Any tips for visual learners?

Lizzie · Post by **Lizzie** » Fri Jul 30, 2004 9:15 pm

Thanks so much for all who have taken the time to respond so thoughtfully…..some of these things I have been doing…gosh, I listened to one tune all the way home in the car about a gazillion times. You can reach the point where you almost hate the tune!

Tony, I am not sure why using ABC notation would be better than using regular notation…seems like the same process to me….and I have heard all about the pitfalls of using sheet music…..but ya gotta do what works for you and the purists be darned! I think I partially get past this by using recorded music in conjunction with the sheet music..I listen and read at the same time.

I do use some visualization, especially to remember how a tune starts..I can remember what the sheet music looks like….I think I should try to do that more deliberately.

Jeff….learning style theory is pretty well grounded…..I think it is much more than a habit….it is how your particular brain is wired...visual learners are in many ways fortunate because they generally do better in school, learning to read comes more easily and so does text book learning….it was great until I decided to take up some music! Jeff, I think I will try more vocalizing of my tunes. I thought of even putting a few words to the first few bars…..I find tunes with words are much easier to remember than straight tunes.

Ah…. Squidgirl and Telegram Sam…someone else who really understands this…. I do use Slowdowner (on my Mac) and that is helpful as I can loop a small section….(aside: I wonder if visual people are more attractive to Macs ‘cause they look so nice?) I do put away the sheet music and continue only with the recording……and eventually I play on my own….I do ‘know’ a number of tunes, but they have been hard learned and I have to keep coming back to them or they are gone….

Moxy..I am not sure that ‘visual’ people do not have good ears…..at least not necessarily. I think I have a fair ear as reflected in my ability to play what I do know and pretty easily….it is just hard when you can’t remember what you have just heard…

Plodding on……

Liz.

andreaz54 · Post by **andreaz54** » Sat Jul 31, 2004 6:32 am

Lizzie...I learn the same way you do. I don't see it as being any problem and you surely aren't the only one out there who learns tunes this way. At least you have me!

I need the sheet music, and like you said, a recording of the tune is very helpful. I learn the tune with the sheet music and when I have played it enough times I find that my fingers start knowing where to go of their own accord and the tune is fixed in my head. Then I abandon the sheet music and can go on to make the tune my own, adding my own flourishes, speeding up certain parts or slowing them down...that sort of things. I have got around 30 tunes stored in my head using this method, and while that is not a large amount compared to some on the Board I think it is nothing to sneeze at either.

I think we sometimes try to make rocket science out of something that should be fairly simple. If you can learn to play a tune just by listening to a CD....GREAT. If you need to start by using sheet music....COOL. What ever works for you. The most important thing is that you are enjoying yourself.

SirNick · Post by **SirNick** » Sat Jul 31, 2004 6:48 am

I always listen to the version of the tune I'm trying to learn since each person puts different articulations and ornamentations on a piece. Take a popular trad piece like Morrisons, Inisheer or Lilting Banshees for instance. I'll find the version that fits my ears and playing style that best fits into my own or even a differnet style that I'm trying to learn, listen to it 137 to 652 times

and print the standard notation out to use as a reference for those difficult runs. Having the songs written music I've learned in a spiral notebook helps to jog my memory when I haven't played something in awhile. I can look at the first passage to get the tune rolling, after that my muscle memory takes over. (hopefully)

moxy · Post by **moxy** » Sat Jul 31, 2004 7:00 am

Lizzie wrote: I do use some visualization, especially to remember how a tune starts..I can remember what the sheet music looks like….I think I should try to do that more deliberately.

Moxy..I am not sure that ‘visual’ people do not have good ears…..at least not necessarily. I think I have a fair ear as reflected in my ability to play what I do know and pretty easily….it is just hard when you can’t remember what you have just heard…

You're right about visual people and their ears - I have no knowledge of what it must be like not to have a good ear, and I'm not sure why mine is so good. There is definitely a relationship between my good ear and some sort of visualization though.

Have you ever seen the movie "A Beautiful Mind"? I have a VHS copy of it, and after the movie's over, Ron Howard talks about John Nash, the real guy. He says something about people like John Nash, and how they don't think in terms of numbers, it's all about shapes and relationships.

That's what I'm like. So I have difficulty relating to someone who doesn't have the same facility as I do with music - and other things too, I'm good at remembering patterns and stuff like that.

I do believe though that being able to sing or hum or lilt a tune is a good precursor to memorizing the tune for playing on any instrument.

Easily_Deluded_Fool · Post by **Easily_Deluded_Fool** » Sat Jul 31, 2004 7:18 am

I learn best using everything
i.e. sight, listening, practice little & often e.g. 1 tune
5-6 times x as many times per day as I feel.

I use MidiNotate - free midi player that shows the score.
Slow it down/speed it up etc.
Some midi files are great, others are poo!
So listen to an mp3 etc to make sure the midi is
at least following the tempo/melody etc.
There are thousands of free midi's available.

Some tunes 'go in' by themselves,
making me wonder if I choose the tune,
or if the tune chooses me!

Other tunes take a lot of practice to memorise
i.e. weeks!

Whatever works for you is your answer.

HTH

Lizzie · Post by **Lizzie** » Sat Jul 31, 2004 7:36 am

Moxy, I think we have some confusion here.....I am primarliy( no one is ever totally one thing or the other) a visual learner.....I have poor auditory memory, but that does NOT mean I do not have a good ear......I can HEAR the differences in notes..I can HEAR when a piece changes key...I can play a piece I know without written notes and I can HEAR if it is right or not....if I am singing and I go flat trying to reach a high note, I can HEAR that I have gone flat....I just don't remember WHAT I have heard easily. People who do not have a good ear cannot tell if a note is higher or lower than another note or how many intervals bertween notes..for them I can imagine learning music would be really hard, so I guess i should not complain too much.

Here is another example of what it means to be visually wired...I can run into someone I have met once and I will remember that face and where I met that person..but for the life of me I will not remember their name. Visual learners are usually good spellers...they remember what the word looks like.

moxy · Post by **moxy** » Sat Jul 31, 2004 8:12 am

Lizzie wrote:Moxy, I think we have some confusion here.....

Most likely the confusion is on my part, because as I said, I have difficulty relating to people who are not like me. However, I do understand that some people will need the sheet music to get started. And to those people I wish they would get it, because it's how they work, it's what they need to get started.

However, as you've said, your issue is in the memorization of tunes. My memory works in shapes and relationships - how I get to those shapes and relationships is beyond me... I've been playing music for over 30 years, and perhaps that has something to do with it. But whatever means you need to get to that is what you should go for.

I can only make suggestions based on my experience. Sometimes my suggestions are really not apropos, depending what you're like and what you need... Sorry about that, I know there's more ways than mine to get to anything.

But it seems there are some really good suggestions being made on this thread, and you also seem to have a direction you know will work for you.

I support you in your quest for a solution!!

squidgirl · Post by **squidgirl** » Sat Jul 31, 2004 10:21 am

Lizzie wrote:I listened to one tune all the way home in the car about a gazillion times. You can reach the point where you almost hate the tune!

Ugh, I know just where you're at with that. I think this is part of why I'm finding it helpful to switch around between several different tutorials -- I get so sick of the tunes in one that I need to switch to another for a while.

Tony, I am not sure why using ABC notation would be better than using regular notation…

I was wondering about this too, but then I realized that I use ABC files in a similar way -- I make BarFly play the tune several times before I pick up the whistle. And (somewhat unrelated to the discussion at hand, but interesting nonetheless) I find that I get a paradoxical effect from listening to the "uninflected" computerized version of a tune -- my mind likes to rebel against the flatness of the automated version, so it adds lilt and ornamentation to it as I listen. So in a way, I get a more creative, personalized version from this than from imitating a human-generated recording.

Jeff….learning style theory is pretty well grounded…..I think it is much more than a habit….it is how your particular brain is wired...

I'll second this -- at the university learning center, they even had standardized tests to determine which learning modalities you're wired for, then modules of suggestions to help you leverage the benefits and work around the drawback of your innate wiring style. I've thought about it a bunch, and for me at least, it feels as just as innate as being right or left handed, being able to run 3D calculus problems in my head, etc.

I find tunes with words are much easier to remember than straight tunes.

Me too. I've gotten a number of collections of folks songs from the library, because I find it easier to learn songs with words and play them expressively. When I feel like doing something mundane, I transcribe them into ABC, make the computer play them so I get the tune right, and sort of sing along inside my head (since my singing-out-loud is so ghastly).

I am not sure that ‘visual’ people do not have good ears…..at least not necessarily. <snip>….it is just hard when you can’t remember what you have just heard…

Yeah, it's more a matter of memory than tone recognition. I can tell if an instrument is is in tune or not, well enough to re-carve the holes on one of my whistles to bring it into tune. I even have a vague sense of absolute pitch, where I can recognize whether an isolated note is a D or C or whatever, but only when I'm feeling relaxed -- if I get at all frustrated I get flustered and immediately lose the knack. It's just remembering sequences of notes that mess me up -- when I play with interval recognition software, I can often recognize the absolute pitch of one of the notes, but then fail to recognize the interval... or if I get the interval, I can't tell the pitch. It's kind weird, now that I think about it...

squidgirl · Post by **squidgirl** » Sat Jul 31, 2004 11:28 am

Hmm, all this has reminded me of something kind of weird that's going on in my life as we type. I've spent the last 8 months or so as the voluntary subject of an ongoing psychopharmacology experiment, i.e. a long odyssey through various combinations of antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds. I was on massive doses of effexor through the holidays, and it had a most annoying side effect -- wherever one goes that time of year, one hears cheezy holiday music, and it would stick in my head in absolute cheez-whiz detail, down to the oooh-aaah background vocals and sappy strings.

Now, starting yesterday, we're re-trying Effexor as part of a different chemical cocktail, and I'm starting to notice that my whistle tunes are already sticking in my head much better than they did a few days ago. So maybe this musical memory stuff really is chemically hard-wired into the brain...

But on the down side, my train-wreck gawker status over on the Serpent Freebies thread has gotten Cher singing "Quadrapodes, jerks and snobes" endlessly looping in my head. Serves me right, eh?

Jeff Guevin · Post by **Jeff Guevin** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 6:58 am

Lizzie wrote:Jeff….learning style theory is pretty well grounded…..I think it is much more than a habit….it is how your particular brain is wired...visual learners are in many ways fortunate because they generally do better in school, learning to read comes more easily and so does text book learning….it was great until I decided to take up some music! Jeff, I think I will try more vocalizing of my tunes. I thought of even putting a few words to the first few bars…..I find tunes with words are much easier to remember than straight tunes.

Cool, didn't know anything about that, as I'd always heard of "visual" and "aural/auditory" learning in a pretty informal context. Then, my post just boils down to, "I, too, am a visual learner, but I've found my aural learning skills to have improved rapidly by depriving myself of my normal learning habits." Let us know how it goes for you!

hmartley · Post by **hmartley** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 11:48 am

Hi. I too am a visual learner. Don't worry, it's OK!

The method that I've settled on is to first get the tune from hearing it, whether from CD, class or session (tape it). I never start from sheet music. That way it goes into your brain through the ears first, not the eyes. I then transcribe the tune. The act of hearing it and then writing it down is part of the "fixing" process for me. After transcribing, I play along with the recording, or by myself. I only look at the music when I stumble over a part of the tune. Eventually the transcription is not necessary and it goes into the tune bank if I should ever need a refresher later.

It does take a lot longer to write them down. But otherwise, it flies right in one ear and out the other, resulting in much more (frustrating) time spent and fewer tunes learned. Sure I can hear it, and I can play it - I just can't remember it! This way I can at least learn a few tunes a week when I'm being good and practicing!

One person's tool may be called a crutch by another, but I try to avoid thinking in those terms. I think we should do whatever works for us. As long as we can get the results we want and have fun doing it!

Good luck and have fun!

Heather M.