Memory aids?

Irish Flute
1

I have a really bad memory apparently. I can listen to tunes all the time, and it doesn’t even really matter what genre the music is, once I try to reproduce a tune using a musical instrument, it seems I have a really hard time remembering how it goes.

For example, take a really easy-to-remember tune like Morrison’s Jig. Should be a piece of cake to play since you could probably hum it in your sleep. But when I get to playing it, especially in the second half, I’ll get tangled up and end up repeating the first half of the second part instead of playing both halves. (I hope that made sense.)

I get confused like this with many tunes that are like this, where there’s a slight enough difference in there that if you mess it up it’s like you are on the wrong offramp on the freeway and you end up on the wrong street.

Do you have any kind of memory aids to help you remember where you are in a tune, so this doesn’t happen?

2

I don’t think that Morrison’s is a particularly easy tune to remember (nor a particularly easy tune generally - it’s just somehow gotten into the canon of beginner tunes in the US).

As for memorizing tunes, I think the point is to break it down, to understand the structure. Mind you what I am telling you now is reflects my level of understanding, which is limited. There are two basic levels to a typical tune: a question/answer structure, and the individual phrases. Take a simple tune like the Burnt Old Man:

(That’s not quite how I play it, but just what I could grab off thesession.org)

The first question covers roughly the first two measures (note that bar lines and beginnings of phrases fall in different places in this music):
[FE] | DFB AFD | ~F3 F
(you should think of this question of containing a lead in, even though it’s not written). Then there is the answer:
FE | DFB AFD | ~E3 E. Think of this as Answer 1.

The question is repeated (but goes up to the high d - many jigs repeat the question 1:1), and then is followed by Answer 2, which also wraps up the part:

de |fed B2d | ABA F .

Look at the B part in the same way. Again there is a question-answer thing going on, with Answer 2 being the same of or similar to Answer 2 of the A part.

That gives you the basic structure.

Break down each question and answer into the phrases. In a jig, a phrase straddles bar lines, like so:
FE | DFB A;
next phrase: FD | ~F3 F; and so on…

Listen and practice tunes by phrase, until you have the question. Then learn the phrases that make up the answer 1, and so on. Soon you’ll be thinking in phrases and will understand how players change phrases around to make them fit together (try playing the A part of the Burnt Old Man repeating the question exactly and then going into the answer 2 - it works: … EF | DFB AFD | ~F3 F de | fed B2d | ABA F).

Once you hear and play phrases, you put together the questions and answers and then thing flows and makes sense. When you learn tunes by ear, you listen for the phrases and learn those. Find the “heavy notes” in the phrase and how you get into them and out of them.

Don’t use sheet music until you can hear understand phrases, questions/answers, and heavy notes (my term. That is, important notes - the bones of the tune). Sorry to break it to you, but I don’t think your “going over the plot first with sheet music” thing works.

FWIW.

3

huh what ? i forgot what i was gonna say

seriously, i find the spot in the tune where i tend to veer off (maybe one note or a little passage) and play that distinctly unique and deliberately the same way every time as a memory aid. just as one would look for a ‘landmark’ wile driving down the road (hey there’s o’malley’s-- we must be in podunk). with two or more tunes that are very similar in structure , i play each tune deliberately different at those spots where i tend to get confused. for example one tune i might always roll the note, and the other tune i deliberately do not roll, but may be do a glttal stop or pulse or something so i can i have a clue as to what i am suppose to be playing. that little clue usually sends me off in the right track.
when i stopped playing flute for a couple years and then returned to it again, i had a hell of a time getting tunes straight in my head. i would play the first half of one tune and then go into the second half of another tune whithout missing a beat. once i was into the second half would then recognize that it was from a different tune. but i just kept playing away anyway drifting in-and-out of tunes hoping one day it would all come out right…

…still waiting

4

I think that might be what I hear June doing in my Fliuit CDs. It seems like she’ll do a roll before one section and then deliberately not before another section, or maybe insert different breathing, or maybe a triplet, as a way to make to similar chunks of the tune seem different.

But since she only plays the tune twice at most it’s not like I really can tell what exactly she is doing. For all I know she’s just illustrating some variations you could do.

What really flummoxes me are tunes that I start on one tune and end up on the other. But it’s just as bad as the tunes that I get stuck in an endless loop because I can’t remember how I get out and on to the next part.

5

Yes, she is. You should recognize the phrase as the same regardless of what variation or breath is placed in it. You can set the CD player on repeat for that track.

What really flummoxes me are tunes that I start on one tune and end up on the other. But it’s just as bad as the tunes that I get stuck in an endless loop because I can’t remember how I get out and on to the next part.

I think this is because you are trying to play a (to you) meaningless stream of notes, rather than something with structure and progression and meaning. Also you should be able to start playing the next part or next tune even if you forget the transition and fudge or drop it.

6

I don’t see them as meaningless streams of notes. You have a chip on your shoulder or something. Please pick on someone else.

7

I agree with rama - the truth is, many tunes are structured similarly (try playing Morrison’s and Whelans jig one after the other). Then some part particularly makes it a bit different - can just be the turn of a phrase, or a whole passage - and the entire tune comes into focus.
Some tunes I just can’t ever remember - too many like them. So I play the ones I remember…

8

don’t see them as meaningless streams of notes. You have a chip on your shoulder or something. Please pick on someone else.

Listen Diana, he is trying to give you sound advice. No chips on shoulders. The problem you put forward and the clips you posted point at one thing and that is that you have a lack of structure in your tunes. When you have a clear idea of the structure of a tune, the problems you face would simply not occur.
I teach young people who grow up with this music around them, they have a different understanding of it, usually they will have a tune after I play it to them twice. The only reason they can is that they have an understanding of how this music moves and stick together.

I know, it’s frustrating to be thrown back to square one and having to force yourself to go through a process that will take long. The advice given here and in the sheetmusic thread on the other forum is sound and worth taking.

9

This might be stating the obvious, but the way I have always learned tunes is to boil them down to as few notes as humanly possible. Then I go back and add in passing notes, ornamentaion, etc… Once you have highly simplified phrases burned into your memory, you’ll never wander off into another tune. I use June’s book also, and it’s great. But the most important tool is your ear, and fixing the tune in your brain is the first step.

I’m teaching old-time/bluegrass mandolin to my son. Today we played the old-time tune “Sugar Hill”. I had to make him PUT THE MANDOLIN DOWN and listen to me play it a few times — stripped down and slow. Once he got the thread of the tune into his head he was off and running. That was six hours ago, and he plays it better than me now!!

:boggle:

10

morrison’s/whelan’s is a great example. i think i had set it up so i would intentionally not roll the first E in whelan’s - i always play EDE at the start. that would set me on course. whereas in morrison’s jig i rolled that E followed by B_B (a ‘stop’ in the middle). that combo: E3~ B_B
was sort of a ‘unique cue’ for me on that jig.

11

I’m really not trying to pick on you. Sorry if I am coming across the wrong way.

12

Given the other thread about sheet music, you might not like me writing that, but I remember tunes learned by ear much better than those learned from dots, and I’m fairly proficient in both.

13

I am learning June’s book by ear.

I have also listened to the Eagles by ear for 30 years or so. I can’t play or sing any of those tunes either. Perhaps you all have a gift.

I was just wondering if you have something you do to help you remember where you are when you get lost. It’s easier when people play together to keep each other on track, but harder when you are alone.

So I was trying to learn a new one in June’s CD and was having a hard time being able to play it by myself without hearing her to prompt me. Since I’m learning to play the instrument at the same time as learning to play tunes it can be difficult when my fingers take a wrong turn and send me into a more memorable portion of the tune, or a more memorable tune completely.

14

Anyhow I don’t think anything
is wrong with your memory.

thisis what it’s like to learn tunes.
For those of us who aren’t geniuses
and who didn’t grow up with this music,
it’s like learning a new language
as an adult. The first five years
are the hardest, I think.

Patience is the chief virtue in this business, IMO.
And practice, practice, practice…

You know, the race isn’t always to the swift.
What matters is where you end up.
Sometimes the people who end up
best are the ones who have more trouble
on the way.

15

P.S. I’m learning the tunes they play at our session from a book because a) it’s the book they all learned the tunes from, b) they’re written the way they play them and c) it really does help when I get to the session and can hear them in person. I instantly can recognize the tune and can even play along, although not perfectly since they play so much faster than I’m capable of.

Without the book I would never be able to achieve my goal of being able to play at the session. So I will recommend learning tunes with sheet music to anyone because I personally find it immensely helpful.

At the same time, I know you need to learn by ear, but I think you have to get to a certain level of skill with the instrument and a certain level of tune knowledge to be able to pick tunes up only by hearing them. EVERYBODY I’ve ever spoken to says that at some point it clicks and then it’s so easy. But until then they all struggled in whatever ways to get to that point.

16

I think the point is that it’s about that struggle and hard work of picking out tunes by ear. I remember listening to tunes a 1,000 times and slowing them down and still not getting the twiddle transition bits and mixing it all up the minute I try on my own. There is something that the process teaches you that people tell me can’t be learned another way (I am still learning it myself). I guess you have to strain a bit to develop your ear for the music.

I can understand about wanting to play in sessions right away and about learning the tunes from the sheet music. I did the same thing, I guess (but I cringe thinking back).

17

But when you are playing the tune, what do you think about to stay on track? Do you keep a running count of where you are? Do you play an ornament or some kind of variation only in one place to remind yourself? Or do you do something I hadn’t thought of. That’s what I’m asking about.

I know there is one tune where I just slam my finger down to remind myself the A part has to have this finger, the B part has the finger that wants to come down without a prompt. But this only has marginal success because it’s more like giving myself a spanking rather than doing something useful.

18

Spankings are fun!

I can hear the tune in my head.
I learn by playing the tune on an audio
one line at a time. I repeat that line.
Then I play that line on the flute.
After a gazillion times I have it.
Then I play the second line on the
audio. I repeat it. Then I play
it on the flute…and so on.

The next day I’ve forgotten the tune.
So I do it again. etc.

‘She will leave you and then,
Come back again…
A pretty girl is just like a pretty tune.’

Obviously it helps to listen to the tune
a whole lot when you are washing the
dishes, etc.

19

Where tunes are easily confused like George White’s Favorite/Humours of Lissadell or the B parts of the Legacy and Saddle the Pony, etc etc, I pay attention to the characteristic note at which the tunes diverge. Otherwise I just hear the tune in my head as play. Some tunes I only seem to be able to play by not thinking at all while I’m playing. When I’ve learned a tune by ear usually I just know how it goes and what to do without knowing how I know it. It’s neat but a bit startling at first.

20

Here’s something we should all remind ourselves of:

We live in a modern world where there are thousands of tunes available to us on recordings and in books. Going to a session these days can be a pretty intimidating experience. But the traditional artists we revere often came from insulated environments where a very limited number of tunes evolved over a period of very many years. They got played a lot! Consequently the players grew up with those tunes, and the tunes became a part of them. (Much like you’ll never forget the TV ads and jingles you probably grew up with, as much as you’d like to.)

To really play a tune requires living with it for awhile. What we do is short-cutting, to put it mildly. Let’s give ourselves the occasional break! Diane, don’t sweat it. You’re doing great, so concentrate on enjoying the ride!