david_h wrote: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.
david_h wrote: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.
"If you take music out of this world, you will have nothing but a ball of fire." - Balochi musician