Memory aids?

[jemtheflute]

Diane, I think this is pretty much a developmental stage thing. Echoing things others have said, I think that in time, with practice (both technical/instrumental and musical/idiomatic), these things just start to fall into place, to "happen" for you.

If you can carry a tune in your head (and most people, even the totally non-musical in a playing or singing anything sense, have an astounding capacity to remember melody), the barriers are, as I think you are starting to explain yourself, those of getting your body to do what you want it to to perform what is in your mind's ear, rather than of memory as such. Some folk get past those barriers (they are stepped and recurrent, as someone else wrote in another thread about learning a while back) more readily than others, but it will happen for you eventually. It is comparable to the high-level classical player's ability to sight read - making the steps from notation to sound directly and instinctively without consciously thinking about the intermediate steps of pitch and duration, fingering, articulation, etc.

I certainly sometimes forget where I'm going in the middle of a tune, and especially at sessions may muddle up tunes started by others that are similar to ones I know, and so on. When I get lost in a tune it is also usually because of some technical lapse - finger pattern memory- rather than forgetting the actual tune. Mostly, though, on stuff I know reasonably well, I don't particularly think about what I am doing at all - I just play. I might consciously think ahead about breathing, about the change to the next tune, or about trying a new ornament or variation or harmony. I mostly know semi-subconsciously where I am in the tune, which repeat it is, how many times we've played it, etc. Of course, if I'm picking up a new tune by ear at a session, or continuing to do so with one partially acquired, I do think about how it sounds/where it is going and listening to catch details I know I haven't yet got right. I also think about my own sound - embouchure problems, intonation etc.

I definitely don't deliberately use any "landmark" type techniques to memorise a tune or the way I play it, though such landmarks doubtless exist and probably are a part of how our brains navigate a tune or a set - so it is a perfectly valid analytical method and could be helpful in conscious learning. Personally, though, I just learn the tune.....

[skh]

Sometimes I can sing or hum them, but sadly my voice lacks the range so I can't do it out loud.

Yes, I have the range problem too But for me it's not about performance quality lilting, just that when I can't lilt a tune I know I don't have it yet. It's a two-step process, to first get the tune into my head, and then from my head into my fingers. The latter step gets much faster with time, of course.

I find that playing the instrument gets in the way of my memory much of the time because just getting my fingers to do what I want is a struggle in itself. Much of the time it's my fingers taking the wrong offramp, not the music in my head, but once my fingers have played it I've heard it with my ears and now I'm all mixed up.

I have read that you want to play sessions, but to me this sounds that slowing down -- the tunes as you play them, and maybe the acquisition of new ones -- might help you here. Try to not play the problematic tune(s) faster than your head and fingers can stay together for a few weeks, and watch what happens.

peace,
Sonja

[Gordon]

Sometimes I can sing or hum them, but sadly my voice lacks the range so I can't do it out loud.

I find that playing the instrument gets in the way of my memory much of the time because just getting my fingers to do what I want is a struggle in itself. Much of the time it's my fingers taking the wrong offramp, not the music in my head, but once my fingers have played it I've heard it with my ears and now I'm all mixed up.

Not to beat a dead horse, but this is part of the reason why, on an earlier thread, I wrote that I think too much is made of ornamentation, and not enough on the tune itself. Beginners (usually) hear the ornament as part of the tune, and approach the ornament as "this part coming up", instead of the part itself, which may or may not need an ornament. The 'not-need' part of tunes often gets lost in the translation -- some folk never learn the tune without ornaments in certain spots, and then don't really know the tune outside their own, learned setting. The point of being able to lilt the tune is that the tune is embedded, not the ornament, which can be added at the player's discretion later.
Now, I still think there are alot of tunes that share ridiculously similar parts and this type of mix up is pretty much unavoidable - start on the Home Ruler and end up on Harvest Home.. It happens. This all becomes a bit of a straight-forward memory thing -- if you don't play a tune for awhile (and the more tunes you know, the more this happens), then you're likely to be doing fine until suddenly you're in another tune.
Ultimately, learning a catalog of unfamiliar and often similar tunes just takes time.

[Bloomfield]

In general I think in the beginning it's really important to

1. slow down during practice (one should avoid practicing the wrong thing by flubbing the same passage over and over --- one should just slow down even more),

2. practice phrase by phrase, making the phrases slow but musical and not mechanical, and

3. focus on one tune at a time, with no more than one tune a week.

[Bloomfield]

Not to beat a dead horse, but this is part of the reason why, on an earlier thread, I wrote that I think too much is made of ornamentation, and not enough on the tune itself. Beginners (usually) hear the ornament as part of the tune, and approach the ornament as "this part coming up", instead of the part itself, which may or may not need an ornament. The 'not-need' part of tunes often gets lost in the translation -- some folk never learn the tune without ornaments in certain spots, and then don't really know the tune outside their own, learned setting. The point of being able to lilt the tune is that the tune is embedded, not the ornament, which can be added at the player's discretion later.

I am all for simplifying the tune, but a lot of what sometimes gets called "ornamentation" is actually "articulation"---particularly cuts and taps. So I would put those in from the beginning. (And long rolls very soon, too, since they are simply a cut and a tap and can be practiced from early on. That has the advantage of REALLY slowing you down. It helps to sit down with someone for this stuff in the beginning.)

[Montana]

In general I think in the beginning it's really important to

1. slow down during practice (one should avoid practicing the wrong thing by flubbing the same passage over and over --- one should just slow down even more),

And use a metronome. I can't emphasize that enough, especially for beginners but it helps all musicians when learning tunes.
jim stone mentioned it a few posts back.
And I know I read somewhere in another thread someone saying that often musicians don't know what a steady tempo sounds like.

Beginners tend to rush through difficult or notey spots so there's never a constant tempo. If you're varying the tempo in a tune, it's difficult to find the phrasing.

[Cubitt]

finally, your body learns to play the tune.

Yes! By George, you've got it!

If you try to memorize melodies, you'll mix them up every time. When I learn a tune, I break it into bite-sized morsels so that I can learn the tune and get the beginnings of the ornaments I want to use. By the time I've got the whole thing together, and reasonably up to tempo, I have a kinetic feel for what is happening at any point in the tune. That is how I memorize it. Read anything out there on memory and retention, and you will learn that the more facets you can associate with what you are trying to remember and the more senses you can utilize, the easier it is to retain what you want.

Sometimes, when I am trying to start a tune that just won't come to me, I can find a passage where I do a particular ornament (for example), and I will play that portion. More often than not, the rest of the tune will come back to me and I can get it started.

So try to incorporate your whole body and all of your senses into the process of learning a tune. You'll not only retain the tunes better, you will probably play better because it will flow of its own, and you won't have to think so much just to get the darn thing out there.

[Tootler]

It's much easier to learn a tune if you can sing it. I make CD's of a collection of tunes or songs I want to learn and play them in the car and sing along to them. I use this more for songs than tunes, but I have used it for tunes and it is very helpful. Once I am reasonable confident I have the tune in [more or less] in my head and can sing it without the CD playing, I sit down with an instrument and try to play it.

Usually I will play along with the CD at first until the fingering has gelled then I try to play it without.

Even so, I find some tunes easier than others to learn.

Geoff

[sbfluter]

I find some tunes easier than others to learn.

I do too. I find the ones I really like much easier to learn than the ones I don't. We need more flutes in our session and less fiddles. They seem to like the hard ones.

Well thanks for your help everybody. I guess it's just a matter of instrument learning. I have never been proficient at an instrument in my life. I've dabbled, but most everything I ever did know I've forgotten.

[Gordon]

Not to beat a dead horse, but this is part of the reason why, on an earlier thread, I wrote that I think too much is made of ornamentation, and not enough on the tune itself. Beginners (usually) hear the ornament as part of the tune, and approach the ornament as "this part coming up", instead of the part itself, which may or may not need an ornament. The 'not-need' part of tunes often gets lost in the translation -- some folk never learn the tune without ornaments in certain spots, and then don't really know the tune outside their own, learned setting. The point of being able to lilt the tune is that the tune is embedded, not the ornament, which can be added at the player's discretion later.

I am all for simplifying the tune, but a lot of what sometimes gets called "ornamentation" is actually "articulation"---particularly cuts and taps. So I would put those in from the beginning. (And long rolls very soon, too, since they are simply a cut and a tap and can be practiced from early on. That has the advantage of REALLY slowing you down. It helps to sit down with someone for this stuff in the beginning.)

Yes, but that's why I used the word ornamentation. Rolls take up a fair amount of space, and are often used in place of articulated notes. That's fine, and fair, but if the tune is not in place, the roll obliterates learning it. Part of why I don't like notation books that show ornamentation, rather than the bare-bones tune.
Now, I'm not saying one shouldn't learn rolls early on, but they should probably be learned independently of a tune, or at the same time, to get a feel for where to put the ornament, sometimes playing it, sometimes not.
As for your first statement, I didn't say anything about simplifying a tune. Very often, it's the rolls that simplify a tune - not technically, because some rolls are difficult - but melodically. Many 'session' tunes are actually dumbed-down versions of a tune, which is why they get played alot, and then it's easy to stick in rolls and such because so many notes were dropped in favor of rolls anyway. The fact is, that many tunes are interesting enough in their original form, and that's really what should be learned.

[Carey]

Hi Diane,

I might be just a little bit down the road from where you are (unless I took the wrong exit ramp ) and I have experienced what you are going through. I might be beating a dead horse here, but perhaps it will help to say it with different words.

Have you ever read the book "Drawing on the Right Side of Your Brain" ? Regardless, the point is that to draw something you have to see it differently. At first this seeing is deliberate, but becomes second nature once you do it enough. Now that you can see the shapes to draw, it's a whole lot easier to draw things. Granted you don't have to do it while keeping up with a flock of crazed fiddlers!

I learned my first tunes as lists of notes. There was nothing else I could do. But I went to a session when I only had one tune. So I did a lot of listening. And watching. Maybe watching is important. Seeing the emotion in the playing. Feeling the tunes, not just hearing them.

I would start off playing my list of notes and work down the list. If I stayed on track all was well, but to get off was death. Now that I had a list of notes, I started hearing the music a little differently. I don't know how to say it other than I started to notice things I did not hear before.

Over time (months) I improved and added tunes but they were still lists. Then one day I found myself not keeping my mental finger on the list but simply listening to my playing. As soon as I realized that the train left the track, but I knew I was about to crest a hill.

My playing became less about lists and more about tunes. And it got worse! That's right, my playing at the session sucked! I think I was learning to use a different part of my brain for the playing. That and the part formerly occupied by keeping count of reps or running down the list of notes was finding other things to do, which was OK so long as enough of my brain was listening/think the tune. If someone spoke to me, there I'd go again, off into the bushes, wheels up.

Oh, about this time I also lost the "fear" of jumping across the dreaded octave barrier. I could put 'em all down or lift 'em all up without concern. There may be a connection. Muscle memory managing the instrument perhaps.

Then the cycle turned again, I started hearing the music differently, and thus playing it differently. I don't mean it sounded different, but that I was playing what I was hearing in my mind. You know how you "think sing" a song when it comes on the radio? Just like that, only it's ME who's playing and I'm think singing along with me.

I guess what I'm saying is it's a spiral - you hear ITM music and you play what you hear, now that you have a frame of reference you hear different things, and play that. And you hear more, play different, and on and on. And while all that is going on, you are able to reliquish more and more of the playing of the instrument to your subconsious. There's no shortcuts. Just keep having fun. If something's too hard, save it for later when your muscles can take more of the load.

I'm far from expert, just sharing some thoughts from along the same path.

Cheers,

Carey

[I.D.10-t]

There are two different versions of "the girl I Left Behind Me". I try to think of different places when I play the tune. One for the older version, one for the newer one.

Learn about the tune, form an image, play the image.

[Tootler]

I find some tunes easier than others to learn.

...I find the ones I really like much easier to learn than the ones I don't.

That's human nature. We tend to like the things we can do well

We need more flutes in our session and less fiddles. They seem to like the hard ones.

There are two things here. Firstly, fiddles are good. A well played fiddle has a rhythmic drive that no other "folk" instrument can equal IMHO. I certainly have learnt an awful lot about how the rhythms work in traditional music by listening to fiddlers.

As to your second point that they "choose the hard ones", different tunes suit different instruments. The the tunes they choose may not be the hard ones to them. Tunes that are hard on the flute may well be easy on the fiddles and vice versa, so what they could be doing is choosing tunes that are easy to them.

Well thanks for your help everybody. I guess it's just a matter of instrument learning. I have never been proficient at an instrument in my life. I've dabbled, but most everything I ever did know I've forgotten.

Your not alone in that. I have also dabbled in a variety of instruments over the years. The one I really stuck to, though is the recorder. I have only recently started learning the flute and am enjoying it, though it is only after a false start on the Boehm system flute which I did not particularly like. However the wooden flute is proving a different story.

Most people can learn to play an instrument at least competently. It is a matter of finding one that suits you and that can sometimes take a long time. I found an instrument that suited me while I was at primary school, but I did not realise it until over 20 years later when my daughters started learning it and I picked it up again and have played it ever since.

Geoff

[Tootler]

I find some tunes easier than others to learn.

...I find the ones I really like much easier to learn than the ones I don't.

That's human nature. We tend to like the things we can do well

We need more flutes in our session and less fiddles. They seem to like the hard ones.

There are two things here. Firstly, fiddles are good. A well played fiddle has a rhythmic drive that no other "folk" instrument can equal IMHO. I certainly have learnt an awful lot about how the rhythms work in traditional music by listening to fiddlers.

As to your second point that they "choose the hard ones", different tunes suit different instruments. The the tunes they choose may not be the hard ones to them. Tunes that are hard on the flute may well be easy on the fiddles and vice versa, so what they could be doing is choosing tunes that are easy to them.

Well thanks for your help everybody. I guess it's just a matter of instrument learning. I have never been proficient at an instrument in my life. I've dabbled, but most everything I ever did know I've forgotten.

You're not alone in that. I have also dabbled in a variety of instruments over the years. The one I really stuck to, though is the recorder. I have only recently started learning the flute and am enjoying it, though it is only after a false start on the Boehm system flute which I did not particularly like. However the wooden flute is proving a different story.

Most people can learn to play an instrument at least competently. It is a matter of finding one that suits you and that can sometimes take a long time. I found an instrument that suited me while I was at primary school, but I did not realise it until over 20 years later when my daughters started learning it and I picked it up again and have played it ever since.

Geoff

[Bloomfield]

Not to beat a dead horse, but this is part of the reason why, on an earlier thread, I wrote that I think too much is made of ornamentation, and not enough on the tune itself. Beginners (usually) hear the ornament as part of the tune, and approach the ornament as "this part coming up", instead of the part itself, which may or may not need an ornament. The 'not-need' part of tunes often gets lost in the translation -- some folk never learn the tune without ornaments in certain spots, and then don't really know the tune outside their own, learned setting. The point of being able to lilt the tune is that the tune is embedded, not the ornament, which can be added at the player's discretion later.

I am all for simplifying the tune, but a lot of what sometimes gets called "ornamentation" is actually "articulation"---particularly cuts and taps. So I would put those in from the beginning. (And long rolls very soon, too, since they are simply a cut and a tap and can be practiced from early on. That has the advantage of REALLY slowing you down. It helps to sit down with someone for this stuff in the beginning.)

Yes, but that's why I used the word ornamentation. Rolls take up a fair amount of space, and are often used in place of articulated notes. That's fine, and fair, but if the tune is not in place, the roll obliterates learning it. Part of why I don't like notation books that show ornamentation, rather than the bare-bones tune.
Now, I'm not saying one shouldn't learn rolls early on, but they should probably be learned independently of a tune, or at the same time, to get a feel for where to put the ornament, sometimes playing it, sometimes not.
As for your first statement, I didn't say anything about simplifying a tune. Very often, it's the rolls that simplify a tune - not technically, because some rolls are difficult - but melodically. Many 'session' tunes are actually dumbed-down versions of a tune, which is why they get played alot, and then it's easy to stick in rolls and such because so many notes were dropped in favor of rolls anyway. The fact is, that many tunes are interesting enough in their original form, and that's really what should be learned.

I agree with everything you say here.