dots vs ears

[Denny]

Well, ya tend to use the tools you understand.

Doesn't mean that a different tool is better or worse,
just that you don't want to learn how to use it.

It should not be about the tools in the first place,
it's should be about what you can make with them.



so there

[rama]

I had written the following paragraph in another thread and I decided I would open a new topic and start another discussion:

"Don't wanna hijack the thread but this idea of a separation between "dots" and "by ear" bugs me. When I read music - see dots - I hear sound. When I hear sound - I see written music. It's the same thing. When I learn a song by ear, I usually just go and write it out. When I learn a song by reading, I hear it in my mind the same way and play it."

adding more now:
I do understand the value of listening to hear the nuances that do not come across on paper. I'm not a "trained" musician - I learned my trade on the bandstand writing horn parts for the bands I worked with over the years. Listen and write - write and listen.

thoughts?

it seems to me you are simply describing an ability to
recognize notes (sight recognition or aural recognition), which is not the same as learning a tune on the flute, two seperate abilities entirely. you 'have a tune' when you can actually play it thru and thru. it is at that point that dots become useless. traditionally, dots are not used in the actual playing of itm. they are good memory aides but no sheet music is used when you actually play. so as a beginner in fluteplaying, the emphasis should be on the act of playing tunes, not on musical theory which is not necessary - it is sometimes heplful and sometimes harmful, depending on how anal someone is.
also, there are plenty of people, dancers for instance, who have the ability to recognize tunes when they 'hear' it, but haven't a clue about how to play the flute. funny some people think i ought to take up dancing.

i can read lyrics of song all day but i can not sing. to learn, i would need to learn how to sing or at least lip sync.

[doogieman]

Well, I started this so I'll chime in again with confessions and obervations.
I memorized my first 10-12 songs and thought - wow this is easy. The folks at my session were patient. And as I listened to them and to CD's I realized I had to go back and de-construct everything I had so "correctly" learned and start over. I still use music at sessions sometimes to guide me through new tunes but I listen too.

I think anybody comes to this - or any - music because they love it - somewhere you heard this and it just ahhhhh - ya know. And then you say "I wanna do that" and then it starts: the learning the listening the false starts and detours (as I wrote above) and then on down that road.
Its the LOVE that's most important.

[Screeeech!!!]

you 'have a tune' when you can actually play it thru and thru. it is at that point that dots become useless.

Absolutely not. As has already been mentioned, many tunes would not be played today if it wasn't for the fact that someone wrote those dots down, and considered them uselful enough to keep even though they had learned the tune.

There are thousands if not millions of pieces of music sat in archives and libraries around the world that haven't been played by anyone alive. I'm glad that the people who once learned those tunes had the forthought to think of future generations of players, and not just condemn the idea as "useless".

On a further point...

You should also realise that some people, myself included amongst them, have memory problems caused by various physiological conditions within the brain. Sometimes i completely forget bits of tunes (and lots of other things), even ones i play regularly. This is a disability, and i don't think that anything that allows people with a disability to join in playing music should be called useless.

If someone wants to play music with me, i don't care if they use notation or not, what matters to me is that they want to play music with me.

traditionally, dots are not used in the actual playing of itm.

When did the simple system flute become traditional? I admit that i have very little knowledge of this, and i do sincerely invite people to correct me on this, but from what i've read the simple system flute was adopted into ITM from its use in other genres. So why not the notation that was being used with these flutes in these other genres?

People use guitars in ITM, and they seem to be accepted in a lot of sessions. But a folk guitar is an extremely young instrument. So why accept that and not notation?

[GaryKelly]

"Because it's not traditional!"


teehee. There, I said it!

[bradhurley]

traditionally, dots are not used in the actual playing of itm.

When did the simple system flute become traditional? I admit that i have very little knowledge of this, and i do sincerely invite people to correct me on this, but from what i've read the simple system flute was adopted into ITM from its use in other genres. So why not the notation that was being used with these flutes in these other genres?

I think you misunderstood what rama meant: he meant that when musicians are playing Irish traditional music in sessions, they don't play from the sheet music. It's not like a string quartet or a recorder consort where you sit down with sheet music and play from it. Nobody's going to boot you out of a session if you bring sheet music, but you'll stick out a bit. And there really are advantages to learning how to remember a tune and play it from memory.

[colomon]

The ear players on these forums seem to come across that one has to listen to every reel played by a confirmed ITM player before one can play it properly. But surely once one knows how a reel feels in ITM then one can play any reel in ITM?

A jig is a jig, a hornpipe is a hornpipe. Once you know what they are supposed to feel like in ITM then surely you can take the dots to any of them and play it with the correct feel and ornament it however you please to get the required feel.

Or am i missing something?

You're missing something.

A tune is a lot more than dots on the page plus style. There are also a sort of set of common variations, nuances in rhythm and emphasis, etc. The things that are nigh impossible to represent in printed music, but you always hear when a good player is playing.

Let me try an analogy. The argument that you can learn a reel from dots without any knowledge of ITM is like saying that two identical twins raised in different cultures are basically the same person -- obviously crazy. But the idea that you can learn a reel from dots once you have a working knowledge of ITM is then like saying identical twins raised in the same culture are basically the same person. They're going to be a lot more alike, but they're still clearly different people.

People do rescue tunes that have been forgotten but for dots all the time -- but when they do so, it's like cloning a long-dead person from a DNA sample. The framework is the same, but the tune is inevitably different. For lost tunes, that's clearly better than nothing, but you should never think that the end result is the same as the tune was when it was first alive.

[michael_coleman]

I don't even answer anymore those who imply that, given their classical expertise on the instrument, it will be a walk in the park to play ITM. They tend to play stiffly and without passion.
I know that the music will survive their "corrupting" influence. More important, in time these classical players might be assimilated by ITM and make a genuine contribution, like so many of the hot-dog younger players who are stretching the tradition.

You wouldn't believe how many I've come across who think that because they play violin they can then play fiddle.

Happens on flute occasionally as well.

Yeah, but when the classical player tries to get a sound out of the Irish flute, they found its a bit different than the metal rod they are accustomed to.

[Bretton]

I had written the following paragraph in another thread and I decided I would open a new topic and start another discussion:

"Don't wanna hijack the thread but this idea of a separation between "dots" and "by ear" bugs me. When I read music - see dots - I hear sound. When I hear sound - I see written music. It's the same thing. When I learn a song by ear, I usually just go and write it out. When I learn a song by reading, I hear it in my mind the same way and play it."

adding more now:
I do understand the value of listening to hear the nuances that do not come across on paper. I'm not a "trained" musician - I learned my trade on the bandstand writing horn parts for the bands I worked with over the years. Listen and write - write and listen.

thoughts?

This has always bugged me a bit too... There are many tunes that I really need to see written out just so I get the basic structure/framework (landmarks) of the tune. I always write my tunes out myself from recordings of sessions/slow-sessions etc. so it's not usually a case of learning just from the dots.

I think many people who argue against using sheet music are assuming the worst about what use people might be putting it to.

The tunes I've transcribed myself are the ones that really stick in my head. The ones that I've never transcribed seem to leak out of my brain over time.

-Brett

[Wormdiet]

Happens on flute occasionally as well.

Yeah, but when the classical player tries to get a sound out of the Irish flute, they found its a bit different than the metal rod they are accustomed to.

I'm referring to more then technical differences in the instruments. Over the summer I attended a supposedly "intermediate" workshop. We had a classical flautist in the room who did not know what rolls, cuts, or taps were, and assumed she was "intermediate" because she knew classical music. I think she had a simple system flute on hand too, and could play scales on it well enough, but was clueless when it came to stylistic things.

[peeplj]

think many people who argue against using sheet music are assuming the worst about what use people might be putting it to.

The tunes I've transcribed myself are the ones that really stick in my head. The ones that I've never transcribed seem to leak out of my brain over time.

I think this is spot-on, on both counts.

Nothing will teach you a tune like transcribing it from someone else's playing!

--James

[Bretton]

The ear players on these forums seem to come across that one has to listen to every reel played by a confirmed ITM player before one can play it properly.

A jig is a jig, a hornpipe is a hornpipe. Once you know what they are supposed to feel like in ITM then surely you can take the dots to any of them and play it with the correct feel and ornament it however you please to get the required feel.

Or am i missing something?

Please don't blast me. These are genuine questions that seem, to my mind, to be being overlooked here.

Actually, I find that there are quite a few different kinds of reels and jigs each with their own feel/style. I wouldn't go so far as to say each one is different, but there are quite a few different, and maybe not obvious, breeds.

Do others find this to be true? I find it especially true of jigs.

-Brett

[Gordon]

I promised several friends here that I would, occasionally, chime in on pertinent topics, other than my selling my baroque flute. Great flute, BTW, for a good price.

And I also mentioned that, eavesdropping here and there, some topics just seem to stick around, as if I'd never left. This is one of them, but -- well -- here's my two cents on it, yet again... as if I'd never left...

Reading notes has little to do with traditional playing. Playing has little to do with literacy. But it helps with learning, for those that can do it, and that's no small thing. Let me clarify with a non-music analogy.

Actors generally work with scripts, and have for centuries, although illiterate actors (or foreign born, with another language more fluent for them) probably still exist, and once upon a time, they were probably pretty common. They learned by memory. Bela Lagosi barely spoke English when he was cast as Dracula, and his quirky preformance and rhythms are largely due to phonetic memorization -- he did not understand a large part of what he was saying.

But, while reading and memorizing have little to do with acting and performance, reading surely helps the process along for those that read. I learned some 300 tunes early on, long before these tunes were under my belt, by reading them and practicing them as I grew. My teacher, a traditional player of some repute, wrote them out for me (and his other students). Do I stick to the "script" now? Probably not, but they are nice settings - nicer than many heard in sessions - and they were the basis of my early ITM education. And most of these tunes -- and many others by now -- are well ingrained in my brain, fixed just as surely as any pop song or commercial jingle heard growing up. And fixed just as surely as the tunes I originally learned by ear.

My point? I guess playing the music is the point. How the tune got stuck is immaterial, later on.

All for now..
Gordon

[tin tin]

Here's an interesting read on the subject...
http://alan-ng.net/irish/learning/

And, to bring us full circle, the above article makes mention of the great notation debate of 2001: http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php ... forum=1&28

[John-N]

One good thing about the “dots” is that they don't have any speed. The fast tunes that I like are impossible for me to learn by ear at full speed since I really want to get the melody notes correct. I'm sure that some have the ability to pick out individual eighth notes at 220 bbm but I cannot [yet].

So what I do is slow down the tunes to 1/2 speed and transcribe the melodies using ABC notation. Many times I do this using my ears (relative pitch) w/o using my instrument. I listen to the tape/CD at full speed and read my transcription just to make sure that I've got the melody right. I usually don't transcribe the ornamentation etc. of a performance unless I'm intentionally trying to study something specific. Then I work on it (visually for awhile) to quickly get the melody notes under my fingers, and then after about 100x's for a difficult tune I file the sheet music away in a notebook and play it from then on by memory. After many months I might pull the sheet music out again.

We as players need to practice the tunes long enough that we internalize them. We cannot effectively improvise on a melody until we have committed it to memory. Then we can mess around with it and spice it up.