Two quick pieces of advice. Start by trying to learn easy tunes by ear. Those great exciting tunes you hear the Bothy Band play are mostly going to be hard for a beginner. But there are loads of simple polka-like tunes out there which are great for your first steps at learning by ear.
And make sure you’re trying to learn music you actually listen to! I usually make a folder of MP3s I want to learn, and listen when I walk the dog every morning, drive around town, etc. After months of listening to them every day, then I’m ready to start learning them by ear.
I think that listening is vital - most of the time, if I can “playback” a tune in my head, I can play it too (although not with all ornaments put the same way etc.).
Another thing which can help with learning process is - if notes and music work together, i.e. if you look at dots, listen to music at one time, and try to “assign” notes to sounds.
Plus, many tunes have something in common, so once you hear an interval, your brain should be able to identify, where the interval can be - and if you join this knowledge with the fact, that the tune starts with some note (which is easy to find out experimentally), after some time, it could come out naturally.
Maybe you could start with ballads and such songs, not jigs and reels (I’m at the stage where I have very tough time learning jigs and reels purely by ear) - youtube is full of Dubliners, Pogues etc. and that presents a lot of learning material.
Here is a clip I took some years ago from a whistle-class tape of my (then ten or eleven year old) son. This is an intermediate whistle class from eight to twelve year old, the tune is played by the phrase so you can grasp the structure and learn it in meaningful divisions.
Try. The tune is a simple reel (Ships are Sailing).
I think, in fairness, this is more the ‘learning by ear’ anyone should be starting off with, not the sitting down with the Bothy Band CDs. Taking it gently (the beginners classes start on Twinkle twinkle and a few marches) it trains the ear and facilitates the understanding of how tunes sit together, which makes it easy to pick them up. Most of my pupils have been through the same whistle classes and by the time they are fourteen or so I can play them a tune and most of them will start playing along second time around and have it note for note by the third time. That doesn’t come overnight, it’s a process that brings you to that point.
Thank you very much. That was something I wanted to get. General words is good thing, but practical advice is better. I’ll try.
After thinking all that stuff over once more I’ve understood one more thing. The problem is that the tunes which I want to learn and/or which are popular among local musicians - these are tunes I can’t learn by ear. Tunes which I can (or at least can try to) learn by ear - these are not ones I like and not ones which people here will play.
Bothy Band, Dervish, Danu and Lunasa play neither “merrily we roll along” or “twinkle twinkle little star” (did I spell it right? have no idea what are these), nor simple polkas. Learning tunes you neither like too much, nor will ever play with someone besides the metronome… Not much fun, especially when you have limited time for practice. I have smth about one hour a day, and a tunebook of ~50 tunes. Perspective of spending that hour on learning tune I don’t like and won’t ever need (instead of working on some tune I like) makes me feel bad.
( I’m not trying to say something bad about polkas - I love them when they are good, but I’ve spent one hour trying to learn this](http://ru.youtube.com/watch?v=TGx9sEIo5LM%22%3Ethis) one by ear, and failed. Seems that good tunes are never straitforward. )
Maybe I should try to ask some mature whistlers to make reordings of the tunes I want to learn in the same fashion Peter did - very slowly and with no ornamentation. Maybe that helps.
Well, I’ve been playing for a bit over two years now and it was only until recently that I’ve begun to be able to pick up tunes by ear… I’m still not too terribly good at it, but generally I can get the general idea after a couple tries. Ever since the start I wanted to play stuff by ear, but I just couldn’t do it, I read sheet music fine, but I just couldn’t play by ear… at all. Finally just this past month it finally clicked… at least a little. We were getting ready for playing at a cousin’s wedding and my brothers were working on a new song (Time of Your Life… not exactly traditional) I had never played it before, but after messing around a little bit I was playing it fairly smoothly in a matter of minutes and we actually played it later that day at the wedding. So basically it just takes some work… you’ve got to try and realise it won’t come overnight. Also don’t tell yourself you can’t… you can, it’ll take time though… I’m not near as good as I’d like to be at it yet, but with work and time I think I can… or at least I hope…
Oh, yeah, and work on simple stuff to start… don’t even bother trying to play like Finnigan or McGoldrick by ear to start… it won’t work.
Bregwas: For example, the Chieftains do have many tunes that are not that difficult to pick up by ear - some slower whistle-only tunes, now I´m learning (by ear) Scotch Mary, Breeches full of stitches and Toss the feathers (not that Corrs version). And O’Neill’s march doesn´t sound so difficult either.
What you’re saying he is the equivalent of saying “All my friends are marathon runners, and I’d like to be one too. I think I’ll start by running 38 kilometers at a time, and work my way up to 42.” Most of us can’t do that – we need to start off simple and build our way up over time.
I guess “Twinkle Twinkle” is culturally specific, a simple nursery rhyme song that everyone in the English-speaking world heard thousands of times growing up. It’s not something you’d play for fun, but it is something whose melody everyone here knows perfectly, making it a good place to start learning by ear. Surely there must be a Russian equivalent?
As for the bands you list, they do play simple tunes sometimes. For instance, Lunasa recorded “Jim Ward’s Jig” (it’s on Merry Sisters of Fate), which is a classic beginner’s tune. It’s just that when they play it, they play it quickly and in a complicated arrangement. That’s one of the reasons those bands are fun to listen to, but not particularly great choices for learning by ear.
I don’t know what to say about not liking any simple tunes. I am always hearing simple tunes I like. For every Ed Reavy hornpipe or Michael Coleman reel I’d like to learn, there’s a Sliabh Luachra slide or a Sligo polka. Perhaps you need to try listening to a wider variety of material?
Well, I’m probably late to the party here, but I think different strokes for different folks. I’m more in your camp, I have a heck of a time leaning by ear, but can read and play from notation without a problem. Where the problem lies with Celtic music like The Blues is in the ornamentation and variation, that feeling that you give the music with phrasing, tone, gracenotes, bending/slides etc.
I agree with this. Different people learn in different ways.
Two things I do think, though. First; to play a tune well you really need to be able to sing it, so although I mostly learn tunes from dots, I don’t really feel I know them until I can sing/hum them to myself.
I also sing and I mostly learn songs by ear since, though I can read music reasonably fluently, I have never learnt to sing from dots, so I either learn songs by listening to recordings or by getting hold of the dots and singing along to my concertina until I have the tune in my head.
Second; however you learn, one thing is important is listening to others playing. Recordings are fine, but tune sets in recordings are often show pieces and so, not necessarily the best examples. The best way, if you are able is to get to know other musicians, especially if they are experienced. A good musician is always willing to pass on their knowledge.
I think walrii has hit the mark. It’s not popular, but you have to learn the notes first. When first starting out I spent the first half hour just going through the scale until my head and fingers learned what to do to get a particular sound. Even now I spend the first 10 minutes or so running through scales and note combinations. Once I had the sound in my head and fingers the rest was easy. Start small - with just the first several bars and get them right then add a few more. Once the notes are right, then start adding ornamentation.
Just my humble thoughts - others’ mileage may vary.
You don’t have to sing it out loud for everyone to hear if that’s what you are thinking. You can stop at the point where you can sing in it your head. The point is you need to know what you want to sound like in great detail, because it is those details that are nigh on impossible to describe that make the sound you are looking for. And you have to know it well enough to replay it in your head so you can play along with that tune in your head.
Are there no popular songs that get stuck in your head and you can’t shut them off? (Some people call them ear worms.) How do they get in there? Figure that out for your case and put some tunes in there the same way.
Carey has it right. You kind of sing in your head. Often I sort of subvocalise - it’s hard to describe exactly but it is a kind of breathy whistling from the back of your tongue and you can do it very quietly.
When I am learning a song, I annoy my daughter because I do this so it can be just heard. She can hear I am singing something, but not what.
BTW, you will probably find you can sing. If you can play an instrument, you can sing. I used to think like you, but then I went on a weekend workshop and “discovered” my voice. I find singing and playing reinforce each other. Because you have to listen, I find it improves my sense of pitch.
With the exception of early childhood, I have always learned tunes from written music - dots on a piece of paper.
Until yesterday!
The starter of this thread stated difficulties in learning music by ear. I guess that choice of piece is important.
Yesterday, my whistle teacher played me an air/waltz called On A Cold Winter’s Morning. It is not too fast and falls under the fingers. He began by having me play the scale G maj. It felt really difficult at first, but I managed the first phrase.
I spent an hour or so today (luckily at home with a head cold) playing through the MP3 he sent me by email. Using GarageBand on the Mac, I was able to repeat phrases until I had learnt them.
Anyway, I have the piece memorized pretty well, although I have yet to add ornamentation.
If I can do it, then I am sure that anyone can do it! OK, so I am learning from a solo whistle recording that is quite simple rather than a CD with a fast track which includes other instruments.
Maybe using a computer to assist with ear learning is not strictly traditional, but I think I have a deeper appreciation and learning of the tune, than if I had learnt it from written music.
