…I have to hear it to be able to play it! I can read sheet music for my pipes and guitar but not for my whistle. How odd is that?! 
I’ve tried and tried to use written music to learn whistle tunes but it just won’t work for me. So I suppose I will need to start laying in a real collection of whistle tune recordings.
With best regards,
Pfreddee(Stephen)
What you say seems to be the way things generally are. I wouldn’t worry overmuch.
What I have to do is listen to a tune till I get it stuck in my head, then puzzle it out on the whistle with the sheet music in front of me.
If I get to the stage where I really have the tune in my head, I can play it. I think that’s the way to go. Much the best way to learn tunes, in my opinion.
Irish traditional music has traditionally been learned by ear.
In the tradition, written collection have usually been viewed as irrelevant, more or less. Not evil, just irrelevant.
Most written collections of Irish traditional music suffer from one of the following problems:
They’re written by people who have a firm command of standard music notation, but aren’t steeped in the tradition.
They’re written by people steeped in the tradition, but don’t know much about music notation.
It becomes a self-fulfilling thing, resulting in poorly notated tunes that don’t do anybody much of a service.
Traditional players, if they use notation at all, usually use ABC notation rather than ordinary staff notation.
BTW when you say “pipes” what sort do you play? Scottish, uilleann, or some other sort?
And when you say you learn pipe tunes by sheet music, do you mean sightreading a tune you’ve never heard? Or using sheet music to support the learning of a tune you already are familiar with by hearing it?
Irish traditional music has traditionally been learned by ear.
In the tradition, written collection have usually been viewed as irrelevant, more or less. Not evil, just irrelevant.
Most written collections of Irish traditional music suffer from one of the following problems:
They’re written by people who have a firm command of standard music notation, but aren’t steeped in the tradition.
They’re written by people steeped in the tradition, but don’t know much about music notation.
It becomes a self-fulfilling thing, resulting in poorly notated tunes that don’t do anybody much of a service.
Traditional players, if they use notation at all, usually use ABC notation rather than ordinary staff notation.
Richard is summing up the accepted narrative there.
Reality is, as it usually is, a bit more nuanced and less absolute. Many musicians did have writing skills and compiled collections of music or exchanged tunes in written form. Staff notation was used, tonic solfa was common at one time as were simple systems like ABC (not the internet ABC you see on these forums) or number systems like Padraig O’Keeffe used (O’Keeffe is a wellknown example but many others used self devised systems). Others depended fully on their ear for new tunes and their memory to retain them.
I don’t know about written collections being considered irrelevant. Musicians have always been keen to learn new tunes, in any available manner, and written/printed collections have always been part of transmission. There are well worn stories of local groups of musicians meeting to learn tunes from O’Neill’s collection with a musical literate of the company playing through the book. Overall the rapid spread of tunes published in O’Neill’s book or the first volumes of Ceol Rinnce na hEirreann in their time tells you all you need to know about the the esteem these publications were held in.
It’s sort of interesting that in an area like East Galway musicians ‘ran out of tunes to learn’ after they had collectively gone through O’Neill’s and then decided to take turns composing a new tune for the group to learn. I do not recall if these new tunes were submitted in written form though.
I have met musicians over time seem to that fit Richard’s description, ear players but I have also known the other side of the coin, people maintaining collections of written music. One of them was piper/fiddler/whistler Martin Rochford who would pursue you if he heard a tune he liked but didn’t know, until you had written it down for him. And he in turn would pass these tunes on in written form. I once mentioned this to Bill Ochs, who in response told me how during the seventies he was visiting a mutual friend, Ronnie Wathen, who was at that time based in Feakle in east Clare. One night Bill played a tune he had learned from a Boys of the Lough recording ‘The Killarney Boys of Pleasure’. Martin knocked on the door the next day in search of the tune and didn’t leave until Bill had committed it to paper. It’s been a solid part of the east Clare repertoire for decades now.
Martin Rochford playing the fiddle during the early 90s. On that occasion I wrote a reel, a, John Brosnan composition, for him that he heard me play earlier.
I remember taking a photograph of Peter O’Loughlin once, with discussions like this in mind, while he was playing through a manuscript collection on the back of his car, parked in the street in Feakle. I can’t find that immediately I am afraid.
I have also on occasion heard older musicians refer to Scottish tune collections that were going around, ‘that one I found in Kerr’s book’ , that sort of thing.
Anyhow, my point is that there are no absolutes one way or the other. Irish music is simple and easily picked up by ear once you’re familiar with the idiom and thus that would be the common manner of picking up tunes. But musicians will learn tunes wherever they find them, by ear, from other musicians radio or recordings, but they won’t shy away fro mother means and written music is part of the process of transmission as well
I play Highland pipes, and i use the sheet music to help me learn an unfamiliar tune, backed up by hearing the tune many, many times. I’ve been playing pipes for 25+ years, and I’m a pretty good street band piper. I play all of the instruments mentioned for my own amusement (Sometimes I’m the only one amused, but that’s another story…)
It seems to be most problematic with jigs, or maybe, most obvious. In Irish music, ornaments are best learned by ear because standard music notation, sheet music, and even ABC are unable to notate effectively. The easiest (for me) example would be a triplet, which on the whistle usually means a roll. The first part is the longest, the second part (usually a cut) is the shortest, and the last part (usually a strike) is somewhere in-between. When done effectively, this lifts the music, regardless of the tempo or speed in which it is played. My tendency, being self taught, is to speed through these ornaments and play each part of the triplet equally timed. As a result, no matter how fast I play the tune, something is missing. Un-learning this is a challenge, but one that I readily accept as being essential to the music. Standard notation really cannot account for these nuances, however, a good teacher walked me through it.
Whenever someone says they can’t learn something from sheet music, I am forced to wonder how much time they have put into learning to read from sheet music. It is a skill and a learned art. There is nothing magical about learning from notation vs learning by ear so long as you know how the music should sound. But either way, you have to practice and thoroughly understand how the notation correlates to how your instrument works and what note is what. Music notation is a language and in order to use it you must be able to fully understand it. What you need to know for Irish music notation wise is itty-bitty.
On the notation of Irish music, I hate it when someone trys to notate everything. Notation is best when it is a sketch and then you can flesh it out yourself, because the nature of the music is variation and unless you are going to write pages to capture everything, just let me take a crack at it.
Whenever someone says they can’t learn something from sheet music, I am forced to wonder how much time they have put into learning to read from sheet music.
In my own experience it is often easier to learn a tune by ear because it has often lodged itself in the subconscious. It is not hard, in my mind, to play a tune from notation but it can be hard(er) to make it stick sometimes. My reading of the OP was along these lines.
Sometimes I read through a collection and find a tune that immediately sticks. Invariably I find later I have heard the tune played around me or on recordings I have listened to regularly. For that reason I have always put on particular recordings as background when doing jobs around the house, painting walls, cleaning windows and scrubbing flagstones are great opportunities for quietly and easily absorbing tunes. that will out at a later point in time.
I hate it when someone trys to notate everything.
Detailed notation is only useful for the analysis/documentation of a particular playing/style. It isn’t much good for anything else. A notation to learn from should ideally only give the tune’s outline. But that, at the same time, assumes the reader is familiar with the music and able to fill in the gaps, as it were.
[edited for typos]
I do think some people are aural vs visual learners. I find I need both to listen and to have notation to learn the best.
Well, Scott… Since the OP indicated earlier that he has been using dots to help with tunes on the pipes for years, it might… Maybe only just might… Just maybe… Possible that he has some degree of familiarity with reading dots. Perhaps, as he indicates, it just isn’t catching when he applies it to the whistle.
the original post really doesn’t require you to wonder about a thing. It could be that your attitude is requiring you to wonder.
I read the post and saw a fellow whistler positing a challenge he faces. Normally, we try to help each other out with other ways to work around a challenge. Calling into question the amount of effort he put into learning dots was neither necessary nor helpful.
Two cents.
I’m another for whom notation has always been a difficulty, and beyond piano in my childhood, my adult literacy has for the most part been confined to the standard key signatures of ITM. I learned how to read music, but only sort of because something never clicked; it was and still is like typing with one finger, so my M.O. has been to use notation to remind me of what I forget. I can’t remember when, if ever, I have played from notation. For seven years I was able to deceive my piano teacher that I could read. Perhaps it is an effort issue, as mentioned. But sometimes I think there’s aptitude to be looked at.
Highly literate musicians have told me that they can hear, internally, the music they read. I’ve never been able to do that. Chicken, or the egg?
I’d say that if it works it’s the correct way, however that works out.
I play by ear but I have reached a point where I struggle with memorizing new tunes. Once I have a tune well entrenched in my head, I can play it, but I sometimes catch myself changing the original tune by error. Then, there are variations in the same traditional tunes. I have found myself combining the two versions because I like it better that way. This makes me wonder how much of the non written music has changed over the years as they were passed along. But the point is this for me at this stage: Learning how to read music will help me memorize new tunes so that I may augment what I learn my ear. I wish though, that I had had the discipline when much younger to learn the art of reading music. But I digress. So, OP, I guess we have our challenges and have to figure out how to improve through trial and error, and I have a feeling learning how to read music after depending on my ears for so long is going to be a formidable task.
I believe that you read a great deal more aggression into what I said than was there. The point being that in my time as a classical musician I spent many years learning to read quickly and fluently and I had to practice a great deal at it. Likewise translating that notation to memory took a long time and was difficult to get good at it. Changing instruments I’ve had to endure that same struggle over again as well.
If it doesn’t come to someone easily even after months or years of playing, that isn’t the fault of notation or somehow intrinsic to music. Nor is it the musicians fault. The point is, every skill takes time and practice to acquire sometimes more than we think it should.
I have had a great deal of trouble learning to play in a trad style. Practice and listening has been thw only answer for me.
Scott,
Not so much aggression as attitude. I had a hunch your trained classically by your comment that you were forced to wonder… I am also classically trained. I’ve been sight reading for around 50 years. In that time, I have never felt compelled to wonder how much effort one puts into reading. Some people get reading… some don’t. That is just the way of things. It’s kinda like English. I know people who been speaking English for fifty or more years… And they still haven’t gotten it right.
Put a different way… Perhaps what you perceived as my “going after” you was not much different than what OP may have perceived as you “going after” him. Then again, maybe not.
All that said, with all my training, I use my ear to learn trad tunes, cuz dots just don’t do a good job of getting “trad feel” on paper. I understand completely where the OP was coming from. I also have a fair collection of trad tunes in standard notation. It’s more of a reminder than a primary resource.
I’ve enjoyed our conversation.
Be well.
The irony. Brilliant! 
Hey, Blower,
I’d love claim credit for the brilliant irony. But, I can’t. I have good ideas, and good intent. But, at the end of the day I’m just as illiterate as the next slob.
I hope the intent of my message wasn’t lost in the pedanticism.
Why are flowers called flowers when they don’t even flow?
I doubt you’re illiterate or a slob, Jim. As an Englishman (and a pedant!), I appreciate it is probably just the difference between American English and English English that forced me to be amused. Your message certainly wasn’t lost.