If someone says 'Harold's better writer than Maude because he can type at 50 words a minute whereas she can only do 30', you might think there were a few other things to be taken into account. Is Harold's story more interesting? Does he express himself better? Is his style better? Does he give more information? Do people enjoy reading him more than they enjoy reading Maude?
Being able to type fast and accurately is a useful skill if you want to be a writer, but it's not essential.
If someone says 'Harold is a better musician than Maude because he can pick up tunes by ear quickly and easily but she struggles and sometimes needs to look at the dots' you might ask, is Harold a better player technically? Does he have better knowledge of the context and history of the music? Does he understand the style and can he play well in that style? Does he communicate the music better than Maude?
Being able to pick up tunes fast and easily by ear is a useful skill but it is not essential.
Being a good typist is not essential to being a good writer.
Being able to hear the music, respond on he fly, and internalize it -- so yes, quickly picking up tunes by ear, is essential to being able to play this music at its highest levels.
c.g., parallels are a favoured tool of politicians, because they are easy to conjure, easy to grasp, and perfect for conveying a distorted, or at least oversimplified, message.
Consider this:
"If someone says 'Harold's better in communication than Maude because he is able to memorize what others say, is able to render and interpret what he hears while she has to stick to text, deciphers with trouble and can only reproduce what she has read', you would agree that his comprehension is better.
Being able to listen and interpret accurately and quickly is essential if you want to be proficient in communication skills.
If someone says 'Harold is a better musician than Maude because he can pick up tunes by ear quickly and easily but she struggles and needs to follow the dots' you would say that he is a better musician. Your skill in musical perception and interpretation makes you a better musician."
The usefulness of this statement is exactly the same as that of yours.
Sessions aside, it should never be a case of "either/or".
Especially at workshops and other musical gatherings, you will often encounter the situation where either an "ear player" or "sight reader(who relies on the music) is disadvantaged when the proceedings are carried out one way or another.
It might be that you are handed the music and expected to start playing straight away or, on the other hand, you have to pick up the tune "by ear" just after a couple of hearings.
Probably, ear players have a better advantage in this situation as they will pick it up anyway after a few times although the "dot people" may have greater difficulty without the written music.
Of course, we're mostly talking about sessions here and this is really NOT the place for playing "off the dots". However, in the wider world there are many possibilities.
Yes, Ben. You're right. I should have said, "play this music. full stop."
Thesession.org is only place I have seen such issues and insecurity over "ear people" v. "dot people," mainly from "dot people" who seem unreasonably stressed by hearing about how important ear learning is from more vocal denizens of this website. In the real world, or at least my little corner of it, no one gives a sh*t and they just get on with the business of learning and playing tunes.
In the real world some of us are just beginning and though the value judgements do not matter the practicalities do.
I find what Ben and Emily are saying for sessions. I have no doubt about it.
But I have also experienced what John J is saying at workshops. Sometimes I just want to get on with playing the tune and paying attention to what the leader is doing with it. Not being able to get the right notes in the right order from the sheet even at slow playing speed meant I get less from the workshop that if I could.
Not just for sessions. For playing Irish traditional music well, in any context. Hearing and being able to respond, on the fly, to all the subtleties and variations of the tune is absolutely integral to the music. The sooner even a beginner gets off the sheet music, the better they will be able to hear what is really happening.
When I was an *absolute* beginner, I couldn't read sheet music at all and learned all my tunes by ear from various sources including occasional sessions even although they were rather fast there.
I only started to read music properly when I started going to a local Reel and Strathspey society as they just "dished out" the sheet music. However, I would record the others at this time and learn the tunes "by ear" at home or just "pick up" the easier ones.
To this day, I still don't rely on the written music although it's a useful tool.
I also find that when I'm playing a less familiar instrument (e.g. I'm learning PA), I tend to rely on my "ear" much more as my fingers don't automatically seek out the notes on the keyboard on reading "the dots" as they would do on a fiddle or madolin.
I am trying, succesfully I think, to kill off that "middle line = left index finger" type of reaction that I learned early on. Slow going trying to get the dots to trigger something more aural though.
Picking up tunes easily and playing them well are separate skills, but tend to be related to one another in practice. Good writers tend to be fast typists as well--but good typists are not nearly as often good writers.
And, for the record, I find that one can learn tunes far more quickly by ear than off of sheet music--and having done so, it's much easier to adapt the tunes you've learnt by ear to other people's playing.
I'm actually terrible at sight reading, but the beauty of Irish music is that it doesn't matter. If I were terrible at ear learning, I would be seriously hampered and would need to do something about that if I intended to even be a half-decent player.
I myself am a slow learner, and rather than drive folks crazy asking them to play that passage one more time so I can get it, I usually use sheet music at home when learning a new tune. I thought by now I would be able to let go of the sheet music altogether, but it is what it is.
Conversely, I am a terrible sight reader. I have to use my ear to help me play something, even when it is on a sheet of paper in front of me. Again, when playing from sheet music alone, I can only get up to about half speed on an unfamiliar tune.
As long as you get the result of a well learned tune, I console myself with the thought that it doesn't matter how the sausage is made.
If the sausage were made by grinding it under the tracks of a 40-ton excavator then packing it into a casing using hands covered with hydraulic fluid, that would matter to me if I ate sausage.
To avoid an over-stimulation of ethical blend's curiosity about others' dietary preferences that could possibly result in his being crippled by astonishment, perhaps I should have written instead, ". . . if I ate sausage sold from a cook's stall near an idling excavator".
In the meantime, valid points have been raised by both violamike and gam indicating a need for some elucidation by Weejie on whether, in fact, the production of haggis has increased exponentially in the Highlands with the advent of petroleum products and highway construction.
"Haggis can easily outrun a 40-ton excavator..." (gam).
Round a 45 degree mountain slope, almost certainly, as the 40-ton excavator would roll over and over downhill, being out of its proper territory.
Along a proper road the excavator would have a decided edge in speed, but the haggis would soon scuttle across the road and into the edge because of its inbuilt bias to run in circles. One just has to accept that the haggis is differently abled, even if one actually sees it as an infuriating little cheat that refuses to lose a straight race and get squashed.
Falling off a cliff, however, both would hit the ground at the same time. I think Newton proved this.
Sight reading is a skill. It can be helpful, but anyone at the elite level of playing pretty much any kind of music ... Knows the tune. Doesn't matter if it is classical, jazz, or this type of music. Knowing the tune.... by ear... having it in your heart, is absolutely a requirement. Does that mean they never ever look at sheet music? Nope.. sure doesn't. They look at it because reading music is often part of their skill set.
Music does not come off the page. It comes from the musician. Learning by ear is quite essential for any music form. I don't think that people need to be offended if they are not speedy at learning, and someone else next to them is. The more time you spend learning a tune, the longer it will take for you to forget it. No harm in taking your time, looking a dots now and again etc...
Don't be hassled by absolute rules. Just enjoy yourself.
Hmm it might seem I contradicted mysellf... there are some absolute rules...but, I meant in this situation.. learning styles vary.. don't compare yourself to others too much... something like that.
As a person who is equally comfortable learning by ear or learning from sheet music, I find any discussion about the merits or shortcomings of either to be pointless. If you heard me play, you would have no basis for knowing whether I had learned the tune by one method or the other, so what possible difference does it make? I wouldn't want to be without either ability. I can only guess that the defenders of one cannot do the other.
I don't think anyone who cares at all about ITM is unaware of the importance of listening to get the music right, but this is true no matter what kind of music you play. There is nothing peculiar to ITM in this regard. Sheet music does not give you the sense of how the tune should sound; it is up to the player to learn the basic tune from the sheet music and then apply what they know about ITM so that the result is the same as learning it by ear. When I learn a tune by ear, I eventually play it my own way, so the ear process really doesn't differ from when I learn a tune from sheet music. Ultimately, I play the tune "right" because I know how to play ITM. Is there really anything else that needs to be said on this topic?
Do you think c.g. started this thread because things have been a bit quiet round here for the last couple weeks, and he thought he might stir the mustard up a bit?
I know people who only play by ear and those who read music. Those who play by ear, can learn a tun e from hearing it, but they are learning that variation on the tune. If they are truly a good musician, they can also interpret the tune. The same goes for someone reading music. Do they only play the written music, or can they interpret it? Can they play with other musicians to hear a harmony line or another part to ad layers to the tune to make it sound filler and richer?
There are different ways to learn tunes, but I find that I can't really play them until I know them, deeply, front to back, side to side, in my sleep, and upside down.
If I've heard a tune many times (which comes from attending sessions regularly, and is a process that works slowly, over time, by osmosis), enough so I know how it goes, I can pick it up quite easily by ear.
If there's a tune I've never heard and it grabs me and I say, "Damn, I really must learn that tune right away," I will hunt down the sheet music and play off the notes for a bit at home, but I get off the music asap. I can tell you, as long as I'm looking at the notes, I'm not really playing the tune - it's a different part of the brain.
Sara sums it up well. There's no argument here, though sometimes people create one by being dogmatic. As a parallel example: no actor would think they'd learnt their part by just reading the words off the page. They have to internalise, interpret, absorb, interact. However, they might find it a bit odd if it was suggested that having the words on paper to start with was questionable.
If had heard it at a session, and it had stuck in my head, and I tried to work it out later I would settle on the key it is normally played in. However since I already knew the tune it didn't take long to find the key in that clip from the ends of the parts and it was obvious from the sound which way to start hunting.
Does whatever the point is depend of relative skill ? That is my next key to get happy with on the flute, I am stumbling badly on the B part of that tune. But could a similarly skilled dot reader sight-transpose any better ?
I was hoping for a good old fashioned dots vs. ears discussion; things have been quiet lately. I follow the posts but seldom participate, because the music I play is 95% symphony orchestra, where sightreading skill is essential, and only 5% trad, where I'm happy to leave the notation at home.
"Knowing the tune.... by ear... having it in your heart, is absolutely a requirement."
Sorry, i disagree. There are sight-reading masters who can pick up pieces of music they've never seen, or heard before, and play it straight through. It's pretty hardcore. But when you think about it, it makes sense because of the fact that if you practice anything, you get better at it.
I'm not a master sight-reader, but i've played simple pieces of music that i've never heard before. They were really simple though. I've seen it done with complicated pieces of music though.
I will admit this though. I'm done with sheet music with this music. I needed it before because the music was terribly unfamiliar. The melodic phrases didn't click with my understanding, so I had to learn them. How they sounded, and what phrases were common to the music. Now, months later after dedicated listening, there's not much that's unfamiliar, and because of this, I could pick up anything i wanted to by ear, given I put in the effort.
I've learned a few tunes by sheet music, but I have at least one recording of every tune I play(but if I only have 1 recording, I likely don't play it)
Personally, i think that different learning styles are better for different music styles. This music doesn't require dots because it's Melodic. When something is melodic, the only significant factor in it's difficulty to learn, is tempo. Next significant would be repetition and consistency.
So now i understand what everyone meant when they said "you don't need the dots for this music." It's true. You don't.
I'm sure you don't necessarily need dots for this music. I'm also sure that dots are very, very useful if you want to be an interesting and original player, rather than just an eternal session play-along.
Maybe not quite so much in the Irish tradition, but certainly in the Scottish, English, Welsh, French traditions - You buy a CD of your current hero so that you can learn the tunes by ear. You hear a tune you like but have never heard before. So you look at the sleeve note to see where it came from, and find he got it from an old WRITTEN collection. Your hero learned it from the dots. OK, so now he's recorded it you can learn to imitate him by ear. But if you ever want to be the FIRST person to re-discover a great old tune, you'll have to do it from the dots.
Tell me about tempos, it's almost an obsession. I usually learn tunes by listening for individual phrases. My thinking is a fast tempo is not so intimidating if the phrases make sense & are *speaking* with one another. As for repetition & consistency, if I'm following your meaning, the tunes are always repetitious & always changing. So, if you're always playing it exactly the same way the you might as well be playing western art music.
"As for repetition & consistency, if I'm following your meaning, the tunes are always repetitious & always changing. So, if you're always playing it exactly the same way the you might as well be playing western art music."
Keep in mind that i'm talking about learning and internalizing the music, not so much playing it.
What i mean is, i guess i could loosely use the term "substance" with this. I heard someone describe The Tarbolton Reel as "that's a lot of tune." Meaning it does a lot of different things within itself, it has a lot of substance. This makes it harder to learn because there's more to get internalized. Compare that to tunes like The Banshee, or The Silver Spear, they have a lot more repetition and consistency in their melodic phrases, but less substance. This makes them easier to learn and internalize because the same patterns are thrown at you over and over again.
Oopa, I mean I like the way everyone took my SAUSAGE ANALOGY, and ran with it. I am not sure that, even if one collected all the tales of misspelled meat products and put them in one place, that they would fill an anthology...
RE dors and music. Dots are not music--nor are the two necessarily related; the fomer is simply a notation and form of expressing aspects of the latter.
RE dots and music. Dots are not music--nor are the two necessarily related; the former is simply a notational form of expressing aspects of the latter.
AlBrown, I reread your sausage post. Please burn the sheet music. Sit down with one of your mates & have them play the tune phrase by phrase ~ it's much more satisfying in the end. Your mates; your session, **should** be exactly like family. Whether you're making them miserable or happy it is all life. You can rest when you're dead!
"How would we play any tunes if the whole thing is completely disfunctional?"
But aren't sessions all dysfunctional? If there is a session that *isn't* hiding a morass of resentment, irascibility, insecurity, ego, and anxiety (like many families), I'd like to see it!
@Screech, when I am less tired and more sober, I will write an intelligent rebuttal to your post, as it seems to be calling everyone who isn't raiding through the School of Scottish Studies and NLS archives for 1790s tunes "eternal session play-alongs," which is, um, ridiculous.
By the way, the School of Scottish Studies has an archive of, wait for it, recordings.
It wasn't calling everyone anything. Simply trying to rebuff the idea that seems to prevail on this site that there is something inherrently 'bad' or 'wrong' about sheet music. Yes, being able to play by ear is vital, and being able to learn by ear is very, very useful. But that doesn't mean that using sheet music isn't useful.
If you read that sentence about eternal play-alongs again (sober) you'll see that it doesn't say 'everyone who can't read music is a play-along'. It says that reading music broadens the spectrum of music available to you.
And there's another good reason for learning from dots: if you learn tunes from sheet music you learn the names with them. I now have a couple of dozen very common session tunes that I've picked up 'by osmosis' just like you're supposed to, and I haven't the faintest idea what any of them are called.
I don't remember reading anyone ever say on this site that sheet music is "inherently 'bad' or 'wrong'". That's pure imagination on your part, skreech.
In fact, the only people you normally hear accusing others of saying that sheet music is "bad" are those who are too lazy to bother to learn this music. Since you are clearly not in that camp, skreech, I would be wary where you pitch your tent.
Mind, how long have you been playing in sessions, skreech? And, if it's more than a couple of years, how on earth have you managed to only acquire "a couple of dozen [...] tunes" that you don't know the names of?
Of course sheet music isn't inherently bad or wrong. Except, if you need it. If you cannot function without it then you are wrong to keep using it.
There are many facets to this music, many subtleties, and many ways of learning them. (none of them difficult of course). And one of these facets is the simple order of notes. And coincidentally, this is all the information that there is contained within the sheet music. Don't be fooled by other information you may think is in there, like rhythm, for example. There is no rhythm in sheet music for jigs and reels etc. none at all - a quick listen to your midi file should show this clearly enough. And there are many many other things not contained in the sheet music, but don't fall the other way and say that this is a shortcoming inherent within the notational system, it's not. It's just that that's not what it's for. It's simply a vehicle for transmitting and recording the order of notes.
So what happens when you go about learning a tune? If all you have is the straightforward order of the notes then you've not learned it. You have to have all the other stuff too and you have to learn that from places other that the sheet music.
So if you listen to someone good playing a tune, you hear lots of stuff ... but one of the easiest bits to hear is the simple order of notes. And if you can't get that from simply listening too it, what chance have you of getting the rest of it? I'm sorry, but if you are one of these people who persist in saying that you cannot get the order of the notes without referring to them being written down, then you will never get the rest of it. Never.
So, unfortunately, because of the existence of sheet music, there are lots and lots of people who are under the misapprehension that they have learned a rake of tunes when all that they have really learned is the order of their notes. And they even have the audacity to practice them up so they can regurgitate these notes, in the right order, as fast as other people who are actually playing the tune. GO AWAY.
(by the way, I'm just putting the finishing touches to a book of tunes - not my tunes - and I expect you all to go out and buy it in a couple of weeks when it's printed.)
"(by the way, I'm just putting the finishing touches to a book of tunes - not my tunes - and I expect you all to go out and buy it in a couple of weeks when it's printed.)"
I would like my signed copy on the limited edition handwritten on parchment flayed from the hides of all those cutleristas who disappeared out the back fo the Sandy Bells over the last fifteen years. I can pay for it with all the money I've made mercilessly abusing the copyright system over the last three years.
"So if you listen to someone good playing a tune, you hear lots of stuff ... but one of the easiest bits to hear is the simple order of notes. And if you can't get that from simply listening too it, what chance have you of getting the rest of it? I'm sorry, but if you are one of these people who persist in saying that you cannot get the order of the notes without referring to them being written down, then you will never get the rest of it. Never."
Evidence?
(By the way, I'm a fast typist, a rotten author, prefer to learn by ear but use dots when working with18th/19th century manuscripts or printed tunebooks)
Screech, you didn't write, "reading music broadens the spectrum of music available to you;" you in fact wrote:
"I'm also sure that dots are very, very useful if you want to be an interesting and original player, rather than just an eternal session play-along."
Those two sentences don't mean the same thing. You're very much implying a dichotomy between "eternal session play-alongs," who learn entirely by ear, from recordings and sessions, and "interesting and original players" who seek out more interesting and varied music in old collections. I think this dichotomy is just plain wrong -- there may be people who fit those descriptions (I am definitely an eternal session play-along, but I would say that is due to my poor playing rather than my poorer sight reading), but it has very little to do with how they learn tunes.
c.g., Michael makes a very good point. As I read it, he is basically saying there is a lot of stuff happening in Irish music *in addition* to a single melodic line of notes -- melodic variation, articulation/ornamentation, timing and rhythmic variation and playfulness, and so on -- and if you can't figure out, by ear, the basic melody line, how the hell are you going to figure out the rest of it?
"c.g., Michael makes a very good point. As I read it, he is basically saying there is a lot of stuff happening in Irish music *in addition* to a single melodic line of notes -- melodic variation, articulation/ornamentation, timing and rhythmic variation and playfulness, and so on -- and if you can't figure out, by ear, the basic melody line, how the hell are you going to figure out the rest of it? "
Well, if you get the basic melody from the dots, the rest of it is easier to figure out by ear. But I would ask the validity of slavishly copying someone elses "melodic variation, articulation/ornamentation, timing and rhythmic variation and playfulness, and so on". Surely, that is how you put "yourself" into a tune?
"It's simply a vehicle for transmitting and recording the order of notes." (llig)
I think that is a bit unfair on careful and knowledgeable transcribers, of which there are several who post to the tunes section here. Generally the relative lengths of the notes and position in relation to the strong beats of a dance tune is as much an indication of the way the tunes goes as is the order of the notes shown. In reality both will vary and much detail is absent - but we know that. A 'clever' part of some tunes is the way the same sequences of pitches shifts in relation to the beat in different parts of the tune.
I didn't hear anyone advocating becoming a carbon copy of what they hear.
What I did understand was that there was advocating of idiomatic learning, learning to speak the language and understanding the nuances, above and beyond getting the order of the notes right.
Experience, unfortunately, seems to point towards sight learners getting too attached to their script. it is much easier for them to regurgitate what they have learned by heart.
The crux ofcourse is that you have to understand what's going on before you 'put yourself into the tune'.
Why are you asking about the "validity of slavishly copying someone else's melodic variation, etc. etc..?" No one is talking about doing any slavish copying, but good players can hear what other players are doing with a tune. I mean, how else are you going to learn how to make Irish music sound like Irish music? And of course if you are playing with other people, you need a good enough ear to match them. And it is infinitely more rewarding to be able to match and play off their variations.
That all said, there *is* something to be said for learning, ornament for ornament, a "master's" version of a tune, by ear, when you are just starting out. When I'd been playing for a year or so, I was hanging out with a mate who had been playing pipes for about the same amount of time, maybe a bit longer but not much. When he would learn tunes, he would listen closely to Ennis or Clancy's version and try to pick up as much of what they were doing as he could, bring it into his playing. I was just learning tunes, but without that kind of intent focus, and if asked why not, I'd come up with some waffle about finding my own style or whatever. These days, from what I know, my pal is quite a well-regarded player in his area, while I am still just a session hack. So there may well be something to be said for his learning methods.
"Screech, you didn't write, "reading music broadens the spectrum of music available to you;" you in fact wrote:
"I'm also sure that dots are very, very useful if you want to be an interesting and original player, rather than just an eternal session play-along."
I worded that sentence very carefully, because I specifically didn't want to infer that dots were essential if you want to progress.
But even taking your interpretation of what I wrote, I don't think it is entirely wrong. If you only learn by ear you can, by definition, only ever learn tunes that other people already play - you are a play-along. But if you are also happy playing from dots, that opens up a whole nother world of tunes. Tunes that were written down in the past, but which modern players have overlooked.
The bottom line is that if you want to be good at what you do, you have to be a sponge - soak up information wherever you find it. As soon as you start putting restrictions on what you are prepared to learn ("I'm not going to learn from sheet music, because it is not necessary", or "I'm not going to learn classical technique because you don't need it for trad music", then you're unlikely to ever get to the top of the pile, because there will always be others who know, and can do, more than yourself.
The thing that always gets lost in these discussions is that there's a difference between "learning the music" and "learning the bones of a tune".
If you're learning the music by dots alone, you'll never get it. In reality, nobody does that. They basically have to have some reason for wanting to learn it, and that generally comes from hearing it played, and thinking that it would be a good thing to learn.
At that point, it's common for people to think about starting to learn the music by learning some tunes. (Meaning, a string of notes... The "easiest part" to hear) So they go off and find some notated tunes, and take their first step. The problem comes when people get stuck at that point, thinking that they're playing the music. I have met people who can actually listen to a recording of themselves regurgitating a string of notes, and then a recording of, say, Kevin Burke playing the same tune, and believe that they're "playing the same thing".
I have never met a person who learns by ear have that impression.
Once you have experience in actually playing the music properly, it's reasonable to think that you can learn the bones of a new tune from sheet music, and then run with it.
For me, I don't feel like I have a good grasp on a tune until I've played it with other people a few times, and I don't really feel like I "know" a tune until I've played it for long enough that I can start expressing the tune, and exploring different ways to express it. There's no magic time limit on that. It happens for me much quicker these days than it did, say, 5 years ago.
From the numerous players that I have met over the years, my general impression is that people who learn all of their tunes from sheet music struggle to get to the point of being able to express musical ideas, instead of just regurgitate notes, and many of them never get there. There are certainly exceptions.
If you're not likely to be "at the top of the pile" anyway, what does it matter? It's not as if there are umpteen squillions of tunes on a squillion recordings...oh, wait.
You seem to be arguing that in order to be a top-of-the-heap player, it is *necessary* to have sight reading skills. The problem with this argument is that (a) not everyone intends on being a top-of-the-heap player, making recordings, and so on and (b) people who are don't *always* dig through old collections of recordings looking for mid nineteenth century tunes to revive. Some do, sure, but it's daft to assume that alone makes sight reading a *necessary* skill, for even a top trad player, It's not as if there is a queue of trad players outside the NLS wanting to look at their archives!
You can learn tunes from dots. Or not. But you can't learn THE MUSIC from the dots. That's the distinction. Has nothing to do with Victorian collections of tunes.
OK, not everyone wants to be at the top of the heap. But surely everyone wants to play to the best of their ability? That means learnign as much as you can within the constains of the time/effort you are prepared to devote to it. If you restrict your data sources, you restrict the amount you can learn.
I fully agree that you can't learn THE MUSIC from dots. But learning THE MUSIC isn't exclusive to learning tunes by ear either, it comes from listening to THE MUSIC. Certainly learning a tune by ear involves listening to it, which helps, but it is not a necessity.
In my own case, in my early years there were three or four fiddlers that I listened to incessantly. But 99% of that listening was done whilst driving a car. When I got time to actually play, I would pick a tune I liked, dig out the sheet music and play it from that. It never occured to me to try to learn it by ear, or play along with the recording. Yet the influence of those three or four fiddlers was plain to hear in my playing - I had THE MUSIC, but had learned all my tunes from sheet music.
Screech, how do you know you are not one of the people that the Rev mentioned:
"I have met people who can actually listen to a recording of themselves regurgitating a string of notes, and then a recording of, say, Kevin Burke playing the same tune, and believe that they're "playing the same thing". "
So what happens when you go about learning a tune? If all you have is the straightforward order of the notes then you've not learned it. You have to have all the other stuff too and you have to learn that from places other that the sheet music."
in my opinion, a tune is not learned until the player can didle it, however the other stuff, is something the player should make up him/herself, you don't have to learn that from one particular place, that should come from listening to a lot of different styles.
unfortunately in Ireland some of the teachers insist on teaching ornamentation and insisting that their particular ornamentation is the only way,[most of these players teach by ear] that is in my opinion as limiting as learning a tune and ornamentation from the dots.
This just might be the Irish session version of Mamma don't let you babies grow up to be cowboys. ~
"If there is a session that *isn't* hiding a morass of resentment, irascibility, insecurity, ego, and anxiety (like many families), I'd like to see it!"
"Screech, how do you know you are not one of the people that the Rev mentioned:"
Well, for a start I wouldn't ever "believe that I was playing the same thing", because I'm not trying to imitate someone else.
That is the (to me) big advantage of learning from sheet music - you're never trying to imitate someone else as you do learning by ear. You get the bare bones of the tune from the music, and put your own emphasis, ornamentation and 'style' onto it. Style that has been picked up through years of listening. I would have thought that 'playing the sequence of notes and thinking it was the music' would be far more likely in someone learning from a recording, where they are trying to copy one single instance of the tune, rather than drawing on a number of instances as you would learning it in live sessions, or taking the tune from the dots and the style from elsewhere.
The other thing I have found from personal experience is that if you are comfortable learning by ear you use dots in a very different way to someone who only ever uses dots. It's been said here many times that if you only ever play from dots you never really get the tune into your head, and memorising a tune is a long, slow process that is likely to result in a series of notes. But if you have the ability to learn by ear, you can play a tune through from the dots a few times until the basic tune is in your head, then close your eyes and the rest of the process is the same as if you had got the tune into your head from someone else playing. So it doesn't really make a lot of difference whether you get the tune from dots or ear. Except that with dots, if you find you've forgotten a bit, or are unsure, all you have to do is open your eyes and check.
Sheet music is a good way to refresh your memory when some of the phrases of the tune you were learning at the pub the other night is just outside the grasp of your feeble recollections...it serves the same purpose as those little notes you pin to the front of your refrigerator...
Skreech, I get what you're saying about learning tunes which you can only find in the written version. But, are you saying you fairly often use sheet music for tunes which are played in sessions? I'm assuming if you're comfortable learning by ear that means you aren't using sheet music for tunes which you can hear played; either in sessions or on recordings.
For me learning session tunes happens in one of two ways: sometimes a tune comes up and I think "I've got to play that one", and in that situation I'll go home, find the sheet and learn it as I've described above. But there are also tunes I'm not that fussed about - stuff that I don't particularly want for my personal repertoire, so wouldn't bother putting in the effort to learn, but which comes round often enough at sessions that I've learned it by osmosis.
"But if you have the ability to learn by ear, you can play a tune through from the dots a few times until the basic tune is in your head, then close your eyes and the rest of the process is the same as if you had got the tune into your head from someone else playing. " (skreech)
No, doing that I close my eyes and still see the dots, and they will appear before me at inconvenient times in the future. However, if I already have the tune in my head well enough to know when I hit a wrong note then once, or maybe twice, through with the dots often works as a quick and lazy way in. Which is why I find llig' s "if you can't get the notes how will you get the rest" so annoying.
"Certainly learning a tune by ear involves listening to it, which helps, but it is not a necessity."
Would you like to rephrase that, Skreech?
I'm with you here, by the way -- I can learn a tune from the dots by listening to myself play, then throw the dots away. They never bother me, as they seem to David50.
No he's not, its me who is summarising his point badly. His argument seems to be that the note sin the right order is the easy bit, so how will we get the rest. Its dance music, the easy bit is the beat and the gross phrasing.
Maybe its not easy, maybe its the advantage of starting on bodhran
It's simple. Anyone who can play music can play the tunes by ear. The only thing holding one back is either their previous training, lack of familiarity with your instrument, limited amount of time listening to the tunes; or the idiom, &/or your true passion for the music.
One thing about sheet music that does irritate me is when someone from a classical background learns something from sheet music that I play at a session, and then tells me that I play it wrong because I don't play it the way it appears on the page. I try to tell them that this isn't like classical music, and there are different settings, and not every attempt at transcription is a good one, but they look at me like I have questioned the gospel.
David, your summation that the easy bit is the gross phrasing is compelling. However, have you ever heard anyone with really great rhythm who has trouble getting the notes in the right order? I haven't.
skreech, Your approach worries me. You hear a tune you want to learn and instead of learning it from what you hear, you go to some dots. You cannot deny that the chances of the dots you go to being the same order of notes you heard in the pub is very very small.
Thank you all. I hadn't intended to start this and then disappear, but the weekend didn't go the way I'd planned.
One further question. All the answers seem to assume everyone has the same level of ability when it comes to learning tunes by ear. I'm not sure this is so.
And in the meantime, for reasons unconnected with traditional music, I am learning viola clef. The problem is finding enough music to practise on. Unfortunately once I've played a tune a couple of times I've got the shape of the tune in my head and I start playing it by ear . . . .
At sessions (in my most humble experience) you will likely find top notch players, improvers, beginners, and no-hopers (put me in somewhere among the improvers). In each of these sections you will find people who just learn by ear and people who can read music to some extent. Some of the very best players can't read music off the page. Many can, and some can glance at the sheet music for a tune they don't know and play a fluent interpretation straight off like they've known it all their life. If some people are held back because they plod through tune books and can't make the great leap forward to play at sessions then they might benefit from some advice. It's all quite obvious - no need for argument and counterargument. resulting in a 100+ discussion (though it does pass the time).
"Unfortunately once I've played a tune a couple of times I've got the shape of the tune in my head and I start playing it by ear . . . ."
I would call that fortunate. The alto clef is primarily used to keep viola music relatively free of ledger lines in scores. It is a reference point for middle C. You are doing what should be done IMO.
Michael. The answer to a different question is no I haven't heard anyone with great rhythm playing notes that are 'out of place' in time or 'wrong' in the context of the tune, because they would not then have great rhythm. So I think I am agreeing with you.
Its a different question because I think "notes in the right order" is always an implied reference to the well known Eric Morecambe quote given above. It doesn't mean anything in the context of an actual melody. There is a better quote, from someone well-known I think, to the effect that the correct note at the wrong time is a wrong note.
" You cannot deny that the chances of the dots you go to being the same order of notes you heard in the pub is very very small."
That's very true llig. But at the same time, the chances of me wanting to play the tune exactly as I heard it in the pub is also very,very small. My situation is maybe different to a lot of other people here, in that our local session only meets once per month, but I play in 'performance situations' at least once a week, so having versions of tunes that I am comfortable with is more important to me than playing the 'session standard' versions. Also, as my ear learning technique improves I think I am tending to land up with versions that are nearer to the pub version - the dots are acting less as the main source, and more as a memory-jogger to the version I heard in the pub.
My way probably isn't the best if session playing is your main concern, but it does have logistical advantages: I probably need to hear a simple tune half a dozen times to pick it up. Assuming it gets played at every session, that means six months for me to learn it purely in session. My way I can hear it for the first time on Sunday, and play it out on Tuesday. I suppose the middle ground would be to use a recording device (I used to do that a lot), but it's a hell of a lot easier to look at the dots (even if they aren't quite right for what you are actually playing) than to keep faffing about trying to re-wind to the right place.
AlBrown, I've heard that myself. Once, after loaning some CDs of my favourite Irish players to a classically trained musician, I was informed the playing was a good deal of fun; despite the poor technique & numerous mistakes.
>> All the answers seem to assume everyone has the same level of ability when it comes to learning tunes by ear. I'm not sure this is so.
It's certainly not so! But discussions like this might help encourage people to work at it.
Listening is a skill that can (and should) be practiced. There are different levels of attention that can be given to your listening. And learning tunes by ear quickly is something that takes a lot of practice. It doesn't magically happen overnight. You have to do it a bunch to get better at it. To actually practice it, you don't even need your instrument in your hands. Try lilting tunes while you're listening. That takes away any issues that you might have with unfamiliarity with your instrument. And ultimately, it gets easier and easier.
If you've ever met someone with a really great ear, you can have a goal to shoot for. And those people weren't naturally born with it. They learned it and practiced it.
"playing the notes/phrases you do know and miming or even just thinking about the other bits until you know them? (it's amazing how quickly you can fill in the gaps if you resist the temptation to guess)" (llig here: http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/17549#comment364875 - quoted in another current thread).
Those comments and, somewhere, a longer version of what Reverend just posted about listening are, to me, a much more useful way of approaching a tune than the "sequence of notes" approach.
"still never achieved the level my daughter was born with!"
C.G.
I'm not sure what you mean here. When children are born, they surely are all on the same level in musical terms regardless of any other factor, hereditary or other wise, or whether they are able bodied or not?
They can't play an instrument or sing and have no knowledge of music whatsoever. Ok, you may wish to argue that they might hear or experience music while still in the womb and maybe this may encourage their awareness a little earlier?...I don't know.
I'm sure that you really mean to say that your daughter is now at a higher level than you are now or ever likely to be. However, much of this is probably due to the fact that she had either far more opportunity to learn music by whatever means and/or took full advantage of this from a very early age.
I'm assuming she read music from the start too but we don't know how well she might have progressed if she had only learned by ear.
Having said all that, the ability to do both is surely much more beneficial than relying on either "ear" or "the dots"? I could never understand why music teachers would wish to discourage students from learning by ear either. It seems the most natural thing in the world to me and is the most obvious way to understand and learn traditional music.
I imagine it's a problem if you need session or orchestral musicans to sight-read in normal time, if they start playing the melody they hear in their head instead. As someone who can't sight-read, that's what I do.
My daughter seemed to be able to pick tunes up easily as soon as she had enough technical facility on an instrument to play them. She learned to play by ear and from music right from the start. Of course, this was on a basis of nursery rhymes, singing games and music played and sung in the house, both recorded and live. You are right, John J., in that I didn't have that background.
Personally I think that if you have both skills and know when to use them it's great. (Please imagine 'know when to use them in italics!) After all, if you can only learn by ear you only have access to tunes that someone will play to you. (One, at least, of the Kilmore carol tunes has been lost because it was never written down, fell out of use and now no-one is left who remembers it)
However - many people are told as children that they are tone-deaf. This is complete rubbish. What actually happens is that the ability to pitch - to sing in tune - develops somewhere between the ages of 2 and 10, and some people struggle all their lives with singing in tune. I wonder if the same is true of learning by ear? Are the two things related?
And am I ever going to stop this displacement activity and get on with what I should be doing?
One problem for people (not pointing fingers at you, necessarily, c.g.) is that as long as they believe that something is hard, or that they'll never be as good as someone else at it, it will continue to be hard, and they'll never be as good as that someone else!
My point about knowing someone with a good ear is that it gives you hope that it is possible. And just knowing that it is possible should help you get over the idea that it is hard. It may take a lot of effort, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's hard.
In your case, c.g., maybe the work and practice that you put into it wasn't the right way, who knows...? And the "right way" may differ from person to person...
There are several different things at work in this process. One of them is the proficiency on your instrument to move beyond kinesthetic "memory", where your fingers remember a pattern of a tune, and you rely upon that. I think that kinesthetic memory is an important development step, and will always come in to play in your ability to play things on your instrument that you have in your head, because your fingers need to know where to go to play different notes. But it's important to get past relying on your fingers to remember how a tune goes. Otherwise, it is very difficult to express the music in any form other than the way you learned it. It's even hard to move your articulations and ornaments around, which, along with dynamics, are the simplest forms of changing your expression. But once you get more familiar with a tune, the melodic phrases can be expressed in subtly different ways. If you're relying on your fingers to know where to go, it makes it nearly impossible to play any sort of melodic variation without getting lost. (That's also a problem for people who still have the dots in their head when they close their eyes...) One really good exercise for determining how much you're relying on kinesthetic memory is to try playing the tune in a different key. That also gives you an idea of how well you know the tune. I'm not necessarily saying that you need to be able to play it well in another key (although, that comes in handy a lot of times!), but it's a good exercise, and can give you a lot of insight into how you remember tunes.
The other major factor in learning by ear is how well you can internalize the tune. How well you can hear the twists and turns, and how well you can remember them. That takes practice. But in reality, after a while, it makes the whole process easier. Instead of having to remember a string of 128 notes, and what order they come in, all you have to remember is the contour of the tune. And Irish tunes are catchy. I have one running through my head at any given moment. As I mentioned in a previous post, singing, or lilting tunes can be good practice. You've already more or less "mastered" the instrument, so you don't have to rely on much thought to be able to sing different notes (even if your singing is dreadful). So you can practice listening to tune, and lilting along with them. Try listening to the A part the first time through, and then lilting it the second time through, paying attention to the parts you missed. And then see if you can start to correct those mistakes by the third time through. I do that in my car all the time. In fact, I had a 13 hour drive back from a festival a few weeks ago, and learned 3 new tunes by listening to them repeatedly, and lilting along with them. I couldn't just sit down and play them when I got home, but they came really quickly when I did sit down with an instrument in my hands and listened to those recordings again. If you practice listening like that, you'll get better at it. If you do it with your voice, you will take some of the "familiarity with your instrument" issues out of the equation, at least for a time.
One of my favorite examples of someone learning by ear took place a few years ago, when I was road tripping to a music gathering with a couple of other musicians. I sat in the front seat with a mandolin, and taught a tune to the guy in the back seat with his fiddle. The driver was also a musician, and he didn't know the tune I was teaching. But he could hear the notes and intervals well enough to correct the fiddler in the back seat a number of times. A few hours later, we stopped for fuel, and I handed an instrument to the driver, and he played the tune. And it wasn't a simple tune, either! Very cool!
I am (was!) a reasonable distance runner but a bad sprinter. Apparently this is something to do with the way the muscles work. No matter how hard I work, I will never achieve the sprint speeds of someone whose muscles work differently - and who has put the same amount of effort in. That's realism. (If I had enjoyed sprinting and wanted to do it, the motivation would have enabled me to achieve more.)
Some people can add up a column of figures just by looking at it. Others struggle.
People do have differing levels of ability. However - motivation and learning in the right way for you can overcome a lot of problems. The woman who taught my dyslexic brother to read was an absolute genius.
OK - why are some tunes so easy to learn that I find I know them without any conscious effort, but others won't 'stick' even though I put a lot of effort in?
There are a number of reasons for tunes "sticking". Some tunes sit better on some instruments than others. Some tunes are more familiar than others, because of their similarity to other tunes you know. Some tunes are in less familiar keys. Some tunes buck against the tradition, and don't make the same kind of sense. Unlike llig, I sometimes find that the hardest ones to learn are the best tunes, because they have more of the element of surprise, which makes them interesting (albeit, maybe not as good for sessions).
While I agree that there are differences in physical and mental abilities between different people, I would say that the limits are much easier to define for the physical (like the difference between being good at long distance running vs. sprinting, or one's ability to jump high enough to dunk a basketball...) than they are for the mental. I think our limits for things like memory and pattern recognition are much less stringent. (The old phrase "you can do anything you put your mind to" has some merit). That's one of my favorite things about playing music is that it is a journey of self discovery, and allows you to push yourself to achieve things that you wouldn't have thought possible.
I'm not one who really believes much in someone being "born with innate musical talent". I think what those people are generally born with is the kind of obsession that leads to spending the thousands of hours it takes to get good at things. I played music in various forms for many years before being introduced to Irish trad, and I was never any good at all. I always felt like I wasn't "musically talented", until I started playing Irish music. It grabbed onto me, and made me obsessive enough to want to get better and better at it. So, for me, it wasn't a lack of "innate musical talent" that was holding me back, as much as it was a lack of focus, direction, and true love for the music I was trying to play.
Especially with the newer tunes and probably more so those by some Scottish composers, there now seems to be the tendency to add a wee "quirky" bit just to be clever or different. Often this is the part which causes difficulty.
So, in many instances, I feel that I should be playing something else which seems to "fit in" more naturally" and there's often a big temptation or risk that I do that.
Maybe these tunes are written by people who are too clever for their own good or, on the other hand, just don't have a clue. Or a bit of both?
One of the tunes is the polka J. B. Milne, written by Angus Fitchett, which is a great tune.
Another question - if you play two very different instruments, such as fiddle and flute, do you have to 're-learn' a tune to some degree if you've learnt it on one instrument and then play it on the other?
I vaguely know that tune although I believe I had to play it a fiddle concert once "from the dots" which was the accepted practice(if you know the tunes already or play by ear, you just pretend )
As for different instruments, I don't believe you have to relearn the tune as such although there will often be different techniques involved including the varieties of ornamentation which are either possible or desirable on a particular instrument.
You might also wish approach the tune differently as regards playing style.... obviously, in a session you have to "go with the flow" but in other situations you have more scope.
There's also the option of adding "bass parts" or some form of accompaniment on the accordion and/or other instruments too.
Earlier on, I mentioned too that it's much easier for me to play a relatively unknown tune "from the dots" on my regular instruments but if I'm doing it on an instrument with which I'm not as familiar I have to really concentrate.
However, it's usually much easier "by ear" and more often I'll learn a tune on the fiddle or mandolin first and get it "into my head" before attempting it on another instrument.
Fortunately I'm not a chord player and only need to think about one note at a time! I learnt it by ear with the title 'Polka J.B. Milne' (words in that order).
I had a friend who you could play a ten note chord for on a piano, any ten notes, no octaves, any random dischordant ten notes, and he'd tell you exactly which they were.
Some pianists have used their noses to play notes that were otherwise impossible to reach. Mozart reputedly included such notes in a composition as a joke. Franz Liszt didn't have a wide hand span and used his nose. Makes a change from playing by ear.
For me, dots are great for keeping similar starting B parts to tunes associated with their correct A Parts. At least they do help me in this area. I get loads of B parts mixed up at the moment, especially reels whose B part starts with a long G Roll on the beat. Maybe that's a reflection of something I look for in the tunes that I like to learn, or maybe its' just because G Rolls on the flute are easy and sound good? (And there is a whole ecosystem of other reels starting with a long G roll off the beat which also have a disturbing tendency to cause unintended tune-switches while playing.)
What would you call this then - I 'learn' a new tune (eg from an old MS) by playing it over and over till its in my head. Then I play it. Am I learning from dots or by ear??
I'm not quite sure if that's the same thing as learning a tune "off by heart" though as some people claim to visualise the dots in their heads and memorise fingering positions etc which, if your are really familair with your instrument you don't need to to do.
"Am I learning from dots or by ear??"
It's both & it's neither. You're learning through osmosis.
When I learn by ear it's from listening to a tune without any visual aids. Something like this* ~ hear tune, get tune in head, play tune; as opposed to see tune, play notes, hear notes, play what I think the tune should sound like (correcting for mistakes, omissions, etc. seen on source).
Yep, Archivist, that's what I do with MSS and old tune books - play the tune from the dots whilst listening to myself until I have the tune in my head, then play along with the tune running in my head.
I'm teaching myself the tune by ear.
Learning by ear does limit you to tunes someone else can already play!
The existence of musicians' handwritten tune books from the 18th and 19th centuries is interesting in this context.
I have a friend, who will teach me a tune by playing it from dots, and then I'll teach it back to her so she can learn it by ear, because she doesn't retain it very well when playing it from dots... It's an interesting phenomenon, because both of us initially learn it by ear from a written source.
I don't think "osmosis" is the right word, given that its scientific definition is molecules permeating a membrane, moving from a solution with a lower solute concentrate to one with a higher solute concentrate. One of the main differences between that and other forms of molecular movement -- or so I hazily remember from high school biology courses -- in a cell is that it's passive; it takes no, or very little, energy.
So when used as a metaphor for learning tunes, it's a relatively passive method of learning tunes; for example, hearing them over and over again on your car stereo, or hearing them week in, week out at a session, and eventually playing them without ever having put any conscious effort into learning them. Looking at a MS and playing a tune over and over again from the dots until it is internalised isn't that.
c.g., you seem to have the weird idea that a lot of the people who learn by ear and who advocate doing so are not able to read music. You could not be more wrong. Quite a lot of musicians can read, to some degree, and many who are perfectly capable of learning by ear are also capable of sight-reading. I admit, I'm not one of them. I'm a terrible sight-reader; although I can identify notes on a staff, I struggle to make a coherent Irish tune out of them unless I already have most of the melody in my hands. Luckily, I don't find it "limiting," as there are tens of thousands of recorded tunes out there that I never have the time to learn. It will be a while yet before I get to 18th century ones that exist only on MSS.
Having said all that, the ability to do both is surely much more beneficial than relying on either "ear" or "the dots"?
Oh yes, VERY beneficial. Here's why. Now you have 2 ways to learn, instead of just one.
Practical reasons. Ear, You can't play a tune if you don't remember what it sounds like. Sheet, You can't play a tune if you don't have your manuscript. But if you know what it sounds like, and what it looks like, you have more to recall to.
I've remembered what pieces of music sounded like after picturing the sheet in my head(if i didn't have a recording handy) and i've remembered what pieces sounded like if i didn't have the sheet handy.
Sure it's great to know both. But the crucial difference is that while it maybe beneficial to be able to read, one must never rely on it. And if you are not, for whatever reason, always 100% relying on your ear, you'll never be a decent player.
Actually since most of the people I'm around are professional musicians, I'm more than used to the idea of people who read music AND play by ear, get on with the job and don't spend ages on fora agonising over it.
I'm more disturbed by the idea, often perpetrated on here, that anyone who so much as looks at a dot is betraying the sanctity of traditional music.
I think an intelligent use of both means of communicating tunes is the ideal.
I've come across people in more than one sort of music who think that if you just play the dots you are playing the music. They are missing the point. Similarly I've met people who's aim appears to be to copy exactly someone else's performance and never deviate from that. They are missing the point too.
Think about baroque music. The ornamentation wasn't written out because the player was supposed to know how to ornament the bare bones and to interpret the music according to their own good taste.
A bit like traditional music, really.
If you understand the style and the context you can learn a tune from music because you will know how to interpret it. If you learn by ear without you are just a tape recorder.
"I'm more disturbed by the idea, often perpetrated on here, that anyone who so much as looks at a dot is betraying the sanctity of traditional music."
Could you please find the posts where people have said this and quote them here.
And then reread all the posts -- including the long discussion in Will Harmon's profile -- where people have said reading music is perfectly kosher so long as you understand how the music should sound. Then reread all the posts where people elucidated the difference between learning A TUNE from sheet music, verses learning THE MUSIC from a sheet music. I'm sure you can understand that distinction.
c.g. there's one major problem with addiction to paper. Aside from that the tradition is strong enough to live with people using abcs or sheet music; depending only on how these are used.
All those posts where people ask for dots and get slagged off for not learning everything by ear?
There is a great range of opinion on here (good!)
And surely you've noticed I keep saying that sheet music should be used sensibly and with knowledge of style and context?
Time, I think, to say that everyone still digging back to find this thread seems to be more or less in agreement.
And thank you so much making a very boring job bearable by making it possible to come on here occasionally to take my mind off it for a few minutes . . .
c.g., if you haven't already read the preface of Ceol Rince na hÉireann by Breandán Breathnach you might want to. Then consider all that he put into the project the next time someone asks for a bit of sheet music; http://www.nigelgatherer.com/books/CRE/cre1.html
Dots and learning by ear
Dots and learning by ear
If someone says 'Harold's better writer than Maude because he can type at 50 words a minute whereas she can only do 30', you might think there were a few other things to be taken into account. Is Harold's story more interesting? Does he express himself better? Is his style better? Does he give more information? Do people enjoy reading him more than they enjoy reading Maude?
Being able to type fast and accurately is a useful skill if you want to be a writer, but it's not essential.
If someone says 'Harold is a better musician than Maude because he can pick up tunes by ear quickly and easily but she struggles and sometimes needs to look at the dots' you might ask, is Harold a better player technically? Does he have better knowledge of the context and history of the music? Does he understand the style and can he play well in that style? Does he communicate the music better than Maude?
Being able to pick up tunes fast and easily by ear is a useful skill but it is not essential.
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by c.g.
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Being a good typist is not essential to being a good writer.
Being able to hear the music, respond on he fly, and internalize it -- so yes, quickly picking up tunes by ear, is essential to being able to play this music at its highest levels.
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Frankly, it's essential for being able to play this music at low levels too. Unless you're not bothered about playing with other people.
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by ethical blend
Re: Dots and learning by ear
c.g., parallels are a favoured tool of politicians, because they are easy to conjure, easy to grasp, and perfect for conveying a distorted, or at least oversimplified, message.
Consider this:
"If someone says 'Harold's better in communication than Maude because he is able to memorize what others say, is able to render and interpret what he hears while she has to stick to text, deciphers with trouble and can only reproduce what she has read', you would agree that his comprehension is better.
Being able to listen and interpret accurately and quickly is essential if you want to be proficient in communication skills.
If someone says 'Harold is a better musician than Maude because he can pick up tunes by ear quickly and easily but she struggles and needs to follow the dots' you would say that he is a better musician. Your skill in musical perception and interpretation makes you a better musician."
The usefulness of this statement is exactly the same as that of yours.
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by Janek
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Sessions aside, it should never be a case of "either/or".
Especially at workshops and other musical gatherings, you will often encounter the situation where either an "ear player" or "sight reader(who relies on the music) is disadvantaged when the proceedings are carried out one way or another.
It might be that you are handed the music and expected to start playing straight away or, on the other hand, you have to pick up the tune "by ear" just after a couple of hearings.
Probably, ear players have a better advantage in this situation as they will pick it up anyway after a few times although the "dot people" may have greater difficulty without the written music.
Of course, we're mostly talking about sessions here and this is really NOT the place for playing "off the dots". However, in the wider world there are many possibilities.
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by Johnny Jay
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Yes, Ben. You're right. I should have said, "play this music. full stop."
Thesession.org is only place I have seen such issues and insecurity over "ear people" v. "dot people," mainly from "dot people" who seem unreasonably stressed by hearing about how important ear learning is from more vocal denizens of this website. In the real world, or at least my little corner of it, no one gives a sh*t and they just get on with the business of learning and playing tunes.
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Dots and learning by ear
"Yes, Ben. You're right. I should have said, "play this music. full stop." "
Yes, Emily, you should. I expect better in future.
And you're spot on of course about the real world. Who gives a %&*"?
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by ethical blend
Re: Dots and learning by ear
In the real world some of us are just beginning and though the value judgements do not matter the practicalities do.
I find what Ben and Emily are saying for sessions. I have no doubt about it.
But I have also experienced what John J is saying at workshops. Sometimes I just want to get on with playing the tune and paying attention to what the leader is doing with it. Not being able to get the right notes in the right order from the sheet even at slow playing speed meant I get less from the workshop that if I could.
So I am spending a little time on my dot reading.
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by David50
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Not just for sessions. For playing Irish traditional music well, in any context. Hearing and being able to respond, on the fly, to all the subtleties and variations of the tune is absolutely integral to the music. The sooner even a beginner gets off the sheet music, the better they will be able to hear what is really happening.
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Who said "just for sessions" ? Tut tut.
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by David50
Re: Dots and learning by ear
When I was an *absolute* beginner, I couldn't read sheet music at all and learned all my tunes by ear from various sources including occasional sessions even although they were rather fast there.
I only started to read music properly when I started going to a local Reel and Strathspey society as they just "dished out" the sheet music. However, I would record the others at this time and learn the tunes "by ear" at home or just "pick up" the easier ones.
To this day, I still don't rely on the written music although it's a useful tool.
I also find that when I'm playing a less familiar instrument (e.g. I'm learning PA), I tend to rely on my "ear" much more as my fingers don't automatically seek out the notes on the keyboard on reading "the dots" as they would do on a fiddle or madolin.
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by Johnny Jay
Re: Dots and learning by ear
I am trying, succesfully I think, to kill off that "middle line = left index finger" type of reaction that I learned early on. Slow going trying to get the dots to trigger something more aural though.
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by David50
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Picking up tunes easily and playing them well are separate skills, but tend to be related to one another in practice. Good writers tend to be fast typists as well--but good typists are not nearly as often good writers.
And, for the record, I find that one can learn tunes far more quickly by ear than off of sheet music--and having done so, it's much easier to adapt the tunes you've learnt by ear to other people's playing.
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by Georgi
Re: Dots and learning by ear
I'm actually terrible at sight reading, but the beauty of Irish music is that it doesn't matter. If I were terrible at ear learning, I would be seriously hampered and would need to do something about that if I intended to even be a half-decent player.
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Dots and learning by ear
I myself am a slow learner, and rather than drive folks crazy asking them to play that passage one more time so I can get it, I usually use sheet music at home when learning a new tune. I thought by now I would be able to let go of the sheet music altogether, but it is what it is.
Conversely, I am a terrible sight reader. I have to use my ear to help me play something, even when it is on a sheet of paper in front of me. Again, when playing from sheet music alone, I can only get up to about half speed on an unfamiliar tune.
As long as you get the result of a well learned tune, I console myself with the thought that it doesn't matter how the sausage is made.
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by AlBrown
Re: Dots and learning by ear
If the sausage were made by grinding it under the tracks of a 40-ton excavator then packing it into a casing using hands covered with hydraulic fluid, that would matter to me if I ate sausage.
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by ∅
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Are you seriously telling us that you don't eat sausage?
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by ethical blend
Re: Dots and learning by ear
i thought that's how they made haggis, not sausage.
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by banshee misfortune
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Haggis can easily outrun a 40-ton excavator.
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by gam
Re: Dots and learning by ear
To avoid an over-stimulation of ethical blend's curiosity about others' dietary preferences that could possibly result in his being crippled by astonishment, perhaps I should have written instead, ". . . if I ate sausage sold from a cook's stall near an idling excavator".
In the meantime, valid points have been raised by both violamike and gam indicating a need for some elucidation by Weejie on whether, in fact, the production of haggis has increased exponentially in the Highlands with the advent of petroleum products and highway construction.
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by ∅
Re: Dots and learning by ear
No, but increased road and railway building certainly influenced the construction of lunatic asylums up north.
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Dots and learning by ear
The production of haggis has increased exponentially in the Highlands with the advent of petroleum products and highway construction.
Or so my neighbour tells me.
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by Weejie
Re: Dots and learning by ear
"Haggis can easily outrun a 40-ton excavator..." (gam).
Round a 45 degree mountain slope, almost certainly, as the 40-ton excavator would roll over and over downhill, being out of its proper territory.
Along a proper road the excavator would have a decided edge in speed, but the haggis would soon scuttle across the road and into the edge because of its inbuilt bias to run in circles. One just has to accept that the haggis is differently abled, even if one actually sees it as an infuriating little cheat that refuses to lose a straight race and get squashed.
Falling off a cliff, however, both would hit the ground at the same time. I think Newton proved this.
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by nicholas
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Sounds likely, I drove back from my hols with a couple of 'em.
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by David50
Re: Dots and learning by ear
That was to Weejie. Doesn't prove anything though, some neighbours who went are not offaly keen on them.
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by David50
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Sight reading is a skill. It can be helpful, but anyone at the elite level of playing pretty much any kind of music ... Knows the tune. Doesn't matter if it is classical, jazz, or this type of music. Knowing the tune.... by ear... having it in your heart, is absolutely a requirement. Does that mean they never ever look at sheet music? Nope.. sure doesn't. They look at it because reading music is often part of their skill set.
Music does not come off the page. It comes from the musician. Learning by ear is quite essential for any music form. I don't think that people need to be offended if they are not speedy at learning, and someone else next to them is. The more time you spend learning a tune, the longer it will take for you to forget it. No harm in taking your time, looking a dots now and again etc...
Don't be hassled by absolute rules. Just enjoy yourself.
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by SandyBottoms
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Hmm it might seem I contradicted mysellf... there are some absolute rules...but, I meant in this situation.. learning styles vary.. don't compare yourself to others too much... something like that.
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by SandyBottoms
Re: Dots and learning by ear
As a person who is equally comfortable learning by ear or learning from sheet music, I find any discussion about the merits or shortcomings of either to be pointless. If you heard me play, you would have no basis for knowing whether I had learned the tune by one method or the other, so what possible difference does it make? I wouldn't want to be without either ability. I can only guess that the defenders of one cannot do the other.
I don't think anyone who cares at all about ITM is unaware of the importance of listening to get the music right, but this is true no matter what kind of music you play. There is nothing peculiar to ITM in this regard. Sheet music does not give you the sense of how the tune should sound; it is up to the player to learn the basic tune from the sheet music and then apply what they know about ITM so that the result is the same as learning it by ear. When I learn a tune by ear, I eventually play it my own way, so the ear process really doesn't differ from when I learn a tune from sheet music. Ultimately, I play the tune "right" because I know how to play ITM. Is there really anything else that needs to be said on this topic?
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by Ailin
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Do you think c.g. started this thread because things have been a bit quiet round here for the last couple weeks, and he thought he might stir the mustard up a bit?
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Dots and learning by ear
IIRC someone suggested just that course of action not so long ago...
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by David50
Re: Dots and learning by ear
I know people who only play by ear and those who read music. Those who play by ear, can learn a tun e from hearing it, but they are learning that variation on the tune. If they are truly a good musician, they can also interpret the tune. The same goes for someone reading music. Do they only play the written music, or can they interpret it? Can they play with other musicians to hear a harmony line or another part to ad layers to the tune to make it sound filler and richer?
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by Whistlestop
Re: Dots and learning by ear
"Haggis can easily outrun a 40-ton excavator."
I thought Haggis just laid there and "took it." ???
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by catty
Re: Dots and learning by ear
There are different ways to learn tunes, but I find that I can't really play them until I know them, deeply, front to back, side to side, in my sleep, and upside down.
If I've heard a tune many times (which comes from attending sessions regularly, and is a process that works slowly, over time, by osmosis), enough so I know how it goes, I can pick it up quite easily by ear.
If there's a tune I've never heard and it grabs me and I say, "Damn, I really must learn that tune right away," I will hunt down the sheet music and play off the notes for a bit at home, but I get off the music asap. I can tell you, as long as I'm looking at the notes, I'm not really playing the tune - it's a different part of the brain.
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by sara505sings
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Sara sums it up well. There's no argument here, though sometimes people create one by being dogmatic. As a parallel example: no actor would think they'd learnt their part by just reading the words off the page. They have to internalise, interpret, absorb, interact. However, they might find it a bit odd if it was suggested that having the words on paper to start with was questionable.
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by RichardB
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Without looking at the dots which key would you play this tune in? ~ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eozokknYzag
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by Batgirl has left the GPL ;)
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Is it a trick question? I played along with it anyway - it's nice. I think I'll learn it (by ear)
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by RichardB
Re: Dots and learning by ear
No, it's not a trick question.
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by Batgirl has left the GPL ;)
Re: Dots and learning by ear
If had heard it at a session, and it had stuck in my head, and I tried to work it out later I would settle on the key it is normally played in. However since I already knew the tune it didn't take long to find the key in that clip from the ends of the parts and it was obvious from the sound which way to start hunting.
.
(and I didn't cheat using the info on the page
Not sure what that demonstrates.
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by David50
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Does whatever the point is depend of relative skill ? That is my next key to get happy with on the flute, I am stumbling badly on the B part of that tune. But could a similarly skilled dot reader sight-transpose any better ?
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by David50
Re: Dots and learning by ear
I was hoping for a good old fashioned dots vs. ears discussion; things have been quiet lately. I follow the posts but seldom participate, because the music I play is 95% symphony orchestra, where sightreading skill is essential, and only 5% trad, where I'm happy to leave the notation at home.
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by Greg the Piano Tuner
Re: Dots and learning by ear
"Knowing the tune.... by ear... having it in your heart, is absolutely a requirement."
Sorry, i disagree. There are sight-reading masters who can pick up pieces of music they've never seen, or heard before, and play it straight through. It's pretty hardcore. But when you think about it, it makes sense because of the fact that if you practice anything, you get better at it.
I'm not a master sight-reader, but i've played simple pieces of music that i've never heard before. They were really simple though. I've seen it done with complicated pieces of music though.
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by fiddlelearner
Re: Dots and learning by ear
I will admit this though. I'm done with sheet music with this music. I needed it before because the music was terribly unfamiliar. The melodic phrases didn't click with my understanding, so I had to learn them. How they sounded, and what phrases were common to the music. Now, months later after dedicated listening, there's not much that's unfamiliar, and because of this, I could pick up anything i wanted to by ear, given I put in the effort.
I've learned a few tunes by sheet music, but I have at least one recording of every tune I play(but if I only have 1 recording, I likely don't play it)
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by fiddlelearner
Re: Dots 2nd, ears 1st
Ah, but fiddlelearner, how many of those sight-reading masters can play slides like this without first having heard the idiom? ~ http://comhaltas.ie/music/detail/comhaltaslive_288_2_eimear_buckley_padraig_king
Now watch someone inform me that Eimear Buckley and Pádraig King learnt these from the dots.
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by Batgirl has left the GPL ;)
Re: Dots and learning by ear
OK, sight read this:
http://lostinthecloud.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/faeries-aire.gif
Now, try to learn it by ear:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cysRztrR1G4
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by Michael Eskin
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Touche Babs, touche
Personally, i think that different learning styles are better for different music styles. This music doesn't require dots because it's Melodic. When something is melodic, the only significant factor in it's difficulty to learn, is tempo. Next significant would be repetition and consistency.
So now i understand what everyone meant when they said "you don't need the dots for this music." It's true. You don't.
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by fiddlelearner
Re: Dots and learning by ear
I'm sure you don't necessarily need dots for this music. I'm also sure that dots are very, very useful if you want to be an interesting and original player, rather than just an eternal session play-along.
Maybe not quite so much in the Irish tradition, but certainly in the Scottish, English, Welsh, French traditions - You buy a CD of your current hero so that you can learn the tunes by ear. You hear a tune you like but have never heard before. So you look at the sleeve note to see where it came from, and find he got it from an old WRITTEN collection. Your hero learned it from the dots. OK, so now he's recorded it you can learn to imitate him by ear. But if you ever want to be the FIRST person to re-discover a great old tune, you'll have to do it from the dots.
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by skreech
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Tell me about tempos, it's almost an obsession. I usually learn tunes by listening for individual phrases. My thinking is a fast tempo is not so intimidating if the phrases make sense & are *speaking* with one another. As for repetition & consistency, if I'm following your meaning, the tunes are always repetitious & always changing. So, if you're always playing it exactly the same way the you might as well be playing western art music.
# Posted on October 29th 2011 by Batgirl has left the GPL ;)
Re: Dots and learning by ear
skreech, if you really want to know the dots transcribe the music.
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by Batgirl has left the GPL ;)
Re: Dots and learning by ear
"As for repetition & consistency, if I'm following your meaning, the tunes are always repetitious & always changing. So, if you're always playing it exactly the same way the you might as well be playing western art music."
Keep in mind that i'm talking about learning and internalizing the music, not so much playing it.
What i mean is, i guess i could loosely use the term "substance" with this. I heard someone describe The Tarbolton Reel as "that's a lot of tune." Meaning it does a lot of different things within itself, it has a lot of substance. This makes it harder to learn because there's more to get internalized. Compare that to tunes like The Banshee, or The Silver Spear, they have a lot more repetition and consistency in their melodic phrases, but less substance. This makes them easier to learn and internalize because the same patterns are thrown at you over and over again.
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by fiddlelearner
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Fair play, Jerone. Now I get your meaning.
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by Batgirl has left the GPL ;)
Re: Dots and learning by ear
I like the way everyone took my sausuge anthology, and ran with it!
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by AlBrown
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Ach, they're just a few ol' tunes;
Alistair Anderson said it best - 'I can read music but it helps if I know the tune.'
Lot of fuss about nothing. What is is the advert says? Ah yes, I remember - 'Just do it.'
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by john knoss
Re: Dots and learning by ear
That brings us back to sausage.
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by ∅
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Oopa, I mean I like the way everyone took my SAUSAGE ANALOGY, and ran with it. I am not sure that, even if one collected all the tales of misspelled meat products and put them in one place, that they would fill an anthology...
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by AlBrown
Re: Dots and learning by ear
The local renders know how to handle byproducts. ;)
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by Batgirl has left the GPL ;)
renderers (?)
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by Batgirl has left the GPL ;)
Re: Dots and learning by ear
RE dors and music. Dots are not music--nor are the two necessarily related; the fomer is simply a notation and form of expressing aspects of the latter.
What is the big deal?, indeed...
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by catty
Re: Dots and learning by ear
That shoulr read:
RE dots and music. Dots are not music--nor are the two necessarily related; the former is simply a notational form of expressing aspects of the latter.
What is the big deal?, indeed...
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by catty
Has twittering &/or the aging process finally eliminated the need of all written language?
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by Batgirl has left the GPL ;)
http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/28692#comment609745
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by Batgirl has left the GPL ;)
Dots, ears, learning . . . mates
AlBrown, I reread your sausage post. Please burn the sheet music. Sit down with one of your mates & have them play the tune phrase by phrase ~ it's much more satisfying in the end. Your mates; your session, **should** be exactly like family. Whether you're making them miserable or happy it is all life. You can rest when you're dead!
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by Batgirl has left the GPL ;)
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Wait, I don't want my session to be like family. How would we play any tunes if the whole thing is completely disfunctional?
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by banshee misfortune
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Maybe not exactly like your family. But, yes, it's a well kept secret that sessions are dysfuntional.
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by Batgirl has left the GPL ;)
. . .
not that family. I'm referring to the people you want to be with, even though may not be your biological relatives.
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by Batgirl has left the GPL ;)
Something like this
A stew of patience, frustration, etc,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYJnFQE7evQ
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by Batgirl has left the GPL ;)
Re: Dots and learning by ear
"How would we play any tunes if the whole thing is completely disfunctional?"
But aren't sessions all dysfunctional? If there is a session that *isn't* hiding a morass of resentment, irascibility, insecurity, ego, and anxiety (like many families), I'd like to see it!
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Dots and learning by ear
@Screech, when I am less tired and more sober, I will write an intelligent rebuttal to your post, as it seems to be calling everyone who isn't raiding through the School of Scottish Studies and NLS archives for 1790s tunes "eternal session play-alongs," which is, um, ridiculous.
By the way, the School of Scottish Studies has an archive of, wait for it, recordings.
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Dots and learning by ear
It wasn't calling everyone anything. Simply trying to rebuff the idea that seems to prevail on this site that there is something inherrently 'bad' or 'wrong' about sheet music. Yes, being able to play by ear is vital, and being able to learn by ear is very, very useful. But that doesn't mean that using sheet music isn't useful.
If you read that sentence about eternal play-alongs again (sober) you'll see that it doesn't say 'everyone who can't read music is a play-along'. It says that reading music broadens the spectrum of music available to you.
And there's another good reason for learning from dots: if you learn tunes from sheet music you learn the names with them. I now have a couple of dozen very common session tunes that I've picked up 'by osmosis' just like you're supposed to, and I haven't the faintest idea what any of them are called.
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by skreech
Re: Dots and learning by ear
I don't remember reading anyone ever say on this site that sheet music is "inherently 'bad' or 'wrong'". That's pure imagination on your part, skreech.
In fact, the only people you normally hear accusing others of saying that sheet music is "bad" are those who are too lazy to bother to learn this music. Since you are clearly not in that camp, skreech, I would be wary where you pitch your tent.
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by ethical blend
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Mind, how long have you been playing in sessions, skreech? And, if it's more than a couple of years, how on earth have you managed to only acquire "a couple of dozen [...] tunes" that you don't know the names of?
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by ethical blend
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Of course sheet music isn't inherently bad or wrong. Except, if you need it. If you cannot function without it then you are wrong to keep using it.
There are many facets to this music, many subtleties, and many ways of learning them. (none of them difficult of course). And one of these facets is the simple order of notes. And coincidentally, this is all the information that there is contained within the sheet music. Don't be fooled by other information you may think is in there, like rhythm, for example. There is no rhythm in sheet music for jigs and reels etc. none at all - a quick listen to your midi file should show this clearly enough. And there are many many other things not contained in the sheet music, but don't fall the other way and say that this is a shortcoming inherent within the notational system, it's not. It's just that that's not what it's for. It's simply a vehicle for transmitting and recording the order of notes.
So what happens when you go about learning a tune? If all you have is the straightforward order of the notes then you've not learned it. You have to have all the other stuff too and you have to learn that from places other that the sheet music.
So if you listen to someone good playing a tune, you hear lots of stuff ... but one of the easiest bits to hear is the simple order of notes. And if you can't get that from simply listening too it, what chance have you of getting the rest of it? I'm sorry, but if you are one of these people who persist in saying that you cannot get the order of the notes without referring to them being written down, then you will never get the rest of it. Never.
So, unfortunately, because of the existence of sheet music, there are lots and lots of people who are under the misapprehension that they have learned a rake of tunes when all that they have really learned is the order of their notes. And they even have the audacity to practice them up so they can regurgitate these notes, in the right order, as fast as other people who are actually playing the tune. GO AWAY.
(by the way, I'm just putting the finishing touches to a book of tunes - not my tunes - and I expect you all to go out and buy it in a couple of weeks when it's printed.)
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by ...
Re: Dots and learning by ear
"(by the way, I'm just putting the finishing touches to a book of tunes - not my tunes - and I expect you all to go out and buy it in a couple of weeks when it's printed.)"
Where do I place my order for mine?
Signed by the author, of course.
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by Piece
Re: Dots and learning by ear
I would like my signed copy on the limited edition handwritten on parchment flayed from the hides of all those cutleristas who disappeared out the back fo the Sandy Bells over the last fifteen years. I can pay for it with all the money I've made mercilessly abusing the copyright system over the last three years.
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by Dragut Reis
Re: Dots and learning by ear
"So if you listen to someone good playing a tune, you hear lots of stuff ... but one of the easiest bits to hear is the simple order of notes. And if you can't get that from simply listening too it, what chance have you of getting the rest of it? I'm sorry, but if you are one of these people who persist in saying that you cannot get the order of the notes without referring to them being written down, then you will never get the rest of it. Never."
Evidence?
(By the way, I'm a fast typist, a rotten author, prefer to learn by ear but use dots when working with18th/19th century manuscripts or printed tunebooks)
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by c.g.
Re: Dots and learning by ear
I will order a copy as well, Michael, especially if it would be autographed by the author.
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by Greg the Piano Tuner
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Screech, you didn't write, "reading music broadens the spectrum of music available to you;" you in fact wrote:
"I'm also sure that dots are very, very useful if you want to be an interesting and original player, rather than just an eternal session play-along."
Those two sentences don't mean the same thing. You're very much implying a dichotomy between "eternal session play-alongs," who learn entirely by ear, from recordings and sessions, and "interesting and original players" who seek out more interesting and varied music in old collections. I think this dichotomy is just plain wrong -- there may be people who fit those descriptions (I am definitely an eternal session play-along, but I would say that is due to my poor playing rather than my poorer sight reading), but it has very little to do with how they learn tunes.
c.g., Michael makes a very good point. As I read it, he is basically saying there is a lot of stuff happening in Irish music *in addition* to a single melodic line of notes -- melodic variation, articulation/ornamentation, timing and rhythmic variation and playfulness, and so on -- and if you can't figure out, by ear, the basic melody line, how the hell are you going to figure out the rest of it?
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Dots and learning by ear
TSS
Different slant for you....
"c.g., Michael makes a very good point. As I read it, he is basically saying there is a lot of stuff happening in Irish music *in addition* to a single melodic line of notes -- melodic variation, articulation/ornamentation, timing and rhythmic variation and playfulness, and so on -- and if you can't figure out, by ear, the basic melody line, how the hell are you going to figure out the rest of it? "
Well, if you get the basic melody from the dots, the rest of it is easier to figure out by ear. But I would ask the validity of slavishly copying someone elses "melodic variation, articulation/ornamentation, timing and rhythmic variation and playfulness, and so on". Surely, that is how you put "yourself" into a tune?
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by ormepipes
Re: Dots and learning by ear
"It's simply a vehicle for transmitting and recording the order of notes." (llig)
I think that is a bit unfair on careful and knowledgeable transcribers, of which there are several who post to the tunes section here. Generally the relative lengths of the notes and position in relation to the strong beats of a dance tune is as much an indication of the way the tunes goes as is the order of the notes shown. In reality both will vary and much detail is absent - but we know that. A 'clever' part of some tunes is the way the same sequences of pitches shifts in relation to the beat in different parts of the tune.
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by David50
Re: Dots and learning by ear
I didn't hear anyone advocating becoming a carbon copy of what they hear.
What I did understand was that there was advocating of idiomatic learning, learning to speak the language and understanding the nuances, above and beyond getting the order of the notes right.
Experience, unfortunately, seems to point towards sight learners getting too attached to their script. it is much easier for them to regurgitate what they have learned by heart.
The crux ofcourse is that you have to understand what's going on before you 'put yourself into the tune'.
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by Prof. Prlwytzkofski
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Why are you asking about the "validity of slavishly copying someone else's melodic variation, etc. etc..?" No one is talking about doing any slavish copying, but good players can hear what other players are doing with a tune. I mean, how else are you going to learn how to make Irish music sound like Irish music? And of course if you are playing with other people, you need a good enough ear to match them. And it is infinitely more rewarding to be able to match and play off their variations.
That all said, there *is* something to be said for learning, ornament for ornament, a "master's" version of a tune, by ear, when you are just starting out. When I'd been playing for a year or so, I was hanging out with a mate who had been playing pipes for about the same amount of time, maybe a bit longer but not much. When he would learn tunes, he would listen closely to Ennis or Clancy's version and try to pick up as much of what they were doing as he could, bring it into his playing. I was just learning tunes, but without that kind of intent focus, and if asked why not, I'd come up with some waffle about finding my own style or whatever. These days, from what I know, my pal is quite a well-regarded player in his area, while I am still just a session hack. So there may well be something to be said for his learning methods.
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Dots and learning by ear
I love you guys, and gals. It's all so simple, isn't it?
Do you know the tune or do you know what order the notes go in?
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Dots and learning by ear
“I am playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order.”
Eric Morecambe.
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by Weejie
Re: Dots and learning by ear
"Screech, you didn't write, "reading music broadens the spectrum of music available to you;" you in fact wrote:
"I'm also sure that dots are very, very useful if you want to be an interesting and original player, rather than just an eternal session play-along."
I worded that sentence very carefully, because I specifically didn't want to infer that dots were essential if you want to progress.
But even taking your interpretation of what I wrote, I don't think it is entirely wrong. If you only learn by ear you can, by definition, only ever learn tunes that other people already play - you are a play-along. But if you are also happy playing from dots, that opens up a whole nother world of tunes. Tunes that were written down in the past, but which modern players have overlooked.
The bottom line is that if you want to be good at what you do, you have to be a sponge - soak up information wherever you find it. As soon as you start putting restrictions on what you are prepared to learn ("I'm not going to learn from sheet music, because it is not necessary", or "I'm not going to learn classical technique because you don't need it for trad music", then you're unlikely to ever get to the top of the pile, because there will always be others who know, and can do, more than yourself.
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by skreech
Re: Dots and learning by ear
The thing that always gets lost in these discussions is that there's a difference between "learning the music" and "learning the bones of a tune".
If you're learning the music by dots alone, you'll never get it. In reality, nobody does that. They basically have to have some reason for wanting to learn it, and that generally comes from hearing it played, and thinking that it would be a good thing to learn.
At that point, it's common for people to think about starting to learn the music by learning some tunes. (Meaning, a string of notes... The "easiest part" to hear) So they go off and find some notated tunes, and take their first step. The problem comes when people get stuck at that point, thinking that they're playing the music. I have met people who can actually listen to a recording of themselves regurgitating a string of notes, and then a recording of, say, Kevin Burke playing the same tune, and believe that they're "playing the same thing".
I have never met a person who learns by ear have that impression.
Once you have experience in actually playing the music properly, it's reasonable to think that you can learn the bones of a new tune from sheet music, and then run with it.
For me, I don't feel like I have a good grasp on a tune until I've played it with other people a few times, and I don't really feel like I "know" a tune until I've played it for long enough that I can start expressing the tune, and exploring different ways to express it. There's no magic time limit on that. It happens for me much quicker these days than it did, say, 5 years ago.
From the numerous players that I have met over the years, my general impression is that people who learn all of their tunes from sheet music struggle to get to the point of being able to express musical ideas, instead of just regurgitate notes, and many of them never get there. There are certainly exceptions.
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by Reverend
Re: Dots and learning by ear
If you're not likely to be "at the top of the pile" anyway, what does it matter? It's not as if there are umpteen squillions of tunes on a squillion recordings...oh, wait.
You seem to be arguing that in order to be a top-of-the-heap player, it is *necessary* to have sight reading skills. The problem with this argument is that (a) not everyone intends on being a top-of-the-heap player, making recordings, and so on and (b) people who are don't *always* dig through old collections of recordings looking for mid nineteenth century tunes to revive. Some do, sure, but it's daft to assume that alone makes sight reading a *necessary* skill, for even a top trad player, It's not as if there is a queue of trad players outside the NLS wanting to look at their archives!
You can learn tunes from dots. Or not. But you can't learn THE MUSIC from the dots. That's the distinction. Has nothing to do with Victorian collections of tunes.
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Dots and learning by ear
OK, not everyone wants to be at the top of the heap. But surely everyone wants to play to the best of their ability? That means learnign as much as you can within the constains of the time/effort you are prepared to devote to it. If you restrict your data sources, you restrict the amount you can learn.
I fully agree that you can't learn THE MUSIC from dots. But learning THE MUSIC isn't exclusive to learning tunes by ear either, it comes from listening to THE MUSIC. Certainly learning a tune by ear involves listening to it, which helps, but it is not a necessity.
In my own case, in my early years there were three or four fiddlers that I listened to incessantly. But 99% of that listening was done whilst driving a car. When I got time to actually play, I would pick a tune I liked, dig out the sheet music and play it from that. It never occured to me to try to learn it by ear, or play along with the recording. Yet the influence of those three or four fiddlers was plain to hear in my playing - I had THE MUSIC, but had learned all my tunes from sheet music.
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by skreech
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Screech, how do you know you are not one of the people that the Rev mentioned:
"I have met people who can actually listen to a recording of themselves regurgitating a string of notes, and then a recording of, say, Kevin Burke playing the same tune, and believe that they're "playing the same thing". "
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by ...
Re: Dots and learning by ear
So what happens when you go about learning a tune? If all you have is the straightforward order of the notes then you've not learned it. You have to have all the other stuff too and you have to learn that from places other that the sheet music."
in my opinion, a tune is not learned until the player can didle it, however the other stuff, is something the player should make up him/herself, you don't have to learn that from one particular place, that should come from listening to a lot of different styles.
unfortunately in Ireland some of the teachers insist on teaching ornamentation and insisting that their particular ornamentation is the only way,[most of these players teach by ear] that is in my opinion as limiting as learning a tune and ornamentation from the dots.
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by Joseph Tailyour
Re: Dots & learning by ear & dysfunction
This just might be the Irish session version of Mamma don't let you babies grow up to be cowboys. ~
"If there is a session that *isn't* hiding a morass of resentment, irascibility, insecurity, ego, and anxiety (like many families), I'd like to see it!"
Some don't even hide the fact.
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by Batgirl has left the GPL ;)
Re: Dots and learning by ear
"Screech, how do you know you are not one of the people that the Rev mentioned:"
Well, for a start I wouldn't ever "believe that I was playing the same thing", because I'm not trying to imitate someone else.
That is the (to me) big advantage of learning from sheet music - you're never trying to imitate someone else as you do learning by ear. You get the bare bones of the tune from the music, and put your own emphasis, ornamentation and 'style' onto it. Style that has been picked up through years of listening. I would have thought that 'playing the sequence of notes and thinking it was the music' would be far more likely in someone learning from a recording, where they are trying to copy one single instance of the tune, rather than drawing on a number of instances as you would learning it in live sessions, or taking the tune from the dots and the style from elsewhere.
The other thing I have found from personal experience is that if you are comfortable learning by ear you use dots in a very different way to someone who only ever uses dots. It's been said here many times that if you only ever play from dots you never really get the tune into your head, and memorising a tune is a long, slow process that is likely to result in a series of notes. But if you have the ability to learn by ear, you can play a tune through from the dots a few times until the basic tune is in your head, then close your eyes and the rest of the process is the same as if you had got the tune into your head from someone else playing. So it doesn't really make a lot of difference whether you get the tune from dots or ear. Except that with dots, if you find you've forgotten a bit, or are unsure, all you have to do is open your eyes and check.
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by skreech
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Sheet music is a good way to refresh your memory when some of the phrases of the tune you were learning at the pub the other night is just outside the grasp of your feeble recollections...it serves the same purpose as those little notes you pin to the front of your refrigerator...
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by AlBrown
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Skreech, I get what you're saying about learning tunes which you can only find in the written version. But, are you saying you fairly often use sheet music for tunes which are played in sessions? I'm assuming if you're comfortable learning by ear that means you aren't using sheet music for tunes which you can hear played; either in sessions or on recordings.
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by Batgirl has left the GPL ;)
Re: Dots and learning by ear
For me learning session tunes happens in one of two ways: sometimes a tune comes up and I think "I've got to play that one", and in that situation I'll go home, find the sheet and learn it as I've described above. But there are also tunes I'm not that fussed about - stuff that I don't particularly want for my personal repertoire, so wouldn't bother putting in the effort to learn, but which comes round often enough at sessions that I've learned it by osmosis.
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by skreech
Re: Dots and learning by ear
"But if you have the ability to learn by ear, you can play a tune through from the dots a few times until the basic tune is in your head, then close your eyes and the rest of the process is the same as if you had got the tune into your head from someone else playing. " (skreech)
No, doing that I close my eyes and still see the dots, and they will appear before me at inconvenient times in the future. However, if I already have the tune in my head well enough to know when I hit a wrong note then once, or maybe twice, through with the dots often works as a quick and lazy way in. Which is why I find llig' s "if you can't get the notes how will you get the rest" so annoying.
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by David50
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Thanks for the response skreech. Perhaps you have mastered playing by ear & sight reading equally well.
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by Batgirl has left the GPL ;)
Re: Dots and learning by ear
"Certainly learning a tune by ear involves listening to it, which helps, but it is not a necessity."
Would you like to rephrase that, Skreech?
I'm with you here, by the way -- I can learn a tune from the dots by listening to myself play, then throw the dots away. They never bother me, as they seem to David50.
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by gam
Re: Dots and learning by ear
I think the dot addiction can be attributed to thinking of that which is written as being more *concrete* than that which you hear.
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by Batgirl has left the GPL ;)
Dave50, llig's right; you know?
;)
# Posted on October 30th 2011 by Batgirl has left the GPL ;)
Re: Dots and learning by ear
No he's not, its me who is summarising his point badly. His argument seems to be that the note sin the right order is the easy bit, so how will we get the rest. Its dance music, the easy bit is the beat and the gross phrasing.
Maybe its not easy, maybe its the advantage of starting on bodhran
# Posted on October 31st 2011 by David50
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Now you're just messing with me.
# Posted on October 31st 2011 by Batgirl has left the GPL ;)
Re: Dots and learning by ear
It's simple. Anyone who can play music can play the tunes by ear. The only thing holding one back is either their previous training, lack of familiarity with your instrument, limited amount of time listening to the tunes; or the idiom, &/or your true passion for the music.
# Posted on October 31st 2011 by Batgirl has left the GPL ;)
Re: Dots and learning by ear
One thing about sheet music that does irritate me is when someone from a classical background learns something from sheet music that I play at a session, and then tells me that I play it wrong because I don't play it the way it appears on the page. I try to tell them that this isn't like classical music, and there are different settings, and not every attempt at transcription is a good one, but they look at me like I have questioned the gospel.
# Posted on October 31st 2011 by AlBrown
Re: Dots and learning by ear
David, your summation that the easy bit is the gross phrasing is compelling. However, have you ever heard anyone with really great rhythm who has trouble getting the notes in the right order? I haven't.
skreech, Your approach worries me. You hear a tune you want to learn and instead of learning it from what you hear, you go to some dots. You cannot deny that the chances of the dots you go to being the same order of notes you heard in the pub is very very small.
# Posted on October 31st 2011 by ...
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Thank you all. I hadn't intended to start this and then disappear, but the weekend didn't go the way I'd planned.
One further question. All the answers seem to assume everyone has the same level of ability when it comes to learning tunes by ear. I'm not sure this is so.
And in the meantime, for reasons unconnected with traditional music, I am learning viola clef. The problem is finding enough music to practise on. Unfortunately once I've played a tune a couple of times I've got the shape of the tune in my head and I start playing it by ear . . . .
# Posted on October 31st 2011 by c.g.
Re: Dots and learning by ear
At sessions (in my most humble experience) you will likely find top notch players, improvers, beginners, and no-hopers (put me in somewhere among the improvers). In each of these sections you will find people who just learn by ear and people who can read music to some extent. Some of the very best players can't read music off the page. Many can, and some can glance at the sheet music for a tune they don't know and play a fluent interpretation straight off like they've known it all their life. If some people are held back because they plod through tune books and can't make the great leap forward to play at sessions then they might benefit from some advice. It's all quite obvious - no need for argument and counterargument. resulting in a 100+ discussion (though it does pass the time).
# Posted on October 31st 2011 by RichardB
Re: Dots and learning by ear
"Unfortunately once I've played a tune a couple of times I've got the shape of the tune in my head and I start playing it by ear . . . ."
I would call that fortunate. The alto clef is primarily used to keep viola music relatively free of ledger lines in scores. It is a reference point for middle C. You are doing what should be done IMO.
# Posted on October 31st 2011 by Weejie
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Michael. The answer to a different question is no I haven't heard anyone with great rhythm playing notes that are 'out of place' in time or 'wrong' in the context of the tune, because they would not then have great rhythm. So I think I am agreeing with you.
Its a different question because I think "notes in the right order" is always an implied reference to the well known Eric Morecambe quote given above. It doesn't mean anything in the context of an actual melody. There is a better quote, from someone well-known I think, to the effect that the correct note at the wrong time is a wrong note.
# Posted on October 31st 2011 by David50
Re: Dots and learning by ear
If "notes in the right order" was useful in the context of an actual melody "but not necessarily in the right order" would not be funny.
# Posted on October 31st 2011 by David50
Re: Dots and learning by ear
" You cannot deny that the chances of the dots you go to being the same order of notes you heard in the pub is very very small."
That's very true llig. But at the same time, the chances of me wanting to play the tune exactly as I heard it in the pub is also very,very small. My situation is maybe different to a lot of other people here, in that our local session only meets once per month, but I play in 'performance situations' at least once a week, so having versions of tunes that I am comfortable with is more important to me than playing the 'session standard' versions. Also, as my ear learning technique improves I think I am tending to land up with versions that are nearer to the pub version - the dots are acting less as the main source, and more as a memory-jogger to the version I heard in the pub.
My way probably isn't the best if session playing is your main concern, but it does have logistical advantages: I probably need to hear a simple tune half a dozen times to pick it up. Assuming it gets played at every session, that means six months for me to learn it purely in session. My way I can hear it for the first time on Sunday, and play it out on Tuesday. I suppose the middle ground would be to use a recording device (I used to do that a lot), but it's a hell of a lot easier to look at the dots (even if they aren't quite right for what you are actually playing) than to keep faffing about trying to re-wind to the right place.
# Posted on October 31st 2011 by skreech
Re: Dots and learning by ear
AlBrown, I've heard that myself. Once, after loaning some CDs of my favourite Irish players to a classically trained musician, I was informed the playing was a good deal of fun; despite the poor technique & numerous mistakes.
# Posted on October 31st 2011 by Batgirl has left the GPL ;)
Re: Dots and learning by ear
>> All the answers seem to assume everyone has the same level of ability when it comes to learning tunes by ear. I'm not sure this is so.
It's certainly not so! But discussions like this might help encourage people to work at it.
Listening is a skill that can (and should) be practiced. There are different levels of attention that can be given to your listening. And learning tunes by ear quickly is something that takes a lot of practice. It doesn't magically happen overnight. You have to do it a bunch to get better at it. To actually practice it, you don't even need your instrument in your hands. Try lilting tunes while you're listening. That takes away any issues that you might have with unfamiliarity with your instrument. And ultimately, it gets easier and easier.
If you've ever met someone with a really great ear, you can have a goal to shoot for. And those people weren't naturally born with it. They learned it and practiced it.
# Posted on November 1st 2011 by Reverend
Re: Dots and learning by ear
The first piece of music i ever learned, wasn't by ear or by sheet. It was by watching someone else play it.
# Posted on November 1st 2011 by fiddlelearner
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Reverend - I worked hard, learned and practised playing by ear - and still never achieved the level my daughter was born with!
# Posted on November 1st 2011 by c.g.
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Playing music well requires the ability to hear music in great detail.
(and don't mention Evelyn Glennie. For a start, she only hits things, and, she's no where near as deaf as her publicity makes out.)
# Posted on November 1st 2011 by ...
Re: Dots and learning by ear
"playing the notes/phrases you do know and miming or even just thinking about the other bits until you know them? (it's amazing how quickly you can fill in the gaps if you resist the temptation to guess)" (llig here: http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/17549#comment364875 - quoted in another current thread).
"... the overall contour or shape of the tune. Where does it go up and where does it go down. Where does it circle on itself around a particular note or cluster of notes ..." (Will Harmon http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/17549#comment364927)
Those comments and, somewhere, a longer version of what Reverend just posted about listening are, to me, a much more useful way of approaching a tune than the "sequence of notes" approach.
# Posted on November 1st 2011 by David50
Re: Dots and learning by ear
"still never achieved the level my daughter was born with!"
C.G.
I'm not sure what you mean here. When children are born, they surely are all on the same level in musical terms regardless of any other factor, hereditary or other wise, or whether they are able bodied or not?
They can't play an instrument or sing and have no knowledge of music whatsoever. Ok, you may wish to argue that they might hear or experience music while still in the womb and maybe this may encourage their awareness a little earlier?...I don't know.
I'm sure that you really mean to say that your daughter is now at a higher level than you are now or ever likely to be. However, much of this is probably due to the fact that she had either far more opportunity to learn music by whatever means and/or took full advantage of this from a very early age.
I'm assuming she read music from the start too but we don't know how well she might have progressed if she had only learned by ear.
Having said all that, the ability to do both is surely much more beneficial than relying on either "ear" or "the dots"? I could never understand why music teachers would wish to discourage students from learning by ear either. It seems the most natural thing in the world to me and is the most obvious way to understand and learn traditional music.
# Posted on November 1st 2011 by Johnny Jay
Re: Dots and learning by ear
I imagine it's a problem if you need session or orchestral musicans to sight-read in normal time, if they start playing the melody they hear in their head instead. As someone who can't sight-read, that's what I do.
# Posted on November 1st 2011 by Bren
Re: Dots and learning by ear
My daughter seemed to be able to pick tunes up easily as soon as she had enough technical facility on an instrument to play them. She learned to play by ear and from music right from the start. Of course, this was on a basis of nursery rhymes, singing games and music played and sung in the house, both recorded and live. You are right, John J., in that I didn't have that background.
Personally I think that if you have both skills and know when to use them it's great. (Please imagine 'know when to use them in italics!) After all, if you can only learn by ear you only have access to tunes that someone will play to you. (One, at least, of the Kilmore carol tunes has been lost because it was never written down, fell out of use and now no-one is left who remembers it)
However - many people are told as children that they are tone-deaf. This is complete rubbish. What actually happens is that the ability to pitch - to sing in tune - develops somewhere between the ages of 2 and 10, and some people struggle all their lives with singing in tune. I wonder if the same is true of learning by ear? Are the two things related?
And am I ever going to stop this displacement activity and get on with what I should be doing?
# Posted on November 1st 2011 by c.g.
Re: Dots and learning by ear
"Are the two things related?" they are one in the same
# Posted on November 1st 2011 by ...
Re: Dots and learning by ear
One problem for people (not pointing fingers at you, necessarily, c.g.) is that as long as they believe that something is hard, or that they'll never be as good as someone else at it, it will continue to be hard, and they'll never be as good as that someone else!
My point about knowing someone with a good ear is that it gives you hope that it is possible. And just knowing that it is possible should help you get over the idea that it is hard. It may take a lot of effort, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's hard.
In your case, c.g., maybe the work and practice that you put into it wasn't the right way, who knows...? And the "right way" may differ from person to person...
There are several different things at work in this process. One of them is the proficiency on your instrument to move beyond kinesthetic "memory", where your fingers remember a pattern of a tune, and you rely upon that. I think that kinesthetic memory is an important development step, and will always come in to play in your ability to play things on your instrument that you have in your head, because your fingers need to know where to go to play different notes. But it's important to get past relying on your fingers to remember how a tune goes. Otherwise, it is very difficult to express the music in any form other than the way you learned it. It's even hard to move your articulations and ornaments around, which, along with dynamics, are the simplest forms of changing your expression. But once you get more familiar with a tune, the melodic phrases can be expressed in subtly different ways. If you're relying on your fingers to know where to go, it makes it nearly impossible to play any sort of melodic variation without getting lost. (That's also a problem for people who still have the dots in their head when they close their eyes...) One really good exercise for determining how much you're relying on kinesthetic memory is to try playing the tune in a different key. That also gives you an idea of how well you know the tune. I'm not necessarily saying that you need to be able to play it well in another key (although, that comes in handy a lot of times!), but it's a good exercise, and can give you a lot of insight into how you remember tunes.
The other major factor in learning by ear is how well you can internalize the tune. How well you can hear the twists and turns, and how well you can remember them. That takes practice. But in reality, after a while, it makes the whole process easier. Instead of having to remember a string of 128 notes, and what order they come in, all you have to remember is the contour of the tune. And Irish tunes are catchy. I have one running through my head at any given moment. As I mentioned in a previous post, singing, or lilting tunes can be good practice. You've already more or less "mastered" the instrument, so you don't have to rely on much thought to be able to sing different notes (even if your singing is dreadful). So you can practice listening to tune, and lilting along with them. Try listening to the A part the first time through, and then lilting it the second time through, paying attention to the parts you missed. And then see if you can start to correct those mistakes by the third time through. I do that in my car all the time. In fact, I had a 13 hour drive back from a festival a few weeks ago, and learned 3 new tunes by listening to them repeatedly, and lilting along with them. I couldn't just sit down and play them when I got home, but they came really quickly when I did sit down with an instrument in my hands and listened to those recordings again. If you practice listening like that, you'll get better at it. If you do it with your voice, you will take some of the "familiarity with your instrument" issues out of the equation, at least for a time.
One of my favorite examples of someone learning by ear took place a few years ago, when I was road tripping to a music gathering with a couple of other musicians. I sat in the front seat with a mandolin, and taught a tune to the guy in the back seat with his fiddle. The driver was also a musician, and he didn't know the tune I was teaching. But he could hear the notes and intervals well enough to correct the fiddler in the back seat a number of times. A few hours later, we stopped for fuel, and I handed an instrument to the driver, and he played the tune. And it wasn't a simple tune, either! Very cool!
Gives me something to shoot for.
# Posted on November 1st 2011 by Reverend
Re: Dots and learning by ear
I am (was!) a reasonable distance runner but a bad sprinter. Apparently this is something to do with the way the muscles work. No matter how hard I work, I will never achieve the sprint speeds of someone whose muscles work differently - and who has put the same amount of effort in. That's realism. (If I had enjoyed sprinting and wanted to do it, the motivation would have enabled me to achieve more.)
Some people can add up a column of figures just by looking at it. Others struggle.
People do have differing levels of ability. However - motivation and learning in the right way for you can overcome a lot of problems. The woman who taught my dyslexic brother to read was an absolute genius.
OK - why are some tunes so easy to learn that I find I know them without any conscious effort, but others won't 'stick' even though I put a lot of effort in?
# Posted on November 1st 2011 by c.g.
Re: Dots and learning by ear
There are a number of reasons for tunes "sticking". Some tunes sit better on some instruments than others. Some tunes are more familiar than others, because of their similarity to other tunes you know. Some tunes are in less familiar keys. Some tunes buck against the tradition, and don't make the same kind of sense. Unlike llig, I sometimes find that the hardest ones to learn are the best tunes, because they have more of the element of surprise, which makes them interesting (albeit, maybe not as good for sessions).
While I agree that there are differences in physical and mental abilities between different people, I would say that the limits are much easier to define for the physical (like the difference between being good at long distance running vs. sprinting, or one's ability to jump high enough to dunk a basketball...) than they are for the mental. I think our limits for things like memory and pattern recognition are much less stringent. (The old phrase "you can do anything you put your mind to" has some merit). That's one of my favorite things about playing music is that it is a journey of self discovery, and allows you to push yourself to achieve things that you wouldn't have thought possible.
I'm not one who really believes much in someone being "born with innate musical talent". I think what those people are generally born with is the kind of obsession that leads to spending the thousands of hours it takes to get good at things. I played music in various forms for many years before being introduced to Irish trad, and I was never any good at all. I always felt like I wasn't "musically talented", until I started playing Irish music. It grabbed onto me, and made me obsessive enough to want to get better and better at it. So, for me, it wasn't a lack of "innate musical talent" that was holding me back, as much as it was a lack of focus, direction, and true love for the music I was trying to play.
# Posted on November 1st 2011 by Reverend
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Especially with the newer tunes and probably more so those by some Scottish composers, there now seems to be the tendency to add a wee "quirky" bit just to be clever or different. Often this is the part which causes difficulty.
So, in many instances, I feel that I should be playing something else which seems to "fit in" more naturally" and there's often a big temptation or risk that I do that.
Maybe these tunes are written by people who are too clever for their own good or, on the other hand, just don't have a clue. Or a bit of both?
# Posted on November 1st 2011 by Johnny Jay
Re: Dots and learning by ear
One of the tunes is the polka J. B. Milne, written by Angus Fitchett, which is a great tune.
Another question - if you play two very different instruments, such as fiddle and flute, do you have to 're-learn' a tune to some degree if you've learnt it on one instrument and then play it on the other?
# Posted on November 2nd 2011 by c.g.
Re: Dots and learning by ear
I vaguely know that tune although I believe I had to play it a fiddle concert once "from the dots" which was the accepted practice(if you know the tunes already or play by ear, you just pretend
)
As for different instruments, I don't believe you have to relearn the tune as such although there will often be different techniques involved including the varieties of ornamentation which are either possible or desirable on a particular instrument.
You might also wish approach the tune differently as regards playing style.... obviously, in a session you have to "go with the flow" but in other situations you have more scope.
There's also the option of adding "bass parts" or some form of accompaniment on the accordion and/or other instruments too.
Earlier on, I mentioned too that it's much easier for me to play a relatively unknown tune "from the dots" on my regular instruments but if I'm doing it on an instrument with which I'm not as familiar I have to really concentrate.
However, it's usually much easier "by ear" and more often I'll learn a tune on the fiddle or mandolin first and get it "into my head" before attempting it on another instrument.
# Posted on November 2nd 2011 by Johnny Jay
Re: Dots and learning by ear
J.B. Milne is a reel - I suppose you could use it as a polka but it's commonly used in sets of reels by Scottish ceilidh bands.
I'd guess Fitchet expected people to get it from the dots in the first instance. No way would most chord players get the harmony 100% by ear.
# Posted on November 2nd 2011 by Jack Campin
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Fortunately I'm not a chord player and only need to think about one note at a time! I learnt it by ear with the title 'Polka J.B. Milne' (words in that order).
# Posted on November 2nd 2011 by c.g.
Re: Dots and learning by ear
I had a friend who you could play a ten note chord for on a piano, any ten notes, no octaves, any random dischordant ten notes, and he'd tell you exactly which they were.
# Posted on November 2nd 2011 by ...
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Ach I can do better than that - I can tell you all of the notes in a twelve note chord with no octaves
# Posted on November 2nd 2011 by On Sabbatical
Re: Dots and learning by ear
How do you play a twelve note chord?
# Posted on November 2nd 2011 by c.g.
Re: Dots and learning by ear
With a ruler - no, that's inches - buggerit!
# Posted on November 2nd 2011 by On Sabbatical
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Twelve-note chord on the piano?
It's easy for some:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polydactyly/
# Posted on November 2nd 2011 by NewToItAll
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Two rulers of suitable length would work.
# Posted on November 2nd 2011 by johndsamuels
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Oops. Extra slash in that link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polydactyly
# Posted on November 2nd 2011 by NewToItAll
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Some pianists have used their noses to play notes that were otherwise impossible to reach. Mozart reputedly included such notes in a composition as a joke. Franz Liszt didn't have a wide hand span and used his nose. Makes a change from playing by ear.
# Posted on November 2nd 2011 by RichardB
Re: Dots and learning by ear
For me, dots are great for keeping similar starting B parts to tunes associated with their correct A Parts. At least they do help me in this area. I get loads of B parts mixed up at the moment, especially reels whose B part starts with a long G Roll on the beat. Maybe that's a reflection of something I look for in the tunes that I like to learn, or maybe its' just because G Rolls on the flute are easy and sound good? (And there is a whole ecosystem of other reels starting with a long G roll off the beat which also have a disturbing tendency to cause unintended tune-switches while playing.)
# Posted on November 2nd 2011 by Crackpot
Re: Dots and learning by ear
What would you call this then - I 'learn' a new tune (eg from an old MS) by playing it over and over till its in my head. Then I play it. Am I learning from dots or by ear??
# Posted on November 2nd 2011 by The Archivist
Re: Dots and learning by ear
You're learning it by ear from yourself, I'd say.
I'm not quite sure if that's the same thing as learning a tune "off by heart" though as some people claim to visualise the dots in their heads and memorise fingering positions etc which, if your are really familair with your instrument you don't need to to do.
# Posted on November 2nd 2011 by Johnny Jay
Re: Dots and learning by ear
"Am I learning from dots or by ear??"
It's both & it's neither. You're learning through osmosis.
When I learn by ear it's from listening to a tune without any visual aids. Something like this* ~ hear tune, get tune in head, play tune; as opposed to see tune, play notes, hear notes, play what I think the tune should sound like (correcting for mistakes, omissions, etc. seen on source).
*MMV
# Posted on November 2nd 2011 by Batgirl has left the GPL ;)
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Osmosis...hmm...I like the sound of that!
# Posted on November 2nd 2011 by The Archivist
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Yep, Archivist, that's what I do with MSS and old tune books - play the tune from the dots whilst listening to myself until I have the tune in my head, then play along with the tune running in my head.
I'm teaching myself the tune by ear.
Learning by ear does limit you to tunes someone else can already play!
The existence of musicians' handwritten tune books from the 18th and 19th centuries is interesting in this context.
# Posted on November 2nd 2011 by c.g.
Re: Dots and learning by ear
I have a friend, who will teach me a tune by playing it from dots, and then I'll teach it back to her so she can learn it by ear, because she doesn't retain it very well when playing it from dots... It's an interesting phenomenon, because both of us initially learn it by ear from a written source.
# Posted on November 2nd 2011 by Reverend
Re: Dots and learning by ear
I don't think "osmosis" is the right word, given that its scientific definition is molecules permeating a membrane, moving from a solution with a lower solute concentrate to one with a higher solute concentrate. One of the main differences between that and other forms of molecular movement -- or so I hazily remember from high school biology courses -- in a cell is that it's passive; it takes no, or very little, energy.
So when used as a metaphor for learning tunes, it's a relatively passive method of learning tunes; for example, hearing them over and over again on your car stereo, or hearing them week in, week out at a session, and eventually playing them without ever having put any conscious effort into learning them. Looking at a MS and playing a tune over and over again from the dots until it is internalised isn't that.
c.g., you seem to have the weird idea that a lot of the people who learn by ear and who advocate doing so are not able to read music. You could not be more wrong. Quite a lot of musicians can read, to some degree, and many who are perfectly capable of learning by ear are also capable of sight-reading. I admit, I'm not one of them. I'm a terrible sight-reader; although I can identify notes on a staff, I struggle to make a coherent Irish tune out of them unless I already have most of the melody in my hands. Luckily, I don't find it "limiting," as there are tens of thousands of recorded tunes out there that I never have the time to learn. It will be a while yet before I get to 18th century ones that exist only on MSS.
# Posted on November 2nd 2011 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Dots and learning by ear
*in my head. I am also, clearly, a terrible typist.
# Posted on November 2nd 2011 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Having said all that, the ability to do both is surely much more beneficial than relying on either "ear" or "the dots"?
Oh yes, VERY beneficial. Here's why. Now you have 2 ways to learn, instead of just one.
Practical reasons. Ear, You can't play a tune if you don't remember what it sounds like. Sheet, You can't play a tune if you don't have your manuscript. But if you know what it sounds like, and what it looks like, you have more to recall to.
I've remembered what pieces of music sounded like after picturing the sheet in my head(if i didn't have a recording handy) and i've remembered what pieces sounded like if i didn't have the sheet handy.
It's great to know both.
# Posted on November 2nd 2011 by fiddlelearner
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Sure it's great to know both. But the crucial difference is that while it maybe beneficial to be able to read, one must never rely on it. And if you are not, for whatever reason, always 100% relying on your ear, you'll never be a decent player.
# Posted on November 2nd 2011 by ...
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Actually since most of the people I'm around are professional musicians, I'm more than used to the idea of people who read music AND play by ear, get on with the job and don't spend ages on fora agonising over it.
I'm more disturbed by the idea, often perpetrated on here, that anyone who so much as looks at a dot is betraying the sanctity of traditional music.
I think an intelligent use of both means of communicating tunes is the ideal.
I've come across people in more than one sort of music who think that if you just play the dots you are playing the music. They are missing the point. Similarly I've met people who's aim appears to be to copy exactly someone else's performance and never deviate from that. They are missing the point too.
Think about baroque music. The ornamentation wasn't written out because the player was supposed to know how to ornament the bare bones and to interpret the music according to their own good taste.
A bit like traditional music, really.
If you understand the style and the context you can learn a tune from music because you will know how to interpret it. If you learn by ear without you are just a tape recorder.
# Posted on November 3rd 2011 by c.g.
Re: Dots and learning by ear
'whose' not 'who's'. Too early in the morning.
# Posted on November 3rd 2011 by c.g.
Re: Dots and learning by ear
"I'm more disturbed by the idea, often perpetrated on here, that anyone who so much as looks at a dot is betraying the sanctity of traditional music."
Could you please find the posts where people have said this and quote them here.
And then reread all the posts -- including the long discussion in Will Harmon's profile -- where people have said reading music is perfectly kosher so long as you understand how the music should sound. Then reread all the posts where people elucidated the difference between learning A TUNE from sheet music, verses learning THE MUSIC from a sheet music. I'm sure you can understand that distinction.
# Posted on November 3rd 2011 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Dots and learning by ear
c.g. there's one major problem with addiction to paper. Aside from that the tradition is strong enough to live with people using abcs or sheet music; depending only on how these are used.
# Posted on November 3rd 2011 by Batgirl has left the GPL ;)
Reverend, what you're doing with your friend is an excellent way of using sheet music. I may steal your method. ;)
# Posted on November 3rd 2011 by Batgirl has left the GPL ;)
Re: Dots and learning by ear
All those posts where people ask for dots and get slagged off for not learning everything by ear?
There is a great range of opinion on here (good!)
And surely you've noticed I keep saying that sheet music should be used sensibly and with knowledge of style and context?
Time, I think, to say that everyone still digging back to find this thread seems to be more or less in agreement.
And thank you so much making a very boring job bearable by making it possible to come on here occasionally to take my mind off it for a few minutes . . .
# Posted on November 3rd 2011 by c.g.
Re: Dots and learning by ear
c.g., if you haven't already read the preface of Ceol Rince na hÉireann by Breandán Breathnach you might want to. Then consider all that he put into the project the next time someone asks for a bit of sheet music;
http://www.nigelgatherer.com/books/CRE/cre1.html
# Posted on November 4th 2011 by Batgirl has left the GPL ;)
this link to the preface is perhaps easier to read off the computer screen ~ http://www.mcgee-flutes.com/CeolRince1.htm
Cheers Terry!
# Posted on November 4th 2011 by Batgirl has left the GPL ;)
Re: Dots and learning by ear
Once you go there maybe Breathnach's 'The use of Notation in the transmission of Irish Folk Music' would be a good little book to read next.
# Posted on November 4th 2011 by Prof. Prlwytzkofski
Re: Dots and learning by ear
I'm hoping to, & guessing I might be able to receive a copy from UCC's Department of Music Traditional Music Archive http://www.music.ucc.ie/index.php?/staff/detail/mary_mitchell_ingoldsby/
That's the source, from the first lecture in the Ó Riada Memorial Lecture series?
# Posted on November 6th 2011 by Batgirl has left the GPL ;)