Learning from ear

Steve-o · Post by **Steve-o** » Sun Dec 18, 2005 11:36 pm

I have a question about learning from ear. What are some good CD's to get that have some good songs that are easy to pick up by ear. I have some music, but the problem that I have is that most of it is lightning fast, and its very hard to pick up the notes at that speed. Any help would be appreciated.

Azalin · Post by **Azalin** » Sun Dec 18, 2005 11:41 pm

I think your best bet is to listen a lot, a lot to the stuff until you get the melody clearly in your head. On the technical side, there's some free software that will allow you to slow the tune and keep the pitch, perfect for learning fast tunes. Maybe you can also, yes, God Save My Soul, use sheet music just to find out the few notes you might have been missing. Just to fill the gaps, you should still learn the tune's "meat" by ear.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Mon Dec 19, 2005 12:34 am

It probably depends but Flogging Molly and The Pogues are generally my favorites (stuff like: ol' beggar's bush, The Wanderlust, Devil's Dance Floor by FM, or Mahones: Cragataska, most things by Blood or Whiskey) of course those are all 'punkier' than a lot of people like; theres always The Corrs (if you can match Andrea) or the Dubliners. I'm curious as to what others play to though because I'm running out of material I can play with my D. Oh Cruachan also has a whistler whos pretty easy to follow.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Mon Dec 19, 2005 12:44 am

Oh and although I might get crap for this one: Eire Og has some really easy powerful rebel tunes to jam with (I got in trouble before for mentioning the Ra). You can kill the revolutionary, but never the revolution a chara.

Key_of_D · Post by **Key_of_D** » Mon Dec 19, 2005 2:10 am

Well, when I first started the whistle, I had a couple flogging molly cd's,(swagger and drunken lullabies) A dropkick murphy's cd (Do or Die) and also a few Pogues cd's - Red Roses for Me, and Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash. Great stuff. And I learned the simple songs from those cd's. There's a few on all cd's I just mentioned. Battle of Brisbane (from Red Roses for Me) is a good beginner tune. Far Away Coast is from Do or Die is a good beginner tune. I'm sure there's plenty more tunes out there that are easy to learn, such as Foggy Dew, Down by the Sally Garden (the slow one I mean, I know there's a reel version called Sally garden (s?) Anyways, I pretty much stick to learning all the chieftain's tunes I can nowawdays. I also enjoy playing highland bagpipe tunes on the Bb or Eb whistles. But, I'm sick and I'm rambling so good night.

-Eric

Henkersbraut · Post by **Henkersbraut** » Mon Dec 19, 2005 5:54 am

I'm trying too, but I'm afraid I'm failing miserably (not having been able to "play" the last three weeks didn't really improve matters)... I would love to be able to play some Skyclad tunes, but alas, they only do sound good when I'm nowhere near my whistles... I know it shouldn't bee too hard to hear what Eric's playing in "Great blow for a day job", but still no luck. I'm hoping that Santa brings some sort of enlightment to me for Christmas

chas · Post by **chas** » Mon Dec 19, 2005 7:07 am

To pick tunes up and learn phrasing, get some albums that are very sparsely arranged. Some people that come to mind are Jack and Charlie Coen; Mike Rafferty; Catherine McEvoy; the Kevin Burke solo live disc. None of these folk generally play at breakneck speed, either.

dwinterfield · Post by **dwinterfield** » Mon Dec 19, 2005 7:38 am

Since I've never been able to play by ear, I always keep trying. I don;t try to learn to play by ear from cds. I go to the Wandering Whistler site and pick tunes there. They are in an unembelished midi version. It's a great place to practice picking out notes. The tunes are also there in musical notation so you can check if you've got it right.

Arka · Post by **Arka** » Mon Dec 19, 2005 8:08 am

Steve-o wrote:I have a question about learning from ear. What are some good CD's to get that have some good songs that are easy to pick up by ear. I have some music, but the problem that I have is that most of it is lightning fast, and its very hard to pick up the notes at that speed. Any help would be appreciated.

A possible solution is what I do: I've got installed an audio editor, many of them have the timestretching function whereby you can make slower the melody and ear all the notes clearly

susnfx · Post by **susnfx** » Mon Dec 19, 2005 9:22 am

The Amazing Slowdowner is a good option for slowing down tunes without distortion.

Susan

Tom O'Farrell · Post by **Tom O'Farrell** » Mon Dec 19, 2005 10:03 am

Apparently quite a few people don't know that Windows Media Player has a slow down function that does not alter pitch. It only works on tunes from CD's that you have ripped (copied) to the WMP library as far as I know, but ripping is also a thing WMP does very easily from a CD, and it's all free. To set up goto the view menu and then enhancements and there it is, called play speed settings. Select it and you're away. I have the latest version of WMP running under XP, so I cannot say if it is available on older versions.

fearfaoin · Post by **fearfaoin** » Mon Dec 19, 2005 10:07 am

Also, the writer of the Amazing Slow Downer created a plug in for
Winamp called "Slow me Down"

http://winamp.com/plugins/details.php?id=21827

straycat82 · Post by **straycat82** » Mon Dec 19, 2005 10:59 am

I say get your hands on as many Chieftains albums as you can, you can't really go wrong. Pretty much any one of their cd's is going to have a mixture of some slow stuff that is fairly easy to learn, all the way up to some fun reels. Since most of their music is traditional, you can find sheet music for it pretty easily to aid in playing. I play by ear as well but I do need to reference the music on some of the faster songs.

carrie · Post by **carrie** » Mon Dec 19, 2005 10:59 am

John Skelton's A Few Tunes and A Few More Tunesare very musically played at a relaxed tempo, and you can get a transcription of the tunes along with the CDs. I highly recommend these.

Carol

Zoe · Post by **Zoe** » Mon Dec 19, 2005 11:00 am

I came to whistling with no music experience, no training in either sheet music or learning by ear. Two best pieces of advice:

1) Learn to hum the tune first. Pick simple tunes. Learning by ear takes practice. It used to take me an hour or more to pick out a tune, once I could hum it. Now I can usually get in 20 minutes or so, depending on the tune. If you can hum it, you can pick it apart eventually. I even started by doing non-irish tunes. Try it first with tunes that you are really familiar with, like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Scarborough Fair, Silent Night, etc. You can train your ear, just be patient.

2)Use a slow downer. I use the Amazing Slow Downer. I used it quite a lot a the beginning and it really helps to pick apart a tune, phrase by phrase, even note by note. I still use it when there's a note of phrase that eluding me.

As for some good session tunes, played at slow to moderate pace, many of them solo whistle, there are WMAs and MP3s of quite a few trad tunes at www.ccepittsburgh.org (though I wouldn't start with the first listed, Christmas Eve, that's a hard one).

Happy whistling!

Zoe

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Learning from ear

Learning from ear

Re: Learning from ear

learn to hum it first