A beginners question. I'm coming up to two years whistle playing. I'm 40 years plus, so it's slower stuff, but I'm pleased today with getting down, by ear, the trad Cornish tune "The Sweet Nightingale." I reckon about 90% of the two dozen, or so, simple tunes I play, I can play by ear. Should this give me hope, or should I look rather to concentrate on trying to play something harder?
Play tunes you like. Learning them by ear will help you play them by ear.
When you screw your courage to the sticking-place and beard the lion in his den and in other ways grasp the nettle of that local session you'll hear tunes that you don't know, and you'll think you'll never learn all of those, and you'll be discouraged for a few days and then you'll decide, what the hell, I may not learn them all, but I can surely give it the old college try, and you'll sit there and listen like a rabbit in a hedge with a fox about, that is to say carefully and with an ear peeled for danger, and you'll realize that one of them you do know, but by that point they'll be on to another one, but by gum they do play one you know, so you'll turn up the next time and you'll play that one and they'll like it and you'll be the hero of the session and in the meantime you'll realize that you actually know two more of the ones they play, and they'll likely ask you to play a tune and you'll realize that they know those ones too so that's six tunes you have, and you heard one that you think you could pick up if you heard it a few more times so you'll go back the next week and listen some more and play a few more and realize that these guys aren't so scary, and what were you worried about all those years ago when you first wandered in there, ah well, you were young then, and now you've had a decent life of it, and certainly the many hours you've spent in that bar were among the decentest parts of it. And it turns out you did end up learning all those tunes, after all.
You might find it helps to not think in terms of tunes being "harder" or "easier" than others. They're all just tunes.
And the key is getting them, not so much onto your whistle, as into your head. They'll come out on the whistle if (and only if) you have them in your head.
If you want to play in Irish sessions, you'll want to learn at least some of the vast "standard" (heh) repertoire. No reason not to do it by ear. The more you do it, the better you get at it. No time like now to start. (Or you can wait and then wonder why you didn't start sooner....)
There are a brazilian jigs in D and G that fall quite naturally on the whistle. Give one of them a try. (Out on the Ocean, Humours of Trim, The Rolling Waves, Joy of My Life, Kerfunteun Jig, Fasten the Leg In Her, Tobin's Favourite, Top of Cork Road....)
You really should go to your local session. Keep going, record
some tunes on an mp3 recorder. Without really working on the
tunes, get them in your head like pop tunes or tv jingles. At that
point, it's no big deal to start playing them on your whistle.
When you say that you play about 90% of your tunes by ear? Does that mean that the other ones require sheet music? Why don't you start by learning to play them by ear too?
Does "playing by ear" mean memorization to you? That's a common thing for people starting out. Memorizing a tune is tough! There's a ton of notes, and not only do you have to remember the notes, you have to remember what *order* they come in too! Yikes!
There's an easier way, like Will mentions, and that is to "internalize" them. Get them in your head. Don't worry about whether you can play them on your whistle or not. Get them in you head so that you can sing them. Your voice is your first instrument, after all. You have a ton of experience playing it. Eventually, your whistle will get there too, so that if you know a tune in your head, you can play it on whistle.
And trust me, when you start internalizing the tunes, it gets MUCH easier, because then all you have to remember is one thing - "how the tune goes", as opposed to all the notes, and the order that they come in. Much easier!
With regards to getting the confidence to join the local session, I will say this: It's a good thing to not want to overstep your bounds, so approaching the session in the right way is important. But keep in mind that *nobody* is ever "ready" to join their first session. The only way to get good at playing with other people is by doing it. If you do it now, you'll thank yourself 3 years from now!
True enough, Michael, but making the necessary neural connections twixt fingers and brain, and making them so that they don't die overnight, can take a little longer. Longer than a lifetime in my case.
Learn to sing a tune first, then learn to play it from your singing. start off with really easy tunes, nursery rhymes even, Or tunes that are also song tunes, lannigans ball, frost is all over, some say the devils dead,campbells are comin[burnt old man] off she goes[humpty dumpty]
The President was getting his morning briefing on the war in Afghanistan. General Issimo broke the bad news:
General: "Sir, there was a raid on the international coalition's Green Zone last night. Mortar rounds, followed by machine gun fire."
President: "Sounds bad. Casualties?"
Genera; "Bloody. A dozen American troops were wounded. And three Brazilian soldiers were killed."
President (visibly anguished): Oh my god! Three brazilian soldiers?! That's horrible!"
General: "Yes sir."
President (composing himself): "Um, okay, so exactly how many is a 'brazilian?"
"Should this give me hope, or should I look rather to concentrate on trying to play something harder?"
Since this is a style of music that is dominantly melodic, and you're playing a melodic instrument, the tunes(in my opinion) have a difficulty cap, especially if you learn them by ear. In other words, at a certain point they just stop being hard.
Some tunes are harder than others, of course; But the more you know your instrument, the music, and the specific tunes, the more of a personal curve you have.
So to answer your question, i'd say that this isn't something you should worry about. If you like the harder tunes, go for it. If you don't, why bother?
Steve, I couched the joke the way I did in hopes of sparing us any political chest pounding.
But since you probed, I'm an independent. Who is giving up on voting because the lesser of evils is still evil. Our entire political system has gone to the money mongers. My interests are wholly unrepresented.
To get back to the original poster, Tim, after two years, it is past time where you should be coming out of your shell, and attending the local session. Don't feel like you have to even play, just listening is a good way to start, and talking to the other musicians about your desire to join in on the fun.
Good luck, and enjoy your first steps into a fun new world!
Also, if the OP put the time into playing tunes on whistle that he does blogging about tunes he wants to play on whistle, he'd be a session pro by now.
"Also, if the OP put the time into playing tunes on whistle that he does blogging about tunes he wants to play on whistle, he'd be a session pro by now."
Wasn't sure how drunk I would need to be before reply to this.. I guess I am now. What if folks can't join sessions because of long-standing anxiety-disorders which hardly allow them to leave the front door. Maybe the internet gives them a chance to discuss things with others.. or not?
The reason doesn't signify - Will's right to say that you'd learn more in the company of other musicians than you will by talking about it on line.
Nothing wrong with talking about it on line except it gets you nowhere - but if you allow it to substitute for human interaction, that's sort of sad, isn't it?
If that's what you need to do, best wishes with it. Whatever it takes to get out from the four glass walls of the tiny little internet prison and into the vast space of a cramped little room with one more musician crammed in than can reaonably fit, and all the tunes in the world to play and all the time in the world to .play them in.
It's nice out here, and honestly, most of the people aren't jerks.
Tim, I apologize. I am utterly and sincerely sorry. I too have spent time stuck inside that door.
So my reasoning may be sound, but my words were unnecessarily harsh. If reaching out through blogging and other net activities helps and maybe even heads you on a path to more direct interaction, then by all means keep doing it.
Also, keep playing music, regardless of whether anyone else ever hears it. Play it for yourself, for your own joys and sorrows. I speak from personal experience...music is what opened the door for me when nothing else did.
So please take heart, and ignore my previous post. Go back up the thread to my first post and start playing the jigs I listed there. They *will* come to you, if you put the time in.
Percentage by ear?
Percentage by ear?
A beginners question. I'm coming up to two years whistle playing. I'm 40 years plus, so it's slower stuff, but I'm pleased today with getting down, by ear, the trad Cornish tune "The Sweet Nightingale." I reckon about 90% of the two dozen, or so, simple tunes I play, I can play by ear. Should this give me hope, or should I look rather to concentrate on trying to play something harder?
Tim
http://timwhistles.blogspot.com/
# Posted on September 7th 2011 by TimWhistles
Re: Percentage by ear?
PS. I guess this is a little off-topic as my confidence to date hasn't allowed me to join in my local 'session!'
# Posted on September 7th 2011 by TimWhistles
Re: Percentage by ear?
Play tunes you like. Learning them by ear will help you play them by ear.
When you screw your courage to the sticking-place and beard the lion in his den and in other ways grasp the nettle of that local session you'll hear tunes that you don't know, and you'll think you'll never learn all of those, and you'll be discouraged for a few days and then you'll decide, what the hell, I may not learn them all, but I can surely give it the old college try, and you'll sit there and listen like a rabbit in a hedge with a fox about, that is to say carefully and with an ear peeled for danger, and you'll realize that one of them you do know, but by that point they'll be on to another one, but by gum they do play one you know, so you'll turn up the next time and you'll play that one and they'll like it and you'll be the hero of the session and in the meantime you'll realize that you actually know two more of the ones they play, and they'll likely ask you to play a tune and you'll realize that they know those ones too so that's six tunes you have, and you heard one that you think you could pick up if you heard it a few more times so you'll go back the next week and listen some more and play a few more and realize that these guys aren't so scary, and what were you worried about all those years ago when you first wandered in there, ah well, you were young then, and now you've had a decent life of it, and certainly the many hours you've spent in that bar were among the decentest parts of it. And it turns out you did end up learning all those tunes, after all.
That's how it always works.
# Posted on September 7th 2011 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Percentage by ear?
You might find it helps to not think in terms of tunes being "harder" or "easier" than others. They're all just tunes.
And the key is getting them, not so much onto your whistle, as into your head. They'll come out on the whistle if (and only if) you have them in your head.
If you want to play in Irish sessions, you'll want to learn at least some of the vast "standard" (heh) repertoire. No reason not to do it by ear. The more you do it, the better you get at it. No time like now to start. (Or you can wait and then wonder why you didn't start sooner....)
There are a brazilian jigs in D and G that fall quite naturally on the whistle. Give one of them a try. (Out on the Ocean, Humours of Trim, The Rolling Waves, Joy of My Life, Kerfunteun Jig, Fasten the Leg In Her, Tobin's Favourite, Top of Cork Road....)
# Posted on September 7th 2011 by Will Harmon
Re: Percentage by ear?
You really should go to your local session. Keep going, record
some tunes on an mp3 recorder. Without really working on the
tunes, get them in your head like pop tunes or tv jingles. At that
point, it's no big deal to start playing them on your whistle.
# Posted on September 7th 2011 by Hup
Re: Percentage by ear?
Brazilian jigs?
When you say that you play about 90% of your tunes by ear? Does that mean that the other ones require sheet music? Why don't you start by learning to play them by ear too?
Does "playing by ear" mean memorization to you? That's a common thing for people starting out. Memorizing a tune is tough! There's a ton of notes, and not only do you have to remember the notes, you have to remember what *order* they come in too! Yikes!
There's an easier way, like Will mentions, and that is to "internalize" them. Get them in your head. Don't worry about whether you can play them on your whistle or not. Get them in you head so that you can sing them. Your voice is your first instrument, after all. You have a ton of experience playing it. Eventually, your whistle will get there too, so that if you know a tune in your head, you can play it on whistle.
And trust me, when you start internalizing the tunes, it gets MUCH easier, because then all you have to remember is one thing - "how the tune goes", as opposed to all the notes, and the order that they come in. Much easier!
With regards to getting the confidence to join the local session, I will say this: It's a good thing to not want to overstep your bounds, so approaching the session in the right way is important. But keep in mind that *nobody* is ever "ready" to join their first session. The only way to get good at playing with other people is by doing it. If you do it now, you'll thank yourself 3 years from now!
# Posted on September 7th 2011 by Reverend
Re: Percentage by ear?
Will
I suspect 'Brazilian' is the result of a rather overenthusiastic predictive text system on your phone rather than the origin of those tunes ??
# Posted on September 7th 2011 by Enob
Re: Percentage by ear?
Well said, Pete.
# Posted on September 7th 2011 by will morgan
Re: Percentage by ear?
"A brazillion" is a common internet-ism for "a number significantly larger than a bazillion". I suspect that's what Will meant.
# Posted on September 7th 2011 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Percentage by ear?
You won't find a thing about jigs here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_Brazil
# Posted on September 7th 2011 by Hup
Re: Percentage by ear?
You can learn all there is to know about the whistle in an afternoon. What the heck else have you be doing for your couple of years?
# Posted on September 7th 2011 by ...
Re: Percentage by ear?
True enough, Michael, but making the necessary neural connections twixt fingers and brain, and making them so that they don't die overnight, can take a little longer. Longer than a lifetime in my case.
# Posted on September 7th 2011 by Steve Shaw
Re: Percentage by ear?
Learn to sing a tune first, then learn to play it from your singing. start off with really easy tunes, nursery rhymes even, Or tunes that are also song tunes, lannigans ball, frost is all over, some say the devils dead,campbells are comin[burnt old man] off she goes[humpty dumpty]
# Posted on September 7th 2011 by Joseph Tailyour
Re: Percentage by ear?
"Longer than a lifetime"? Not yet, Steve.
# Posted on September 7th 2011 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Percentage by ear?
Re: "brazilian"
The President was getting his morning briefing on the war in Afghanistan. General Issimo broke the bad news:
General: "Sir, there was a raid on the international coalition's Green Zone last night. Mortar rounds, followed by machine gun fire."
President: "Sounds bad. Casualties?"
Genera; "Bloody. A dozen American troops were wounded. And three Brazilian soldiers were killed."
President (visibly anguished): Oh my god! Three brazilian soldiers?! That's horrible!"
General: "Yes sir."
President (composing himself): "Um, okay, so exactly how many is a 'brazilian?"
Ba da boom
# Posted on September 7th 2011 by Will Harmon
Re: Percentage by ear?
ouch.
# Posted on September 7th 2011 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Percentage by ear?
I think a Brazilian is a Maximilian * 10^3, if you want to be precise.
# Posted on September 7th 2011 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Percentage by ear?
The Irish equivalent is, of course, a Cillian while the English prefer a Gillian.
# Posted on September 7th 2011 by MacCruiskeen
Re: Percentage by ear?
I believe a Gillian is 1/1000 of a gazillion, isn't that right?
# Posted on September 7th 2011 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Percentage by ear?
No, a Gillian is a thousand shaftments divided by a carucate (or 8 bovates if you don't have a carucate handy) multiplied by a butt.
# Posted on September 7th 2011 by MacCruiskeen
Re: Percentage by ear?
But is that net, or gross?
# Posted on September 7th 2011 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Percentage by ear?
No, it's by jigger or, in some cases, by pottle.
# Posted on September 7th 2011 by MacCruiskeen
Re: Percentage by ear?
Or, in extreme cases, bi-curious.
# Posted on September 7th 2011 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Percentage by ear?
One thing for sure, a brazilian is much more than a smidgen or a tadbit.
# Posted on September 7th 2011 by ancientfifer
Re: Percentage by ear?
"Should this give me hope, or should I look rather to concentrate on trying to play something harder?"
Since this is a style of music that is dominantly melodic, and you're playing a melodic instrument, the tunes(in my opinion) have a difficulty cap, especially if you learn them by ear. In other words, at a certain point they just stop being hard.
Some tunes are harder than others, of course; But the more you know your instrument, the music, and the specific tunes, the more of a personal curve you have.
So to answer your question, i'd say that this isn't something you should worry about. If you like the harder tunes, go for it. If you don't, why bother?
The advice given above was great.
# Posted on September 7th 2011 by fiddlelearner
Re: Percentage by ear?
Anyway, comparing Gillians with Brazilians is like comparing apples with pairs.
# Posted on September 7th 2011 by Steve Shaw
Re: Percentage by ear?
I'll 'appily concede that Gillian the Brazilian has a nice pair.
# Posted on September 7th 2011 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Percentage by ear?
(can you tell it's been a long day?)
# Posted on September 7th 2011 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Percentage by ear?
"comparing apples with pairs", I must remember that one, it's a nice little mind warp.
kind of like comparing one granny and two granddads
# Posted on September 7th 2011 by Theirlandais
Re: Percentage by ear?
in the smith family
# Posted on September 7th 2011 by Theirlandais
Re: Percentage by ear?
That joke sounds far better, Will, when the president in question is Dubya. You were too kind. I could be thinking that you vote Republican.
# Posted on September 8th 2011 by Steve Shaw
Re: Percentage by ear?
Steve, I couched the joke the way I did in hopes of sparing us any political chest pounding.
But since you probed, I'm an independent. Who is giving up on voting because the lesser of evils is still evil. Our entire political system has gone to the money mongers. My interests are wholly unrepresented.
# Posted on September 8th 2011 by Will Harmon
Re: Percentage by ear?
To get back to the original poster, Tim, after two years, it is past time where you should be coming out of your shell, and attending the local session. Don't feel like you have to even play, just listening is a good way to start, and talking to the other musicians about your desire to join in on the fun.
Good luck, and enjoy your first steps into a fun new world!
# Posted on September 8th 2011 by AlBrown
Re: Percentage by ear?
"...enjoy your first steps into a fun new world!"
Gollly gee Al, you make it sound like a romp through the theme park with Mickey and Minnie.
Some sessions I've been to put me more in mind of Shutter Island....
# Posted on September 8th 2011 by Will Harmon
Re: Percentage by ear?
Also, if the OP put the time into playing tunes on whistle that he does blogging about tunes he wants to play on whistle, he'd be a session pro by now.
# Posted on September 8th 2011 by Will Harmon
Re: Percentage by ear?
Cheers all. Many great replies!
# Posted on September 9th 2011 by TimWhistles
Re: Percentage by ear?
Joke, Will, joke.
# Posted on September 9th 2011 by Steve Shaw
Re: Percentage by ear?
"Also, if the OP put the time into playing tunes on whistle that he does blogging about tunes he wants to play on whistle, he'd be a session pro by now."
Wasn't sure how drunk I would need to be before reply to this.. I guess I am now. What if folks can't join sessions because of long-standing anxiety-disorders which hardly allow them to leave the front door. Maybe the internet gives them a chance to discuss things with others.. or not?
Tim
http://timwhistles.blogspot.com/
Tim
# Posted on September 9th 2011 by TimWhistles
Re: Percentage by ear?
The reason doesn't signify - Will's right to say that you'd learn more in the company of other musicians than you will by talking about it on line.
Nothing wrong with talking about it on line except it gets you nowhere - but if you allow it to substitute for human interaction, that's sort of sad, isn't it?
# Posted on September 9th 2011 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Percentage by ear?
Hi Jon,
Yeah, it is..but when you have little choice?
I'm hoping things will start to get better soon.. I'm soon to go T-total (With the help of antibuse). Cheers, Tim
# Posted on September 9th 2011 by TimWhistles
Re: Percentage by ear?
If that's what you need to do, best wishes with it. Whatever it takes to get out from the four glass walls of the tiny little internet prison and into the vast space of a cramped little room with one more musician crammed in than can reaonably fit, and all the tunes in the world to play and all the time in the world to .play them in.
It's nice out here, and honestly, most of the people aren't jerks.
# Posted on September 9th 2011 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Percentage by ear?
Tim, I apologize. I am utterly and sincerely sorry. I too have spent time stuck inside that door.
So my reasoning may be sound, but my words were unnecessarily harsh. If reaching out through blogging and other net activities helps and maybe even heads you on a path to more direct interaction, then by all means keep doing it.
Also, keep playing music, regardless of whether anyone else ever hears it. Play it for yourself, for your own joys and sorrows. I speak from personal experience...music is what opened the door for me when nothing else did.
So please take heart, and ignore my previous post. Go back up the thread to my first post and start playing the jigs I listed there. They *will* come to you, if you put the time in.
# Posted on September 9th 2011 by Will Harmon
Re: Percentage by ear?
Jon,
You're missing lots of great opportunities to say nothing...
# Posted on September 9th 2011 by Theirlandais
Re: Percentage by ear?
@theirlandais
I don't think I could ever say nothing as well as you just did. I won't even try.
# Posted on September 9th 2011 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Percentage by ear?
Goodness gracious, Will, what's wrong with trying to always look on the bright side of life?
# Posted on September 10th 2011 by AlBrown
Re: Percentage by ear?
Heh, Al, that's one of my favorite lines from Monty Python:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1loyjm4SOa0
# Posted on September 10th 2011 by Will Harmon
Re: Percentage by ear?
One of my favorite lines as well...
# Posted on September 11th 2011 by AlBrown