I have my second proper whistle lesson tommorow night, and I am determined to get to grips with learning by ear, I have had a few attemps this week, and its not easy, but I do now realise that when I manage to crack a short passage I am much better off because my fingers are taking more control as they are not being guided so much by mean telling them where they should be, which is what happens with the sheet music and ABC, I can also enjoy playing these bits I have learnt without pinning music to the notice board or setting up my stand, now I have noticed that if I have the first 2 notes of a tune before starting thats a big help.
So a couple of question to you gifted guys and gals that do play by ear, if you wanted to learn something like The Gravel Walks or The Bucks of Oranmore, which I would consider quite complex, would you still use the same method, or would you back it up with some notation as a help, I would like to shed all my ABC and sheet music baggage and restart with a system that works best.
second question, I have used slow down software before Audacity mainly, but I travel quite a bit does and need something that fits in my pocket, does anyone have experience with the Tascam vt1 vocal trainer, there are a few in the Tascam range for guitars and the VT1 was geared towards vocals and instrument players, and from what I have read can slow down loaded mp3'S to a very slow rate without pitch change, a bit like a Audacity, and also loop a small selected section, I used to have an Edirol and a tascam portable recorder which had the half speed feature, this was fine on slowish tunes, but wasn't much good for anything played fast or very fast for me anyway.
any help appreciated
sponge
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