Learning by ear

[Denny]

There are several member on this forum who whistle and who live the WY.
What I don't know if they want company or if they are interested in teaching.
This WY fellow has a blog, you might try to contact him;
http://whistlingbadger2.blogspot.com/

Tom is a bit out of Lander

Nice guy, if ya don't mind an euphonium

[bogman]

Learning by ear, the first and main steps at becoming a decent traditional musician. Just do a wee bit every day even if it's a couple of bars or even a bar of a slow tune. You'll notice it becomes easier and easier, the more you do it the faster you learn. Remember you're not actually training your ear, it's your brain that's working it out. And do yourself a huge favour and avoid all temptation to use slow down software, it lets you learn tunes faster but you'd be cheating yourself. Eventually you'll learn reels at full speed without much trouble, use slow down software and you'll always need a crutch.

[grey]

So Bogman,
What you suggest is to take a song, say from the list off of Small Circle Tune Learning Session or Tradlessons etc and listen repeatedly to a bar or phrase until I have it in my head without listening, then try and work it out with just my whistle and my brain until I can match the D,G, F#, G and the spacing - timing and rhythm that I have memory of, then go to the next phrase and do the same thing?
I notice I am particularly (emotionally) responding to the posts that give huge encouragement - especially mentioning 'years' of practice, practice. I must be finding this task quite challenging - wishing I was younger, or had never quit music for decades. If this is how you advise me to proceed I will. I guess I am afraid of wasting years of time. I have already- by using sheet music to learn a tune when I KNEW it probably was NOT how I should be learning ITM.
When I do try to play the notes from memory it takes forever to find the proper note - that is why I said, "I don't think I know my whistle well."
Intuitively I believe you are correct not to rely on slow-down manuevers too much. I do like the facility for looping a bar however.
I DO know all the dittys like Twinkle, Twinkle but it is a brain-fingers thing. I suppose I should go back and try and name notes as I play? See, even now, if I pull out the whistle for each note of 'Twinkle, Twinkle' I have to stop and see where my fingers are, and then look at the fingering chart on the wall. I don't know the specific sound of the "d" and then the "a" by ear alone.
I confess I have looked at the music learning programs, ie PerfectPitch and others with the intent to learn the notes by ear. I have been reluctant since they seem geared to classical music and that may have been what the error in my approach has been already.
Whatever insights or thoughts you or others have I well appreciate.
I DO know it is practice practice. I think I may be one of the duller persons. I do not know the sound of an "a" unless I play it and look - and I have been daily with the whistle for some time now. I DO know when the note is wrong however, so I guess that is a starting point?
Thanks...

[Mr.Gumby]

Don't loop by the bar, the whole point of learning by ear is to learn identify the correct structure of the tune and learn it by the phrase.

[bogman]

You don't have to know what a 'd' or an 'a' sounds like. Learning to hear the intervals between notes is the basis to playing by ear. Many phrases and mini phrases appear repeatedly in traditional music and you begin to recognise these over time and things get easier. Hearing the tune in your head is important and if you can do that you're well on the way. Not one minute of practising learning by ear is time wasted, so no matter how old someone is or how much time they have available it's worth getting started. Even 10 minutes a day practicing playing by ear will be a great benefit to someones playing - even if it were to take a year to learn one tune.

[Steve Bliven]

.... use slow down software and you'll always need a crutch.

I must disagree with this. To me, using slow down software is little different from leaning over to a player at a session and saying, "I didn't get the second part to that last reel, could you play it over for me a bit more slowly." And the slow down technology won't cost you a pint... Many of us have to learn tunes from recordings where the professional recording artists are playing fast and never play the same phrase the same way twice, so slowing things down a bit makes it easier to sort things out.

Many phrases and mini phrases appear repeatedly in traditional music and you begin to recognize these over time and things get easier. Hearing the tune in your head is important and if you can do that you're well on the way. .

This part I thoroughly agree with. It's kind of like like learning a language. The same bits tend to repeat themselves over and over. Once you begin to pick up a few, the rest start to fall into place. We learn a language as a child by picking out words that we hear regularly (and to harken back to the above, it's real helpful if the adult speaks slowly while the child is learning ). Over on the piping discussion of this topic, the short phrases of ITM and Scotch TM were likened to Lego blocks that are fit together in various ways. Learn the blocks and the then see how they fit into the phrases.

But as has been suggested several times in this thread, the goal is to learn to play the music (or speak the language) not just the notes or phrases....

Best wishes.

Steve

[Steve Bliven]

Oh, one more thing. To get back to the OP's question,

http://www.amazon.com/Ear-Training-Inst ... 0634003852
or
http://www.amazon.com/eMedia-EM11086-Ea ... pd_sim_b_1

Best wishes.

Steve

[ytliek]

The same bits tend to repeat themselves over and over. Once you begin to pick up a few, the rest start to fall into place. We learn a language as a child by picking out words that we hear regularly (and to harken back to the above, it's real helpful if the adult speaks slowly while the child is learning ). Over on the piping discussion of this topic, the short phrases of ITM and Scotch TM were likened to Lego blocks that are fit together in various ways. Learn the blocks and the then see how they fit into the phrases.

But as has been suggested several times in this thread, the goal is to learn to play the music (or speak the language) not just the notes or phrases....

Best wishes.

Steve

so are these blocks carried over tune to different tune, or just within a particular tune?

[bogman]

We'll have to agree to disagree on the slow down software Steve.

[Steve Bliven]

so are these blocks carried over tune to different tune, or just within a particular tune?

Lots of tunes have "blocks"/"words" in common with other tunes. There are those who believe there are only 20 or so tunes in the entire Irish dance music repertoire—with lots of variations. The real fun is giving all of them different names....or even giving the same one lots of different names.

We'll have to agree to disagree on the slow down software Steve.

Agreed.

In the words of that noted philosopher, Sylvester Stone, "Different strokes for different folks, (and so on and so on and doobie, doobie, do.)"

Best wishes.

Steve

[david_h]

I can do it now. Not well, but about four years ago I couldn't do it at all and almost gave up.

I see it as two separate things. The first is getting the tune into my head; I think that is just a matter of more practice at how we learn Happy Birthday or pick up the chorus of a song as we go along.

The second was getting my fingers just to fall onto the holes for the sounds I have in my head without having to think about it in the same way I don't think about how to make the notes when humming in the shower. For me that was just a case of trial and error, 'hunt and peck' as someone posting about doing it on a concertina put it. Over time there is progressively less hunting and less error.

It may not help everyone, but it helped me to start with pentatonic tunes like Amazing Grace, Skye Boat song, Egan's polka etc.

[Nanohedron]

I can do it now. Not well, but about four years ago I couldn't do it at all and almost gave up.

The more you do it, the easier it gets. Eventually you find yourself remembering tunes out of the blue, without having intended to. You may not remember every tiniest detail, or even get the whole thing right, but it'll be close enough to anchor you down right so you can complete the job.

I see it as two separate things. The first is getting the tune into my head; I think that is just a matter of more practice at how we learn Happy Birthday or pick up the chorus of a song as we go along.

The second was getting my fingers just to fall onto the holes for the sounds I have in my head without having to think about it in the same way I don't think about how to make the notes when humming in the shower. For me that was just a case of trial and error, 'hunt and peck' as someone posting about doing it on a concertina put it. Over time there is progressively less hunting and less error.

I agree completely. "Ear learning" is memorization, storage, and retrieval of the way a tune goes, IOW remembering how it will generally sound note-for-note to any listener, including you. Getting it under your fingers is something else entirely.

Some people try playing along as they try to ear-learn, but IMO that's multitasking that will actually distract you from your best memory of the tune itself. Better to be able to remember the tune first, and then do the play-along, I think. However, in workshop situations things will be different; people learning unfamiliar tunes will be working on the fingering muscle memory too, and that's the normal way in those situations. I just don't confuse the two, is all.

[retired]

Reading the original post, what comes to mind is, as others have said, to be able to accurately hum the tune before I can play it on the whistle. In my learning to this point I've come to realize starting a tune on the 'right' hole is very important, meaning I'll do a lot better if I start from a position / key that facilitates playing that tune on the whistle. I could play it from more than one starting point but as I've learned tunes that I've heard on other instruments, and I have a choice of keys to play it in, some keys just seem to be more accommodating than others. I have software (Audacity - free) that allows changing the pitch / key of a tune and it's of enormous help. - I also use it to slow down tunes --- oooh I'm so bad !

[bogman]

retired, I'm not saying it's bad to use slow down software, but surely it's obvious that you can have a much sharper ear if you can learn tunes at the speed they're played at. If someone can pick up at tune at 80% speed they're not very far from not needing the crutch at all. It seems to me that folk who relay on slow down software maybe don't believe they can pick up recorded music at normal speed so don't give the final push. Anyone can do it, it just takes practise.

[Nanohedron]

retired, I'm not saying it's bad to use slow down software, but surely it's obvious that you can have a much sharper ear if you can learn tunes at the speed they're played at.

Hope you'll forgive my quibbling over words, but I personally wouldn't say "sharper ear" in this case. Let's say you solidly memorise a tune by normal speed in, say, 10 minutes (I've seen it done in less time); that's pretty fast, but you're not necessarily going to hear the subtleties that make the ornaments and such what they are, whether live or on a recording. That's where slowdown programs really shine. I have friends who memorise by ear on the fly pretty well, but they also like to get down to what's going on at the "submolecular" level with recordings of a particular person's playing, so they use slowdowners for that. But for them, it's more of an adjunct for learning someone else's technical approaches rather than an adjunct for general memory.

Can't say as I have an opinion about slowdowners for aiding general memory. I've never used one, so of course I'm going to agree with you bogman; being able to learn the tune as-is is golden, and an ability worth cultivating. I think no one can seriously question that. But do I know this: whether by unaided ear, slowdowner, or sheetmusic, in all cases you go through a certain amount of repetition until the memory takes hold. Might as well learn to learn by ear, then.