I have been using both sheet music and the use of my ear to learn new tunes. I work at getting the basics of a tune down with the use of sheet music and some where short of tune memorization I then work the tune through without sheet music but listening to the tune being played. I do this to different degrees with different tunes depending how fast I want to learn a particular tune or whether I am working out other challenges connected to a new tune. I’ve been trying to use this method as my path to being able to learn tunes by ear. It’s not coming back to me in leaps and bounds but it is progressing. Is this a reasonable course or the long way around?
This method seems go give me the satisfaction of fairly quickly being able to obtain the nuts and bolts of a tune but still leaving a challenge of connecting my ear, brain and fingers. That is, besides the challenges of rhythm, expression and ornamentation…smile.
I would be interested in hearing opinions, suggestions and other methods of learning by ear. Thanks in advance for any thoughts regarding this. Respectfully, tim
You’ll gain so much more knowledge and flexibility learning by ear than from any other method. If you have to use sheet music then try only using it to help with tunes you want to learn in a hurry - like ones played at a local session, then listen for differences and correct them. I’m sure most people would agree that it would be better to develop your ear skills as much as possible.
Some people will suggest slow down software. Personally I’ve never used it and think you’re only cheating yourself with it. It’s a bit like sheet music in that if you use it it’s likely to be a very difficult give up. You’ll learn so much more by learning tunes at their played speed than at even 10% slower as you have to listen so much closer. The more you listen the more you hear and the easier it becomes. You don’t have to start with reels, slow tunes and tunes with less notes per bar, like polkas and slides, are obviously easier to begin with. I used to advocate learning only by ear at full speed but some players who were only a few years in changed my opinion. Obviously everyone wants to get a reasonable repertoire as soon as possible and ear training takes time. When you’ve been playing quite a long time it’s quite easy to forget the early struggles.
If you can learn tunes at full speed by ear, even if it takes you much longer, you’ll find it so much easier to spot the different ways folk play different tunes. You’ll find your ability to vary a tune, adapt to someone else’s version during a session, recover from a mistake or fill in a wee bit where you get a mental block is infinitely better.
My personal experience is that the more you do it, the easier it gets. Mad ear skillz won’t happen overnight, so persistence counts.
But here’s something to remember and light your way: You were born learning by ear. It’s your original condition. You didn’t pop out of the womb as a note-reader; think of all the tunes you know and still retain from before the time you learned to read notation. So what you’re doing isn’t something esoteric and foreign - far from it. Think of ear-learning as a muscle that can atrophy from lack of use, and you are building it back to strength in reacquainting yourself with the process.
I signed up for Blain Chastains online whistle course and the tunes are taught by ear phrase by phrase. I find this a great way to learn a tune and commit to memory at the same time.
I have opposite problem.
Didn’t learn to read notes well so learn by ear is my only way how to learn tune. It may sound strange, but it is the easiest way to me (easier than read notes).
But I’m still beginner and I’m learning just simple tunes at this moment. Maybe it will be harder later.
Why I’m writing this - I never understood what is hard on learning by ear. It is just listening tune.
I learn by ear, though I can read music, and I’ve been told by a couple of different people that I pick up tunes incredibly fast.
I find it easy and I have begun to wonder if I am in some way more innately ‘talented’ at it than others or whether it’s come through practise. I don’t know, but suspect a little of column A and a little of column B.
Which then leads me to say that if you find it difficult to learn by ear you aren’t alone. Hopefully you just need to keep trying and it’s possible that some people are just better at it than others and those that insist on learning by ear should cut those who find it harder a bit of slack.
While the sense of relative pitch can be developed through practice, we all start out with greater or lesser abilities, so you probably do (did) start out with a certain innate talent.
Myself, I’m pretty pitiful at picking pitches or intervals out of a tune at any speed. My preferred process tends to be: learn what the tune sounds like, then look at notation to find out what the notes in the tune are, but put down the paper as soon as I can, using my ears to tell me if I’ve got the tune right. I can’t sight-read, so even when I do play with the paper in front of me, it can’t serve as more than a general outline.
bogman, your point on learning at tune speed is well taken. I have slowed sound clips down on Audcity and determined that the slowness of the tune was a detriment to the learn by ear process. I also look forward to the day when I can look back and smile at the early struggles.
Nanohedron, “born learning by ear” and it being an original condition is something easily overlooked but man…should be so obvious. Now that gives me hope!
Max, I looked at Blain Chastains site, interesting site. I had previously considered using a Skype tutor and likely will at some point. My solo progress so far has been fairly satisfying, although I’m sure I haven’t exactly been picking straight lines on getting there…smile.
Kmarty, I am opposite of you. I found it a fast study with respect to me finding finger tab correlation to sheet music. At this point looking back, I think I have spent too much time reading and playing sheet music with disregard to learning by ear. A bit of repetitious finger muscle memory and sheet music in front of me has stalled my learn by ear process.
Benhall.1, spot on.
Infernaltootler, that’s cool, take your breaks when you can get them. Definitely, different folks have leaning or aptitudes in some areas…some have gifts to an extreme, others just have to work hard. I belong to the second group…smile.
Tunborough, yep, extremely gifted musicians throughout recorded history confirm that. Some of them so gifted, it makes a good case for previous life experience…smile.
…some have gifts to an extreme, others just have to work hard…
The best players, workers … anyone aren’t the best because they’re the most talented, they’re the best because they’re works hard (and works the right way).
I would be surprised if there aren’t great differences in what works best for different people when it comes to learning tunes. Just like there are huge variations between people in which method works best for learning languages. I guess it’s relevant as we’re all learning a language ‘by ear’ early on, but I’ve found that I for one am nearly unable to learn a(nother) language the same way as some other people I’ve trained with, in fact it’s detrimental - some of the stuff I learned about English in fourth grade is still a handicap for me, decades later. I can’t get rid of the brain patterns implanted by that (for me) flawed method. When I was learning Italian I realized after a while that the method which worked incredibly well for a co-learrner had a negative effect on my own learning, and the metod which worked for me didn’t work at all for the other person.
As for tunes, I remember following a link in an old post somewhere on this forum - the page was suggesting that individuals could generally be divided into four or five groups (IIRC), visual/audio/etc/etc w.r.t. what works for them.
In short, I don’t think there’s a single correct answer as to which method or combination of methods works best for everybody.
Unfortunately, I don’t read music at all. Fortunately, I listen to ITM constantly and did so for years before ever picking up a whistle. I find that I listen to ITM more intently now that I play whistle. I pay particular attention to melody, rhythm, ornamentation, variation, etc., as I listen to the music. i also listen to stylistic variation between various whistle players I admire, as well, I pay attention to the techniques they make use of in common.
For me, I find that if I can break a total composition down into phrases or parts, practice each seperate unit and add the next consecutive piece until having the whole composition completed, it seems to work well for me. Listening intentively and practicing my playback skills seem to develop more strongly as time / experience goes on. Definitely the best method by which I learn to play.
That’s what I’m trying to adapt to . . . with the help of Blayne Chastain who teaches that way. Though if I’m trying to learn a complex air full of ornamentation that’s not written down, something of Davy Spillane’s for example, I still tend to resort to trying to transcribe it first so I have the dots written down at least if I forget it. But I know I need to do more of Blayne’s stuff which helps me to learn by ear but at least has the music to fall back on when I’m struggling.
There can be other side effects too.. I’ve been an amateur musician for most of my life, but I didn’t start listening properly until about 15 years ago. A few years ago I noticed that I can’t really listen to background music anymore. Either there’s music playing and I listen to it, or I do something else and then background music is in the way.
I had heard some other people tell about the phenomenon before, particularly some of the pro or the semi-pro guys. I registered it as a curiosity, but then it happened to me. It can be a bit of a bother at dinner parties when I want to talk to people and someone puts on a CD.
Pretty much the same here. I find I can tolerate background music to a degree if that’s what it is: so quiet as to be truly ambient. But really, in relaxed social settings I strongly prefer what I call “the music of human conversation”, on its own and by itself, not having to compete with any music at all if possible. Unfortunately, some people nowadays are genuinely distressed if music isn’t there, and louder than I would like or consider necessary.
Also, at home or in the car by myself I usually don’t have music on. It doesn’t occur to me to do so, as I always have tunes going on inside my head. Sort of an inner iPod, if you will.
Exactly the same here! I nearly wrote that exact paragraph myself but figured I had written enough already. And what I hear in my head I can add to (instruments or passages) or improvise, and it sounds as good as the real deal. No need for any iPod. This also came along with the other effects of listening to music from a musician’s point of view, even a lousy musician such as myself.
It won’t, so long as you don’t unduly favor one over the other.
I’m a poor reader myself, but that’s my fault because I’ve always habitually preferred the ear thing to the point of resisting reading, even when I took piano as a kid; for 7 years I deceived my teachers that I could read by asking them to play pieces at the end of the lesson on the pretext that I wanted to hear their phrasing and dynamics, when what I was really doing was committing what I heard to memory as best I could, and painfully plunked out what I couldn’t remember using the notation afterward at home. Naturally, that method will get you only so far. So that could be called a definite downside, an illustration of the results of undue favoring from the other side of the coin.
I think that the ideal would be to have them both, as horses in tandem working for you. There’s no need to put them in adversarial positions, which is rather illogical. That said, I still firmly suggest that ear learning is a tool of essential importance in trad music, and it ought to be cultivated.
Learning to read music is just another skill set, it adds to what you can do. It won’t stop you from learning by ear, anymore than learning to read a language will prevent you from learning to understand the spoken language - unless you spend all the time reading and no time listening.. for exactly the same reasons. I know musicians who have a nearly mortal fear about learning to read music, or any music theory, they (well, there are just a few) believe they will lose the ability to pick up music by ear, or improvise. As if jazz musicians didn’t exist! Or languages..
I don’t know how difficult it is to learn to read music as an adult. I somehow learned it in elementary school, we had a teacher with little interest in mathematics, geography or history. Instead we had music. Mostly just singing and those typical elementary school instruments (recorder, cheap xylophones), but when I started playing in a marching brass band at ten I found to my surprise that I could read the dots and could skip the beginner’s sheet reading course.
(I should add though that I had to learn all my maths, geography and history at a later time.. I certainly didn’t learn anything in elementary school, except what we called the small multiplication table. There’s a cost to everything and there needs to be a balance. )
From observation I have come to the opinion that people who learned traditional music by immersion and by ear approach it and especially it’s structures in a different way than those who came to it later and/or through the medium of notation.
It’s quite an interesting subject to think about and to observe at work but maybe it’s not immediately relevant to this thread. Another thing I know from experience that when learning new tunes it is useful to pick the ones that present themselves to you. I find myself often going to a CD to learn a particular tune and end up learning a different one that immediately ‘sticks’. The same, by the way, happens when going to a book to look at a notation of a particular tune : the tune I intended to learn doesn’t stick and I come away with one maybe from the opposite page that catches my eye.
I am a great believer in serendipity and that tunes will stick when you’re somehow ready for them. So in that sense, it’s good to play it by ear, figuratively speaking, as well.
