Hey. I am fairly new to this. when looking at the ABC of a tune, how do i transpose it to play on the accordion, like rows and buttons? There are quite a few tunes i would like to learn so this would be a great help. Thanks for your time and forgive me for reposting an already posted topic (if true).
Use an application that converts ABC into stave. Look on the "Links - Tutorials" page for the ABC tutorial. http://www.8ung.at/abctransposer/index.html Jens Wollshlager's Transposer will transpose the ABC, and there's a link on this page to places you can download applications to create stave from ABC. I used to use ABCNavigator, now I use ABCExplorer. These two are both free downloads. They'll also play the tunes in a simple midi player, so you can learn them by ear, if that is your preference.
"when looking at the ABC of a tune, how do i transpose it to play on the accordion, like rows and buttons?"
Do you know the letter names of the notes on the accordion? That would be the place to start. It's not necessary if you play entirely by ear, but absolutely essential if you want to read music - either abc or staff notation.
Use an ABC program that can transpose into any key, eg Mid2ABC (it's free) and select the key you want. Then slow it down as far as it will go and find the notes by ear. As you get the hang of the tune increase the speed one notch at a time until you can't keep up, in which case ease off a bit, practise the bits you are struggling with, then continue.
Learning through your eyes is no easier than learning through your ears. When you think you know the tune, search the net for a copy of someone playing it 'properly', and you should be able to join in.
I think Bernie R has the right idea, forget ABCs and go find recordings. Use a slow down program, if necessary, to make the job easier. Then find others to play with, that's the the most important bit. Reading music and ITM are not compatible. ABC is a fantastic tool for remembering tunes or sets or identifying tunes (eg. Tunepal.org), but sheet music is worse than useless at a session. If you want more clarification/confusion, go to http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/28927
gam, I think you are getting things the wrong way round. I would suggest the first thing Capayne should do is listen to someone playing the tune properly. Otherwise, how could he or she know that it is a tune they want to play, or how it should sound?
I suggest this approach: listen to recordings (or download Clare FM or a similar internet radio programme) until you hear tunes you want to play. Then listen to the tune repeatedly, until you can sing along with it and know what is coming next. Then try to play it on your instrument. Play along with the recording if you like, but do play the thing on your own lots of times as (I believe) you learn better that way.
As I read the start of this, it isn't about transposition, moving from one key to another. It is wanting to gain another useful skill - a few steps away from the most important one already mentioned by others - your ears and listening. But what fun to have another trick up your sleeve, to be able to read the music as well, from the several different systems of music notation we've been blessed and damned with for hundreds of years. It's an understandable and admirable pursuit despite the fear and distrust some folks have for it. The fear is silly, as is usually the case, but the distrust is understandable. Like books, too damned many people get trapped by the mistake of considering it 'gospel'.
But, back to reading music. ABC notation is a brilliant and easy start, though dots give you th better graphic understanding of it all - those skeletal but important parameters of time and rhythm, the long and short and silences and pauses and pulses of it all, and pitch, the high and low of it. There is, and this is where the ears are the superior tool, so much more, not all of that extra understanding being subtle....
Learning to read the music will come easier if you have help, meaning someone to guide you. But it has often been learned and reinvented without such aid. As someone stated early on, learn the note names for starters, the ABC-DEFG of it, that up and down, the pitch, the high and low of it all. And for now you could just work with the two major groupings of that, loosely D and G major scales, and you could exercise that understanding, now and then, without obsessing about it, without tension, just for a lark, the fun of it.
G meaning - G-A-B-c-d-e-f#-g (with one sharp, the F#)
That small g is an octave higher, the next one up, from the lower G...
D meaning - D-E-F#-G-A-B-c#-d (Now you've two sharps to consider, F# & C#)
And the other fun of this, he long and the short of it, there the ABC notation gives you a guide in the headers ~
M: is meter, such as 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 6/8, 9/8 - which gives you your basic groupings,the bars/measures...
L: gives you the value of a single letter such as A, so if it says as it often does - 1/8, then a single letter is an eigth note or quaver... N2 becomes a quarter note, 1/4, or crotchet, and to create it into a fraction, half the time value, you follow it as if a fraction with a forward slash, or so ~ A/ - and it becomes a sixteenth note or semi-quaver...
That''s more than enough for now. Have fun with it, but don't let it rule over that most important sense - hearing.
Do some searching here for more, on site, in the discussions, as this has come up before, and there's some good laughs to be had in the arguments, and wisdom to glean as well, if no more than understanding better this passion we all hold - in our individual ways... Here are some ABC resources repeated many times in discussion, and in comments in tunes too - - -
Speaking as someone who has been told by the best musician in the known universe (self-declared) that I do not understand music, my advice may be of dubious value ( ) but I think Bernie has the right idea.
Listen to tunes you like, listen to different versions of them, and listen to them played at sessions if at all possible, until you have them in your head. You start to have them in your head when you know "ah, it's that tune" when someone starts playing it. This is different from recognizing it because you know this particular recording, or because it's the tune that always comes in this place in the set or because you know the name of it and you saw the name on the record sleeve. This is hearing the tune in an unfamiliar setting and knowing it.
That takes a surprisingly long time for some people, but if you start from there, it's a lot easier.
The next thing is, you want to hear the whole tune. It's easy to hear part of the tune, but if you start lilting along in the tune (quietly, if you're at a session) you'll start learning all the bits in the middle. When you can lilt the whole tune, you know you've got it. At that point, it's just a matter of getting it into your fingers.
The trouble with this process is that it feels like it takes forever to get there when you just want to be playing the tune on the box. However, the sooner you get there, the sooner you'll be able to actually play.
Sheet music and slow-down boxes feel like they help, but I'm convinced that this is an illusion. For the beginner, they get you playing badly, early, and make it hard to progress beyond that.
[ Parenthetical aside: I haven't tried this, but if you must use abc, you should write a quick perl script to strip out the numbers and punctuation so that you just have the names of the notes, and maybe the white space. Use that as a cheat sheet so you have an approximate guide to what notes the tune has in what order, but force yourself to actually listen to the tune and figure out how they really go. ]
If you want. That's a Simple Matter of Programming. The point is to get away from "reading" the music off the page and to use it as a set of hints, if at all.
I don't expect that the original poster will take up this suggestion, obviously, but since I wasted a lot of time with the sheet music idea myself, when I was young and foolish, I feel a duty to warn them off from that, Cassandra-fashion.
Once more, a tirade of rubbish advice pointing out that sheet music is no good.
Listening to other people's playing is NOT the B all and end all in ITM. Sure, its something you MUST do, but its not the only way to learn.
Learning to read music from dots or ABC's is a skill that ASSISTS you in the playing of this or any other music. No, its not the B all and end all either, but it can help lots.
Why turn your back on something that can help?
Do not reject dots or ABC's or recordings - they are ALL useful tools. Chiefly though, listen to your own output and ask yourself if it is doing what you want it to do.
I would say it again, listening to other players is how the music is generally passed on, ABC is ok for lists and checking. Most players dont use Standard music notation (probably it's close to useless as a way of writing how the music is played). I've NEVER seen anybody using dots at a session. Tools they may be, for reading and writing music (albeit cumbersome and difficult for most people to grasp without spending money on lessons and books. for ITM dots have an extremely limited use.
"I've NEVER seen anybody using dots at a session."
Ah, you ain't seen me, then Backer. I carry a little moleskine music staff book around with me and, if I hear a tune I like, I quite often notate it then and there in the session. Call it my version of a recording device, if you like.
"Most players dont use Standard music notation". Have you asked?
I agree, most players will never use dots at a session, but that doesn't mean they are of no use. However, I find they are only any use if I already know the tune, that is, can hear it in my head. Then the dots do help me to learn the tune a bit more quickly at home.
I have been looking at a lot of dots recently. I decided that if I was going to have a file with ABC of tunes I could play I had better get on with it before the backlog got too big. I have come to think there are a number of people who post to the tunes database here who are rather good at using notation to sketch out the way a tune goes.
David, notation is good for showing the sequence of notes, but there's a lot more to a tune than that. Keep this distinction in mind and you'll gain a useful tool without doing any harm to yourself.
Will, the file I am building up is of tunes I already play. The skill I am admiring in some people is that they can notate in a way that does not obscure, and may invite, other ways of playing a tune. That is in contrast to some who leave me thinking that there is detail which obscures the general picture.
ethical blend, Isn't life difficult enough for the poor moles of this world, without folks like you putting dots on their backs?
minijackpot Perhaps you have answered your own question!
David, whether someone notates the bones of a tune or a clutch of details in every measure likely says more about what the purpose is. Sometimes I write out the bones so a friend can see the basic melody line. Other times I include all sorts of details, to share a specific setting of a tune, or to show options for articulating and varying the phrases.
Come to think of it another thing that one gets used to but which isn't obvious to start with is that notation often shows things that one instrument might do but another probably wouldn't and that if learning by ear one instrument may do things that another can't or usually wouldn't. Posts on the web where someone say, for example, "that triplet is hard on the flure" and get a response of "its a fiddlers thing, do something different, try this" are thin on the ground but can come as a great relief.
Listening and imitation is necessary and sufficient to learn to play properly. Notation is neither necessary nor sufficient. That’s why the new learner should prioritise learning by listening and imitation.
Will, yes fine. Crossed. I think that 's why many of the 'main' versions on the database here are not fit for purpose - they were notated for different purposes.
Also, the Breathnach books (Ceol Rince na hEireann) capture a lot of articulations for specific instruments, depending on who Breathnach got a tune from.
@ Backer: yes, those moleskine notebooks are great. I've got a few. Don't know why, really, except that, funnily enough given Will's cpomments above, I do have one for primarily fiddle tunes and one for those I've picked up on flute.
"Listening and imitation is necessary and sufficient to learn to play properly" - I don't recall saying they were'nt - provided that you are listening to a "propper" version of course - and who defines that? Is that your job?
"Notation is neither necessary nor sufficient." - I don't recall saying they were.
What part of "Learning to read music from dots or ABC's is a skill that ASSISTS you in the playing of this or any other music. No, its not the B all and end all either, but it can help lots." were you struggling with mate?
And who mentioned using notation in a session? - not I, nor the OP.
I didn't do Jon's quote justice in the above edit, so here it is complete, having accidentally lost his "for the beginner" in the cut and paste ~
"Sheet music and slow-down boxes feel like they help, but I'm convinced that this is an illusion. For the beginner, they get you playing badly, early, and make it hard to progress beyond that." - Jon Kiparsky
The resource isn't at fault. It is the person who misuses or abuses, usually out of ignorance...
Fintan Vallely's entry regarding the *Three Ages of Music* in "The Companion to Irish Traditional Music" might be appropriate at this point in the discussion.
imho
"The resource isn't at fault. It is the person who misuses or abuses, usually out of ignorance..."
I couldn't agree more. And to try to learn this music, as a beginner, from sheet music, is misuse, usually out of ignorance. This ignorance is unfortunate because it leads people into a blind alley where they can waste years, I've seen it happen many times and in fact I did myself. If you search enough on this site, you'll find old posts from me defending sheet music as just another way to learn tunes. I was wrong, and when I figured out that I had been wrong, my playing improved immensely, almost overnight.
It's completely preventable, and there's no reason why I should see people in sessions fumbling blindly through tunes like the Wind that Shakes the Barley simply because they have devoted their time to training their eyes and their fingers at the expense of their ears.
I know that this advice is not one that the beginner wants to hear, and I know that it's advice that the beginner will ignore, but I still believe it's true: for the beginner, sheet music and slow-down boxes are short, blind alleys. This does not mean that sheet music is evil or harmful in general; someone who knows the music will be able to dig tunes out of books and get music out of them, and this is a good way to re-introduce old tunes that would otherwise not be played. This is a good thing, but it's not something a beginner should be trying to do. The beginner should be getting the music into their head, and that is done via the ears, not the eyes.
Slow downers are great :-p . I give them much of the credit for me being able to hear *some* of the stuff talked about in that nearby 'Reels' discussion that *some* people who claim years of experience seem not to be able to hear. They are also good for the subtleties timing of, say, Martin Hayes' feetl. Hearing is better (or at least an essential addtion) to being told. Several of 'old-timers' are quoted as running their record turntables slow.
"The resource isn't at fault. It is the person who misuses or abuses, usually out of ignorance..."
I think it's important not to chastise ignorance. There's a feeling that an ignorant person is somehow at fault for their ignorance. It's the essence of snobbery really. (with the proviso, of course, that willful ignorance shall be chastised where ever found).
"I've NEVER seen anybody using dots at a session."
I have. I've seen a guy using tunepal to identify a tune, and then try to play along by following the sheet music. Sounded awful, even when tunepal got the identification right, and he didn't always notice when it didn't.
"I think it's important not to chastise ignorance."
It's fun to chastise ignorance, but how often to we take the time to indulge in gratuitous apostrophe these days?
O ignorance, thou misbegotten lout, you confirm the fool in his folly and succour the sanctimonious. You kill the weak and enfeeble the strong. You prolong sickness and ravish away health. You are a creature of dark places, and mobs, and the internet. You are possessed of but one virtue: it is the ceaseless drive to be free of you that creates all knowledge.
Jon - "- to try to learn this music, as a beginner, from sheet music, is misuse, usually out of ignorance"
Yup!
llig?! ~ Are you suddenly studying for the clergy? This is like black needing white, joy needing sorrow, and the need for ignorance so we can appreciate the contrary...
Now for a sweeping statement that is likely true - - -
There is no one in Irish Traditional Music that hasn't learned from and benefited from notated music, not a one - directly or indirectly...
We can all look forward to the development of Kindle-dot, the way forward in sight reading...........and for sessioneers, the Kindle session rack, which holds up to eight Kindle-dots in a secure, easy to read configuration. All pre loaded with at least 17 versions of each of the 15000 tunes, and a Kindle pre-loader which is controled by the "Session Leader" to pick out the sets. Woe betides any non-readers who just drop in for a few tunes. Then theres the I-strum, the I-beat, and for fiddlers the I-scratch, which has slurs, and double stops and bad tempered remarks generated at random.
Or the iSurly Piper, which generates even more slurs and bad tempered remarks along with out of tune regulators, but without the double-stop feature. Best to get with the repair patch iReed, although this is prone to crashing as well. In my experience, iWhisky is usually the only thing that makes the software run.
Reading music
Reading music
Hey. I am fairly new to this. when looking at the ABC of a tune, how do i transpose it to play on the accordion, like rows and buttons? There are quite a few tunes i would like to learn so this would be a great help. Thanks for your time and forgive me for reposting an already posted topic (if true).
# Posted on December 11th 2011 by capayne
Re: Reading music
Use an application that converts ABC into stave. Look on the "Links - Tutorials" page for the ABC tutorial. http://www.8ung.at/abctransposer/index.html Jens Wollshlager's Transposer will transpose the ABC, and there's a link on this page to places you can download applications to create stave from ABC. I used to use ABCNavigator, now I use ABCExplorer. These two are both free downloads. They'll also play the tunes in a simple midi player, so you can learn them by ear, if that is your preference.
# Posted on December 11th 2011 by Innocent Bystander
Re: Reading music
"when looking at the ABC of a tune, how do i transpose it to play on the accordion, like rows and buttons?"
Do you know the letter names of the notes on the accordion? That would be the place to start. It's not necessary if you play entirely by ear, but absolutely essential if you want to read music - either abc or staff notation.
# Posted on December 11th 2011 by CreadurMawnOrganig
Re: Reading music
That's really not good advice for a newcomer Bystander. You can not learn to play this music by ear by listening to a midi!
Capayne, you should find recordings of the tunes you want to learn, and then work out how to play them by ear.
# Posted on December 11th 2011 by Bernie 29
Re: Reading music
Use an ABC program that can transpose into any key, eg Mid2ABC (it's free) and select the key you want. Then slow it down as far as it will go and find the notes by ear. As you get the hang of the tune increase the speed one notch at a time until you can't keep up, in which case ease off a bit, practise the bits you are struggling with, then continue.
Learning through your eyes is no easier than learning through your ears. When you think you know the tune, search the net for a copy of someone playing it 'properly', and you should be able to join in.
# Posted on December 11th 2011 by gam
Re: Reading music
I think Bernie R has the right idea, forget ABCs and go find recordings. Use a slow down program, if necessary, to make the job easier. Then find others to play with, that's the the most important bit. Reading music and ITM are not compatible. ABC is a fantastic tool for remembering tunes or sets or identifying tunes (eg. Tunepal.org), but sheet music is worse than useless at a session. If you want more clarification/confusion, go to
http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/28927
# Posted on December 11th 2011 by Backer
Re: Reading music
gam, I think you are getting things the wrong way round. I would suggest the first thing Capayne should do is listen to someone playing the tune properly. Otherwise, how could he or she know that it is a tune they want to play, or how it should sound?
I suggest this approach: listen to recordings (or download Clare FM or a similar internet radio programme) until you hear tunes you want to play. Then listen to the tune repeatedly, until you can sing along with it and know what is coming next. Then try to play it on your instrument. Play along with the recording if you like, but do play the thing on your own lots of times as (I believe) you learn better that way.
# Posted on December 11th 2011 by Bernie 29
Re: Reading
As I read the start of this, it isn't about transposition, moving from one key to another. It is wanting to gain another useful skill - a few steps away from the most important one already mentioned by others - your ears and listening. But what fun to have another trick up your sleeve, to be able to read the music as well, from the several different systems of music notation we've been blessed and damned with for hundreds of years. It's an understandable and admirable pursuit despite the fear and distrust some folks have for it. The fear is silly, as is usually the case, but the distrust is understandable. Like books, too damned many people get trapped by the mistake of considering it 'gospel'.
But, back to reading music. ABC notation is a brilliant and easy start, though dots give you th better graphic understanding of it all - those skeletal but important parameters of time and rhythm, the long and short and silences and pauses and pulses of it all, and pitch, the high and low of it. There is, and this is where the ears are the superior tool, so much more, not all of that extra understanding being subtle....
Learning to read the music will come easier if you have help, meaning someone to guide you. But it has often been learned and reinvented without such aid. As someone stated early on, learn the note names for starters, the ABC-DEFG of it, that up and down, the pitch, the high and low of it all. And for now you could just work with the two major groupings of that, loosely D and G major scales, and you could exercise that understanding, now and then, without obsessing about it, without tension, just for a lark, the fun of it.
G meaning - G-A-B-c-d-e-f#-g (with one sharp, the F#)
That small g is an octave higher, the next one up, from the lower G...
D meaning - D-E-F#-G-A-B-c#-d (Now you've two sharps to consider, F# & C#)
And the other fun of this, he long and the short of it, there the ABC notation gives you a guide in the headers ~
M: is meter, such as 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 6/8, 9/8 - which gives you your basic groupings,the bars/measures...
L: gives you the value of a single letter such as A, so if it says as it often does - 1/8, then a single letter is an eigth note or quaver... N2 becomes a quarter note, 1/4, or crotchet, and to create it into a fraction, half the time value, you follow it as if a fraction with a forward slash, or so ~ A/ - and it becomes a sixteenth note or semi-quaver...
That''s more than enough for now. Have fun with it, but don't let it rule over that most important sense - hearing.
Enjoy - 'c'
# Posted on December 11th 2011 by ceolachan
Reading ABC music notation
Do some searching here for more, on site, in the discussions, as this has come up before, and there's some good laughs to be had in the arguments, and wisdom to glean as well, if no more than understanding better this passion we all hold - in our individual ways... Here are some ABC resources repeated many times in discussion, and in comments in tunes too - - -
http://www.lesession.co.uk/abc/abc_notation.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_notation
http://abcnotation.com/
There's a favourite inexpensive book I like to recommend but it's not coming to mind right now, for learning notation. I'll add it when I remember it.
# Posted on December 11th 2011 by ceolachan
"Learn/Learning to Read Music"
The obvious title -
"Learn to Read Music" by Howard Shanet
"Learning to Read Music" by Peter Nickol
Read the reviews on Amazon (.co.uk & .com) for a little extra guidance in their use...
# Posted on December 11th 2011 by ceolachan
Re: Reading music
Speaking as someone who has been told by the best musician in the known universe (self-declared) that I do not understand music, my advice may be of dubious value (
) but I think Bernie has the right idea.
Listen to tunes you like, listen to different versions of them, and listen to them played at sessions if at all possible, until you have them in your head. You start to have them in your head when you know "ah, it's that tune" when someone starts playing it. This is different from recognizing it because you know this particular recording, or because it's the tune that always comes in this place in the set or because you know the name of it and you saw the name on the record sleeve. This is hearing the tune in an unfamiliar setting and knowing it.
That takes a surprisingly long time for some people, but if you start from there, it's a lot easier.
The next thing is, you want to hear the whole tune. It's easy to hear part of the tune, but if you start lilting along in the tune (quietly, if you're at a session) you'll start learning all the bits in the middle. When you can lilt the whole tune, you know you've got it. At that point, it's just a matter of getting it into your fingers.
The trouble with this process is that it feels like it takes forever to get there when you just want to be playing the tune on the box. However, the sooner you get there, the sooner you'll be able to actually play.
Sheet music and slow-down boxes feel like they help, but I'm convinced that this is an illusion. For the beginner, they get you playing badly, early, and make it hard to progress beyond that.
[ Parenthetical aside: I haven't tried this, but if you must use abc, you should write a quick perl script to strip out the numbers and punctuation so that you just have the names of the notes, and maybe the white space. Use that as a cheat sheet so you have an approximate guide to what notes the tune has in what order, but force yourself to actually listen to the tune and figure out how they really go. ]
# Posted on December 11th 2011 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Reading music
[ ... strip out the numbers and punctuation ..] Taking the bar lines seems a bit mean.
[How about keeping just the bar lines and the next note after them ?]
# Posted on December 11th 2011 by David50
Re: Reading music
If you want. That's a Simple Matter of Programming. The point is to get away from "reading" the music off the page and to use it as a set of hints, if at all.
I don't expect that the original poster will take up this suggestion, obviously, but since I wasted a lot of time with the sheet music idea myself, when I was young and foolish, I feel a duty to warn them off from that, Cassandra-fashion.
# Posted on December 11th 2011 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Reading music
Once more, a tirade of rubbish advice pointing out that sheet music is no good.
Listening to other people's playing is NOT the B all and end all in ITM. Sure, its something you MUST do, but its not the only way to learn.
Learning to read music from dots or ABC's is a skill that ASSISTS you in the playing of this or any other music. No, its not the B all and end all either, but it can help lots.
Why turn your back on something that can help?
Do not reject dots or ABC's or recordings - they are ALL useful tools. Chiefly though, listen to your own output and ask yourself if it is doing what you want it to do.
# Posted on December 11th 2011 by ormepipes
Re: Reading music
The paths to enlightenment are as numerous as those who seek it...
# Posted on December 11th 2011 by AlBrown
Re: Reading music
"Once more, a tirade of rubbish" - ormepipes
I would say it again, listening to other players is how the music is generally passed on, ABC is ok for lists and checking. Most players dont use Standard music notation (probably it's close to useless as a way of writing how the music is played). I've NEVER seen anybody using dots at a session. Tools they may be, for reading and writing music (albeit cumbersome and difficult for most people to grasp without spending money on lessons and books. for ITM dots have an extremely limited use.
# Posted on December 11th 2011 by Backer
Re: Reading music
"I've NEVER seen anybody using dots at a session."
Ah, you ain't seen me, then Backer. I carry a little moleskine music staff book around with me and, if I hear a tune I like, I quite often notate it then and there in the session. Call it my version of a recording device, if you like.
# Posted on December 11th 2011 by ethical blend
Re: Reading music
"Most players dont use Standard music notation". Have you asked?
I agree, most players will never use dots at a session, but that doesn't mean they are of no use. However, I find they are only any use if I already know the tune, that is, can hear it in my head. Then the dots do help me to learn the tune a bit more quickly at home.
But that's just me...........am I most players?
# Posted on December 11th 2011 by minijackpot
Re: Reading music
I have been looking at a lot of dots recently. I decided that if I was going to have a file with ABC of tunes I could play I had better get on with it before the backlog got too big. I have come to think there are a number of people who post to the tunes database here who are rather good at using notation to sketch out the way a tune goes.
# Posted on December 11th 2011 by David50
Re: Reading music
David, notation is good for showing the sequence of notes, but there's a lot more to a tune than that. Keep this distinction in mind and you'll gain a useful tool without doing any harm to yourself.
# Posted on December 11th 2011 by Will Harmon
Re: Reading music
Will, the file I am building up is of tunes I already play. The skill I am admiring in some people is that they can notate in a way that does not obscure, and may invite, other ways of playing a tune. That is in contrast to some who leave me thinking that there is detail which obscures the general picture.
For the benefit of the OP. See (especially ) the part starting " On the Relative Merits of..." on his page
http://www.thesession.org/members/display/58
# Posted on December 11th 2011 by David50
Re: Reading music
ethical blend, Isn't life difficult enough for the poor moles of this world, without folks like you putting dots on their backs?
minijackpot Perhaps you have answered your own question!
# Posted on December 11th 2011 by Backer
Re: Reading music
David, whether someone notates the bones of a tune or a clutch of details in every measure likely says more about what the purpose is. Sometimes I write out the bones so a friend can see the basic melody line. Other times I include all sorts of details, to share a specific setting of a tune, or to show options for articulating and varying the phrases.
# Posted on December 11th 2011 by Will Harmon
Re: Reading music
Come to think of it another thing that one gets used to but which isn't obvious to start with is that notation often shows things that one instrument might do but another probably wouldn't and that if learning by ear one instrument may do things that another can't or usually wouldn't. Posts on the web where someone say, for example, "that triplet is hard on the flure" and get a response of "its a fiddlers thing, do something different, try this" are thin on the ground but can come as a great relief.
# Posted on December 11th 2011 by David50
Re: Reading music
Yep. I'll often do up one transcription for a flute-playing friend, and another for fiddlers and yet another for plectrum players.
# Posted on December 11th 2011 by Will Harmon
Re: Reading music
Ormepipes,
Listening and imitation is necessary and sufficient to learn to play properly. Notation is neither necessary nor sufficient. That’s why the new learner should prioritise learning by listening and imitation.
# Posted on December 11th 2011 by Bernie 29
Re: Reading music
Will, yes fine. Crossed. I think that 's why many of the 'main' versions on the database here are not fit for purpose - they were notated for different purposes.
# Posted on December 11th 2011 by David50
Re: Reading music
Also, the Breathnach books (Ceol Rince na hEireann) capture a lot of articulations for specific instruments, depending on who Breathnach got a tune from.
# Posted on December 11th 2011 by Will Harmon
Re: Reading music
Capayne,
Tell us some of the tunes you want to learn please.
# Posted on December 11th 2011 by Bernie 29
Re: Reading music
@ Backer: yes, those moleskine notebooks are great. I've got a few. Don't know why, really, except that, funnily enough given Will's cpomments above, I do have one for primarily fiddle tunes and one for those I've picked up on flute.
# Posted on December 11th 2011 by ethical blend
Re: Reading music
Bernie,
"Listening and imitation is necessary and sufficient to learn to play properly" - I don't recall saying they were'nt - provided that you are listening to a "propper" version of course - and who defines that? Is that your job?
"Notation is neither necessary nor sufficient." - I don't recall saying they were.
What part of "Learning to read music from dots or ABC's is a skill that ASSISTS you in the playing of this or any other music. No, its not the B all and end all either, but it can help lots." were you struggling with mate?
And who mentioned using notation in a session? - not I, nor the OP.
# Posted on December 11th 2011 by ormepipes
Re: Reading music
Gosh
# Posted on December 11th 2011 by Joseph Tailyour
To read or not to read, that is a matter of free choice, to ignore or not
"Sheet music and slow-down boxes ~ I'm convinced that ~ they get you playing badly, early and make it hard to progress beyond that." - Jon Kiparsky
Maybe for some, I have known and had to deal with such addicts...
Bold blanket statements that music notation has no place in ITM, that's not even funny any more, just tragic and sad. Maybe it's true for a few...
# Posted on December 12th 2011 by ceolachan
I didn't do Jon's quote justice in the above edit, so here it is complete, having accidentally lost his "for the beginner" in the cut and paste ~
"Sheet music and slow-down boxes feel like they help, but I'm convinced that this is an illusion. For the beginner, they get you playing badly, early, and make it hard to progress beyond that." - Jon Kiparsky
The resource isn't at fault. It is the person who misuses or abuses, usually out of ignorance...
# Posted on December 12th 2011 by ceolachan
Re: Reading music
Fintan Vallely's entry regarding the *Three Ages of Music* in "The Companion to Irish Traditional Music" might be appropriate at this point in the discussion.
imho
# Posted on December 12th 2011 by ain't fluffed
Re: Reading music
"The resource isn't at fault. It is the person who misuses or abuses, usually out of ignorance..."
I couldn't agree more. And to try to learn this music, as a beginner, from sheet music, is misuse, usually out of ignorance. This ignorance is unfortunate because it leads people into a blind alley where they can waste years, I've seen it happen many times and in fact I did myself. If you search enough on this site, you'll find old posts from me defending sheet music as just another way to learn tunes. I was wrong, and when I figured out that I had been wrong, my playing improved immensely, almost overnight.
It's completely preventable, and there's no reason why I should see people in sessions fumbling blindly through tunes like the Wind that Shakes the Barley simply because they have devoted their time to training their eyes and their fingers at the expense of their ears.
I know that this advice is not one that the beginner wants to hear, and I know that it's advice that the beginner will ignore, but I still believe it's true: for the beginner, sheet music and slow-down boxes are short, blind alleys. This does not mean that sheet music is evil or harmful in general; someone who knows the music will be able to dig tunes out of books and get music out of them, and this is a good way to re-introduce old tunes that would otherwise not be played. This is a good thing, but it's not something a beginner should be trying to do. The beginner should be getting the music into their head, and that is done via the ears, not the eyes.
At least, that's what I've come to believe.
# Posted on December 12th 2011 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Reading music
Slow downers are great :-p . I give them much of the credit for me being able to hear *some* of the stuff talked about in that nearby 'Reels' discussion that *some* people who claim years of experience seem not to be able to hear. They are also good for the subtleties timing of, say, Martin Hayes' feetl. Hearing is better (or at least an essential addtion) to being told. Several of 'old-timers' are quoted as running their record turntables slow.
# Posted on December 12th 2011 by David50
Re: Reading music
# Posted on December 12th 2011 by David50
Re: Reading music
"The resource isn't at fault. It is the person who misuses or abuses, usually out of ignorance..."
I think it's important not to chastise ignorance. There's a feeling that an ignorant person is somehow at fault for their ignorance. It's the essence of snobbery really. (with the proviso, of course, that willful ignorance shall be chastised where ever found).
# Posted on December 12th 2011 by ...
Re: Reading music
You'll find here is so interesting.
# Posted on December 12th 2011 by TachellGrace
Re: Reading music
"I've NEVER seen anybody using dots at a session."
I have. I've seen a guy using tunepal to identify a tune, and then try to play along by following the sheet music. Sounded awful, even when tunepal got the identification right, and he didn't always notice when it didn't.
# Posted on December 12th 2011 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Reading music
"I think it's important not to chastise ignorance."
It's fun to chastise ignorance, but how often to we take the time to indulge in gratuitous apostrophe these days?
O ignorance, thou misbegotten lout, you confirm the fool in his folly and succour the sanctimonious. You kill the weak and enfeeble the strong. You prolong sickness and ravish away health. You are a creature of dark places, and mobs, and the internet. You are possessed of but one virtue: it is the ceaseless drive to be free of you that creates all knowledge.
# Posted on December 12th 2011 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Reading music
llig!? ~
Are you suddenly studying for the clergy? This is like black needing white, joy needing sorrow, and the need for ignorance so we can appreciate the contrary...
Jon - "- to try to learn this music, as a beginner, from sheet music, is misuse, usually out of ignorance"
Yup!
llig?! ~
Now for a sweeping statement that is likely true - - -
There is no one in Irish Traditional Music that hasn't learned from and benefited from notated music, not a one - directly or indirectly...
# Posted on December 12th 2011 by ceolachan
Re: Reading music
We can all look forward to the development of Kindle-dot, the way forward in sight reading...........and for sessioneers, the Kindle session rack, which holds up to eight Kindle-dots in a secure, easy to read configuration. All pre loaded with at least 17 versions of each of the 15000 tunes, and a Kindle pre-loader which is controled by the "Session Leader" to pick out the sets. Woe betides any non-readers who just drop in for a few tunes. Then theres the I-strum, the I-beat, and for fiddlers the I-scratch, which has slurs, and double stops and bad tempered remarks generated at random.
# Posted on December 12th 2011 by Backer
Re: Reading music
Or the iSurly Piper, which generates even more slurs and bad tempered remarks along with out of tune regulators, but without the double-stop feature. Best to get with the repair patch iReed, although this is prone to crashing as well. In my experience, iWhisky is usually the only thing that makes the software run.
# Posted on December 12th 2011 by DrSilverSpear