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Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
When my wife can't attend our local session she is much missed because she's a good concertina player, but also because she remembers the names of tunes and the notes that start them. I'm not usually missed very much, but that's probably because I play banjo, right?
However, it's unclear because I'm also pretty bad at remembering the names of tunes, and thus have difficulty in starting a given tune.
She learns the tunes by reading the notes, and I learn them by listening to the tune over and over. Does anyone know if there is an association between method of learning and ability to retain detail about a tune? Are there any effective ways of remembering tune names and how to start them?
Thanks, and I apologize if this topic has been discussed previously.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
To my knowledge there is no formula, and no correlation between how you've learned the tune, with remembering the title(s). My guess is your wife just remembers stuff better than you. Keep that in mind during your next argument
I try and remember tune names as best I can, because I find it to be interesting trivia and occasionally useful. I am exclusively an ear learner - not that that has any added meaning or value in answering your question.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I learn equally from written and audio resources and find no difference in what I remember. My memory of tunes is, and for me must be, kinetic; otherwise, I'd never be able to play at tempo. I would be trying to remember notes, which IMO is not a good idea no matter how you actually aquired the tune. I make it a point to remember titles because if I don't keep them sorted, I lose all track of what I know.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I find that learning a tune is quicker using dots but it doesn't seem to 'stick' in my mind very long, learning the tune by ear is harder work for me but in the long run I remember more details and remember the tune years later, it must 'go deeper' into my subconcious.... so my phsycoanalist tells me
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I think people who learn from the dots are more likely to know the names of tunes because they always have the name in front of them when they're learning the tune. If I hear a tune I don't know at a session, I might learn it, but I'll never learn the name unless I ask for it. If I'm reading the tune, there it is - the name is the first thing I see.
Anecdotally, when I mostly learned tunes from dots, I always had to remember the name of a tune in order to play it. That's going away now, but in exchange I find it's not as easy to remember a name when I hear the tune. I think this is a good trade. I can still remember tune names, of course. I just can't always remember which name goes with which tune or vice versa.
Ailin - when you say kinetic, do you mean you remember tunes as sequences of motions?
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Needing the name of the tune in order to play it is a fascinating phenomenon - a form of self-imposed psychological dependence, or convoluted context-dependent recall. Needing a linguistic cue to generate the recall of the first sequence of (visually-encoded) information, which in turn stimulates aural recall. It seems like very hard work when all you need to learn tunes is to listen. Nobody of a reasonably competent standard could possibly know the name of every tune they actually know, surely? That's a genuine question, by the way.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Aye, I used to struggle to remember the tune if I could not recall the name. Nowadays I have a bugger of a time remembering names but can usually remember the notes.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Ailin - when you say kinetic, do you mean you remember tunes as sequences of motions?
# Posted on January 3rd 2012 by Jon Kiparsky
Yes. My fingers know where they are going with no conscious prompting on my part. I "think" the tune and the fingers find their way much faster than I could ever guide them.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I often need the name of the tune to really lock in and play it. There are a few exceptions, tunes that I don’t know the name of and just know as “that tune”.
Once at a session, a very drunk woman with smeared makeup tottered up to slurringly announce to the group that it was her 20th wedding anniversary (a wide, vague gesture indicated her hubby with his head down on the bar) and would we please play ‘an Irish love song?”
We all looked at each other, some folks proposed Haste to the Wedding. One of the leaders struck up the tune, and we joined in but I found myself struggling. I knew the tune, but it wasn’t the one I’d expected. It took me the whole first time through the A part to realize it was “I Buried My Wife and Danced On Her Grave.”
The lady wept, thanked us, and woke up her husband to buy us a round.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
One of those great transitional session moments (at least for me) happened a few years ago when I was sitting in a really good session and several tunes flew by that my fingers knew before my mind did. It happened several more times that evening much to my delight and surprise. When the night was over, I found I had finally bridged that mental gap of needing to know the name before I could play the tune. I've been by told by many long-time players this happens to everyone who hangs around this stuff long enough.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Nice story fidkid. And JNE might have a point about the wife just being a bit better at recall! And I think Jon has a point that referring to sheet music helps you remember the name because it is there at the top of the page.
(I guess I'm just feeling agreeable today.)
The other night I was at a different session, and kept playing along with things I knew, but couldn't think of the names. In my home pub, I think I would have been able to name all of them. Different context seemed to throw my brain off track.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
i'm told that in education theory the hot thing the last decade or so is apparently "learning styles." and people who they call "visual" learners (in this case they mean "visual" as in, written material) do tend to be analytical logic types (including in artistic fields) who are strong at mastering and recalling detail and verbal nuances. that is what i've been since birth, and it does seem to be that my tune-name retention started out extremely strong but has been slipping with each year that passes since i began limiting my irish music study to ear-learning.....it's still not bad, but it's not as spot-on as i usually am with data i can see in my mind's eye....
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
*Venting* At the last session I went to, one guy played this super cool tune. Weeeeellll, out of the 8 of us that were there, none of us knew the tune name. I recorded, but when I checked my phone, the recording was gone. I'm beginning to get a little obssesive over it. Whatever the case, I make an effort to remember names and take note of them, because like said above, I could forget my whole repertoire.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
When I'm struggling to recall a tune and how it starts, I often try to get into the second part to then lead back into the tune proper. Also often have to think of other tunes I might play it with but I'm sure these are both common 'strategies'.
I have often learnt a tune from a session or personal recording, looked up the tune title - in these instances, I can still play the tunes if I keep at them but rarely remember the names.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
When I was first starting out and was learning from sheet music, I would think of the name of a tune and then try to remember the notes for it. Now a decade-plus later, with most of my learning by ear, I find that I tend to remember the notes of a tune, and then if I'm lucky at some point the name will come to me. Frequently I have to play through the tune a time or two to remember the name.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
"I often try to get into the second part to then lead back into the tune proper"
I do that as well. This can lead to trouble, when people hear the B part of one and think it's the A part of another, or they leap into it and then we don't know where to end it up.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I stated earlier that my memory of tunes works kinetically, which is to say that I "think" the tune and my fingers know where to go without my having to consciously guide them or remember each note. Someone asked how that affects my ability to play improvised variations. The answer is that it does not affect it at all. If I wish to add an ornament, I simply shift to that ornamnent; if I want to play a variation, I shift to that. These are conscious choices made a bar or two before I get there, but the actual playing of the variation is automatic. That's something that comes from experience. When I jam on popular music, I can pretty much play any melody that I know because I kinetically know the intervals and can thus pick out melodies at tempo of tunes I've never played before.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Interesting. I don't know if we're meaning the same thing, but I've had tunes I knew "kinetically", meaning that I knew them on, say, mandolin as a series of mandolin-type movements, but if I wanted to play the tune on the whistle, I'd have had to learn it fresh.
Needless to say this was totally useless to me, and since it seemed to me largely a product of learning by eye, it was a part of the reason why I started moving away from sheet music.
As I say, I don't know if this is exactly what you're talking about. It sounds like it might not be.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I see. My understanding of kinetic memory would have been closer to the idea of muscle memory, which it seems to me would be more of a prison, forcing a player to repeat the same patterns without any ability to improvise. Thinking the tune, consciously or subconsciously, seems to me to be an entirely different thing. I love finding myself playing a tune that I have no conscious recollection of having heard before. It's always a wonderful gift.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
"I love finding myself playing a tune that I have no conscious recollection of having heard before. It's always a wonderful gift."
It is that. I'll get that at a session sometimes - someone starts playing a tune, and I'm playing it, but I never learned it. Lovely.
I had a similar thing happen to me last weekend. I went to a friend's place on Friday, and a bunch of us played tunes all night. In the morning (early afternoon, if I'm honest about it) I picked up my flute and started playing a tune that I'd heard before but never learned. It was funny, too, before I even picked up the flute I heard that tune in my head and I felt my fingers playing it - I picked up the flute just to play that one tune, even though I don't think I'd ever played it through before.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Jon, I think we are talking about the same thing. If I attempted to play what I know on flute on another instrument, I'd be starting from scratch. Similarly, if I attempted a tune on flute in a different key, I'd also have to start all over. In fact, if I even wanted to play a tune on a Boehm flute that I already know, it would take time for me to adapt to the alternate fingering because my fingers know the way on an eight-key, not a Boehm. And to cap things off, it even takes me a little while to adapt to a keyless flute if I use, say, the Cnat key when I play the tune on my eight-key.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Really Ailin? How odd. I frequently play tunes on one instrument that I've learned on another and never played before on the one I'm now playing. No problem. And it's really common to find you have to play in different keys. I hardly even think about it. It took me a while to realise the other night that a tune that I normally play in Gmin we were playing in Amin.
Mind, that would be because I learn the tunes, and the way they sound. I don't believe that muscles, or fingers, have memory. I just know the tunes. Simpler that way.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
And, to answer the OP, I really wouldn't even like to hazzard a guess at the differences between different people learning tunes in different ways and whether that might have something to do with remembering them.
However, for me, I know that there are just a few tunes that I have learned from dots rather than from hearing them. Those are the ones that I trip up on. Anything I've learned by ear (the vast majority) just flows and I don't usually forget. Well, not before about 3:30 am at any rate!
I can't remember tune names though. I really try, but it seems that I have some sort of block on it. I just get confused with them and end up not knowing which is which. There's just a few that I know solidly. Generally, it's those ones that someone else gets wrong and gets all insistent about. Which makes me want to give up bothering to remember them at all.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
"I don't believe that muscles, or fingers, have memory". I could believe that an G roll is in "finger memory" in the sense that tying my shoelaces is in "finger memory" (and tying a necktie often isn't any more... )
But I am persuaded by the general description eb. I havent been at this long and I sometimes play (simple) tunes in the wrong key and don't notice until I come to something that I haven't "got my fingers round" (like an G roll that's become a need for a C roll)
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
EB, maybe you're just better than I am. I also learn tunes and the way they sound, and no the fingers don't have memory. To play kinetically is to play the same way you scratch your nose. You don't think about it, you simply have the impulse and the fingers know what to do without further guidance. However, if you normally scratch you nose with your forefinger and maybe it now has a bandage on it, you will use a bit more conscious thought to use an alternate finger. Or maybe not., All I can tell you is that I do. I don't think it's odd, in any event.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I should also point out that when I play popular music, I can play in any key with more or less the same dexterity on tunes I've never played before. ITM is much more complex, however, and I need to get comfortable with the fingering before I can play it at tempo.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I doubt I'm much better than you, if at all, Ailin. I'm kind of OK. Just with a different approach, I guess.
I can't say this is right or not, but I'd ask you to consider, Ailin, whether you are, in fact, thinking about the fingers too much when you play? If you forget the fingers and what notes are in the tune, just relax and play the tune itself, as you hear it in your head, maybe it would be easier. I mean, that's what I do. It didn't happen all at once. It took a sort of 'letting go' over a long period, but it's fine now.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Kinetic learning is simply learning where your fingers go instead of learning the tune. Very common way to teach beginners ("When you see the dot on the bottom line, you put your finger here, and when it's on the space above it you put your next finger down here...") but not very helpful in the long run.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I am not just being picky. It is fairly easy to find references to kinesthetic learning and get a feel for what people mean by it.
As a seperate comment - I think there is a difference between 'getting ones fingers round' an awkward bit of the tune to make it sound the way one wants and actual learning the tune by rehearsing the finger movements. The latter seems like learning a song by training ones throat.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
You can call it what you like. That's what Ailin's describing.
It's not like it's some sort of breakthrough in learning, it's just learning tunes by finger position. Old stuff. You probably did some of that yourself when you were starting out.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Jon, you are getting to caught up in terminology. Forget "kinetic." I just found that the easiest term to describe what I do. I learn the tune. Honest. I do not use any methodology whatsoever. I simply find that once I get the tune in my head, my fingers know where to go without conscious prompting. Once I learn a tune, whether by audio or written means, the fingers take over quite naturally, which is to say I don't consciously "remember' anything. The tune is simply there for me. I most certainly do not learn tunes by finger position. If that is the formal definition of kinetic, then that is not what I do. I called it kinetic because I find there is a direct line between the brain and the fingers that bypasses conscious thought. What you are describing sounds like position memorization, which requires constant conscious thought, no? If I forget how a tune begins, I generally don't find it by finger position. Rather I find it by remembering how the tune goes. My fingers can then take it from there.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Ailin, I drew the conclusion that "kinetic" (in your usage) means "learning tunes as sequences of finger motions and not as tunes" from your claims that this is what you do, and that you call this "kinetic". I didn't get it from any formal definition. As you recall, I was curious about your usage and I asked you if it meant that, and you said "yes", and you confirmed it several times. So if that's not what you mean when you use the word, it's at least what you said it meant when you were asked about it.
So this isn't about getting caught up in terminology or formal definitions, it's just me taking you at your word.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
... and, if "Once [you] learn a tune [...] the fingers take over quite naturally" etc, then I don't get why it might be a problem to play it in whatever key you want. 'Cos this latest statement sounds exactly like what I was saying.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
If we learn a tune in key X, by whatever means, and then play it in key Y without conscious thought then to use kinetic/kinesthetic to describe the process of playing it in key Y is misleading and a diversion from the interesting question in the OP.
To me the process of playing it in key Y seems to be the same as having learned the tune by eb's prefered method. Tune (notes, rhythm, dynamics etc) is in head, fingers know how to make different notes, rhytm, dynamics etc happen. But if they haven't done a particular combination before they may need a few goes at it to get it right.
I am currently reading through Daniel Levitin's "This is your brain on music" again. Somewhere in there is something about how the tune may be encoded in our heads. IIRC it is not as a sequence of notes and it is probably relevant to the OP.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I'll go with "embodied cognition" here as my fancy term of choice.
If I hear a sequence of notes, I can play it back on the pipes or whistle *without* conscious thought of where my fingers are going. This is true for mist musicians, I imagine, that the spatial layout of your instrument provides a framework for music conceptualisation.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Hmm. Or some internal concept is mapped onto the 'mechanics' of a particular instrument. That would fit with eb's recommendation of learning to sing the tune first.
I remember how some tunes start from how my fingers look when I start the tune. Probably a bad thing, but interesting because I can't see my fingers when playing flute.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
And I think that mapping to the instrument is part of what was meant by a recommendation from a member here to "think whistle" as part of the route to learning/playing by ear. It could have meant what TSS says, but I don't think so.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Anyway, Ben, the trick to being a "mist musician" is drinking enough beer during the course of the session that the world, and the music, becomes misty.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I think there's a learning period when you begin a new instrument and those neural connections have to be made, when you do have to consciously learn finger patterns. The sooner you get over that awkward phase, the better!
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
"I think there's a learning period when you begin a new instrument and those neural connections have to be made, when you do have to consciously learn finger patterns"
Sure - most people don't just pick up an instrument and know how to play it fro the start. But the way you learn those patterns is important. I learned them as names of notes: Play this string open and it's a D, put your finger here and it's an E, put your finger here for an F#, and so forth.
I'm starting to think that I'd have done better to learn the sounds first and then get the names of the notes later on.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
"I'm starting to think that I'd have done better to learn the sounds first and then get the names of the notes later on."
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by Jon Kiparsky
It doesn't much matter, really. That was my original point when I answered the OP. I learn from written music, where note values come into play, and I also learn from hearing a tune, where I don't have to think about the specific notes I'm playing - I do it by ear. However, (to answer a previous post) part of the process of learning a tune is learning how to play it on a specific instrument. The fact that, once the tune is learned, I can remember the tune kinetically (if I may continue to use that term) is not transferable to another instrument (unless it's flute to whistle or vice-versa) because the fingering is now different. The kinetic part comes from the association of finger movement with the process of learning the tune. It is not a conscious process, but rather a result of learning the tune and learning the fingering at the same time. Once accomplished, the memory of the tune automatically triggers the memory of the fingering.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
" However, (to answer a previous post) part of the process of learning a tune is learning how to play it on a specific instrument. The fact that, once the tune is learned, I can remember the tune kinetically (if I may continue to use that term) is not transferable to another instrument (unless it's flute to whistle or vice-versa) because the fingering is now different."
I'm still confused by what you want to mean with this. To me, knowing the fingerings and knowing the tune are quite different things.
It looks to me like you don't make a distinction between the two - is this correct?
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
"I'm still confused by what you want to mean with this. To me, knowing the fingerings and knowing the tune are quite different things.
It looks to me like you don't make a distinction between the two - is this correct?"
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by Jon Kiparsky
I don't know. What do you mean by "knowing the tune"? When you know the tune, what do you know? Is it a melody you can now hum? If so, I am learning something. As I've said before, I can do that with pop tunes. If I can think a tune, I can play it, but I've never found that to be the case with ITM, except with songs, slow airs, and some hornpipes. Reels and jigs are just too complex for me to learn without working out the fingering. I guess I could be in the minority on this, but I just can't learn a tune without having played it unless I've heard it so many times that it becomes ingrained, but that would take too long compared to just learning how to play it.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
"I think there's a learning period when you begin a new instrument and those neural connections have to be made, when you do have to consciously learn finger patterns" TSS
Yes. But not just a new instrument. I have known where C natural and F natural where on a whistle for decades and transferred them easily to a keyless flute and don't think about them. Cross-fingered G# for tunes in A was completely new and required that learning phase; for new tunes I often still have to think about it but sometimes it just happens. Bb is currently completely new and tunes with that (all two of them) are still an excercise. However, on mandolin my fingers 'knew' where those notes were going to be but were not used to going there.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
"What do you mean by "knowing the tune"?"
I mean being able to "play the tune back" in your head - to hear it in your head, without reference to any particular instrument. For me, this is very different from being able to simply execute the finger motions of a tune. A key marker of "knowing the tune" for me is the ability to play it on any instrument I know. It might not be a great rendition if I've never played the tune on that instrument before, but it'll be the tune. There are still tunes that I learned "kinetically" (as I understand your use of the term) which I can't play except on the instrument I learned them on. I don't really feel that I know those tunes, because if I try to play them on some other instrument, I won't be able to do it.
For example, I can play the Green Mountain on the box without any trouble, but I'd have a hard time playing it on the mandolin, and to do so I'd have to translate it from the box, so it would be slow and awkward. On the other hand, The Maid Behind the Bar - a very similar tune - is easy for me on any instrument, not because I've learned it on all of the instruments but because I know the tune and not just the fingerings.
Does that help?
"I just can't learn a tune without having played it unless I've heard it so many times that it becomes ingrained, but that would take too long compared to just learning how to play it."
This, to me, would be learning the tune. "Just learning how to play it" would be what I mean by "learning the fingerings", I suppose.
One difference that I notice is that if I know the tune, I don't have to fine "entry points" for it - I can stop and start at will in the tune. If I'm interrupted while playing a tune that I know only as fingerings, I have to come back in just at the start of a part or a phrase.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
"One difference that I notice is that if I know the tune, I don't have to fine "entry points" for it - I can stop and start at will in the tune" Yes I am coming to think that is important. On flute it shows as being able to experiment with breathing places (or clear a bubble of spit from my lips etc) and come back in properly. On parts of tunes where I can't do that I suspect I am just following a sequence of notes.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Well, you're one up on me, Jon. I don't do it your way, so we do have different methods. If you can do what you describe, more power to you. It seems to me that it would take much longer, but if you absorb tunes that quickly, you certainly have my respect and admiration.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I don't say I get them quickly! It takes a while to get the tune in my head that way, especially if I only hear them occasionally at the session. I can get them faster if I make a very small playlist with the same tune in about five different sets, and repeat that over and over, but that's too much like work. I think I learn them faster than I did before, but that's not really what I'm after.
What it really gets me, as I said, is flexibility. I don't have to re-learn tunes, and that's nice. Also, I get the "gift from the fairies" every once in a while - a tune that I never learned, but I can just play it. That's especially nice. Doesn't happen often, but oftener now than before.
I also don't think this is something that I can do that you can't - I didn't think I could learn this way until I decided that I probably could, and made the effort. I don't think I'm very special, so I suspect you can do this as well, if you want to.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Well, you do puzzle me, Ailin. In your bio, you say (having said that you've been playing ITM for 25 years):
"After all these years, my collection of tunes is still modest, mostly because I'm picky about what I learn."
But now you seem to me to be saying that, of those, presumably relatively few, tunes, you actually know hardly any. (Well, not by my definition of knowing a tune, at any rate.)
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Good call, EB; I should update that. What I said still holds true, except in the intervining years, I've taken to learning more tunes than I was doing at the time I did the profile.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Interesting. There's also that word "memorize" which seems to differ connotatively from "learn", although the denotations seem to be about the same.
I really don't want to turn this into an argument about who's got the best way to learn tunes, though. The original question has a lot of meat on it, and part of that is figuring out what are the ways people actually use to learn this stuff. We don't do that by picking on Ailin for what he does.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
"We don't do that by picking on Ailin for what he does."
What, that's just an incidental bonus?
I am, of course, kidding. I didn't consider - probably should have done - that your profile might have been out of date enough to be considered obsolete, Ailin. Sorry about that.
JK - I agree that there's *loads* of meat in the OP. But I'm also really interested in this apparently minor, but IMO in fact important, distinction between "memorising" a tune, being able to store the fingerings in memory, and actually *knowing* the tune. This latter means not only being able to pay the tune back in your head, but even at times being unable to stop the thing coming back into play at irregular intervals. When I "know" a tune, under that definition, I can play it on any instrument I know how to play, whether I've previously played it on that instrument or not. But "knowing" a tune also means, to me, knowing all sorts of ways that tune might get from point A in it to point B.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
>"But "knowing" a tune also means, to me, knowing all sorts of ways that tune might get from point A in it to point B."
True enough. How many ways can you write down the first part of Dunmore Lasses? Probably half a dozen without too much effort and staying pretty simple. There's only the one tune, though, and each of those is one way of playing that one tune. Learn the one that's on this site:
and you've learned one fingering for this tune. But if you learn the tune itself, you have as many ways to play it as you can come up with. And, now that I think of it, none of them are "variations". "Variations" suggests that one fingering (maybe this one, maybe another one) is the "standard" and the others are clever things that are like it. I think that's not right.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
EB, I took absolutely no offense, It's a fair cop as far as it goes. When I started in on this journey, there was no internet and very few resources. If I were starting now, it would be a very different story. One of the first sets I learned once I could find my way around a simple-system flute was the Bothy Band set that culminates in The Kid on the Mountain. Great set, and I still love it, but quite a challenge to learn. I took it phrase by phrase, which is still how I learn today. Mind you, I was already a flute player when I began, but this music was still new to me and I still didn't know the difference between the melody line and the ornaments. It intrigues me that anyone can actually "know" tunes as opposed to "learning" them in order to play them. I don't know if you and Jon were raised with this music, but I would be interested to know how many people here acquire new tunes the way you two do if they weren't. Great discussion.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I think when someone knows a tune it means they know what to do. Some of my best friends are also those who surprise me the most. But I'm not out of sorts when it happens. In other words they can change things up in the most subtle of ways & still I know what to do next; even if this then surprises them . . . etc. To use a figure of speech it all happens without missing a beat.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I came to the music in my late teens. At the time I played guitar and harmonica and mandolin, lots of rock and roll, some around-the-campfire stuff, not very good at any of it. When I started listening to the stuff, I got a copy of O'Neills and started figuring out how to read it, because I thought that was how you did. Took me a long time to undo the damage from that, but I'm getting there.
I think all of the really good players that I've played with have learned tunes in the way I'm talking about, and most of them would look at me funny if I mentioned getting tunes out of a book. It wasn't a put-on, either - they would always got tunes off me, and I had to go and look up the tunes they played. Most of them could write out a tune in some way, but they just didn't think of them as written material, they thought of them as tunes. That was my first clue.
"When I started in on this journey, there was no internet and very few resources."
1987 or so? Sure there was the internet. No world wide whatever, no http protocol, but there was tons of internet. Most people didn't know about it, that's all. We call it "the good old days".
Let me tell you about my 300 baud modem and my dumb terminal some time...
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I started in 1983 - same year :"The Thistle & Shamrock" went nation-wide on public radio. I didn't get on the net until the '90s, and it's only in the last ten years or so that I have really been aware of the resources online for Irish. I found out about this site on my honeymoon in Hawaii (at a session, no less!) in 2004. I find most players do not play the settings in O'Neill's, but I have source books that serve me quite well. Of course, I only use the written version to get the basic tune structure, after which I work in my own variations and ornaments. If I play with a group that varies from what I do, I pick up their version or sit out. Happens rarely. I see the usefulness of being able to go from one instrument to another, but since I only play flute (having lost interest in whistle - maybe I should sell my Copeland?), I see no advantage to changing how I learn new tunes. I also use the Incredible Slow Downer for recorded tunes that I want.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I can't speak for what it's like to play more than one (non-wind) instrument, as I don't. But I find if I sing a tune in my head, I can work it out pretty quickly on the pipes. Like Jon, I didn't find this easy AT ALL the first few years I was playing, but decided it was something I needed to learn how to do, so I did it.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I started playing fiddle when I was 8. The object was to learn how to play classical, but I was lucky enough to have, as my first teacher, someone who taught people first by getting them to play some simple trad tunes - Welsh, as it happens, 'cos that's where I grew up. So I've always played both classical and trad (and loads of other stuff as well) and I've always picked things up by ear as well as being able to read music.
But, trust me, anyone can do it. I've seen it. You sort of, as I hinted above, have to 'let go'. Then keep practising doing that, and don't give up on it. And, eventually, it'll happen.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
This has been a good post.
Two of my session mates go through the process of writing the tune (variations) down in handwritten dots as part of the learning process, and it seems to make the tune names stick as well.
I learn myself tunes by ear and find it hard to get the name. I think the aural learning process feeds the brain with patterns that come in handy to get an intuitive feel of the music. It also freedom, and quite often I find myself playing (on my own) new tunes that is some kind of synthesis of what I have learned.
Therefore, in a session setting I have a wide repertoire when joining other people playing. However, when it comes to starting tunes, my learning approach can become a handicap.
I myself have over the years therefore been on the lookout for a way of connecting names to tunes and here´s what I´ve come up with based on advice and own trial and error:
1. Connect the name to a singable recognizeable fragment of the tune (preferably at the beginning). This will work two-ways both for starting tunes and for recognizing tunes being played by others. This works for me on the ones I´ve spent the effort on.
2. Use any opportunity to try to pin the name on the tune, in discussions, making lists, sets etc. Naturally, the more you aspire to know the names, the more names you will eventually learn. If you use names, eventually they will stick, and gradually it will (hopefully) become part of the learning process. I´m still struggling with this...mostly because I´m too lazy to adopt my friend´s writing approach, I suspect.
3. I´ve also tried advanced memory techniques associating ABCs fragments with objects and creating visual associations that incorporate the tune name. Although It works with great accuracy and can be fun
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
.. both the time spent on the coding and decoding part makes this no better than a memorized cheat sheet.... Rather spend the time enjoying the music....
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
TheSilverSpear, I don´t need a name to start the tunes that at a given moment crosses my mind ( I usually don´t have a clue whatever I am playing is named, but in order to be able to use my rational thinking to start a specific tune, I need some reference to it.
I haven´t found any other way than names or other word-alike associations (e.g. situations where you have picked up the specific tune) - i.e. associations that can be mapped into visual pictures - to map reference tunes into the logical part of the brain.
When following other playing the tune, it is the felling of recognizing the tune structure combined with intuition that makes me pick up the fiddle and join in, and names have no importance...
Usually, when playing and leading sets, I only know in the split-second before the next tune how the next tune sounds like. The aural memory is a to me chain of musical associations.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
...if you ask me if if I play the maid behind the bar, I would say yes, as well as most commonly played tunes.
If you asked me how to play it, I would go blank.
I have played the tunes so times in sessions that I have not invested in neither connecting the name to the tune nor have the desire to start them.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Around here, at least, nobody says "I'm going to play The Maid Behind The Bar, and the Bank Of Ireland, and the High Reel" - they just play them. I agree with ethical blend; I don't know why you're going to all this bother over the names.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
"in order to be able to use my rational thinking to start a specific tune, I need some reference to it." Is it not rational to think about the start of the tune? That seems to work for me. If I have the tune in my head & can sing it I'm not sure why there is a need for anything else.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
<<Around here, at least, nobody says "I'm going to play The Maid Behind The Bar, and the Bank Of Ireland, and the High Reel" - they just play them. >> But that's not the situation in the OP. That is "I think I will play The Maid behind the Bar, now, how does I start ?"
I am not drawn to FiddleTramp's approach, but as it happens that is the one tune where I do something like that - I always hear the rhythm of the ends of the parts as "maid behind the bar" so I lilt it in my head and then loop back to the start.
A problem I have when I remember the first few notes (as names or finger positions, not as a sound) is that I am inconsistant about remembering it from the first beat or from a 'pick-up' (which I may change depending on the context). If I get it wrong I start in a daft key.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Tonya, I think the problem is having the tune in ones head but not being able to find it and knowing if one can find the loose end and tug it the rest will follow.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I suppose if you ever want to play a tune that's called X, you've got a problem, that's true. But I don't usually care if the tune is called The Vicar's Special Undergarment or The Naughty Barmaid, when I start a tune I'm thinking the tune. Later on, someone might ask me the name, and then I have to work back to it, but i's not even on my mind when I play a tune, and I'm really not sure why it would matter.
I do find that I get confused by tunes that start similarly and go off in different directions. I can easily find myself plotting out a set that requires the ending of Bank of Ireland, and bollixing myself up by playing Star of Munster, but that's nothing to do with the names. Same happens with the obvious pairings - Cooley's/Virginia Reel, or Drunken Pigeon On the Landlady's Gate. But I don't think I could ever be thinking of the Maid Behind the Bar and start into The Wise Maid or the Sligo Maid, just because the titles are similar.
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
David50, I was asking in the context of Fiddle Tramp using references such as the name of the tune, word alike associations, visual pictures . . . instead of something in the tune itself ~ the actual start of the tune. That's part of my process in getting to know a tune is to be sure I can begin the tune. I don't know how to explain it but when I do it I'm not thinking about the title or pictures. Perhaps some visuals of dancers, but mainly just the tune. And hopefully from the beginning. Sometimes I want to start certain tunes with the B part. But, most people don't like when you do that in a session.
Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
When my wife can't attend our local session she is much missed because she's a good concertina player, but also because she remembers the names of tunes and the notes that start them. I'm not usually missed very much, but that's probably because I play banjo, right?
However, it's unclear because I'm also pretty bad at remembering the names of tunes, and thus have difficulty in starting a given tune.
She learns the tunes by reading the notes, and I learn them by listening to the tune over and over. Does anyone know if there is an association between method of learning and ability to retain detail about a tune? Are there any effective ways of remembering tune names and how to start them?
Thanks, and I apologize if this topic has been discussed previously.
# Posted on January 3rd 2012 by dfost
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
To my knowledge there is no formula, and no correlation between how you've learned the tune, with remembering the title(s). My guess is your wife just remembers stuff better than you. Keep that in mind during your next argument
I try and remember tune names as best I can, because I find it to be interesting trivia and occasionally useful. I am exclusively an ear learner - not that that has any added meaning or value in answering your question.
# Posted on January 3rd 2012 by Jusa Nutter Eejit
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I learn equally from written and audio resources and find no difference in what I remember. My memory of tunes is, and for me must be, kinetic; otherwise, I'd never be able to play at tempo. I would be trying to remember notes, which IMO is not a good idea no matter how you actually aquired the tune. I make it a point to remember titles because if I don't keep them sorted, I lose all track of what I know.
# Posted on January 3rd 2012 by Ailin
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I find that learning a tune is quicker using dots but it doesn't seem to 'stick' in my mind very long, learning the tune by ear is harder work for me but in the long run I remember more details and remember the tune years later, it must 'go deeper' into my subconcious.... so my phsycoanalist tells me
# Posted on January 3rd 2012 by Atk
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I think people who learn from the dots are more likely to know the names of tunes because they always have the name in front of them when they're learning the tune. If I hear a tune I don't know at a session, I might learn it, but I'll never learn the name unless I ask for it. If I'm reading the tune, there it is - the name is the first thing I see.
Anecdotally, when I mostly learned tunes from dots, I always had to remember the name of a tune in order to play it. That's going away now, but in exchange I find it's not as easy to remember a name when I hear the tune. I think this is a good trade. I can still remember tune names, of course. I just can't always remember which name goes with which tune or vice versa.
Ailin - when you say kinetic, do you mean you remember tunes as sequences of motions?
# Posted on January 3rd 2012 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Needing the name of the tune in order to play it is a fascinating phenomenon - a form of self-imposed psychological dependence, or convoluted context-dependent recall. Needing a linguistic cue to generate the recall of the first sequence of (visually-encoded) information, which in turn stimulates aural recall. It seems like very hard work when all you need to learn tunes is to listen. Nobody of a reasonably competent standard could possibly know the name of every tune they actually know, surely? That's a genuine question, by the way.
# Posted on January 3rd 2012 by Dragut Reis
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I am pretty good at tune names actually. I would guess I could name 95% of what I have.
# Posted on January 3rd 2012 by Prof. Prlwytzkofski
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
You are more dedicated to the history and development of the music than most, in fairness.
# Posted on January 3rd 2012 by Dragut Reis
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Also, it's not the same thing as needing to recall the name of the tune before you can play it either, is it?
# Posted on January 3rd 2012 by Dragut Reis
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I actually have a touch of that, it used to be stronger but I do seem to need to somehow identify a tune when someone else starts it.
# Posted on January 3rd 2012 by Prof. Prlwytzkofski
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Aye, I used to struggle to remember the tune if I could not recall the name. Nowadays I have a bugger of a time remembering names but can usually remember the notes.
# Posted on January 4th 2012 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Ailin - when you say kinetic, do you mean you remember tunes as sequences of motions?
# Posted on January 3rd 2012 by Jon Kiparsky
Yes. My fingers know where they are going with no conscious prompting on my part. I "think" the tune and the fingers find their way much faster than I could ever guide them.
# Posted on January 4th 2012 by Ailin
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
How does that affect your ability to play improvised variations?
# Posted on January 4th 2012 by Dragut Reis
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I often need the name of the tune to really lock in and play it. There are a few exceptions, tunes that I don’t know the name of and just know as “that tune”.
Once at a session, a very drunk woman with smeared makeup tottered up to slurringly announce to the group that it was her 20th wedding anniversary (a wide, vague gesture indicated her hubby with his head down on the bar) and would we please play ‘an Irish love song?”
We all looked at each other, some folks proposed Haste to the Wedding. One of the leaders struck up the tune, and we joined in but I found myself struggling. I knew the tune, but it wasn’t the one I’d expected. It took me the whole first time through the A part to realize it was “I Buried My Wife and Danced On Her Grave.”
The lady wept, thanked us, and woke up her husband to buy us a round.
# Posted on January 4th 2012 by fidkid
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
One of those great transitional session moments (at least for me) happened a few years ago when I was sitting in a really good session and several tunes flew by that my fingers knew before my mind did. It happened several more times that evening much to my delight and surprise. When the night was over, I found I had finally bridged that mental gap of needing to know the name before I could play the tune. I've been by told by many long-time players this happens to everyone who hangs around this stuff long enough.
# Posted on January 4th 2012 by Jusa Nutter Eejit
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Nice story fidkid. And JNE might have a point about the wife just being a bit better at recall! And I think Jon has a point that referring to sheet music helps you remember the name because it is there at the top of the page.
(I guess I'm just feeling agreeable today.)
The other night I was at a different session, and kept playing along with things I knew, but couldn't think of the names. In my home pub, I think I would have been able to name all of them. Different context seemed to throw my brain off track.
# Posted on January 4th 2012 by AlBrown
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
i'm told that in education theory the hot thing the last decade or so is apparently "learning styles." and people who they call "visual" learners (in this case they mean "visual" as in, written material) do tend to be analytical logic types (including in artistic fields) who are strong at mastering and recalling detail and verbal nuances. that is what i've been since birth, and it does seem to be that my tune-name retention started out extremely strong but has been slipping with each year that passes since i began limiting my irish music study to ear-learning.....it's still not bad, but it's not as spot-on as i usually am with data i can see in my mind's eye....
# Posted on January 4th 2012 by ceemonster
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
some say you play tunes over and over again in your sleep, thus developing a muscle memory of them.
# Posted on January 4th 2012 by darach
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
*Venting* At the last session I went to, one guy played this super cool tune. Weeeeellll, out of the 8 of us that were there, none of us knew the tune name. I recorded, but when I checked my phone, the recording was gone. I'm beginning to get a little obssesive over it. Whatever the case, I make an effort to remember names and take note of them, because like said above, I could forget my whole repertoire.
# Posted on January 4th 2012 by fiddlelearner
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
When I'm struggling to recall a tune and how it starts, I often try to get into the second part to then lead back into the tune proper. Also often have to think of other tunes I might play it with but I'm sure these are both common 'strategies'.
I have often learnt a tune from a session or personal recording, looked up the tune title - in these instances, I can still play the tunes if I keep at them but rarely remember the names.
# Posted on January 4th 2012 by the wounded hussar
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
When I was first starting out and was learning from sheet music, I would think of the name of a tune and then try to remember the notes for it. Now a decade-plus later, with most of my learning by ear, I find that I tend to remember the notes of a tune, and then if I'm lucky at some point the name will come to me. Frequently I have to play through the tune a time or two to remember the name.
# Posted on January 4th 2012 by Sol Foster
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
"I often try to get into the second part to then lead back into the tune proper"
I do that as well. This can lead to trouble, when people hear the B part of one and think it's the A part of another, or they leap into it and then we don't know where to end it up.
# Posted on January 4th 2012 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
When my wife can't attend our local session ...I get to drink more and talk to the pretty ladies-woohoo!
# Posted on January 4th 2012 by saltcast
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I stated earlier that my memory of tunes works kinetically, which is to say that I "think" the tune and my fingers know where to go without my having to consciously guide them or remember each note. Someone asked how that affects my ability to play improvised variations. The answer is that it does not affect it at all. If I wish to add an ornament, I simply shift to that ornamnent; if I want to play a variation, I shift to that. These are conscious choices made a bar or two before I get there, but the actual playing of the variation is automatic. That's something that comes from experience. When I jam on popular music, I can pretty much play any melody that I know because I kinetically know the intervals and can thus pick out melodies at tempo of tunes I've never played before.
# Posted on January 4th 2012 by Ailin
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Interesting. I don't know if we're meaning the same thing, but I've had tunes I knew "kinetically", meaning that I knew them on, say, mandolin as a series of mandolin-type movements, but if I wanted to play the tune on the whistle, I'd have had to learn it fresh.
Needless to say this was totally useless to me, and since it seemed to me largely a product of learning by eye, it was a part of the reason why I started moving away from sheet music.
As I say, I don't know if this is exactly what you're talking about. It sounds like it might not be.
# Posted on January 4th 2012 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I see. My understanding of kinetic memory would have been closer to the idea of muscle memory, which it seems to me would be more of a prison, forcing a player to repeat the same patterns without any ability to improvise. Thinking the tune, consciously or subconsciously, seems to me to be an entirely different thing. I love finding myself playing a tune that I have no conscious recollection of having heard before. It's always a wonderful gift.
# Posted on January 4th 2012 by Dragut Reis
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
x-post
# Posted on January 4th 2012 by Dragut Reis
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
"I love finding myself playing a tune that I have no conscious recollection of having heard before. It's always a wonderful gift."
It is that. I'll get that at a session sometimes - someone starts playing a tune, and I'm playing it, but I never learned it. Lovely.
I had a similar thing happen to me last weekend. I went to a friend's place on Friday, and a bunch of us played tunes all night. In the morning (early afternoon, if I'm honest about it) I picked up my flute and started playing a tune that I'd heard before but never learned. It was funny, too, before I even picked up the flute I heard that tune in my head and I felt my fingers playing it - I picked up the flute just to play that one tune, even though I don't think I'd ever played it through before.
# Posted on January 4th 2012 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I love this music. What do people who don't play do with themselves?
# Posted on January 5th 2012 by Dragut Reis
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Watch TeeVee. We don't have one, that's why we can spend two hours a night playing
I know, I can't imagine my life without this music.
# Posted on January 5th 2012 by dfost
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Jon, I think we are talking about the same thing. If I attempted to play what I know on flute on another instrument, I'd be starting from scratch. Similarly, if I attempted a tune on flute in a different key, I'd also have to start all over. In fact, if I even wanted to play a tune on a Boehm flute that I already know, it would take time for me to adapt to the alternate fingering because my fingers know the way on an eight-key, not a Boehm. And to cap things off, it even takes me a little while to adapt to a keyless flute if I use, say, the Cnat key when I play the tune on my eight-key.
# Posted on January 5th 2012 by Ailin
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Really Ailin? How odd. I frequently play tunes on one instrument that I've learned on another and never played before on the one I'm now playing. No problem. And it's really common to find you have to play in different keys. I hardly even think about it. It took me a while to realise the other night that a tune that I normally play in Gmin we were playing in Amin.
Mind, that would be because I learn the tunes, and the way they sound. I don't believe that muscles, or fingers, have memory. I just know the tunes. Simpler that way.
# Posted on January 5th 2012 by ethical blend
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
And, to answer the OP, I really wouldn't even like to hazzard a guess at the differences between different people learning tunes in different ways and whether that might have something to do with remembering them.
However, for me, I know that there are just a few tunes that I have learned from dots rather than from hearing them. Those are the ones that I trip up on. Anything I've learned by ear (the vast majority) just flows and I don't usually forget. Well, not before about 3:30 am at any rate!
I can't remember tune names though. I really try, but it seems that I have some sort of block on it. I just get confused with them and end up not knowing which is which. There's just a few that I know solidly. Generally, it's those ones that someone else gets wrong and gets all insistent about. Which makes me want to give up bothering to remember them at all.
# Posted on January 5th 2012 by ethical blend
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
"I don't believe that muscles, or fingers, have memory". I could believe that an G roll is in "finger memory" in the sense that tying my shoelaces is in "finger memory" (and tying a necktie often isn't any more... )
But I am persuaded by the general description eb. I havent been at this long and I sometimes play (simple) tunes in the wrong key and don't notice until I come to something that I haven't "got my fingers round" (like an G roll that's become a need for a C roll)
# Posted on January 5th 2012 by David50
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
(spot the clue that I originally had A roll)
# Posted on January 5th 2012 by David50
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
EB, maybe you're just better than I am. I also learn tunes and the way they sound, and no the fingers don't have memory. To play kinetically is to play the same way you scratch your nose. You don't think about it, you simply have the impulse and the fingers know what to do without further guidance. However, if you normally scratch you nose with your forefinger and maybe it now has a bandage on it, you will use a bit more conscious thought to use an alternate finger. Or maybe not., All I can tell you is that I do. I don't think it's odd, in any event.
# Posted on January 5th 2012 by Ailin
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I should also point out that when I play popular music, I can play in any key with more or less the same dexterity on tunes I've never played before. ITM is much more complex, however, and I need to get comfortable with the fingering before I can play it at tempo.
# Posted on January 5th 2012 by Ailin
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Can you point to some web resource that explains kinetic learning ?
# Posted on January 5th 2012 by David50
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I doubt I'm much better than you, if at all, Ailin. I'm kind of OK. Just with a different approach, I guess.
I can't say this is right or not, but I'd ask you to consider, Ailin, whether you are, in fact, thinking about the fingers too much when you play? If you forget the fingers and what notes are in the tune, just relax and play the tune itself, as you hear it in your head, maybe it would be easier. I mean, that's what I do. It didn't happen all at once. It took a sort of 'letting go' over a long period, but it's fine now.
Alcohol helps ...
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by ethical blend
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Kinetic learning is simply learning where your fingers go instead of learning the tune. Very common way to teach beginners ("When you see the dot on the bottom line, you put your finger here, and when it's on the space above it you put your next finger down here...") but not very helpful in the long run.
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Isn't that an example of kinesthetic learning ?
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by David50
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I am not just being picky. It is fairly easy to find references to kinesthetic learning and get a feel for what people mean by it.
As a seperate comment - I think there is a difference between 'getting ones fingers round' an awkward bit of the tune to make it sound the way one wants and actual learning the tune by rehearsing the finger movements. The latter seems like learning a song by training ones throat.
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by David50
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
You can call it what you like. That's what Ailin's describing.
It's not like it's some sort of breakthrough in learning, it's just learning tunes by finger position. Old stuff. You probably did some of that yourself when you were starting out.
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Jon, you are getting to caught up in terminology. Forget "kinetic." I just found that the easiest term to describe what I do. I learn the tune. Honest. I do not use any methodology whatsoever. I simply find that once I get the tune in my head, my fingers know where to go without conscious prompting. Once I learn a tune, whether by audio or written means, the fingers take over quite naturally, which is to say I don't consciously "remember' anything. The tune is simply there for me. I most certainly do not learn tunes by finger position. If that is the formal definition of kinetic, then that is not what I do. I called it kinetic because I find there is a direct line between the brain and the fingers that bypasses conscious thought. What you are describing sounds like position memorization, which requires constant conscious thought, no? If I forget how a tune begins, I generally don't find it by finger position. Rather I find it by remembering how the tune goes. My fingers can then take it from there.
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by Ailin
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Ailin, I drew the conclusion that "kinetic" (in your usage) means "learning tunes as sequences of finger motions and not as tunes" from your claims that this is what you do, and that you call this "kinetic". I didn't get it from any formal definition. As you recall, I was curious about your usage and I asked you if it meant that, and you said "yes", and you confirmed it several times. So if that's not what you mean when you use the word, it's at least what you said it meant when you were asked about it.
So this isn't about getting caught up in terminology or formal definitions, it's just me taking you at your word.
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
... and, if "Once [you] learn a tune [...] the fingers take over quite naturally" etc, then I don't get why it might be a problem to play it in whatever key you want. 'Cos this latest statement sounds exactly like what I was saying.
I must be misinterpreting ... again ...
[shakes head perplexedly]
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by ethical blend
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
If we learn a tune in key X, by whatever means, and then play it in key Y without conscious thought then to use kinetic/kinesthetic to describe the process of playing it in key Y is misleading and a diversion from the interesting question in the OP.
To me the process of playing it in key Y seems to be the same as having learned the tune by eb's prefered method. Tune (notes, rhythm, dynamics etc) is in head, fingers know how to make different notes, rhytm, dynamics etc happen. But if they haven't done a particular combination before they may need a few goes at it to get it right.
I am currently reading through Daniel Levitin's "This is your brain on music" again. Somewhere in there is something about how the tune may be encoded in our heads. IIRC it is not as a sequence of notes and it is probably relevant to the OP.
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by David50
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Crossed with eb.
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by David50
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
"fingers know how to" is not meant literally.
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by David50
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I'll go with "embodied cognition" here as my fancy term of choice.
If I hear a sequence of notes, I can play it back on the pipes or whistle *without* conscious thought of where my fingers are going. This is true for mist musicians, I imagine, that the spatial layout of your instrument provides a framework for music conceptualisation.
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Hmm. Or some internal concept is mapped onto the 'mechanics' of a particular instrument. That would fit with eb's recommendation of learning to sing the tune first.
I remember how some tunes start from how my fingers look when I start the tune. Probably a bad thing, but interesting because I can't see my fingers when playing flute.
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by David50
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
And I think that mapping to the instrument is part of what was meant by a recommendation from a member here to "think whistle" as part of the route to learning/playing by ear. It could have meant what TSS says, but I don't think so.
This is all related, in my thinking, to the OP.
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by David50
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I wanna be a mist musician, like Emily.
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by ethical blend
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Then I'd be able to REALLY play The Foggy Dew.
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by ethical blend
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Argh, sneaky typos!
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Anyway, Ben, the trick to being a "mist musician" is drinking enough beer during the course of the session that the world, and the music, becomes misty.
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
And then you play the Mist on the Mist Covered Mountains of Home, over and over.
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I think there's a learning period when you begin a new instrument and those neural connections have to be made, when you do have to consciously learn finger patterns. The sooner you get over that awkward phase, the better!
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
When things get misty for me, I forget B parts of tunes.
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
"I think there's a learning period when you begin a new instrument and those neural connections have to be made, when you do have to consciously learn finger patterns"
Sure - most people don't just pick up an instrument and know how to play it fro the start. But the way you learn those patterns is important. I learned them as names of notes: Play this string open and it's a D, put your finger here and it's an E, put your finger here for an F#, and so forth.
I'm starting to think that I'd have done better to learn the sounds first and then get the names of the notes later on.
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
"I'm starting to think that I'd have done better to learn the sounds first and then get the names of the notes later on."
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by Jon Kiparsky
It doesn't much matter, really. That was my original point when I answered the OP. I learn from written music, where note values come into play, and I also learn from hearing a tune, where I don't have to think about the specific notes I'm playing - I do it by ear. However, (to answer a previous post) part of the process of learning a tune is learning how to play it on a specific instrument. The fact that, once the tune is learned, I can remember the tune kinetically (if I may continue to use that term) is not transferable to another instrument (unless it's flute to whistle or vice-versa) because the fingering is now different. The kinetic part comes from the association of finger movement with the process of learning the tune. It is not a conscious process, but rather a result of learning the tune and learning the fingering at the same time. Once accomplished, the memory of the tune automatically triggers the memory of the fingering.
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by Ailin
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
" However, (to answer a previous post) part of the process of learning a tune is learning how to play it on a specific instrument. The fact that, once the tune is learned, I can remember the tune kinetically (if I may continue to use that term) is not transferable to another instrument (unless it's flute to whistle or vice-versa) because the fingering is now different."
I'm still confused by what you want to mean with this. To me, knowing the fingerings and knowing the tune are quite different things.
It looks to me like you don't make a distinction between the two - is this correct?
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
"I'm still confused by what you want to mean with this. To me, knowing the fingerings and knowing the tune are quite different things.
It looks to me like you don't make a distinction between the two - is this correct?"
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by Jon Kiparsky
I don't know. What do you mean by "knowing the tune"? When you know the tune, what do you know? Is it a melody you can now hum? If so, I am learning something. As I've said before, I can do that with pop tunes. If I can think a tune, I can play it, but I've never found that to be the case with ITM, except with songs, slow airs, and some hornpipes. Reels and jigs are just too complex for me to learn without working out the fingering. I guess I could be in the minority on this, but I just can't learn a tune without having played it unless I've heard it so many times that it becomes ingrained, but that would take too long compared to just learning how to play it.
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by Ailin
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
"I think there's a learning period when you begin a new instrument and those neural connections have to be made, when you do have to consciously learn finger patterns" TSS
Yes. But not just a new instrument. I have known where C natural and F natural where on a whistle for decades and transferred them easily to a keyless flute and don't think about them. Cross-fingered G# for tunes in A was completely new and required that learning phase; for new tunes I often still have to think about it but sometimes it just happens. Bb is currently completely new and tunes with that (all two of them) are still an excercise. However, on mandolin my fingers 'knew' where those notes were going to be but were not used to going there.
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by David50
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
"What do you mean by "knowing the tune"?"
I mean being able to "play the tune back" in your head - to hear it in your head, without reference to any particular instrument. For me, this is very different from being able to simply execute the finger motions of a tune. A key marker of "knowing the tune" for me is the ability to play it on any instrument I know. It might not be a great rendition if I've never played the tune on that instrument before, but it'll be the tune. There are still tunes that I learned "kinetically" (as I understand your use of the term) which I can't play except on the instrument I learned them on. I don't really feel that I know those tunes, because if I try to play them on some other instrument, I won't be able to do it.
For example, I can play the Green Mountain on the box without any trouble, but I'd have a hard time playing it on the mandolin, and to do so I'd have to translate it from the box, so it would be slow and awkward. On the other hand, The Maid Behind the Bar - a very similar tune - is easy for me on any instrument, not because I've learned it on all of the instruments but because I know the tune and not just the fingerings.
Does that help?
"I just can't learn a tune without having played it unless I've heard it so many times that it becomes ingrained, but that would take too long compared to just learning how to play it."
This, to me, would be learning the tune. "Just learning how to play it" would be what I mean by "learning the fingerings", I suppose.
One difference that I notice is that if I know the tune, I don't have to fine "entry points" for it - I can stop and start at will in the tune. If I'm interrupted while playing a tune that I know only as fingerings, I have to come back in just at the start of a part or a phrase.
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
"One difference that I notice is that if I know the tune, I don't have to fine "entry points" for it - I can stop and start at will in the tune" Yes I am coming to think that is important. On flute it shows as being able to experiment with breathing places (or clear a bubble of spit from my lips etc) and come back in properly. On parts of tunes where I can't do that I suspect I am just following a sequence of notes.
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by David50
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Well, you're one up on me, Jon. I don't do it your way, so we do have different methods. If you can do what you describe, more power to you. It seems to me that it would take much longer, but if you absorb tunes that quickly, you certainly have my respect and admiration.
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by Ailin
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I don't say I get them quickly! It takes a while to get the tune in my head that way, especially if I only hear them occasionally at the session. I can get them faster if I make a very small playlist with the same tune in about five different sets, and repeat that over and over, but that's too much like work. I think I learn them faster than I did before, but that's not really what I'm after.
What it really gets me, as I said, is flexibility. I don't have to re-learn tunes, and that's nice. Also, I get the "gift from the fairies" every once in a while - a tune that I never learned, but I can just play it. That's especially nice. Doesn't happen often, but oftener now than before.
I also don't think this is something that I can do that you can't - I didn't think I could learn this way until I decided that I probably could, and made the effort. I don't think I'm very special, so I suspect you can do this as well, if you want to.
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Well, you do puzzle me, Ailin. In your bio, you say (having said that you've been playing ITM for 25 years):
"After all these years, my collection of tunes is still modest, mostly because I'm picky about what I learn."
But now you seem to me to be saying that, of those, presumably relatively few, tunes, you actually know hardly any. (Well, not by my definition of knowing a tune, at any rate.)
What have you been doing all these years???
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by ethical blend
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Good call, EB; I should update that. What I said still holds true, except in the intervining years, I've taken to learning more tunes than I was doing at the time I did the profile.
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by Ailin
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Interesting. There's also that word "memorize" which seems to differ connotatively from "learn", although the denotations seem to be about the same.
I really don't want to turn this into an argument about who's got the best way to learn tunes, though. The original question has a lot of meat on it, and part of that is figuring out what are the ways people actually use to learn this stuff. We don't do that by picking on Ailin for what he does.
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
"We don't do that by picking on Ailin for what he does."
What, that's just an incidental bonus?
I am, of course, kidding. I didn't consider - probably should have done - that your profile might have been out of date enough to be considered obsolete, Ailin. Sorry about that.
JK - I agree that there's *loads* of meat in the OP. But I'm also really interested in this apparently minor, but IMO in fact important, distinction between "memorising" a tune, being able to store the fingerings in memory, and actually *knowing* the tune. This latter means not only being able to pay the tune back in your head, but even at times being unable to stop the thing coming back into play at irregular intervals. When I "know" a tune, under that definition, I can play it on any instrument I know how to play, whether I've previously played it on that instrument or not. But "knowing" a tune also means, to me, knowing all sorts of ways that tune might get from point A in it to point B.
It's hell, this trad stuff, ain't it?
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by ethical blend
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
>"But "knowing" a tune also means, to me, knowing all sorts of ways that tune might get from point A in it to point B."
True enough. How many ways can you write down the first part of Dunmore Lasses? Probably half a dozen without too much effort and staying pretty simple. There's only the one tune, though, and each of those is one way of playing that one tune. Learn the one that's on this site:
~E3F ~G3A|Be~e2 Be~e2|~E3F G2BG|A2BA GEFD|
~E3F ~G3A|Beed ~e3f|(3.g.f.e fd eBdB|AcBA GEFD:|
and you've learned one fingering for this tune. But if you learn the tune itself, you have as many ways to play it as you can come up with. And, now that I think of it, none of them are "variations". "Variations" suggests that one fingering (maybe this one, maybe another one) is the "standard" and the others are clever things that are like it. I think that's not right.
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
EB, I took absolutely no offense, It's a fair cop as far as it goes. When I started in on this journey, there was no internet and very few resources. If I were starting now, it would be a very different story. One of the first sets I learned once I could find my way around a simple-system flute was the Bothy Band set that culminates in The Kid on the Mountain. Great set, and I still love it, but quite a challenge to learn. I took it phrase by phrase, which is still how I learn today. Mind you, I was already a flute player when I began, but this music was still new to me and I still didn't know the difference between the melody line and the ornaments. It intrigues me that anyone can actually "know" tunes as opposed to "learning" them in order to play them. I don't know if you and Jon were raised with this music, but I would be interested to know how many people here acquire new tunes the way you two do if they weren't. Great discussion.
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by Ailin
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I think when someone knows a tune it means they know what to do. Some of my best friends are also those who surprise me the most. But I'm not out of sorts when it happens. In other words they can change things up in the most subtle of ways & still I know what to do next; even if this then surprises them . . . etc. To use a figure of speech it all happens without missing a beat.
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by ain't fluffed
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I came to the music in my late teens. At the time I played guitar and harmonica and mandolin, lots of rock and roll, some around-the-campfire stuff, not very good at any of it. When I started listening to the stuff, I got a copy of O'Neills and started figuring out how to read it, because I thought that was how you did. Took me a long time to undo the damage from that, but I'm getting there.
I think all of the really good players that I've played with have learned tunes in the way I'm talking about, and most of them would look at me funny if I mentioned getting tunes out of a book. It wasn't a put-on, either - they would always got tunes off me, and I had to go and look up the tunes they played. Most of them could write out a tune in some way, but they just didn't think of them as written material, they thought of them as tunes. That was my first clue.
"When I started in on this journey, there was no internet and very few resources."
1987 or so? Sure there was the internet. No world wide whatever, no http protocol, but there was tons of internet. Most people didn't know about it, that's all. We call it "the good old days".
Let me tell you about my 300 baud modem and my dumb terminal some time...
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I started in 1983 - same year :"The Thistle & Shamrock" went nation-wide on public radio. I didn't get on the net until the '90s, and it's only in the last ten years or so that I have really been aware of the resources online for Irish. I found out about this site on my honeymoon in Hawaii (at a session, no less!) in 2004. I find most players do not play the settings in O'Neill's, but I have source books that serve me quite well. Of course, I only use the written version to get the basic tune structure, after which I work in my own variations and ornaments. If I play with a group that varies from what I do, I pick up their version or sit out. Happens rarely. I see the usefulness of being able to go from one instrument to another, but since I only play flute (having lost interest in whistle - maybe I should sell my Copeland?), I see no advantage to changing how I learn new tunes. I also use the Incredible Slow Downer for recorded tunes that I want.
# Posted on January 6th 2012 by Ailin
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I can't speak for what it's like to play more than one (non-wind) instrument, as I don't. But I find if I sing a tune in my head, I can work it out pretty quickly on the pipes. Like Jon, I didn't find this easy AT ALL the first few years I was playing, but decided it was something I needed to learn how to do, so I did it.
# Posted on January 7th 2012 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I started playing fiddle when I was 8. The object was to learn how to play classical, but I was lucky enough to have, as my first teacher, someone who taught people first by getting them to play some simple trad tunes - Welsh, as it happens, 'cos that's where I grew up. So I've always played both classical and trad (and loads of other stuff as well) and I've always picked things up by ear as well as being able to read music.
But, trust me, anyone can do it. I've seen it. You sort of, as I hinted above, have to 'let go'. Then keep practising doing that, and don't give up on it. And, eventually, it'll happen.
# Posted on January 7th 2012 by ethical blend
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
This has been a good post.
Two of my session mates go through the process of writing the tune (variations) down in handwritten dots as part of the learning process, and it seems to make the tune names stick as well.
I learn myself tunes by ear and find it hard to get the name. I think the aural learning process feeds the brain with patterns that come in handy to get an intuitive feel of the music. It also freedom, and quite often I find myself playing (on my own) new tunes that is some kind of synthesis of what I have learned.
Therefore, in a session setting I have a wide repertoire when joining other people playing. However, when it comes to starting tunes, my learning approach can become a handicap.
I myself have over the years therefore been on the lookout for a way of connecting names to tunes and here´s what I´ve come up with based on advice and own trial and error:
1. Connect the name to a singable recognizeable fragment of the tune (preferably at the beginning). This will work two-ways both for starting tunes and for recognizing tunes being played by others. This works for me on the ones I´ve spent the effort on.
2. Use any opportunity to try to pin the name on the tune, in discussions, making lists, sets etc. Naturally, the more you aspire to know the names, the more names you will eventually learn. If you use names, eventually they will stick, and gradually it will (hopefully) become part of the learning process. I´m still struggling with this...mostly because I´m too lazy to adopt my friend´s writing approach, I suspect.
3. I´ve also tried advanced memory techniques associating ABCs fragments with objects and creating visual associations that incorporate the tune name. Although It works with great accuracy and can be fun
# Posted on January 7th 2012 by FiddleTramp
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
.. both the time spent on the coding and decoding part makes this no better than a memorized cheat sheet.... Rather spend the time enjoying the music....
# Posted on January 7th 2012 by FiddleTramp
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Why do you *need* to know the name to start the tune? This sounds like an overly complicated process!
# Posted on January 7th 2012 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
It does sound complicated. Still, it's an interesting take, I think.
# Posted on January 7th 2012 by ethical blend
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
TheSilverSpear, I don´t need a name to start the tunes that at a given moment crosses my mind ( I usually don´t have a clue whatever I am playing is named, but in order to be able to use my rational thinking to start a specific tune, I need some reference to it.
I haven´t found any other way than names or other word-alike associations (e.g. situations where you have picked up the specific tune) - i.e. associations that can be mapped into visual pictures - to map reference tunes into the logical part of the brain.
When following other playing the tune, it is the felling of recognizing the tune structure combined with intuition that makes me pick up the fiddle and join in, and names have no importance...
Usually, when playing and leading sets, I only know in the split-second before the next tune how the next tune sounds like. The aural memory is a to me chain of musical associations.
# Posted on January 7th 2012 by FiddleTramp
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
...if you ask me if if I play the maid behind the bar, I would say yes, as well as most commonly played tunes.
If you asked me how to play it, I would go blank.
I have played the tunes so times in sessions that I have not invested in neither connecting the name to the tune nor have the desire to start them.
No rule without exceptions....
# Posted on January 7th 2012 by FiddleTramp
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
oops, I mean yes. (full stop) - would´nt want to sound cocky.
I would answer the same to * the question* on most common names that I know I know.
# Posted on January 7th 2012 by FiddleTramp
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Around here, at least, nobody says "I'm going to play The Maid Behind The Bar, and the Bank Of Ireland, and the High Reel" - they just play them. I agree with ethical blend; I don't know why you're going to all this bother over the names.
# Posted on January 7th 2012 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
"in order to be able to use my rational thinking to start a specific tune, I need some reference to it." Is it not rational to think about the start of the tune? That seems to work for me. If I have the tune in my head & can sing it I'm not sure why there is a need for anything else.
# Posted on January 7th 2012 by ain't fluffed
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
<<Around here, at least, nobody says "I'm going to play The Maid Behind The Bar, and the Bank Of Ireland, and the High Reel" - they just play them. >> But that's not the situation in the OP. That is "I think I will play The Maid behind the Bar, now, how does I start ?"
I am not drawn to FiddleTramp's approach, but as it happens that is the one tune where I do something like that - I always hear the rhythm of the ends of the parts as "maid behind the bar" so I lilt it in my head and then loop back to the start.
A problem I have when I remember the first few notes (as names or finger positions, not as a sound) is that I am inconsistant about remembering it from the first beat or from a 'pick-up' (which I may change depending on the context). If I get it wrong I start in a daft key.
# Posted on January 7th 2012 by David50
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
Tonya, I think the problem is having the tune in ones head but not being able to find it and knowing if one can find the loose end and tug it the rest will follow.
# Posted on January 7th 2012 by David50
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
I suppose if you ever want to play a tune that's called X, you've got a problem, that's true. But I don't usually care if the tune is called The Vicar's Special Undergarment or The Naughty Barmaid, when I start a tune I'm thinking the tune. Later on, someone might ask me the name, and then I have to work back to it, but i's not even on my mind when I play a tune, and I'm really not sure why it would matter.
I do find that I get confused by tunes that start similarly and go off in different directions. I can easily find myself plotting out a set that requires the ending of Bank of Ireland, and bollixing myself up by playing Star of Munster, but that's nothing to do with the names. Same happens with the obvious pairings - Cooley's/Virginia Reel, or Drunken Pigeon On the Landlady's Gate. But I don't think I could ever be thinking of the Maid Behind the Bar and start into The Wise Maid or the Sligo Maid, just because the titles are similar.
# Posted on January 7th 2012 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Correlation between remembering tune detail and method of learning?
David50, I was asking in the context of Fiddle Tramp using references such as the name of the tune, word alike associations, visual pictures . . . instead of something in the tune itself ~ the actual start of the tune. That's part of my process in getting to know a tune is to be sure I can begin the tune. I don't know how to explain it but when I do it I'm not thinking about the title or pictures. Perhaps some visuals of dancers, but mainly just the tune. And hopefully from the beginning. Sometimes I want to start certain tunes with the B part. But, most people don't like when you do that in a session.
# Posted on January 7th 2012 by ain't fluffed