentuation. The end result is a really awful mushy sounding, overly sweet, contrived sound that is not only *not* trad at all, it's not even music. It's just rubbish.
Remember, if there is anything in the music that you are unable to pick up by ear (ornamentation, the notes of particular passages etc) then those are things that you can't play. If you can't hear it, you can't reproduce it. So you have to listen and practise until you *can* hear every single detail, and you can reproduce it at will. There are *no* shortcuts. Really, there aren't.
PS I had classical training in my early years, and I've been a teacher too (still am). I realise now that my classical training hindered my progress with trad music in many ways, one of which was a problem of attitude. I see this attitude in you, acaretta, and I hope that in time you too see that it is the wrong approach.
I'm with Georgi on this one--olfacotry is the only way to go. I can play tunes prioperly only when reeking in the fumes of porter, stout, or whiskey, wallowing in the eau de sweat of my session mates, stale tobacco resin peeling the paper off the walls.
Dow is right. Learning by ear (=listening) is a skill that has to be developed - it's not like your born with a natural talent for it.
Being a rather old guitar player, I didn't have much choice in my musical development, as so much guitar music you bought in the shops was "arranged for pianoforte". So it was one hand on the needle with the old Hacker set at 16 2/3 (one octave down/half speed) the other on the axe.
The more you practise the better you get. Classically trained grade 8 super readers can understandably get a tad miffed at suddenly being so deskilled but it's worth the effort.
Being able to play by ear tells you so much about this music and music in general.
Celtic Guitar - I can spend hours pondering on chord choices or sequences for tunes.
In the end it's like saying do you want the apple crumble or the chocolate torte. Some days I go with the crumble, other days with the torte.
That said, I find a bit of theory (even classical at that) helps in choosing chords that make sensible sequences.
Except that I think everyone is born with an innate ability to do it. I'm convinced it's the same ability that facilitates language acquisition - one that is a skill to be developed over a period of years. It's just a case of tapping into that innate ability and applying it specifically to the music. This requires an open mind and a belief in your own ear - something which classical music training does not tend to emphasise as a priority.
Yeah, but it's not like some people are born with the talent and some not.
Having been in (and still partially in) education I know that people are supposed to learn best in different ways (the current fashion when I left the establishment but perhaps already passe), but I believe we can all learn to play by ear. It's how I judge someone's musical ability. If they need the dots the ain't gonna add much.
This is why people in Ireland who have grown up with the music often don't understand why people coming at the music from outside the tradition have a hard time nailing the rhythm of Irish music. They take it for granted that that's the way it is: "that's the way a reel goes, that's the way a jig sounds - how can you possibly not be able to do it - it's easy". It's like if we heard a non-native speaker of English reading the words "classical training" off the page, and it sounding like "cla-SSEYE-cal training", it would sound strange to us. We'd want to tell them how to say it properly:
"Say after me: CLASS-i-cal".
"Cla-SSEYE-cal".
"No you're not listening... say CLASS-i-cal".
"Yes I said it - cla-SSEYE-cal".
"No, you're not using your ears and listening carefully enough, etc. etc.
Donald, apple crumble and chocolate torte is OK some of the time, what about savoury as opposed to sweet. Sometimes I want something sugar free...
benhall.1: ~ classically trained ~ These people will never be able to pick up tunes by ear, and they won't fully 'get' the music either.
'c': Classical music is by indoctrination, they are convinced they are in the know and don't have a problem, because they are 'certifiable'...
BC: ~ in my experience it is easy to discern people who learn tunes from dots - and those who don't.
'c': Yes, the former resulting in something generally dull and lifeless...and danceless...
CG: There is no right way to learn the music except by listening to it.
Georgi: In the end, listening (and learning by ear) is really pretty much mandatory.
Dow: The problem here is that many people (especially those with classical training) approach this music as though they know everything about it already (because of their training), and they think they can shortcut since they can simply read the music. ~ a problem of attitude.
Dow: I think everyone is born with an innate ability to do it. I'm convinced it's the same ability that facilitates language acquisition ~ This requires an open mind and a belief in your own ear - something which classical music training does not tend to emphasise as a priority.
'c': James Galway's take on it ~ YUCK! ~ But, to be fair, my flatcap off to acaretta who has done more than most 'classically trained' musicians and at least is giving it a go, has some realization that there is something more than the dots about this music, if not quite seeming to understand it isn't about 'going beyond the dots', a very 'classical music' mind set. They other thing that so often also is missed by those so indoctrinated is any sense at all of the dance in dance music. Generally the treatment by orchestras is dire and uninspiring, meaning it doesn't make you want to dance or tap your feet to it... It is just 'listening music', and lacks that extra depth of understanding. But that understanding is also often missed by the session soaked lush and speed junky who tend to flatten everything as if taking a steam roller to asphalt...
Sheetmusic addiction is a serious affliction, I've had to treat folks for it. It's always the same, they don't see themselves as having a problem, just like an alcoholic, "I just read music socially, I can stop anytime I want." And, it is 'life threatening', to the music. Honest, some of us, as already said, can hear the difference. You might be welcome in a session, can hold the notes together, and we might never breach the subject with you, you having your fun and not interferring too much in ours, but if you actually stopped and asked us ~ some of us would be honest, thinking you were seriously looking to improve your understanding and ability with this music. I honestly thing we might benefit from a 'Sheetmusic Anonymous', except that mostly sheetmusic addicts are worse than alcoholics, we too often are enablers, help them with their delusions.
Back to a Dowism ~ we all know that to get fluent in a language (in this lovely thing called music), you have to immerse yourself in it and listen and use it as much as you can until you get it right. There's absolutely no other way.
'c': You have to get back in touch with that humbleness of the child in yourself and let loose and listen and play and and step from behind and away from, throw away that crutch of sheetmusic... You can come back to it later after you've learned to breath life into music without it...by listening and mimicry...
I dont know about the olfactory approach, I'm all for getting physical with it, hands on, feet in ~ If you don't understand the dance, how can you play 'dance music'?
Yes, I do know some fine players that can play with the 'dance' in their music, though you'll never catch them on the floor. You can pick it up by ear too, from 'dance musicians'...
So if notation has no place in learning ITM, what am I supposed to do with the Tom Billy, Padraig O'Keefe, and Cuz Teehan notation I have lying around? I suppose they didn't know what they were doing. It's a pity, really, because Padraig O'Keefe is one of the aural sources I steal from constantly. I suppose I should stop listening, though, because if he thought that notation was good for his students, he obviously didn't have a grasp of how the music should be played. I mean, I already completely ignore the notation which makes up a large section of this website. It's just one more step.
Or, possibly, they realized that using all the tools available helped their students more than the alternative. I'm not certain why notation is this knee-jerk, polarizing issue on this website. In fact the tendency is when someone mentions notation positively, no matter the comment, witch-burning and complete insane conclusion-jumping ensues. Folks, be consistent. Do that to Francis O'Neill, while you're at it. Or O'Keefe.
Dow, I'm interested in knowing more about your "classical" training. What are you trained in? Where did you get your music degree from? What was your emphasis in?
I'm also interested in why you think that classical training does not put emphasis on ear training and belief in one's own ear. Perhaps you have never listened to this wonderful thing called jazz? Jazz players spend years improving their ears....but I guess they don't count because they read notes. ;)
"Dow: The problem here is that many people (especially those with classical training) approach this music as though they know everything about it already (because of their training), and they think they can shortcut since they can simply read the music. ~ a problem of attitude."
Let's continue to beat the dead horse here. No one has said that they should only play the notes and NOT listen to the music. And beyond that, any classical musician who's worth their salt, listens to everything that they are playing, be it Mozart, Brahms, or ITM or rock music. A good musician tries to emulate the things that he/she hears. We all listen to recordings of our teachers, our idols, and anyone who has recorded the pieces. We listen to the things that we *want* to take away from the piece and we also hear the things that aren't great about the musician.
Perhaps the problem is, not that classically trained musicians can't play the music as well as non-trained musicians, but maybe that the people that you are encountering and considering "classically trained" are people that played piano for three years when they were a kid, or someone who played the trumpet when they were in middle school.
One of the most important things that we are taught in music school is how to *listen* to the music, and how to go beyond the notes.
Lordy, straw men being set up and knocked down all over the place.
Reenactor, don't be silly. People who got notation from Padraig O'Keefe also got LESSONS from Padraig O'Keefe.
acaretta, let's not get into a snipey "who's more qualified to talk about classical music" argument. We're talking about trad here. It's not just about listening, it's about LEARNING from listening.
The problem is neither classical musicians who don't have enough training, nor is it classical musicians who don't listen. It's classical musicians who think that what they know about classical music should universally apply to traditional music. It just doesn't.
"A good musician tries to emulate the things that he/she hears."
Yes! Absolutely! And reading sheet music does very little to help improve that singularly important skill in traditional music.
More often than not, people (and NOW we're mainly talking about classical musicians again) hold onto their note reading skills, rather than putting in the time to improve their aural learning skills. The result is someone who can play the notes of a tune, but is clearly not playing traditional music.
When the paper and the performer differ, which do you follow?
If you follow the paper, you're missing on of the key points of traditional music. If you follow the performer, why were you using the paper in the first place?
I guess Dow's pet peeve (which I share) is hearing someone play traditional music as if it was classical music. Shakey and simplified rhythm, blocky bowing, ponderous ornamentation, and poor variation choice. Toss in excessive vibrato, and you have a recipe for how to sound like an ugly musical tourist, no matter how well in tune they happen to be playing, or how sweet their tone is.
We've all heard it. Many of us have even BEEN that tourist (much to our eternal embarrassment). I hear someone say something like "you don't need to learn by ear to play traditional music", and I can feel that ugly tourist coming.
Almost every artistic endeavor has the concept of "paying your dues" before you achieve legitimacy. For Irish traditional music, one of those dues really is the ability to learn music by ear with facility.
It's really not a question of being able to learn from the dots and *then* 'go beyond the dots'. If you are holding the tune in your head by remembering the dots, you are not holding the tune, and any amount of 'going beyond the dots' won't help. You *have* to hold it in your mind's *ear*, not your mind's *eye*.
And yes, it's an innate ability in just about everyone. Anyone who can hear a tune like Twinkle Twinkle as a small child and then sing it, without first having seen the dots, has demonstrated the ability. All you have to do is tap into it. Having said which, that can be a challenge in itself for people who have relied on dots for a number of years. Essential though for this music.
I can't help but go back here to the comparison of learning a language and learning trad. ( I know this has been said over and over again, but it's still in my mind the most important piece of the puzzle)
As a start off we all learn our spoken language, in the first part anyway, by ear. The result is usually to develop an accent/dialect most likely attuned to the area/environment around us. i.e. our "ears" have picked up the subtle nuances of the spoken word. Even later when learning from written material, we rarely lose that initial influence on our speech.
Having lived in Germany and Sweden for many years, I was obviously totally immersed in the spoken language and learnt it as such by ear. Even though, especially in Germany, the written language was practically indentical all over, the difference from north to south in speech was immense. So much so that I was once almost identified as a Bavarian/Schwab due to the dialect I spoke.
The written language conveyed little of the colour or lilt of the spoken word, and was basically there as a rarely used dictionary function. As an added thought, there are still many people in the world who speak, however, cannot read or write!
Surely the same applies to learning trad by ear. The many different and beautiful styles (dialects) of the trad music we love, played in different parts only go to prove that the fundamentals of the music "can" only be learnt by ear!
For me, my ears taught me to speak, and my ears brought me to this wonderful trad music. My ears will never let me down, and if they do, I always have the dots as my dictionary. QED.
Halellujah Georgi, ben & tctelboy!!! I love it... Damn you guys are good, Dow too. This may be me covering that old ground you managed better, but here goes a bit more...
reenactor: if notation has no place in learning ITM ~ I already completely ignore the notation which makes up a large section of this website. ~ why notation is this knee-jerk, polarizing issue on this website. In fact the tendency is when someone mentions notation positively, no matter the comment, witch-burning and complete insane conclusion-jumping ensues. Folks, be consistent. Do that to Francis O'Neill, while you're at it. Or O'Keefe...
'c': In case you don't realize it already, I've just checked, I think Dow and I are at least two of the largest contributors of notations on this site, including in the 'comments' for tunes, and including melodic variations transcribed from a lot of different sources. I don't know about Mark, but I also actively try to tie up the dots with the recordings, when I can, as I've been doing recently, quietly behind the scenes, as that sort of thing doesn't register here under a name. You mentioned some great examples, ~ Tom Billy, Padraig O'Keeffe, and there are endless others.
Personally, having met a slew of the old players, I can't remember one that was truly illiterate as far as notation was concerned. Younger players yes, but not the old codgers. Some of them bewailed that they didn't know proper notation, the dots, but they had other ways, including ABC notation and Solfeggio, etc... They had their way of jogging their memory. Yes, some of them used it as a backup for teaching, but we are talking about people who were regularly sharing music and playing it from memory a lot. There's the old tale, told differently, for the tune "The Bank of Turf" (and there are several carrying this name and possibly even taught the same way)... Padraig O'Keeffe was out cutting turf and Denis came along on his bicycle desperate to learn a particular tune of Padraig's. Padraig wasn't about to stop work, there was turf to cut. But, he gave Denis the tune, by ear, then he went over to a flat long bank of already cut turf and in the black peat, with the edge of his slade, he cut five lines the length of it, then he went along and with a corner cut out the notes. "There you go. You can practice that while I finish cutting the turf for the fire." I'm sure he stopped and shouted or played a bit when Denis strayed. However, Denis would already be soaked in that tradition and had already the tune in his ear and heart, and would get it again and again playing with Padraig and others. The dots, well, they wouldn't be taken home except eventually to warm someone's house with flame and heat... They were just for that moment...
Where did you get your music degree from? ~ acaretta
'c': That's a 'classic' jibe ~ does it really matter? Did we ask that of you?
acaretta: ~ any classical musician who's worth their salt, listens to everything that they are playing ~ and we also hear the things that aren't great about the musician. ~ One of the most important things that we are taught in music school is - how to go beyond the notes.
'c': That doesn't mean we don't filter it through our own preconceptions and long and hard learned pre-existing practices, or that what 'we are taught', how we are indoctrinated, applies to ALL things. Yes, though, I agree, a good number of those 'classically trained' who I've met that were drawn to this music realized they had to 'change' their perspecitives, to take things differently. That depth of appreciation and awareness is admirable, respected...
I've knocked heads with the 'classically trained' before, and I came out with more bruises, that's with the 'born again' sorts, like religious zealots. However, mostly, I've found folks with that background who have been drawn to this music to be ready and willing to give up their preconceptions, or to try, and I've been really pleased to see a few discussions started by folks who knew they had to approach it differently ~ and to unlearn bad 'classical' habits, including in the mind, unhelpful attitudes.
I've known the same with dance. I remember seeing a couple out doing Irish set dancing that looked like they were floating, everything very stylized, like competition ballroom or Latin dancers, a bit silly really, but they were on time and they didn't get in anyones way. Then I overheard some visiting Americans that were really impressed with it, and were paying a lot of attention to this one couple. One of these Americans was actually writing down notes, which I later saw included the figures for the dance. They were using this one couple as their 'best example', and I take it that they intended to take this back home with them to share. I knew this particular couple didn't quite fit, and was curious about the very atypical and exageratted style. So, I found a point to introduce myself. They were really sweet, they were Dutch, and they were competition ice skaters. Undoing what they had spent so long learning and refining would take a lot of effort, if they really wanted to learn to dance these particular Irish dances without the exaggerated flair and affectations they'd nurtured for ice skating. There's no way in hell that could be done with a book, or through reading.
Q: "Oh dear, only two notes.. what can they do with only two notes?"
A: "Make a morris tune?"
What I want to know is, 1) How does he manage to draw a perfectly straight stave freehand, and 2) How come the tune plays in a key sig of 2 sharps when there's no key sig?
Yes I wondered about the key signature, too. I just assumed it was taken to be a whistle tune, so there was no need to actually write down the key signature.
... and my girlfriend has pointed out that it was a 'she'. It was Tiny Clanger. You really should concentrate more, Dow.
Acaretta: "One of the most important things that we are taught in music school is - how to go beyond the notes."
See, this is exactly what I'm on about, and you just don't seem to understand what I'm saying. You said that this is "important", but in the world of trad music, this skill your music school has taught you is absolutely useless. And I mean *completely* useless. Zero, zilch. It won't get you anywhere. I think classical training makes a big mistake here in teaching that "going beyond the notes" is universally applicable. Your classical training will not teach you how to "go beyond the notes" of a piece of written trad music. Unfortunately many classical musicians think they can do this (because they know how to "go beyond the notes" and put their interpretation on a piece of classical sheetmusic), and this is why their trad ends up sounding sh1te. A trad tune is a purely aural thing. The sheetmusic for it is an afterthought. To learn a trad tune you have to approach it from the other direction. Learn how to play the music by ear, and then if you want to use sheetmusic as a memory aid or a crude means of transmission/representation then that's ok. But what you *can't* do is learn the music by attempting to "go beyond the notes". You just can not do it. It's an impossibility. Someone who has learnt by ear for a number of years can learn how to interpret sheetmusic for a trad tune, but that's a different thing. By that time they've put the work in and can play.
I was disappointed that you asked me about where I got my music degree from. But since you ask, I don't have a degree in music, my degree's in something else entirely. I got as far as grade 8, also grade 5 theory, 2 performance papers for A-level on a 1st and 2nd instrument, A-level harmony (string quartets), theory, history and a composition portfolio. Years of work, and none of it helped me learn how to be a trad musician. That required another few years of learning and playing and a different mindset entirely.
I hope someday that you'll understand what I'm talking about. I really genuinely want that for you, because at the moment, I think you just don't see...
C, I do notice that you and Dow are major contributors to the notation section of the site - which is precisely why I made that point! Maybe, just maybe, it's not the using the dots in the learning process that creates the problem. You're damn right I made a straw man, and I appreciate you calling me on it.
Perhaps there's a second straw man in this thread?
You know, decent ability in all forms of music requires a ton of listening. Being able to sort of styles in all types of music requires listening. Developing appropriate or vernacular style in *all* forms of music requires listening.
Yes, folks, we're all traumatized at times by people with too much training and not enough sense. We're also traumatized by people with virtually zero training and not enough sense. Whether they can use notes, as *a* resource, (not *the* resource), is immaterial. I'm pretty damn certain that we tend to shoot first, ask questions later for violinists in particular for the first problem, and bodhran players for the second. Is that really what we want to do?
Your contribution and niggles are appreciated reenactor, don't get me wrong. It is hard for there to be discussion without differing perspectives. Much 'discussion' is about finding understanding, and sometimes reaching some level of agreement, which probably on the whole we have, if phrased in different ways...
I really loved "The Clangers: Music" Ben
K: D Major
a3 g f2 d2 | A2 cd e4 | GF E2 D4 | ~ I'm with the soup dragon, eating music...taste!!!
"What can they do with two notes?" ~ I think planting was a good idea, given enough time and patience and care....
I will read this entire post ~ when I have more time. Skimmed over some real gems!
It is not completely the dots which keep players from hearing. I have noticed even among ear players (people who fondle their ears?) there are sometimes different styles in the same session. You can have 2 good players who are each capable of hearing the 'accent' of their given style of ITM. Until each listens to the other it may sound as unpleasant as any dot reader.
Muse, plenty of people are guilty of playing with closed ears. That's one of the main things that can keep a session from gelling. Some people are so intent on the noise *they're* making that nothing else seems to register.
Dow, perhaps you should go back and reread my earlier posts. No where have I ever said that someone should sit in a room, void of all CD players, IPODs, people, or a computer with internet access, and read sheet music without listening to the tunes.
As a music educator, I apologize that your music education so miserable failed you that you have had to resort to learning tunes without the benefit of these simple tools that so many others find so gratifying. Instead you resort to brow beating those who are able to use these tools to deepen our enjoyment the music.
What utter garbage you are speaking, acaretta. For one thing, of course I can read music. The difference that it doesn't "deepen my enjoyment of the music", because I realise that it cannot. The only enjoyment I can get from music is by listening to it or playing it. In fact, I find the idea of getting enjoyment from seeing black dots on a white page rather strange. Each to his/her own, I guess...
"As a music educator, I apologize that your music education so miserable failed you that you have had to resort to learning tunes without the benefit of these simple tools that so many others find so gratifying."
It's statements like this that are the basis for trad musicians' prejudice against classical musicians and their snobbish attitudes. Yeah, they're not all like that, but you obviously are. Shame.
acaretta, you're missing the point. In fact, what you're doing here, in this thread, doesn't bode well for your ability to listen in that spirit of 'give and take' that is required in a real live session ...
The thing that really bothers me about your argument, acaretta, is this notion of 'going beyond the notes'. Great concept in classical music - useless for trad.
Let me try a different tack: I lead a little Chamber Orchestra (oh, btw, I have a degree in music from Cardiff University, not that that has anything to do with anything ...) and I'm sometimes called on to play solo passages, as I was the other week when we performed Holst's St Paul's Suite. I find that I play my solos much better when I have actually memorised the music. I 'go beyond the notes'.
So far, so good. But my point is that that is a million miles away from what you have to do if you want to play trad. It's actually no good to 'memorise the music', meaning the dots, in this case. What you have to do is play the music *as it sounds*, which is a different thing altogether. I tend to pick up a tune or two a week. What normally happens is that I hear something I like, and, lo and behold, some days later, there it is, in my memory bank, with the sound of the person who played it. It's a different skill, and I'm afaid it's vital, assuming, that is, you want to play trad and not just muck about with sheet music.
btw, when I pick up tunes this way, I just play the tunes. I don't *have* to 'go beyond the notes'.
That's not fair Ben - you're saying exactly what I said and passing it off as your own idea! And I can't believe you've got a music degree even when you make all those mistakes with your theory
I know it was your idea. I was trying to put it in a different way that might be intelligible to acaretta and others who think like her. Someone had to try, as you had so singularly failed.
Yes, I've done a degree, and some other musical studies beyond that, but I don't normally shout about such things here, because I don't really think it's relevant. It's a shame that acaretta can't see that that sort of thing isn't relevant.
Maybe I'll have to start bowing down to him and worshipping him now I know he has a music degree. That's obviously what we're expected to do with people who have music degrees, 'c'. I wonder if Ben got taught by any famous people...
An illustration of a danger in playing from the dots - when you already know the tune well :
Last year I was at a workshop in Devon on playing for set-dancers. Because the attendees were from a wide area, so weren't necessarily familiar with local tunes, or were perhaps used to playing for kinds of set-dancing other than Irish, the only way the workshop could work was by everybody being able to read fluently the printed music provided.
The problem started for me in the afternoon session when we got round to playing for the set-dancers. I already knew quite well about 75% of the 90-odd tunes we had worked on in the morning read-through session. When I found myself with the dots of those tunes in front of me when I was playing for the dancers it turned out to be very distracting. I was slowing down and making silly mistakes. The only solution was to push the music stand out of focus and then everything was ok. The dots must have been interfering with my memory recall mechanism.
It is the &fmt=18 tacked on the end that does the trick. If higher definition is available (not necessarily always) then it will be provided and you'll see a link on the YouTube screen for those who prefer lower definition with a faster download. The high definition video is about 60% bigger than YouTube's standard format so will take longer to download.
Nice to see you here lazyhound... I'm going to have to email you. You have my curiosity perked ~ a 'playing for set dancers workshop' ~ & dots ~ & 90+ tunes ~ ??? Crazy!
I'll now have to chase up that high definition link...
Nice example, and from someone else who also comes from a classical background and knows and appreciates the differences...
Wow, the resolution was great, but it turned out to be only a small part of the tale, up to Tiny Clanger drawing of the staff... I watched it full screen for a change, and on a large monitor, amazing... You could see the stitching and everything. I just wish it had been complete... Thanks LH... May you escape this new lurgy going about...
Let's not be critical of anyone who posts here, this is supposed to be a civil discussion meant to promote learning. I think there are many ways to learn music, value in being able to read music, value in picking up tunes by ear.
Just like real like, there are always some folks at sessions that think the way they play tunes or learned tunes is the only "right" way. I think aceretta has made some good points, try to take the positives away.
I do not want to see any personal attacks on any opinions here. I am happy to see some many different points of view expresses. I think everybody agrees that listening is a key skill, and should be developed as a basic foundation of the music. If there are other learning methods that can reinforce that, great.
It was while I was getting a masters degree in music that I figured out that you don't need a degree in music to be a great player! ha! (duh, and costing a pretty penny to find out, eh?!) What the degree did for me was to get paid more in a job that I eventually quit.
I have used the notes to "learn" a tune, but find that using notes to play ITM and really "know" the tune is a hindrance to my playing. I use them, but also recognize what a crutch they are. I'm trying to wean myself from them.
While I've helped people to escape the prison dots can create, what I've previously called an addiction, I have also worked just as hard to get past people's paranoia and hate of notation ~ to see that it doesn't mean a loss of soul in their music and that it can be a useful tool and another perspective toward understanding the music... On both counts, where it has suceeded, no one was unhappy with the results, either escaping the tyranny of dots, or gaining a new tool in understanding music and being able to read and write its skeleton in either ABCs or dots.
That high-definition trick for YouTube videos – I've now applied it to the set dancing and piper videos listed in my Description here, improving, even if slightly, old videos which were visually somewhat dire.
"I am teaching myself to read music so I can fill in the parts of the melodies that I can't pick up by ear." ~ Celtic Guitar
Very good point. It's only too easy for an inexperienced player in busy sessions to be quite unaware that they are missing a lot of the detail. A typical instance (for a fiddler) would be to mis-hear the sequence |ad bd ad gd| as |a2 b2 a2 g2|.
"I am teaching myself to read music so I can fill in the parts of the melodies that I can't pick up by ear."
I've said this before, but at this point it's worth repeating: The notes of this music than get written down are the straight forward bits. They are the easy bits. If you can't pick them up by ear, how the feck are you gonna be able to pick up all the lovely subtle stuff that's not in the dots?
Except that sometimes the straightforward bits are obscured when the source player puts in lots of lovely (or not so lovely) subtle stuff. If a player can find out what those straightforward bits are, he or she can then add their own subtle bits. Or it can give them a frame of reference that makes it easier to figure out how the source player is fleshing out that section. Kind of like doing a hard crossword. When you're stuck, sometimes a letter or two as a hint can get you unstuck.
Tunes aren't puzzles there to be solved. Sometimes there is no answer. Sometimes, the ambiguity can be the soul of it. Sometimes, the straightforward bits are deliberately obscured. What is wrong with referring to dots at this point is you are looking for something solid that in the real world of the tunes doesn't actually exist. You really must be embracing the fluidity and not damning it.
Yeah, it's interesting. There's so much ambiguity and even downright contradiction. And this is the case with all great art.
Listen to how a really great player ploughs through the end of a phrase and into the next phrase, this is the magic in the music. If this kind of thing troubles you and you feel the need to refer back to an easily transcribable and delineated simplicity, you need to open your mind and trust your ears. Trust what your ears hear and if what your ears hear confuses you? Just go with it and learn it anyway
"To Ben and Dow,
Let's not be critical of anyone who posts here"
Whoa there! I'm not speaking for Dow, who can speak for himself, but I won't be told how take part in a discussion. I was critical of ideas and, aside from a few light-hearted remarks, am not aware of ANY personal criticism on this thread that I personally aimed at *anybody*.
But now I will, because now I'm angry. I for one (and for what it's worth I think this happens to apply to Dow, too in this case) was doing my best to be helpful. So I don't appreciate out of order remarks from some snotty guitarist who has, and I quote "started playing Celtic/Irish music in December 2006 when I ended my self-imposed 36 year retirement from playing guitar" and who proudly boasts that 12-string guitar suits "Celtic melodies".
Whew! ~ It's about the music, which is far more important than any one person... I hate it when folks take it personal, or think that the criticism or question of an idea is aimed at the person delivering it, rather than being able to discuss the idea without being so het up about it as if it were your dog being tortured...
"hippie"? ~ Now I'd love to hear Llig's take on what exactly that means Zebedee... Hey, don't go boooinginginging away... Come back here!
"this is supposed to be a civil discussion meant to promote learning"
Hey Ben, there you go weith personal attacks because you're "angry?" What kind of crap is that? There are some her that seem to get cranky or angry when frustrated that their point of view is not taken as gospel. Maybe I don;t have much exprience with trad music, but I am trying to make ip for lost time and learn as well as I can.
I'd rather be an "ineffecutal hippy" (which I am not) than an arogant lurker on this board who jumps on people who don't agree with them
Llig is right. Don't use the dots to pick up bits of tunes you can't get by ear. You will never be a decent musician if you keep doing that. Just listen to it again and again until you *can* pick it up by ear. Sooner or later you'll find it easier, and you'll start to hear more and more subtleties in the music which you'll then also be able to bring into your own music. Michael's example of ploughing on right into the next phrase is a good one. It's stuff like this that requires you to be a good musician - the subtlety of accent, timing, intonation, attack, phrasing, articulation. If you're only interested in getting the "notes" from the dots, then you're not making music. Especially if you can't get some of the "notes" by ear and you have to "resort" to the dots. You might as well take up knitting or something and leave the music to musicians who are interested in actually learning how to play properly.
Sorry to sound judgemental, but this argument is really really important. It's attitudes like acaretta's which cause sessions to be ruined on a regular basis, and that annoys me.
I attacked because, *without* having previously attacked anyone, you attacked me, celtic. I've been told by Michael now that you don;t really count, though, so I can rest easy.
Out of interest, I did *not* "get cranky or angry when frustrated that [my] point of view [was] not taken as gospel"
The first time I responded with anger was when you attacked me, Celtic. Previous to that, I thought we were having a friendly, useful, and really rather important discussion (as Dow says). But I suppose there are always some who can't leave it like that.
Ted's a bit confused (must be the mushrooms) ... he starts this thread with the eminently sensible, "I don't read music and figured that was a handicap, but, as it turns out, it's not."
But then says, "I am teaching myself to read music so I can fill in the parts of the melodies that I can't pick up by ear."
I think he probably is ineffectual ... to the music I mean, it's not a comment on his character, I don't know him. Some geezer who decides that a 12 string guitar is a good instrument to play these tunes on is not going to ruin them for the rest of us. Such ignorance of the music is commonplace, though at the end of the day, not a problem.
However, the main problem with a discussion board like this is when people expound their strategies of how they are successfully managing the music when quite plainly they can't be. And the only way round this is with counter argument. And sometimes the argument is important, as Dow says.
It is hard to hear all the notes during a session, so I have resorted to learning to read the dots to fill in the blanks. That seems very sensible to me.
This has been a good discussion, let's all just cut out the sarcasm and other negative behaviors. This has all been very enlightening, even without the mushrooms.
And you are not vicious, ben. Porbably just very passionate about music.
I ask experienced session players if I have the tune right after I work on it outside the session. There are often multiple versions of the same tune out there, so I try to go with what the session players play. But sometimes, it varies from session to session.
There's the confusing part, do I play what someone says is right, do I play to the idiosyncracies of each individual session, do I play what I think sounds the best? That is a question I don't have the answer to. Whose ornamentation is "right?"
Ted, you play the 12 string guitar. You are not part to the discussion of "Whose ornamentation is right?" If you continue with this instrument there will always be a wealth that shall remain out of your reach.
I play 6 and 12-string. Please tell me why there is a bias against 12-string guitars. There seem to be plenty of mandolins and octive mandolins around, what's the difference? I get pretty good feedback about the 12-string. I am just wondering.
No bias against 12 string. The problem is with all the fretted family. Banjos, mandolins, guitars etc. There is a wealth of the music which will always be beyond your reach.
So, you are saying that fretted instruments have no place in the music because we can't play the notes between the notes? This is a little confusing, but I have an open mind and I am trying to understand what you are saying.
Thanks, Ben. Things get a little heated sometimes, but we are all passionate about the music. I am really trying to make up for lost time and be very serious about my approach to the music.
I understand why guitar players, in particular, have a bad rep; I have seen numerous guitar players who don't take the time to really learn the music and listen to its subtleties. They just bang away with the same awful rhythems without ever really being present to what's going on around them.
Dow, it's clear to me that you are extraordinarily bent on portraying yourself as correct and me as inexperienced and incorrect. That's fine, you may bash my opinion and training all you want, it doesn't make a bit of difference to me. I would however like to point out that you are basically saying the same thing that I am, and you are contradicting yourself. It's clear to me that you are unable to understand a single point that I am trying to make, which leads me to believe that you are as close minded as a religious zealot.
In an earlier post you stated that a classical musician is only likely to put emphasis on “emotion” in the music and create something that is non-trad and mushy sounding. I submit to you that a properly trained musician is able to submerse themselves in whatever style of music that they would like to play, and are able to pick up the idiosyncrasies of that genre of music. If one would like to play Mozart, they need to immerse themselves in Mozart, because it has a different feel than Handel or Brahms. If one wants to play Hungarian Dances, then they are going to need to immerse themselves in that, etc. If a classically trained musician wants to play Irish Trad music, then they clearly need to listen to the music. This is not optional. It’s a no brainer. A person that wants to play ITM clearly should listen to all the great players, and try to emulate what they are doing with their sounds, ornamentations, and feels of the rhythm.
I submit to you, Dow, that you are misunderstanding what I am saying about going beyond the notes, because you are saying the same things that I am, just putting them into your own words. In your post you said “Sooner or later you'll find it easier, and you'll start to hear more and more subtleties in the music which you'll then also be able to bring into your own music. Michael's example of ploughing on right into the next phrase is a good one. It's stuff like this that requires you to be a good musician - the subtlety of accent, timing, intonation, attack, phrasing, articulation.” Isn’t this exactly what I was saying? Going beyond the notes, in my opinion means exactly this; being able to get the feel for the rhythms, the rubato of the piece, the phrasing, how one phrase of a repeated section may have a different feel than the next, etc….. But in your opinion, a classically trained musician would never be able to do that. Well then I suggest that you start listening to more classically trained musicians that are actually good at what they do. Perhaps if you let go of all of your preconceived notions about the limitations of musicians, perhaps you can start to appreciate the talents and abilities that they do have to offer. It’s your attitude that is detrimental to sessions and playing, in my opinion.
"But in your opinion, a classically trained musician would never be able to do that."
Um, no, that is not my opinion. Of course a classically trained muso could potentially do it, just like anyone else. But they'd have to go through the same process as everyone else to get it right. Don't put words in my mouth I didn't say, please.
I'm afraid when you talk about "going beyond the notes" we are saying very different things in that we're approaching the music in different ways, acaretta. You think we're saying the same thing. I recognise that we're not. Oh well.
Aren't these your words?
See, this is exactly what I'm on about, and you just don't seem to understand what I'm saying. You said that this is "important", but in the world of trad music, this skill your music school has taught you is absolutely useless. And I mean *completely* useless. Zero, zilch. It won't get you anywhere. I think classical training makes a big mistake here in teaching that "going beyond the notes" is universally applicable. Your classical training will not teach you how to "go beyond the notes" of a piece of written trad music.
According to your words, classically trained musicians haven't been taught anything and therefore can't possibly be good ITM players.
Ok let me think and I will try and explain this to you very simply because I think it's important for your future musicianship, and I want to emphasise that I'm trying to help you here. Just hold on a sec...
I'm not surprised you are confused if you think of it as playing the notes between the notes.
I've never said that fretted instruments have no place in the music, it's just that they are not capable of giving it full justice. They are capable of making splendid compromises and can add very successfully to an ensemble. If you don't already know this then, as I've said, you are not using your ears.
I'm afraid Dow is not quite right when he says that classical music training is completely useless. It is worse than useless. Not only do you have every thing to learn about this music, you have to wrestle with what you already know being useless
OK, when I said that classical training itself does not give you the skills to be able to play trad, I meant that a classical musician is at no particular advantage with their specific training when it comes to trad music. BUT. That doesn't mean that they can't ever be good trad musicians. What I mean is, for a classical musician to become a good trad musician, they have to go through a whole new learning process, and not simply transfer skills from their classical training. In other words, even if they've played classical violin for 20 years and teach, and perform solo concerts in front of thousands of people, if they want to be a good trad musician, they're going to need to start from scratch and spend the next 20 years playing trad, so they'd better bloody get started if they want to be any good before their fingers start dropping off.
Yes, cross-posted with you there llig. Very true about having to wrestle with what you know being useless. I know quite a few good trad musos who started out classically trained. They look back now at the years they spent wrestling with what they know being useless and they think "duh?! if only I'd just erased it all and started again I could have got where I am today a lot faster".
Perhaps your challenge in this situation, Dow, is that you are only applying your knowledge of classical musicians to those that play violin. Perhaps you haven't noticed, but there are a lot of other musical instruments in both the classical world and the ITM world.
And, Llig, Dow, classical training is NOT useless, if you know what you're doing.
Dow doesn't play violin. At least, not to my knowledge - not that I know him. I do. Play violin, that is. I have an opinion on all sorts of things, not just on violin.
You do seem strangely incapable of hearing what other people are actually saying, acaretta ...
Celtic Guitar: "I ask experienced session players if I have the tune right after I work on it outside the session. There are often multiple versions of the same tune out there, so I try to go with what the session players play. But sometimes, it varies from session to session."
'c': wise man, well said ~ ask the source. Get the 'notes' from there, from someone who plays them. Make it personal, first hand. The dots can serve as a reminder, or offer other options to sample, but live is always the best way...and it seems you already know that...
acaretta: ~ able to pick up the idiosyncrasies of that genre of music.
'c': It may not be you, this isn't personal or about you in particular, but often, from my experience, the 'classically trained' are hobbled by that training, they play what they consider the 'idiosyncratic' of a genre of music and the resulting sound is generally hackneyed, the music tends to be affected in a quite unnatural and obvious way, even clumsy... Mozart (Handel, Brahms, etc.) isn't the same thing, sorry...much as I love and appreciate this music too, and take interest in the many takes on it I've heard... If you really want to play 'Hungarian Dances', the real stuff of the Carpathians, you don't go to Brahms or Bartok or other classical examples or musicians to learn. That just won't cut it... It couldn't be farther from the truth, from the 'dance'...
From these examples, it doesn't sound like Dow is misinterpreting, but maybe it is a problem of communication? ~ both ways... A classically trained musician CAN DO IT ~ BUT ~ they must set aside the training and clear their ears out of preconception, habit and training and remove those filters and just let the music be what it is instead of trying desperately, as has happened in some instances in Scotland, and elsewhere, to sweeten it and make it acceptable to classical ears...a kind of bawdlerization of music. As the Cape Bretoners often say, it has to have that dirt in it. Also, please don't judge us in ways you can't necessarily know ~ most of us, and Dow too, appreciate other kinds of music, including those things that fall under the catchall category of 'classical', but not limited by that either...
acretta to Dow: "According to your words, classically trained musicians haven't been taught anything and therefore can't possibly be good ITM players."
I didn't read that, we all, I think, realize that classical musicians work damned hard, and we all know folks who started 'classical' and then added another string of appreciation and love to that heat ~ for traditional music, in this case, as discussed here to be specific ~ Irish traditional music(s). I can't think of one of them that doesn't realize the differences mentioned here, that classical training does not quite prepare you for an ethnic music of any kind, meaning with accent and depth of understanding and skill. No one can doubt one is 'practiced', but that is the problem, those practices don't apply to how an ethnic music is pulled out of any given instrument, with accent. Classical music is, in a sense, as WASP as you can get, very right winged if it were a politics, it is the white bread of music. It makes great toast, but it is not the same as any of the sourdough ryes of the world. It is a very different process and result. Just because you have all the equipment and tools to make a white loaf and are well practiced at this and can do it 'without thinking' ~ however good it might be, it doesn't mean you can understand and pull off a good slow fermented sourdough hand kneaded loaf, or that your wholegrain breads won't come out like bricks... It is a whole different method and education and appreciation...
Sorry Llig, I agree with most of what you say, and while I might bewail the loss of the moveable fret, I love the guitar and the guitar family. Even Dow plays double strings. One of my wife's favourite trad instruments is the mandolin. One of my alltime favourite albums, that I sadly gave away, was of Dave MacIsaac playing Cape Breton music on the guitar, which he does beautifully, also being one damned fine fiddler too. Like with every instruments, there are things, and subtleties, the guitar and guitar family can pull off that other instruments can't, and vice versa. If we started too far down this road we'd risk passing judgement that only one instrument can truly be considered to do justice to Irish music... And please, don't let it be the wire strung harp or a one octave set of bagpipes or shawm...
I don't see that people are saying that classical training is useless, point blank, but that it is useless where this music is concerned, on the whole, that you have to relearn and work past your learned preconceptions of what music is and should be. I wouldn't go that so far as to say it were completely useless with regards to traditional music, but that it can be detrimental. Those I've known who had some classical training in their background, and there are loads of them, including some well known ITM musicians, and recorded musicians too ~ still value those earlier experiences, but realize the differences, and the potential disabilities to work past.
Back to dance as an example, when you see someone who has been indoctrinated in 'classical' forms (ballet, ballroom, Latin, Irish Dance Coimisiun competition, etc.) of dance take to the floor and dance a traditional dance ~ it just looks silly, generally, sometimes even akin to that awful thing called 'character dance'. It is affected. It really bears little similarity to the traditional dance, in the down home way. A good example of the difference would be to see what Latin dance has become through the ballroom scene, for example the Tango, with the bright costumes and the silly forced grins and the sequins and the overstated moves. It is awful, in my opinion. And then, to see an older couple who do the tango as second nature, no costumes, no affectations, just grace and charm and natural, as natural and as comfortable as can be, at ease, not pushed and not for exhibition, no forced smiles... The same is true of what some might think of as a simple Conemarra barndance, or the difference between the Dance Coimision stiffness and pointed toes and an older sean nos stepper. To see a ballroom soaked couple give Irish country dance a try can even be said to be bizarre, they just can't do it. It's unnatural, they are too indoctrinated, too affected and robotic. Yes, they can keep time, they can step through the movements, but it's like a bird of paradise plant (Rhodedendrons) growing in the peat of Donegal, it sticks out as being alien. It doesn't fit. It is uncomfortable and garish. Bless the couple for trying, but, it isn't traditional dance, it is comic, tragic... Anyone with sense would notice this, but some of us are short of that gift, sense... For others it takes awhile before they realize. Generally folks are too kind to speak out about it. I mean, they can keep time alright, and they don't get in anyone's way and they seem to enjoy themselves. I'd rather someone took the time and told me, and I'd ask for guidance once I realized...
These folks in this thread may be outspoken, we're passionate, and it might irritate you, but I think they put the music before anything else, including themselves, and they have its best interest, any yours, in mind. Maybe you are not as bad as you make it sound. But so far, your description of how you remake the dots does sound pretty awful. I had a quick indraw of breath when I read that, and it didn't surprise me what followed. Llig and Dow and Ben, amongst others. Llig often gets people in a reactive mood, he doesn't beat around the bush like some of us. He sometimes puts in a few words what might take me a few paragraphs, but those few words can bite deep, truth isn't always kind, nor should it be. It might be in your delivery, but you keep saying what sounds pretty much the same thing, only reworded, and that same thing still sounds uncomfortably lacking in understanding of this music. I can understand why others would struggle to improve your passion for you, to widen your perspective beyond the limitations of classical training. Maybe you're not seeing that? I don't see person
Listen, Don't Read
Listen, Don't Read
I noticed the discussion about asking someone to stop playing. When I first started playing last year, the best advice I got was to listen to the music and let the music play you, rather than the other way around. I don't read music and figured that was a handicap, but, as it turns out, it's not. If you don't read music you have to listen, figure it out and remember it.
I am teaching myself to read music, seems like a good skill to have, but I still find that those who read have trouble remembering the tunes and cannot get by without their music.
What does the board think?
# Posted on March 13th 2008 by Celtic Guitar
Re: Listen, Don't Read
"listen to the music and let the music play you" ~ nice one Celtic Guitar...
# Posted on March 13th 2008 by ceolachan
I've never seemed to have much choice in that, it has always been a case of it playing me...and I'm very grateful of that...
# Posted on March 13th 2008 by ceolachan
Re: Listen, Don't Read
*Listen* to music? What a stupid idea.
# Posted on March 13th 2008 by Dow
Re: Listen, Don't Read
CG
I'm in the same boat. I keep meaning to make a determined effort to learn the dots but I never get round to it.
It's taking me years to learn the session standards played in my region. This is pretty frustrating, but at least I'm getting there ...slowly.
I meet quite a lot of very nice people who can't play anything without the music sitting on the table. They're just too afraid to make the jump to playing by mechanical-memory.
Even worse are the people that complain that you don't 'play the tune properly' if you don't follow the version that they learned from the dots.
Complety crazy, but not that unusual in my part of the world.
Your approach seems just about right, I wish I had the self-discipline to do the same.
HBM
# Posted on March 13th 2008 by Horrace Bampton-Morris
Re: Listen, Don't Read
HBM, I am a work in progress, and slowly learning to read, but I, too, have been told I am changing chords at the wrong time according to the music. When I say, listen to the music, I get a glazed over, the music says you change here, see, it says so.
I play with a lot more confidence when I have music, but learning to figure it out by ear is turning out to be a skill that some "musicians" cannot master because of their reliance on dots.
You have to feel the music and gain an instinct of how to play, strumming patterns, when not to strum, be in the flow.
# Posted on March 13th 2008 by Celtic Guitar
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Your onto something there. I learn tunes by ear and by dots - depends on the time, tune, situation etc. I must say though, the tunes I learn by I never forget, even the names of them. But the ones I learned from dots seem to be forgotten quicker!
then again I'm thick!
# Posted on March 13th 2008 by session savage
Re: Listen, Don't Read
You've got a good point there session savage....I know that whenever I learn tune by ear, I don't forget it. The ones I've learned from the music tend to vanish faster.
There's one piano song I learned, it isn't Irish or anything, but I learned it by ear, and that was probably at least 10 years ago....I still know that song. 
Unfortunately for me, my learning by ear is not what I'd like it to be, I'm still working on it, so I end up learning a lot by the notes and then once I know the tune, listening to other people play it so I can figure out how it should sound....
# Posted on March 13th 2008 by Bryn
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Reading and writing scores is one skill amongst others, it's a way of documenting tunes and a point of reference. I can read charts but always prefer to hear a tune I want to learn.
When there is no audio reference dots become a valuable reference and can allow you to play the tune in your own way, whether it's good or bad, since many phrasing nuances and other subtleties cannot easily be put in a written score.
Also, I found that many musicians who learned to play by ear find it difficult to read dots and play because they don't know where the notes are on their instrument!
Learning to read charts takes time and practice, it's not complicated at all. Take a score (not too complicated) and then read aloud each note by saying its name (A, C, E, etc). Study your instrument and find out where the notes are if you don't already know (this may be a bit challenging on a diatonic instrument, use a keyboard layout).
The real skill to develop is to have your brains see a note on a score and automatically find it on the instrument, without thinking about it. This is the part that takes most practice, but it can be done with time and patience.
Happy playing!
# Posted on March 13th 2008 by québécois
Re: Listen, Don't Read
I agree with you, Q, espcially the part about knowing where the notes are on your instrument. I didn't learn that part of the guitar until I started to teach myself to read the dots.
I also wanted to learn to read the dots so I could play the first few notes of a tune so I could remember it, though I have also downlaoded midi files from The Session as another way to refresh my memory.
So, I can read the dots pretty well not, though I do not have the time signatures down at all. All great comments!
# Posted on March 13th 2008 by Celtic Guitar
Read AND listen!?!?
I started going to Irish sessions because I wanted to learn how to play by ear. Prior to this I had played piano up to grade 8 standard (mostly classical, some jazz/boogie woogie etc) and always learnt from music. I've been going to various sessions for about a year and half now and can do rythm/chords/bass lines easily enough and can pick up simple stuff (waltzes/marches maybe a polka or 2) after hearing it a few times. I'm getting there with reels and the rest but I must admit I still find it easier to:
1) Ask the name of a tune
2) See if I can get hold of some notes for it and play that through a couple of times
3) listen again to the person I heard playing it and other versions if I can (recording or youtube) then
4) take what I like and possibly amalgamate the 2 together.
5) hey presto, you've another tune learnt.
Now I know many of you will scorn this but the simple matter is (for me), if your reading skills are better than your listening ones, it is more than reasonable to use sheet music ALONGSIDE what you have heard at a session/on a recording, to learn a tune. as long as you don't have the music sat on the table at the session itself, and you are still using/honing your listening skills to play with the rest of the musicians, then why the problem?
Oh yeah, and I play Piano accordion, so you can all lay into me for that as well if you really want.
# Posted on March 13th 2008 by Daniel Gott
Re: Listen, Don't Read
When I play with others I'd rather know where the sounds are on the instrument than the notes.
When I read the notes, I don't take the time to identify what the name of it is. I skip that part as it takes to long. I just make a connection between where the note is on the staff and where that falls on the instrument.
On the mandolin, for example, a note on a line of the staff is covered by 1st or 3rd finger. A note in between lines of the staff is always open, 2nd, or 4th finger.
I used that bit of knowledge to read music for mandolin (slowly) in a day. I walk through the scale a few times so my fingers know what frets to go to and away we go.
Of course after I have played a tune from notes, it is still a revelation to hear the tune played by someone who really knows it.
# Posted on March 13th 2008 by abuteague
Re: Listen, Don't Read
CG.
One side of me is as non ITM musician-I play godawful Catholic Church music. (there is another thread on another site for that)
Anyway. My other side played folk for years before movingto ITM, which has now become my primary area.
The earlier comment about spot musicians having trouble remembering tunes w/o spots is right on, but in my case, it is one of insecurity. When I played the folk tradition more than the church stuff ages ago, ear and memory were fine.
Since '99 when our church had a 'format change' to mainline Catholic tripe, I was forced to become an exclusive sight reader because I didn't know the stuff. So when I decided not to be frustrated and focus on my ITM, the ear and memory were severely challenged.
Now I am almosst back to the point where ear and memory are dominant. Like anything else, the harder you work at it and seriously focus, the mind adjusts.
The more important thing about the spots is that with the globalization of everything, iincluding ITM, there is no one to do the word-of-mouth tradition. For many, spots are the only way to communicate the 'bones' of a tune.
They are increasingly a necessary evil for ITM players.
Repeat after me...'Every Good Boy (damn that's sexist) deserves favour". Just kidding
Timing is another issue. My box teacher pulls what's left of his hair out with me on that! Standard musicians sometime 'got no rythym' with ITM as it were! Speaking of dots (or dotted).
# Posted on March 13th 2008 by zippydw
Re: Listen, Don't Read
I'm in the same boat as Daniel. After starting classical and learning tunes from tunebooks (comparing them to albums to see how the pros do them), I've started trying to learn session tunes with no sheet music at all. The first few, I cheated and looked here for some tricky fingerings, but there's one I love and can't find a name for!
Ideally, I'd like to be able to pick up tunes entirely by ear, but that's probably a long way off.
# Posted on March 13th 2008 by Kerry SW
Re: Listen, Don't Read
With you 100%. You need to have that instinct though, ability to feel the music.
I struggle reading music, but have learned enough on whistle to be able to check if I have the tune right! This after recording a tune with Part B wrong.... yet people ask where the lovely setting came from, LOL. I was mortified. Anyway, tune memory can go awry and I like being able to double check this way... and then revert to ear once more.
I am learning harp though now, and while I try to read, I revert to ear every time. After 45 years of ear playing this old doggie finds new tricks hard! It seems the natural way for me. I do envy those who have both abiltiess, that's ideal. Someone who can sight read a tune with ease is lucky... but I do think you should take it away after and develop your own nuances and bit of style in the interpretation of the tunes.
# Posted on March 13th 2008 by irisnevins
Re: Listen, Don't Read
While I can read notation, it was never my strong point, I learn all my tunes by ear, and once Ive learnt a tune, thats it, I have it. I learn by listening to CDs (mostly in car) and listening to radio (clare FM) and playing along with same at home when I get the chance, also more recently with lessons once a week, and then of course, by going to sessions.
# Posted on March 13th 2008 by BanjoBongo
Re: Listen, Don't Read
I have a friend who plays tin whistle by ear. He also listens to music in his car, though it is a bit un-nerving when he plays in the car. Look, ma, no hands!
This discussion is really good. I am trying to blend my novice dot reading with the music, but as I get better learning by ear, my confidence grows that I can go to any session and pick up the tunes.
# Posted on March 13th 2008 by Celtic Guitar
Re: Listen, Don't Read
"They are increasingly a necessary evil for ITM players." That's shear and utter nonsense. Right now there are more readily available, high quality recorded examples of ITM than there ever have been at any point in history. That may pale beside learning it right from the horse's mouth, but it's a hell of a lot better than skipping right to the dots.
I'd also like to point out that it's not learning by ear that's magical. It's learning by ear from someone who knows how to play the tune properly. The big advantage to learning by ear is picking up all the nuances that the dots necessarily leave out.
# Posted on March 13th 2008 by Sol Foster
Re: Listen, Don't Read
I HEAR a tune I like and look up the DOTS to learn it. I have no problem remembering the tunes I learn from dots. I can learn several a week. The only thing that bothers me about sheet music is when it is brought to sessions.
It is possible to Hear with your Eyes. I recall a scene from Amadeus where Salieri picks up Wolfie's written music from the floor and 'hears' it as he looks at it.
I know people who learn by ear and they have little problem remembering their tunes. That's because they only know 5. I know others who learn by ear and can't remember them. I know others who learn stylized versions of tunes from CDs and think that is the way they are played.
Nothing wrong with dots.
# Posted on March 13th 2008 by feardearg
Re: Listen, Don't Read
I too have to agree with Daniel (post way up there). It was very comforting for me to hear he has the same methods as I do in learning tunes. I don't bring sheet music to a session and am getting better and better at learning the music by ear, but sometimes looking at the music for a tricky part saves me literally hours. I know that's the "wrong" way to do it, but that is how it is easiest for me after umpteen years of reading music. I do agree too with the post about "hearing" music with your eyes -- after so many "sight-singing" classes, I can "hear" the intervals and sometimes don't even have to pull out my instrument to say, ah, so that's what note I couldn't hear. Again, for me, as a beginner in ITM, it is a learning process. My goal is to some day not to have to look at another piece of sheet music again, but I'm just not there yet.
# Posted on March 13th 2008 by swillybay
Re: Listen, Don't Read
I do both.
The trouble with learning tunes by ear is the session is twice a month and so that's the only chance I get to hear it. Sometimes they don't play the same tunes each time either. It takes a long time.
The recordings don't work so well because they get all fancy and tricky and don't play in the same key or the same way as at the session. If I want to play what the session people play I have to listen to them, not to Mr. Fancy-pants Irish flute guy who squeezes in a hundred million rolls and varies the tune so much it may as well be jazz.
Still, I listen to Mr. Fancy-pants and whoever else all day long to help seep the music into my brain. I just don't kid myself I can learn to play like that at my stage of ability.
And also there's something nice and low-tech about using written music. No batteries required.
Don't forget that for a lot of us, Irish music isn't our first musical language. I can play the music of my childhood by ear with little difficulty. But the Irish music isn't the music of my childhood so my ear can't really hear all the notes or intervals without a lot of training. The sheet music helps demonstrate the music and helps form the pathways into the ear and into the brain. The more I've learned the easier it is to hear it and the less I need the sheet music.
Another good learning tool rarely mentioned is to pick up a second instrument. That way you don't get stuck in your mind about where or what any of the notes are. The learning process gets more fluid if you can do both a string and a wind instrument, for example.
# Posted on March 13th 2008 by sbhikes
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Well put (at least for me), sbhikes. Used to live in Santa Barbara, but that was in my "classical" years -- didn't know a thing about ITM then, but am glad to hear there are sessions there.
# Posted on March 13th 2008 by swillybay
Re: Listen, Don't Read
In my opinion the best talent you can have is to be able to pick up music by ear.Iv only learnt to read notated music recently,without a doubt its useful but its my opinion that nothing beats by ear you can pick any tune up by listening to the radio.
# Posted on March 13th 2008 by Allissa
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Allissa, how I wish that had been my upbringing, as I'd love to be able to have learned entirely by ear. People who learn to read music later in life can't understand how it is when you've been reading music from when you were a small child -- it's like trying not to read signs in front of you and is a hard thing to break out of -- do-able though, as I'm getting a little better at learning by ear all the time, just not as easy as if you'd been learning by ear all your life. That's my feeling on it anyway.
# Posted on March 13th 2008 by swillybay
Re: Listen, Don't Read
I can understand how hard it is because when I decided to do music for my leaving I had to learn noted music which was totally alean to me,I had to compose basic melodys which I found realy difficult as it took me ages to figure out the dots.Stick with it and it will become easier
# Posted on March 13th 2008 by Allissa
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Here's another beginner checking in:
I, too started out with no ability to learn by ear. I was determined to learn, but not determined enough to ditch the sheet music altogether - I started out with the sheet music, but memorized each tune as soon as I could, never bringing sheet music to sessions. It was HARD at first... tunes would take many, many repetitions before they would stick at all, and would often be gone the next day. I discovered that listening to the tunes incessantly helped tremendously, as well as humming (lilting?) them. In about 5 months of playing, I'm encouraged by my progress so far (although it's entirely possible I would have progressed faster had I given up sheet music altogether): I can now pick up simple tunes in sessions, learn them directly from recordings, and when learning from sheet music it takes far fewer times through before the tune is in my head and I can ditch the sheet music.
So to any beginners who are hesitant to learn to play by ear: go for it! It does get easier after not too long, and really makes playing this music more fun.
# Posted on March 13th 2008 by fliedermaus
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Thank heavens. After a whole two days without a heated sheet music debate I was beginning to fear that there was nothing left to be said on that topic.
Just think, without sheet-music and fiddle-technique arguments, we'd all probably have to find something else to do with our time...
# Posted on March 13th 2008 by Georgi
Re: Listen, Don't Read
So, Georgi. Do you think that a session is a performance?
# Posted on March 13th 2008 by Batlady
Which?
Batlady or Badlady
# Posted on March 14th 2008 by feardearg
Re: Listen, Don't Read
After being a musician for more years than is good for me, I would like to say that I think it is almost magical how some people are able to look at a page of music and bring it to life just by playing it. However, on the other hand, I also believe equally strongly in being able to play by ear without any music in front of you.
My mother (who was a music teacher) began teaching me how to play the piano when I was seven and I will turn fifty next year so I guess that means I have been a musician for thirty-one years now. I am still playing the piano whenever and wherever I can and I have also learned to play bass (both acoustic and electric).
When I began school band in the seventh grade (at age twelve), on the first day the band director gave all of us a test to determine which instrument each of us should play. According to the results of this test, the band director assigned me to play the tuba and that is the instrument I played for the next six years all of the way through junior high and high school until I graduated from high school in 1977. Somewhere in my twenties, I switched from tuba to electric bass guitar and learned how to play it. When I could afford it, I bought a three quarter size bass fiddle and taught myself how to play it also.
Once a week, I play my bass fiddle with a mandolin and guitar group who do a lot of so-called "classical" music. Besides this, I usually sit in and play one instrument or the other at various local jam sessions (Irish, old-time, blues, and other types of music) almost every week. With the mandolin and guitar group, we play from sheet music but at the jam sessions, I always play by ear. In addition to all of this, once a month I play my electric bass with the "praise band" at my sister-in-law's Pentecostal church.
I also have a bachelor's degree in music history from a local college. In order to earn that degree, I had to take some ear training classes as well as accompanying voice majors during their lessons.
As a result of all of this training and experience, I am equally comfortable both sight reading from music and playing by ear. I believe that anyone else can get themself to this point but you must be willing to work at it, be persistent, and don't give up--no matter how difficult it seems to be. If you succeed, I believe that you will be able to enjoy playing music more than you do now.
Yes, learning how to read music can seem like trying to learn a foreign language but I believe that the effort is worth it.
# Posted on March 14th 2008 by fauxcelt
Re: Listen, Don't Read
I am sure that CG will attest to this since I play at the session where he's the leader.
I have read music since I was 10 years old, but I have never been good at playing notes on any instrument. Many years ago I learned folk finger picking (pima style). Having music does help me anticipate the chord changes, but not all the time. (It also helps my memory - which fails me at times.) But how to play a tune doesn't always have to do with how the tune is written. So, that's when listening needs to be done. Plus, I think written down tunes are forcing the tune onto paper.
I wish I had a better ear and could just play by ear. I am listening to more and more tunes to get the feel of the timing and remembering the melody. But, I am also trying to hear the chord changes - figure out where the progression should be. That's the challenge.
# Posted on March 14th 2008 by grumblingoldwoman
Re: Listen, Don't Read
sbhikes wrote:
Another good learning tool rarely mentioned is to pick up a second instrument. That way you don't get stuck in your mind about where or what any of the notes are. The learning process gets more fluid if you can do both a string and a wind instrument, for example.
# Posted on March 13th 2008 by sbhikes
I was really interested to read that as I've recently started playing D/G box on top of the whistle/flute. Though I was only in the early stages of building up tunes on the whistle, I am able to sightread at nearly fullspeed on that instrument and this was a problem. It was just too easy to keep reading the dots while trying to memorize the tune - I'd go too fast too soon, and as others have said, the tunes didn't seem to stick as well as they should have.
Playing box feels totally different. While I can pick out a tune on it from the dots, it's nowhere near as easy, and never will be given the variety of fingerings on the D/G that I gradually sort out as I get the tune down. Maybe it's the greater physicality of the thing, or just by reason of it being the 'second' instrument, but I find I leave the dots behind very easily, and soon don't associate what I'm playing with theory unless I really try to.
So now I find I'll play tunes from the dots or on whistle briefly just to fix it in my head, then move on to the box and start to etch it into my muscles. I reckon it's made me less attached to the dots when I wat to learn a tune on flute/whitle too.
Hurrah!
# Posted on March 14th 2008 by Mairtin Lom
Re: Listen, Don't Read
"When I play with others I'd rather know where the sounds are on the instrument than the notes.
# Posted on March 13th 2008 by abuteague"
As someone who has been playing and dabbling in various instruments and a huge variety of music since the '50's, and earlier than that singing in the local church choir, I feel certain that abuteague has hit the nail on the head here.
I think in the beginning when learning an instrument, if you play a relatively small number of tunes enough and also play the dreaded scales regularly, then a seemingly instinctive connection develops between the hearing senses and motor senses.
At some point in time (and don't ask me how long), in the same way as any other instinctive reaction occurs, fingers/bow hand or whatever instinctively move to the stimulus of a particular note/phrase and the correct position on the respective instrument.
A rather amusing example was a friend of mine way back in the early sixties. He played a huge double bass in a jazz combo and loved his beer. To such an extent that I have seen him many times falling asleep as he was playing. Even in situations where he needed to play a new tune, his instinctive ear-motor sense connection remained in control and he continued with barely a wrong note.
In my own experience, (admittidly I'm an old g*t with 50 years of playing and listening to music) I find that if I hear a tune I know (but never played it) then actually playing it becomes relatively easy.
The advice almost always given on the board is to listen, listen, listen...... to ITM and that's where the ear paints a picture of many colours and emotions. Eyes see dots and they are what they say "dots" (and in black and white). My advice to anyone wanting to learn by ear is thus :-
1. Learn the scales of your instrument and run through them every time you pick it up. (not necessarily over and over again though)
Listen, listen, listen... to trad
2. Learn a small number of tunes in the common keys and play them repeatedly until heard notes and instrument positions become fluid and instinctive.
Listen, listen, listen... to trad
3. Develop your tune repetoire and tempo.
Hope this is not too boring, anyway that's my take.
# Posted on March 14th 2008 by tctelboy
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Playing by ear is a very important musical skill and the skill has to be practised and developed. Experienced ear players can reproduce much larger chunks of music than beginners who often have trouble finding the second note.
Reading is also a very useful musical skill, perhaps more useful in some musical spheres than others. However, in no sphere of music can dots totally represent the music to be played without looking impossibly complicated. But dots can be a great memory aide.
I have "learned" tunes by ear and been able to play through the whole tune, only for an hour later to have totally forgotten the tune. In reality I hadn't learnt the tune, I had only learned how to play it. If you have learnt a tune by ear you should be able to sing it. With tunes you really know well you should be able to transpose them into other keys (say D to F, or vice-versa) pretty easily, without needing to work out the names of the notes. That's what playing by ear means.
# Posted on March 14th 2008 by DonaldK
Re: Listen, Don't Read
sbhikes wrote:
Another good learning tool rarely mentioned is to pick up a second instrument. That way you don't get stuck in your mind about where or what any of the notes are. The learning process gets more fluid if you can do both a string and a wind instrument, for example.
# Posted on March 13th 2008 by sbhikes
I'll third that (Mairtin Lom already seconded it). It forces you to learn the tune as a sequence of sounds, instead of relying solely on muscle memory. And the great thing is, you slip up in different ways, in different places, play different bum notes and take different melodic shortcuts on different instruments, all of which help you discover and develop variations and your own personal style.
Hackneyed though it may be, I would like to mention the oft-made comparison between learning music and learning a language. Most language teaching systems involve a textbook and either a real live teacher or some kind of sound medium. If you were to try to learn, say, Polish or Italian from a book alone, no matter how dilligently, with out any auditory reference, you would get some amused, if not bemused, looks when trying your skills on the natives. If, on the other hand, you moved to Poland or Italy without any prior knowledge of the language, you would, no doubt, pick up enough for the most basic communication in a very short time but, without the aid of a book, it would take years or decades to pick up all the nuances of grammar and syntax. A combination of the two approaches, however, would accelerate your learning considerably.
Having made that comparison, I will make the disclaimer that, unlike many languages, music does not exist in a self-standing written form - musical notation is merely a way of encoding and recording what is to be played or sung. Whilst it is possible to learn to read a language to a high enough standard to appreciate great works of literature, without necessarily having more than very basic speaking skills, sheet music makes no sense without understanding all the sounds that the dots represent.
I'm not sure if I have stated anything other than the obvious in the last two paragraphs, but I quite enjoyed writing it. I think the basic gist is, use the dots if necessary to fill in the details you might not have picked up by ear, but be guided primarily by your ear. Reading too much music will give you red eyes - listening to too much won't give you red ears.
# Posted on March 14th 2008 by ragaman
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Love the very insightful posts on this thread. I am about to start actual Irish fiddle lessons and know I won't be able to read music much and will also have my playing completely turned around and starting back at square one, and I can't wait to start the destruction...
# Posted on March 14th 2008 by swillybay
Re: Listen, Don't Read
I'm of the opinion that everyone is a different type of learner and we each find different ways of learning a tune easier. I don't believe that there is one *right* or *wrong* way to learn the music. For people that learn things more easily by hearing them, then perhaps learning tunes by ear is going to come more naturally than someone that is a visual learner and needs to see something like the notes on a page for the tune to stick.
I don't think that someone should be stigmatized for learning a piece of music from the notes, as long as they are able to go beyond the notes and breathe life into the music.
Don't get me wrong, I have total respect for someone that is able to pick up a tune just from hearing it a couple of times. I think that's awesome, but I would just like to say that some of us can learn pieces from the "dots" and hold our own doing it.
Thanks. =)
# Posted on March 14th 2008 by acaretta
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Anyone can learn to pick up a tune from only hearing it a couple of times if they practise that skill by learning everything by ear. You have to be prepared to put the effort in though and believe that you'll be rewarded for your hard work.
# Posted on March 14th 2008 by Dow
Re: Listen, Don't Read
"hard work" sounds like it's something unpleasant, but I don't mean it that way. I mean you have to concentrate and listen hard, and put your mind to it.
# Posted on March 14th 2008 by Dow
Re: Listen, Don't Read
"I'm of the opinion that everyone is a different type of learner"
No, sorry, but that's a cop-out. It's an excuse for not putting the effort in. What you just said is like saying that some people learn to speak a language fluently by listening and copying, and some do it by reading books. Of course we all know that to get fluent in a language, you have to immerse yourself in it and listen and use it as much as you can until you get it right. There's absolutely no other way.
# Posted on March 14th 2008 by Dow
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Coming from the experience of being a teacher, Dow, I *know* that people are different kinds of learners. I am also a classically trained musician and I know myself. I don't think it's a cop-out at all to know thyself and know that you may learn one way or another better. I think it's judgmental of you to assume that there is only one way for EVERYONE to learn. It's got nothing to do with the amount of time that one immerses in the music.
You are clearly from one school of thought and I am from another.
# Posted on March 14th 2008 by acaretta
Re: Listen, Don't Read
I didn't think Dow *was* saying that there is only one way to learn. I interpreted what he said as being that, if they put in some effort, everyone *can* learn to pick up tunes by ear, and that that was a skill that was worth the effort putting in.
I'd agree wholeheartedly with that, with one small exception. I have found that there is a group of people who *think* they're musicians but who consistently prove they're not by being completely unable to develop aural skills. These people will never be able to pick up tunes by ear, and they won't fully 'get' the music either.
# Posted on March 14th 2008 by benhall.1
Re: Listen, Don't Read
I think it is very unlikely for beginners to 'get' the music without giving up the dots and just using their ears. Yes everyone learns differently, but in my experience it is easy to discern people who learn tunes from dots - and those who don't. I can hear it in myself. There is a massive progression that seems to happen when free of the dots and in my experience, those who continue to learn tunes from them, stay in the same place.
I acknowledge that my learning of tunes by ear is slow - much lower than if I learned them dots - but they sound right. The ability to pick it up by ear will improve... if I play from learned sheet music.... nothing will.
Be free
# Posted on March 14th 2008 by Brown Creeper
Re: Listen, Don't Read
I'll wade back in about Dow's and Acaretta's comments. I do believe that people learn differently, but I think an important distinction is what happens after someone learns a tune. Whether you learn by ear or from the dots, it is still important to listen to the music and learn how to play in harmony with the session you are at. There is no right way to learn the music except by listening to it. Whether by ear or dots, you still need to listen and play.
If you learn by the dots, at some point you have to be able to play without the dots as most traditional music has been handed down without music. I made it a priority to learn how to read sheet music because I thought it was important for my own development, but bear in mind that there a lots of different versions, at least for guitars, of what chords to use.
That's where the listening comes in. I play the chords that sound the best to me. If I am playing in a session and my chords don't sound quite right, I try to find new ones.
I have a question for guitar players in particular. A lot of the time I get some music and play the chords and they sound fine, but, invariably, there a places where I think there should be another chord and I cannot figure it out. Most of the time what I am playing sounds fine, but finding that one more chords woud make it even better. Has that happened to any other guitar players?
# Posted on March 14th 2008 by Celtic Guitar
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Yes, people may be different types of learners, but that doesn't mean that it's reasonable (or even possible) to learn traditional music in each one of those ways. In the end, listening (and learning by ear) is really pretty much mandatory. If you really find it that much harder to learn a tune by ear, then it's all the more reason to work on improving your ability to do so.
I'm a olfactory learner myself... I would prefer to learn traditional music by smell. But I still learn tunes by ear.
# Posted on March 14th 2008 by Georgi
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Perhaps my point is getting misconstrued. I absolutely agree that it is important to listen very carefully and diligently to the music. That's a non issue. A person is never going to get the point of the music and the emotion behind it if they don't spend time listening. I get that. I'm all for that. I subscribe to that 100%.
My point with learning from the sheet music is this: Sometimes, people need the notes to reinforce the tunes that are in their heads. Sometimes people don't. I have seen students that can sit down and play a piece of music only after hearing it once - amazing. That same student struggled in band because he couldn't read a lick of music. I've also seen students that were amazing players, but needed someone to show them visually what each of the notes were before they could conceptualize everything.
That being said, I know that ITM is an aural tradition and is basically learned by ear. I get that. What I'm saying is, don't knock people that learn in different ways. As long as the musician can get past the notes and play beyond them, (which a lot of them can't) then I don't believe they should be stigmatized.
That's all.
# Posted on March 14th 2008 by acaretta
Re: Listen, Don't Read
"As long as the musician can get past the notes and play beyond them, (which a lot of them can't) then I don't believe they should be stigmatized."
The problem here is that many people (especially those with classical training) approach this music as though they know everything about it already (because of their training), and they think they can shortcut since they can simply read the music. This leads them to "play beyond the notes" (as you put it) by altering what they see on the page to something that they *think* is authentically trad (justified because they've altered it themselves, so that's their personal stamp) whereas in fact what comes out doesn't sound like trad at all to a proper trad musician who has spent years immersing themselves in the stuff and learning by ear. A classical musician will naturally put emphasis on the "emotion" (your word) in the tune than the particular kinds of demands trad music makes in terms of rhythm and accentuation. The end result is a really awful mushy sounding, overly sweet, contrived sound that is not only *not* trad at all, it's not even music. It's just rubbish.
Remember, if there is anything in the music that you are unable to pick up by ear (ornamentation, the notes of particular passages etc) then those are things that you can't play. If you can't hear it, you can't reproduce it. So you have to listen and practise until you *can* hear every single detail, and you can reproduce it at will. There are *no* shortcuts. Really, there aren't.
# Posted on March 15th 2008 by Dow
Re: Listen, Don't Read
PS I had classical training in my early years, and I've been a teacher too (still am). I realise now that my classical training hindered my progress with trad music in many ways, one of which was a problem of attitude. I see this attitude in you, acaretta, and I hope that in time you too see that it is the wrong approach.
# Posted on March 15th 2008 by Dow
Listen
How can you play any music if it is only in our ears?
You play with people. As often as possible. Then the music finds where it wants to go.
# Posted on March 15th 2008 by Random_notes
Re: Listen, Don't Read
I'm with Georgi on this one--olfacotry is the only way to go. I can play tunes prioperly only when reeking in the fumes of porter, stout, or whiskey, wallowing in the eau de sweat of my session mates, stale tobacco resin peeling the paper off the walls.
# Posted on March 15th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Dow is right. Learning by ear (=listening) is a skill that has to be developed - it's not like your born with a natural talent for it.
Being a rather old guitar player, I didn't have much choice in my musical development, as so much guitar music you bought in the shops was "arranged for pianoforte". So it was one hand on the needle with the old Hacker set at 16 2/3 (one octave down/half speed) the other on the axe.
The more you practise the better you get. Classically trained grade 8 super readers can understandably get a tad miffed at suddenly being so deskilled but it's worth the effort.
Being able to play by ear tells you so much about this music and music in general.
# Posted on March 15th 2008 by DonaldK
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Celtic Guitar - I can spend hours pondering on chord choices or sequences for tunes.
In the end it's like saying do you want the apple crumble or the chocolate torte. Some days I go with the crumble, other days with the torte.
That said, I find a bit of theory (even classical at that) helps in choosing chords that make sensible sequences.
# Posted on March 15th 2008 by DonaldK
Don't
That is cool you did that DonaldK!
# Posted on March 15th 2008 by Random_notes
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Except that I think everyone is born with an innate ability to do it. I'm convinced it's the same ability that facilitates language acquisition - one that is a skill to be developed over a period of years. It's just a case of tapping into that innate ability and applying it specifically to the music. This requires an open mind and a belief in your own ear - something which classical music training does not tend to emphasise as a priority.
# Posted on March 15th 2008 by Dow
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Yeah, but it's not like some people are born with the talent and some not.
Having been in (and still partially in) education I know that people are supposed to learn best in different ways (the current fashion when I left the establishment but perhaps already passe), but I believe we can all learn to play by ear. It's how I judge someone's musical ability. If they need the dots the ain't gonna add much.
# Posted on March 15th 2008 by DonaldK
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Sorry, had too much wine.
# Posted on March 15th 2008 by DonaldK
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Red or white or rose or bubbly? Doesn't anybody believe in sleep?
I love yuh Dow, you speak for me... Mine's a really lovely Port right now...
# Posted on March 15th 2008 by ceolachan
Re: Listen, Don't Read
This is why people in Ireland who have grown up with the music often don't understand why people coming at the music from outside the tradition have a hard time nailing the rhythm of Irish music. They take it for granted that that's the way it is: "that's the way a reel goes, that's the way a jig sounds - how can you possibly not be able to do it - it's easy". It's like if we heard a non-native speaker of English reading the words "classical training" off the page, and it sounding like "cla-SSEYE-cal training", it would sound strange to us. We'd want to tell them how to say it properly:
"Say after me: CLASS-i-cal".
"Cla-SSEYE-cal".
"No you're not listening... say CLASS-i-cal".
"Yes I said it - cla-SSEYE-cal".
"No, you're not using your ears and listening carefully enough, etc. etc.
# Posted on March 15th 2008 by Dow
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Donald, apple crumble and chocolate torte is OK some of the time, what about savoury as opposed to sweet. Sometimes I want something sugar free...
benhall.1: ~ classically trained ~ These people will never be able to pick up tunes by ear, and they won't fully 'get' the music either.
'c': Classical music is by indoctrination, they are convinced they are in the know and don't have a problem, because they are 'certifiable'...
BC: ~ in my experience it is easy to discern people who learn tunes from dots - and those who don't.
'c': Yes, the former resulting in something generally dull and lifeless...and danceless...
CG: There is no right way to learn the music except by listening to it.
Georgi: In the end, listening (and learning by ear) is really pretty much mandatory.
Dow: The problem here is that many people (especially those with classical training) approach this music as though they know everything about it already (because of their training), and they think they can shortcut since they can simply read the music. ~ a problem of attitude.
Dow: I think everyone is born with an innate ability to do it. I'm convinced it's the same ability that facilitates language acquisition ~ This requires an open mind and a belief in your own ear - something which classical music training does not tend to emphasise as a priority.
'c': James Galway's take on it ~ YUCK! ~ But, to be fair, my flatcap off to acaretta who has done more than most 'classically trained' musicians and at least is giving it a go, has some realization that there is something more than the dots about this music, if not quite seeming to understand it isn't about 'going beyond the dots', a very 'classical music' mind set. They other thing that so often also is missed by those so indoctrinated is any sense at all of the dance in dance music. Generally the treatment by orchestras is dire and uninspiring, meaning it doesn't make you want to dance or tap your feet to it... It is just 'listening music', and lacks that extra depth of understanding. But that understanding is also often missed by the session soaked lush and speed junky who tend to flatten everything as if taking a steam roller to asphalt...
Sheetmusic addiction is a serious affliction, I've had to treat folks for it. It's always the same, they don't see themselves as having a problem, just like an alcoholic, "I just read music socially, I can stop anytime I want." And, it is 'life threatening', to the music. Honest, some of us, as already said, can hear the difference. You might be welcome in a session, can hold the notes together, and we might never breach the subject with you, you having your fun and not interferring too much in ours, but if you actually stopped and asked us ~ some of us would be honest, thinking you were seriously looking to improve your understanding and ability with this music. I honestly thing we might benefit from a 'Sheetmusic Anonymous', except that mostly sheetmusic addicts are worse than alcoholics, we too often are enablers, help them with their delusions.
Back to a Dowism ~ we all know that to get fluent in a language (in this lovely thing called music), you have to immerse yourself in it and listen and use it as much as you can until you get it right. There's absolutely no other way.
'c': You have to get back in touch with that humbleness of the child in yourself and let loose and listen and play and and step from behind and away from, throw away that crutch of sheetmusic... You can come back to it later after you've learned to breath life into music without it...by listening and mimicry...
I dont know about the olfactory approach, I'm all for getting physical with it, hands on, feet in ~ If you don't understand the dance, how can you play 'dance music'?
# Posted on March 15th 2008 by ceolachan
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Yes, I do know some fine players that can play with the 'dance' in their music, though you'll never catch them on the floor. You can pick it up by ear too, from 'dance musicians'...
# Posted on March 15th 2008 by ceolachan
Re: Listen, Don't Read
So if notation has no place in learning ITM, what am I supposed to do with the Tom Billy, Padraig O'Keefe, and Cuz Teehan notation I have lying around? I suppose they didn't know what they were doing. It's a pity, really, because Padraig O'Keefe is one of the aural sources I steal from constantly. I suppose I should stop listening, though, because if he thought that notation was good for his students, he obviously didn't have a grasp of how the music should be played. I mean, I already completely ignore the notation which makes up a large section of this website. It's just one more step.
Or, possibly, they realized that using all the tools available helped their students more than the alternative. I'm not certain why notation is this knee-jerk, polarizing issue on this website. In fact the tendency is when someone mentions notation positively, no matter the comment, witch-burning and complete insane conclusion-jumping ensues. Folks, be consistent. Do that to Francis O'Neill, while you're at it. Or O'Keefe.
# Posted on March 15th 2008 by reenactor
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Dow, I'm interested in knowing more about your "classical" training. What are you trained in? Where did you get your music degree from? What was your emphasis in?
I'm also interested in why you think that classical training does not put emphasis on ear training and belief in one's own ear. Perhaps you have never listened to this wonderful thing called jazz? Jazz players spend years improving their ears....but I guess they don't count because they read notes. ;)
"Dow: The problem here is that many people (especially those with classical training) approach this music as though they know everything about it already (because of their training), and they think they can shortcut since they can simply read the music. ~ a problem of attitude."
Let's continue to beat the dead horse here. No one has said that they should only play the notes and NOT listen to the music. And beyond that, any classical musician who's worth their salt, listens to everything that they are playing, be it Mozart, Brahms, or ITM or rock music. A good musician tries to emulate the things that he/she hears. We all listen to recordings of our teachers, our idols, and anyone who has recorded the pieces. We listen to the things that we *want* to take away from the piece and we also hear the things that aren't great about the musician.
Perhaps the problem is, not that classically trained musicians can't play the music as well as non-trained musicians, but maybe that the people that you are encountering and considering "classically trained" are people that played piano for three years when they were a kid, or someone who played the trumpet when they were in middle school.
One of the most important things that we are taught in music school is how to *listen* to the music, and how to go beyond the notes.
But that's just my experience.
# Posted on March 15th 2008 by acaretta
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Lordy, straw men being set up and knocked down all over the place.
Reenactor, don't be silly. People who got notation from Padraig O'Keefe also got LESSONS from Padraig O'Keefe.
acaretta, let's not get into a snipey "who's more qualified to talk about classical music" argument. We're talking about trad here. It's not just about listening, it's about LEARNING from listening.
The problem is neither classical musicians who don't have enough training, nor is it classical musicians who don't listen. It's classical musicians who think that what they know about classical music should universally apply to traditional music. It just doesn't.
"A good musician tries to emulate the things that he/she hears."
Yes! Absolutely! And reading sheet music does very little to help improve that singularly important skill in traditional music.
More often than not, people (and NOW we're mainly talking about classical musicians again) hold onto their note reading skills, rather than putting in the time to improve their aural learning skills. The result is someone who can play the notes of a tune, but is clearly not playing traditional music.
When the paper and the performer differ, which do you follow?
If you follow the paper, you're missing on of the key points of traditional music. If you follow the performer, why were you using the paper in the first place?
# Posted on March 15th 2008 by Georgi
Re: Listen, Don't Read
I guess Dow's pet peeve (which I share) is hearing someone play traditional music as if it was classical music. Shakey and simplified rhythm, blocky bowing, ponderous ornamentation, and poor variation choice. Toss in excessive vibrato, and you have a recipe for how to sound like an ugly musical tourist, no matter how well in tune they happen to be playing, or how sweet their tone is.
We've all heard it. Many of us have even BEEN that tourist (much to our eternal embarrassment). I hear someone say something like "you don't need to learn by ear to play traditional music", and I can feel that ugly tourist coming.
Almost every artistic endeavor has the concept of "paying your dues" before you achieve legitimacy. For Irish traditional music, one of those dues really is the ability to learn music by ear with facility.
# Posted on March 15th 2008 by Georgi
Re: Listen, Don't Read
It's really not a question of being able to learn from the dots and *then* 'go beyond the dots'. If you are holding the tune in your head by remembering the dots, you are not holding the tune, and any amount of 'going beyond the dots' won't help. You *have* to hold it in your mind's *ear*, not your mind's *eye*.
And yes, it's an innate ability in just about everyone. Anyone who can hear a tune like Twinkle Twinkle as a small child and then sing it, without first having seen the dots, has demonstrated the ability. All you have to do is tap into it. Having said which, that can be a challenge in itself for people who have relied on dots for a number of years. Essential though for this music.
# Posted on March 15th 2008 by benhall.1
Re: Listen, Don't Read
I can't help but go back here to the comparison of learning a language and learning trad. ( I know this has been said over and over again, but it's still in my mind the most important piece of the puzzle)
As a start off we all learn our spoken language, in the first part anyway, by ear. The result is usually to develop an accent/dialect most likely attuned to the area/environment around us. i.e. our "ears" have picked up the subtle nuances of the spoken word. Even later when learning from written material, we rarely lose that initial influence on our speech.
Having lived in Germany and Sweden for many years, I was obviously totally immersed in the spoken language and learnt it as such by ear. Even though, especially in Germany, the written language was practically indentical all over, the difference from north to south in speech was immense. So much so that I was once almost identified as a Bavarian/Schwab due to the dialect I spoke.
The written language conveyed little of the colour or lilt of the spoken word, and was basically there as a rarely used dictionary function. As an added thought, there are still many people in the world who speak, however, cannot read or write!
Surely the same applies to learning trad by ear. The many different and beautiful styles (dialects) of the trad music we love, played in different parts only go to prove that the fundamentals of the music "can" only be learnt by ear!
For me, my ears taught me to speak, and my ears brought me to this wonderful trad music. My ears will never let me down, and if they do, I always have the dots as my dictionary. QED.
# Posted on March 15th 2008 by tctelboy
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Anyway, ALL of the above is complete nonsense.
THIS is how you learn how to do music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3rWghGSm4Y
# Posted on March 15th 2008 by benhall.1
Re: Read & Weep?
Halellujah Georgi, ben & tctelboy!!!
I love it... Damn you guys are good, Dow too. This may be me covering that old ground you managed better, but here goes a bit more...
reenactor: if notation has no place in learning ITM ~ I already completely ignore the notation which makes up a large section of this website. ~ why notation is this knee-jerk, polarizing issue on this website. In fact the tendency is when someone mentions notation positively, no matter the comment, witch-burning and complete insane conclusion-jumping ensues. Folks, be consistent. Do that to Francis O'Neill, while you're at it. Or O'Keefe...
'c': In case you don't realize it already, I've just checked, I think Dow and I are at least two of the largest contributors of notations on this site, including in the 'comments' for tunes, and including melodic variations transcribed from a lot of different sources. I don't know about Mark, but I also actively try to tie up the dots with the recordings, when I can, as I've been doing recently, quietly behind the scenes, as that sort of thing doesn't register here under a name. You mentioned some great examples, ~ Tom Billy, Padraig O'Keeffe, and there are endless others.
Personally, having met a slew of the old players, I can't remember one that was truly illiterate as far as notation was concerned. Younger players yes, but not the old codgers. Some of them bewailed that they didn't know proper notation, the dots, but they had other ways, including ABC notation and Solfeggio, etc... They had their way of jogging their memory. Yes, some of them used it as a backup for teaching, but we are talking about people who were regularly sharing music and playing it from memory a lot. There's the old tale, told differently, for the tune "The Bank of Turf" (and there are several carrying this name and possibly even taught the same way)... Padraig O'Keeffe was out cutting turf and Denis came along on his bicycle desperate to learn a particular tune of Padraig's. Padraig wasn't about to stop work, there was turf to cut. But, he gave Denis the tune, by ear, then he went over to a flat long bank of already cut turf and in the black peat, with the edge of his slade, he cut five lines the length of it, then he went along and with a corner cut out the notes. "There you go. You can practice that while I finish cutting the turf for the fire." I'm sure he stopped and shouted or played a bit when Denis strayed. However, Denis would already be soaked in that tradition and had already the tune in his ear and heart, and would get it again and again playing with Padraig and others. The dots, well, they wouldn't be taken home except eventually to warm someone's house with flame and heat... They were just for that moment...
Where did you get your music degree from? ~ acaretta
'c': That's a 'classic' jibe ~ does it really matter? Did we ask that of you?
acaretta: ~ any classical musician who's worth their salt, listens to everything that they are playing ~ and we also hear the things that aren't great about the musician. ~ One of the most important things that we are taught in music school is - how to go beyond the notes.
'c': That doesn't mean we don't filter it through our own preconceptions and long and hard learned pre-existing practices, or that what 'we are taught', how we are indoctrinated, applies to ALL things. Yes, though, I agree, a good number of those 'classically trained' who I've met that were drawn to this music realized they had to 'change' their perspecitives, to take things differently. That depth of appreciation and awareness is admirable, respected...
Discussion: the fiddle question . .technique?
# Posted on March 11th 2008 by banana512
http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/17012
I've knocked heads with the 'classically trained' before, and I came out with more bruises, that's with the 'born again' sorts, like religious zealots. However, mostly, I've found folks with that background who have been drawn to this music to be ready and willing to give up their preconceptions, or to try, and I've been really pleased to see a few discussions started by folks who knew they had to approach it differently ~ and to unlearn bad 'classical' habits, including in the mind, unhelpful attitudes.
I've known the same with dance. I remember seeing a couple out doing Irish set dancing that looked like they were floating, everything very stylized, like competition ballroom or Latin dancers, a bit silly really, but they were on time and they didn't get in anyones way. Then I overheard some visiting Americans that were really impressed with it, and were paying a lot of attention to this one couple. One of these Americans was actually writing down notes, which I later saw included the figures for the dance. They were using this one couple as their 'best example', and I take it that they intended to take this back home with them to share. I knew this particular couple didn't quite fit, and was curious about the very atypical and exageratted style. So, I found a point to introduce myself. They were really sweet, they were Dutch, and they were competition ice skaters. Undoing what they had spent so long learning and refining would take a lot of effort, if they really wanted to learn to dance these particular Irish dances without the exaggerated flair and affectations they'd nurtured for ice skating. There's no way in hell that could be done with a book, or through reading.
# Posted on March 15th 2008 by ceolachan
Re: Listen, Don't Read
To Ben:
Q: "Oh dear, only two notes.. what can they do with only two notes?"
A: "Make a morris tune?"
What I want to know is, 1) How does he manage to draw a perfectly straight stave freehand, and 2) How come the tune plays in a key sig of 2 sharps when there's no key sig?
# Posted on March 15th 2008 by Dow
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Yes I wondered about the key signature, too. I just assumed it was taken to be a whistle tune, so there was no need to actually write down the key signature.
... and my girlfriend has pointed out that it was a 'she'. It was Tiny Clanger. You really should concentrate more, Dow.
# Posted on March 15th 2008 by benhall.1
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Acaretta: "One of the most important things that we are taught in music school is - how to go beyond the notes."
See, this is exactly what I'm on about, and you just don't seem to understand what I'm saying. You said that this is "important", but in the world of trad music, this skill your music school has taught you is absolutely useless. And I mean *completely* useless. Zero, zilch. It won't get you anywhere. I think classical training makes a big mistake here in teaching that "going beyond the notes" is universally applicable. Your classical training will not teach you how to "go beyond the notes" of a piece of written trad music. Unfortunately many classical musicians think they can do this (because they know how to "go beyond the notes" and put their interpretation on a piece of classical sheetmusic), and this is why their trad ends up sounding sh1te. A trad tune is a purely aural thing. The sheetmusic for it is an afterthought. To learn a trad tune you have to approach it from the other direction. Learn how to play the music by ear, and then if you want to use sheetmusic as a memory aid or a crude means of transmission/representation then that's ok. But what you *can't* do is learn the music by attempting to "go beyond the notes". You just can not do it. It's an impossibility. Someone who has learnt by ear for a number of years can learn how to interpret sheetmusic for a trad tune, but that's a different thing. By that time they've put the work in and can play.
I was disappointed that you asked me about where I got my music degree from. But since you ask, I don't have a degree in music, my degree's in something else entirely. I got as far as grade 8, also grade 5 theory, 2 performance papers for A-level on a 1st and 2nd instrument, A-level harmony (string quartets), theory, history and a composition portfolio. Years of work, and none of it helped me learn how to be a trad musician. That required another few years of learning and playing and a different mindset entirely.
I hope someday that you'll understand what I'm talking about. I really genuinely want that for you, because at the moment, I think you just don't see...
# Posted on March 15th 2008 by Dow
Re: Listen, Don't Read
C, I do notice that you and Dow are major contributors to the notation section of the site - which is precisely why I made that point! Maybe, just maybe, it's not the using the dots in the learning process that creates the problem. You're damn right I made a straw man, and I appreciate you calling me on it.
Perhaps there's a second straw man in this thread?
You know, decent ability in all forms of music requires a ton of listening. Being able to sort of styles in all types of music requires listening. Developing appropriate or vernacular style in *all* forms of music requires listening.
Yes, folks, we're all traumatized at times by people with too much training and not enough sense. We're also traumatized by people with virtually zero training and not enough sense. Whether they can use notes, as *a* resource, (not *the* resource), is immaterial. I'm pretty damn certain that we tend to shoot first, ask questions later for violinists in particular for the first problem, and bodhran players for the second. Is that really what we want to do?
# Posted on March 15th 2008 by reenactor
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Your contribution and niggles are appreciated reenactor, don't get me wrong. It is hard for there to be discussion without differing perspectives. Much 'discussion' is about finding understanding, and sometimes reaching some level of agreement, which probably on the whole we have, if phrased in different ways...
I really loved "The Clangers: Music" Ben
K: D Major
a3 g f2 d2 | A2 cd e4 | GF E2 D4 | ~ I'm with the soup dragon, eating music...taste!!!
"What can they do with two notes?" ~ I think planting was a good idea, given enough time and patience and care....
# Posted on March 15th 2008 by ceolachan
Re: Listen, Don't Read
"Tiny Clanger's Jig"
Key signature: G Major
Submitted on March 15th 2008 by ceolachan.
http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display.php/8349
# Posted on March 15th 2008 by ceolachan
Listening w/closed ears
I will read this entire post ~ when I have more time. Skimmed over some real gems!
It is not completely the dots which keep players from hearing. I have noticed even among ear players (people who fondle their ears?) there are sometimes different styles in the same session. You can have 2 good players who are each capable of hearing the 'accent' of their given style of ITM. Until each listens to the other it may sound as unpleasant as any dot reader.
# Posted on March 15th 2008 by Random_notes
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Muse, plenty of people are guilty of playing with closed ears. That's one of the main things that can keep a session from gelling. Some people are so intent on the noise *they're* making that nothing else seems to register.
# Posted on March 15th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: Listen, Don't Read
read + listen = reason. reasonable?
# Posted on March 15th 2008 by drone
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Dow, perhaps you should go back and reread my earlier posts. No where have I ever said that someone should sit in a room, void of all CD players, IPODs, people, or a computer with internet access, and read sheet music without listening to the tunes.
As a music educator, I apologize that your music education so miserable failed you that you have had to resort to learning tunes without the benefit of these simple tools that so many others find so gratifying. Instead you resort to brow beating those who are able to use these tools to deepen our enjoyment the music.
# Posted on March 16th 2008 by acaretta
Re: Listen, Don't Read
What utter garbage you are speaking, acaretta. For one thing, of course I can read music. The difference that it doesn't "deepen my enjoyment of the music", because I realise that it cannot. The only enjoyment I can get from music is by listening to it or playing it. In fact, I find the idea of getting enjoyment from seeing black dots on a white page rather strange. Each to his/her own, I guess...
# Posted on March 16th 2008 by Dow
Re: Listen, Don't Read
"As a music educator, I apologize that your music education so miserable failed you that you have had to resort to learning tunes without the benefit of these simple tools that so many others find so gratifying."
It's statements like this that are the basis for trad musicians' prejudice against classical musicians and their snobbish attitudes. Yeah, they're not all like that, but you obviously are. Shame.
# Posted on March 16th 2008 by Dow
Re: Listen, Don't Read
acaretta, you're missing the point. In fact, what you're doing here, in this thread, doesn't bode well for your ability to listen in that spirit of 'give and take' that is required in a real live session ...
The thing that really bothers me about your argument, acaretta, is this notion of 'going beyond the notes'. Great concept in classical music - useless for trad.
Let me try a different tack: I lead a little Chamber Orchestra (oh, btw, I have a degree in music from Cardiff University, not that that has anything to do with anything ...) and I'm sometimes called on to play solo passages, as I was the other week when we performed Holst's St Paul's Suite. I find that I play my solos much better when I have actually memorised the music. I 'go beyond the notes'.
So far, so good. But my point is that that is a million miles away from what you have to do if you want to play trad. It's actually no good to 'memorise the music', meaning the dots, in this case. What you have to do is play the music *as it sounds*, which is a different thing altogether. I tend to pick up a tune or two a week. What normally happens is that I hear something I like, and, lo and behold, some days later, there it is, in my memory bank, with the sound of the person who played it. It's a different skill, and I'm afaid it's vital, assuming, that is, you want to play trad and not just muck about with sheet music.
btw, when I pick up tunes this way, I just play the tunes. I don't *have* to 'go beyond the notes'.
# Posted on March 16th 2008 by benhall.1
Re: Listen, Don't Read
That's not fair Ben - you're saying exactly what I said and passing it off as your own idea! And I can't believe you've got a music degree even when you make all those mistakes with your theory
# Posted on March 16th 2008 by Dow
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Gee, thanks, Dow. And there was me trying to help.
# Posted on March 16th 2008 by benhall.1
Re: Listen, Don't Read
I know it was your idea. I was trying to put it in a different way that might be intelligible to acaretta and others who think like her. Someone had to try, as you had so singularly failed.
Ha!
# Posted on March 16th 2008 by benhall.1
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Yes, I've done a degree, and some other musical studies beyond that, but I don't normally shout about such things here, because I don't really think it's relevant. It's a shame that acaretta can't see that that sort of thing isn't relevant.
# Posted on March 16th 2008 by benhall.1
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Damn, you mean I have to start showing more respect for Ben? Will it ever end?
# Posted on March 16th 2008 by ceolachan
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Do I have to address you as 'Sir Ben'? ~ or will just 'Mr. Hall' do?
# Posted on March 16th 2008 by ceolachan
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Nice distillation of a Dow rant by the way, my complements...
# Posted on March 16th 2008 by ceolachan
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Maybe I'll have to start bowing down to him and worshipping him now I know he has a music degree. That's obviously what we're expected to do with people who have music degrees, 'c'. I wonder if Ben got taught by any famous people...
# Posted on March 16th 2008 by Dow
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Well, there's you and me... I wonder if he can put that on his CV?
# Posted on March 16th 2008 by ceolachan
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Ooh, I got taught by LOTS of famous people. WAY too famous to be heard of by the likes of you.
[sniff]
# Posted on March 16th 2008 by benhall.1
Re: Listen, Don't Read
[sniff, sniff, cough cough!]
# Posted on March 16th 2008 by ceolachan
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Hopefully Mark has gone nighty night... But I'm not stating that with any faith...
# Posted on March 16th 2008 by ceolachan
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Just to make it clear, *I* was sniffing in disdain. *Not* because I am afflicted with any sort of Cambrian lurgy.
Just wanted to clear that up ...
# Posted on March 16th 2008 by benhall.1
Re: Listen, Don't Read
An illustration of a danger in playing from the dots - when you already know the tune well :
Last year I was at a workshop in Devon on playing for set-dancers. Because the attendees were from a wide area, so weren't necessarily familiar with local tunes, or were perhaps used to playing for kinds of set-dancing other than Irish, the only way the workshop could work was by everybody being able to read fluently the printed music provided.
The problem started for me in the afternoon session when we got round to playing for the set-dancers. I already knew quite well about 75% of the 90-odd tunes we had worked on in the morning read-through session. When I found myself with the dots of those tunes in front of me when I was playing for the dancers it turned out to be very distracting. I was slowing down and making silly mistakes. The only solution was to push the music stand out of focus and then everything was ok. The dots must have been interfering with my memory recall mechanism.
Btw, if you'd like to watch that YouTube Clangers video posted above in higher definition, try this code instead: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3rWghGSm4Y&fmt=18.
It is the &fmt=18 tacked on the end that does the trick. If higher definition is available (not necessarily always) then it will be provided and you'll see a link on the YouTube screen for those who prefer lower definition with a faster download. The high definition video is about 60% bigger than YouTube's standard format so will take longer to download.
# Posted on March 16th 2008 by lazyhound
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Nice to see you here lazyhound... I'm going to have to email you. You have my curiosity perked ~ a 'playing for set dancers workshop' ~ & dots ~ & 90+ tunes ~ ???
Crazy!
I'll now have to chase up that high definition link...
Nice example, and from someone else who also comes from a classical background and knows and appreciates the differences...
# Posted on March 16th 2008 by ceolachan
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Wow, the resolution was great, but it turned out to be only a small part of the tale, up to Tiny Clanger drawing of the staff... I watched it full screen for a change, and on a large monitor, amazing... You could see the stitching and everything. I just wish it had been complete... Thanks LH... May you escape this new lurgy going about...
# Posted on March 16th 2008 by ceolachan
Re: Listen, Don't Read
To Ben and Dow,
Let's not be critical of anyone who posts here, this is supposed to be a civil discussion meant to promote learning. I think there are many ways to learn music, value in being able to read music, value in picking up tunes by ear.
Just like real like, there are always some folks at sessions that think the way they play tunes or learned tunes is the only "right" way. I think aceretta has made some good points, try to take the positives away.
I do not want to see any personal attacks on any opinions here. I am happy to see some many different points of view expresses. I think everybody agrees that listening is a key skill, and should be developed as a basic foundation of the music. If there are other learning methods that can reinforce that, great.
# Posted on March 16th 2008 by Celtic Guitar
Re: Listen, Don't Read
It was while I was getting a masters degree in music that I figured out that you don't need a degree in music to be a great player! ha! (duh, and costing a pretty penny to find out, eh?!) What the degree did for me was to get paid more in a job that I eventually quit.
I have used the notes to "learn" a tune, but find that using notes to play ITM and really "know" the tune is a hindrance to my playing. I use them, but also recognize what a crutch they are. I'm trying to wean myself from them.
# Posted on March 16th 2008 by wyogal
Re: Listen, Don't Read
"I am teaching myself to read music so I can fill in the parts of the melodies that I can't pick up by ear." ~ Celtic Guitar
Fair enough... It is a valued tool, which I suspect is one agreement we all share...
# Posted on March 16th 2008 by ceolachan
Re: Listen, Don't Read
While I've helped people to escape the prison dots can create, what I've previously called an addiction, I have also worked just as hard to get past people's paranoia and hate of notation ~ to see that it doesn't mean a loss of soul in their music and that it can be a useful tool and another perspective toward understanding the music... On both counts, where it has suceeded, no one was unhappy with the results, either escaping the tyranny of dots, or gaining a new tool in understanding music and being able to read and write its skeleton in either ABCs or dots.
# Posted on March 16th 2008 by ceolachan
Re: Listen, Don't Read
That high-definition trick for YouTube videos – I've now applied it to the set dancing and piper videos listed in my Description here, improving, even if slightly, old videos which were visually somewhat dire.
# Posted on March 16th 2008 by lazyhound
Re: Listen, Don't Read
"I am teaching myself to read music so I can fill in the parts of the melodies that I can't pick up by ear." ~ Celtic Guitar
Very good point. It's only too easy for an inexperienced player in busy sessions to be quite unaware that they are missing a lot of the detail. A typical instance (for a fiddler) would be to mis-hear the sequence |ad bd ad gd| as |a2 b2 a2 g2|.
# Posted on March 16th 2008 by lazyhound
Re: Listen, Don't Read
"I am teaching myself to read music so I can fill in the parts of the melodies that I can't pick up by ear."
I've said this before, but at this point it's worth repeating: The notes of this music than get written down are the straight forward bits. They are the easy bits. If you can't pick them up by ear, how the feck are you gonna be able to pick up all the lovely subtle stuff that's not in the dots?
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by llig leahcim
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Except that sometimes the straightforward bits are obscured when the source player puts in lots of lovely (or not so lovely) subtle stuff. If a player can find out what those straightforward bits are, he or she can then add their own subtle bits. Or it can give them a frame of reference that makes it easier to figure out how the source player is fleshing out that section. Kind of like doing a hard crossword. When you're stuck, sometimes a letter or two as a hint can get you unstuck.
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by GaryAMartin
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Tunes aren't puzzles there to be solved. Sometimes there is no answer. Sometimes, the ambiguity can be the soul of it. Sometimes, the straightforward bits are deliberately obscured. What is wrong with referring to dots at this point is you are looking for something solid that in the real world of the tunes doesn't actually exist. You really must be embracing the fluidity and not damning it.
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by llig leahcim
Listen
Can you explain that;
Sometimes, the straightforward bits are deliberately obscured.
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by Random_notes
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Yeah, it's interesting. There's so much ambiguity and even downright contradiction. And this is the case with all great art.
Listen to how a really great player ploughs through the end of a phrase and into the next phrase, this is the magic in the music. If this kind of thing troubles you and you feel the need to refer back to an easily transcribable and delineated simplicity, you need to open your mind and trust your ears. Trust what your ears hear and if what your ears hear confuses you? Just go with it and learn it anyway
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by llig leahcim
Re: Listen, Don't Read
"To Ben and Dow,
Let's not be critical of anyone who posts here"
Whoa there! I'm not speaking for Dow, who can speak for himself, but I won't be told how take part in a discussion. I was critical of ideas and, aside from a few light-hearted remarks, am not aware of ANY personal criticism on this thread that I personally aimed at *anybody*.
But now I will, because now I'm angry. I for one (and for what it's worth I think this happens to apply to Dow, too in this case) was doing my best to be helpful. So I don't appreciate out of order remarks from some snotty guitarist who has, and I quote "started playing Celtic/Irish music in December 2006 when I ended my self-imposed 36 year retirement from playing guitar" and who proudly boasts that 12-string guitar suits "Celtic melodies".
For feck's sake.
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by benhall.1
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Hey Ben, lighten up, Ted's just an old ineffectual hippie.
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by llig leahcim
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Oh. That's all right then.
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by benhall.1
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Boinggg
... said Zebedee
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by benhall.1
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Whew! ~ It's about the music, which is far more important than any one person... I hate it when folks take it personal, or think that the criticism or question of an idea is aimed at the person delivering it, rather than being able to discuss the idea without being so het up about it as if it were your dog being tortured...
"hippie"? ~ Now I'd love to hear Llig's take on what exactly that means Zebedee... Hey, don't go boooinginginging away... Come back here!
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by ceolachan
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Now I'll have to re-view all of hounddog's vids... Maybe later in the week...
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by ceolachan
Re: Listen, Don't Read
"this is supposed to be a civil discussion meant to promote learning"
Hey Ben, there you go weith personal attacks because you're "angry?" What kind of crap is that? There are some her that seem to get cranky or angry when frustrated that their point of view is not taken as gospel. Maybe I don;t have much exprience with trad music, but I am trying to make ip for lost time and learn as well as I can.
I'd rather be an "ineffecutal hippy" (which I am not) than an arogant lurker on this board who jumps on people who don't agree with them
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by Celtic Guitar
Re: Listen, Don't Read
and maybe I can't spell either. or maybe I am not the best typist.
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by Celtic Guitar
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Llig is right. Don't use the dots to pick up bits of tunes you can't get by ear. You will never be a decent musician if you keep doing that. Just listen to it again and again until you *can* pick it up by ear. Sooner or later you'll find it easier, and you'll start to hear more and more subtleties in the music which you'll then also be able to bring into your own music. Michael's example of ploughing on right into the next phrase is a good one. It's stuff like this that requires you to be a good musician - the subtlety of accent, timing, intonation, attack, phrasing, articulation. If you're only interested in getting the "notes" from the dots, then you're not making music. Especially if you can't get some of the "notes" by ear and you have to "resort" to the dots. You might as well take up knitting or something and leave the music to musicians who are interested in actually learning how to play properly.
Sorry to sound judgemental, but this argument is really really important. It's attitudes like acaretta's which cause sessions to be ruined on a regular basis, and that annoys me.
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by Dow
Re: Listen, Don't Read
I attacked because, *without* having previously attacked anyone, you attacked me, celtic. I've been told by Michael now that you don;t really count, though, so I can rest easy.
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by benhall.1
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Out of interest, I did *not* "get cranky or angry when frustrated that [my] point of view [was] not taken as gospel"
The first time I responded with anger was when you attacked me, Celtic. Previous to that, I thought we were having a friendly, useful, and really rather important discussion (as Dow says). But I suppose there are always some who can't leave it like that.
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by benhall.1
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Ted's a bit confused (must be the mushrooms) ... he starts this thread with the eminently sensible, "I don't read music and figured that was a handicap, but, as it turns out, it's not."
But then says, "I am teaching myself to read music so I can fill in the parts of the melodies that I can't pick up by ear."
I think he probably is ineffectual ... to the music I mean, it's not a comment on his character, I don't know him. Some geezer who decides that a 12 string guitar is a good instrument to play these tunes on is not going to ruin them for the rest of us. Such ignorance of the music is commonplace, though at the end of the day, not a problem.
However, the main problem with a discussion board like this is when people expound their strategies of how they are successfully managing the music when quite plainly they can't be. And the only way round this is with counter argument. And sometimes the argument is important, as Dow says.
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by llig leahcim
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Oh bugger. I can't believe michael has stepped in as the 'voice of reason' and made *me* look like a vicious old curmudgeon.
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by benhall.1
Re: Listen, Don't Read
It is hard to hear all the notes during a session, so I have resorted to learning to read the dots to fill in the blanks. That seems very sensible to me.
This has been a good discussion, let's all just cut out the sarcasm and other negative behaviors. This has all been very enlightening, even without the mushrooms.
And you are not vicious, ben. Porbably just very passionate about music.
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by Celtic Guitar
Re: Listen, Don't Read
How do you know if the blanks you are filling in from the dots are the ones people are playing?
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by llig leahcim
Re: Listen, Don't Read
I ask experienced session players if I have the tune right after I work on it outside the session. There are often multiple versions of the same tune out there, so I try to go with what the session players play. But sometimes, it varies from session to session.
There's the confusing part, do I play what someone says is right, do I play to the idiosyncracies of each individual session, do I play what I think sounds the best? That is a question I don't have the answer to. Whose ornamentation is "right?"
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by Celtic Guitar
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Ted, you play the 12 string guitar. You are not part to the discussion of "Whose ornamentation is right?" If you continue with this instrument there will always be a wealth that shall remain out of your reach.
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by llig leahcim
Re: Listen, Don't Read
I play 6 and 12-string. Please tell me why there is a bias against 12-string guitars. There seem to be plenty of mandolins and octive mandolins around, what's the difference? I get pretty good feedback about the 12-string. I am just wondering.
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by Celtic Guitar
Re: Listen, Don't Read
No bias against 12 string. The problem is with all the fretted family. Banjos, mandolins, guitars etc. There is a wealth of the music which will always be beyond your reach.
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by llig leahcim
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Thanks Celtic. Yes, I am passionate about it - ludicrously, obsessively and increasingly so, for which, apologies.
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by benhall.1
Re: Listen, Don't Read
So, you are saying that fretted instruments have no place in the music because we can't play the notes between the notes? This is a little confusing, but I have an open mind and I am trying to understand what you are saying.
Thanks, Ben. Things get a little heated sometimes, but we are all passionate about the music. I am really trying to make up for lost time and be very serious about my approach to the music.
I understand why guitar players, in particular, have a bad rep; I have seen numerous guitar players who don't take the time to really learn the music and listen to its subtleties. They just bang away with the same awful rhythems without ever really being present to what's going on around them.
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by Celtic Guitar
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Dow, it's clear to me that you are extraordinarily bent on portraying yourself as correct and me as inexperienced and incorrect. That's fine, you may bash my opinion and training all you want, it doesn't make a bit of difference to me. I would however like to point out that you are basically saying the same thing that I am, and you are contradicting yourself. It's clear to me that you are unable to understand a single point that I am trying to make, which leads me to believe that you are as close minded as a religious zealot.
In an earlier post you stated that a classical musician is only likely to put emphasis on “emotion” in the music and create something that is non-trad and mushy sounding. I submit to you that a properly trained musician is able to submerse themselves in whatever style of music that they would like to play, and are able to pick up the idiosyncrasies of that genre of music. If one would like to play Mozart, they need to immerse themselves in Mozart, because it has a different feel than Handel or Brahms. If one wants to play Hungarian Dances, then they are going to need to immerse themselves in that, etc. If a classically trained musician wants to play Irish Trad music, then they clearly need to listen to the music. This is not optional. It’s a no brainer. A person that wants to play ITM clearly should listen to all the great players, and try to emulate what they are doing with their sounds, ornamentations, and feels of the rhythm.
I submit to you, Dow, that you are misunderstanding what I am saying about going beyond the notes, because you are saying the same things that I am, just putting them into your own words. In your post you said “Sooner or later you'll find it easier, and you'll start to hear more and more subtleties in the music which you'll then also be able to bring into your own music. Michael's example of ploughing on right into the next phrase is a good one. It's stuff like this that requires you to be a good musician - the subtlety of accent, timing, intonation, attack, phrasing, articulation.” Isn’t this exactly what I was saying? Going beyond the notes, in my opinion means exactly this; being able to get the feel for the rhythms, the rubato of the piece, the phrasing, how one phrase of a repeated section may have a different feel than the next, etc….. But in your opinion, a classically trained musician would never be able to do that. Well then I suggest that you start listening to more classically trained musicians that are actually good at what they do. Perhaps if you let go of all of your preconceived notions about the limitations of musicians, perhaps you can start to appreciate the talents and abilities that they do have to offer. It’s your attitude that is detrimental to sessions and playing, in my opinion.
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by acaretta
Re: Listen, Don't Read
"But in your opinion, a classically trained musician would never be able to do that."
Um, no, that is not my opinion. Of course a classically trained muso could potentially do it, just like anyone else. But they'd have to go through the same process as everyone else to get it right. Don't put words in my mouth I didn't say, please.
I'm afraid when you talk about "going beyond the notes" we are saying very different things in that we're approaching the music in different ways, acaretta. You think we're saying the same thing. I recognise that we're not. Oh well.
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by Dow
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Aren't these your words?
See, this is exactly what I'm on about, and you just don't seem to understand what I'm saying. You said that this is "important", but in the world of trad music, this skill your music school has taught you is absolutely useless. And I mean *completely* useless. Zero, zilch. It won't get you anywhere. I think classical training makes a big mistake here in teaching that "going beyond the notes" is universally applicable. Your classical training will not teach you how to "go beyond the notes" of a piece of written trad music.
According to your words, classically trained musicians haven't been taught anything and therefore can't possibly be good ITM players.
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by acaretta
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Nope, you've totally misinterpreted that paragraph.
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by Dow
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Ok let me think and I will try and explain this to you very simply because I think it's important for your future musicianship, and I want to emphasise that I'm trying to help you here. Just hold on a sec...
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by Dow
Re: Listen, Don't Read
I'm not surprised you are confused if you think of it as playing the notes between the notes.
I've never said that fretted instruments have no place in the music, it's just that they are not capable of giving it full justice. They are capable of making splendid compromises and can add very successfully to an ensemble. If you don't already know this then, as I've said, you are not using your ears.
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by llig leahcim
Re: Listen, Don't Read
I'll take your word for it, IIig, I really am not sure what you're talking about, but perhaps as my ear becomes more finely tuned, I will understand.
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by Celtic Guitar
Re: Listen, Don't Read
I'm afraid Dow is not quite right when he says that classical music training is completely useless. It is worse than useless. Not only do you have every thing to learn about this music, you have to wrestle with what you already know being useless
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by llig leahcim
Re: Listen, Don't Read
OK, when I said that classical training itself does not give you the skills to be able to play trad, I meant that a classical musician is at no particular advantage with their specific training when it comes to trad music. BUT. That doesn't mean that they can't ever be good trad musicians. What I mean is, for a classical musician to become a good trad musician, they have to go through a whole new learning process, and not simply transfer skills from their classical training. In other words, even if they've played classical violin for 20 years and teach, and perform solo concerts in front of thousands of people, if they want to be a good trad musician, they're going to need to start from scratch and spend the next 20 years playing trad, so they'd better bloody get started if they want to be any good before their fingers start dropping off.
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by Dow
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Yes, cross-posted with you there llig. Very true about having to wrestle with what you know being useless. I know quite a few good trad musos who started out classically trained. They look back now at the years they spent wrestling with what they know being useless and they think "duh?! if only I'd just erased it all and started again I could have got where I am today a lot faster".
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by Dow
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Perhaps your challenge in this situation, Dow, is that you are only applying your knowledge of classical musicians to those that play violin. Perhaps you haven't noticed, but there are a lot of other musical instruments in both the classical world and the ITM world.
And, Llig, Dow, classical training is NOT useless, if you know what you're doing.
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by acaretta
Re: Listen, Don't Read
You're right, I hadn't noticed that there are other instruments.
W.
T.
F.
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by Dow
Re: Listen, Don't Read
If you know that, then maybe you shouldn't pass judgment on the instruments that aren't your own.
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by acaretta
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Dow doesn't play violin. At least, not to my knowledge - not that I know him. I do. Play violin, that is. I have an opinion on all sorts of things, not just on violin.
You do seem strangely incapable of hearing what other people are actually saying, acaretta ...
# Posted on March 17th 2008 by benhall.1
Re: Listen, Don't Read
Celtic Guitar: "I ask experienced session players if I have the tune right after I work on it outside the session. There are often multiple versions of the same tune out there, so I try to go with what the session players play. But sometimes, it varies from session to session."
'c': wise man, well said ~ ask the source. Get the 'notes' from there, from someone who plays them. Make it personal, first hand. The dots can serve as a reminder, or offer other options to sample, but live is always the best way...and it seems you already know that...
acaretta: ~ able to pick up the idiosyncrasies of that genre of music.
'c': It may not be you, this isn't personal or about you in particular, but often, from my experience, the 'classically trained' are hobbled by that training, they play what they consider the 'idiosyncratic' of a genre of music and the resulting sound is generally hackneyed, the music tends to be affected in a quite unnatural and obvious way, even clumsy... Mozart (Handel, Brahms, etc.) isn't the same thing, sorry...much as I love and appreciate this music too, and take interest in the many takes on it I've heard... If you really want to play 'Hungarian Dances', the real stuff of the Carpathians, you don't go to Brahms or Bartok or other classical examples or musicians to learn. That just won't cut it... It couldn't be farther from the truth, from the 'dance'...
From these examples, it doesn't sound like Dow is misinterpreting, but maybe it is a problem of communication? ~ both ways... A classically trained musician CAN DO IT ~ BUT ~ they must set aside the training and clear their ears out of preconception, habit and training and remove those filters and just let the music be what it is instead of trying desperately, as has happened in some instances in Scotland, and elsewhere, to sweeten it and make it acceptable to classical ears...a kind of bawdlerization of music. As the Cape Bretoners often say, it has to have that dirt in it. Also, please don't judge us in ways you can't necessarily know ~ most of us, and Dow too, appreciate other kinds of music, including those things that fall under the catchall category of 'classical', but not limited by that either...
acretta to Dow: "According to your words, classically trained musicians haven't been taught anything and therefore can't possibly be good ITM players."
I didn't read that, we all, I think, realize that classical musicians work damned hard, and we all know folks who started 'classical' and then added another string of appreciation and love to that heat ~ for traditional music, in this case, as discussed here to be specific ~ Irish traditional music(s). I can't think of one of them that doesn't realize the differences mentioned here, that classical training does not quite prepare you for an ethnic music of any kind, meaning with accent and depth of understanding and skill. No one can doubt one is 'practiced', but that is the problem, those practices don't apply to how an ethnic music is pulled out of any given instrument, with accent. Classical music is, in a sense, as WASP as you can get, very right winged if it were a politics, it is the white bread of music. It makes great toast, but it is not the same as any of the sourdough ryes of the world. It is a very different process and result. Just because you have all the equipment and tools to make a white loaf and are well practiced at this and can do it 'without thinking' ~ however good it might be, it doesn't mean you can understand and pull off a good slow fermented sourdough hand kneaded loaf, or that your wholegrain breads won't come out like bricks... It is a whole different method and education and appreciation...
Sorry Llig, I agree with most of what you say, and while I might bewail the loss of the moveable fret, I love the guitar and the guitar family. Even Dow plays double strings. One of my wife's favourite trad instruments is the mandolin. One of my alltime favourite albums, that I sadly gave away, was of Dave MacIsaac playing Cape Breton music on the guitar, which he does beautifully, also being one damned fine fiddler too. Like with every instruments, there are things, and subtleties, the guitar and guitar family can pull off that other instruments can't, and vice versa. If we started too far down this road we'd risk passing judgement that only one instrument can truly be considered to do justice to Irish music... And please, don't let it be the wire strung harp or a one octave set of bagpipes or shawm...
I don't see that people are saying that classical training is useless, point blank, but that it is useless where this music is concerned, on the whole, that you have to relearn and work past your learned preconceptions of what music is and should be. I wouldn't go that so far as to say it were completely useless with regards to traditional music, but that it can be detrimental. Those I've known who had some classical training in their background, and there are loads of them, including some well known ITM musicians, and recorded musicians too ~ still value those earlier experiences, but realize the differences, and the potential disabilities to work past.
Back to dance as an example, when you see someone who has been indoctrinated in 'classical' forms (ballet, ballroom, Latin, Irish Dance Coimisiun competition, etc.) of dance take to the floor and dance a traditional dance ~ it just looks silly, generally, sometimes even akin to that awful thing called 'character dance'. It is affected. It really bears little similarity to the traditional dance, in the down home way. A good example of the difference would be to see what Latin dance has become through the ballroom scene, for example the Tango, with the bright costumes and the silly forced grins and the sequins and the overstated moves. It is awful, in my opinion. And then, to see an older couple who do the tango as second nature, no costumes, no affectations, just grace and charm and natural, as natural and as comfortable as can be, at ease, not pushed and not for exhibition, no forced smiles... The same is true of what some might think of as a simple Conemarra barndance, or the difference between the Dance Coimision stiffness and pointed toes and an older sean nos stepper. To see a ballroom soaked couple give Irish country dance a try can even be said to be bizarre, they just can't do it. It's unnatural, they are too indoctrinated, too affected and robotic. Yes, they can keep time, they can step through the movements, but it's like a bird of paradise plant (Rhodedendrons) growing in the peat of Donegal, it sticks out as being alien. It doesn't fit. It is uncomfortable and garish. Bless the couple for trying, but, it isn't traditional dance, it is comic, tragic... Anyone with sense would notice this, but some of us are short of that gift, sense... For others it takes awhile before they realize. Generally folks are too kind to speak out about it. I mean, they can keep time alright, and they don't get in anyone's way and they seem to enjoy themselves. I'd rather someone took the time and told me, and I'd ask for guidance once I realized...
These folks in this thread may be outspoken, we're passionate, and it might irritate you, but I think they put the music before anything else, including themselves, and they have its best interest, any yours, in mind. Maybe you are not as bad as you make it sound. But so far, your description of how you remake the dots does sound pretty awful. I had a quick indraw of breath when I read that, and it didn't surprise me what followed. Llig and Dow and Ben, amongst others. Llig often gets people in a reactive mood, he doesn't beat around the bush like some of us. He sometimes puts in a few words what might take me a few paragraphs, but those few words can bite deep, truth isn't always kind, nor should it be. It might be in your delivery, but you keep saying what sounds pretty much the same thing, only reworded, and that same thing still sounds uncomfortably lacking in understanding of this music. I can understand why others would struggle to improve your passion for you, to widen your perspective beyond the limitations of classical training. Maybe you're not seeing that? I don't see person