How do you study?

[RainInEden_K]

I am curious how others are learning to play whistles. And woud love to hear some insights from those of you farther along the path to playing well.

I play by ear and read very little music. For strings I listen intently to recordings by masters of the instruments I play. I sometimes time stretch pieces in software to help me better hear the expression. And I spend a lot of time watching better players play using videos. Somehow this seems to work for most of what I play. But I am always on the search for other proven methods and inspirations.

Cheers,

RainInEden

[chris_coreline]

my method has become a bit of a production line unfortunitly, but it works:

get the midi file off the session.org and put it on loop for about 20 minutes so the tune goes in my head.
depending on the complexity / hookeyness of the melody i may need to learn it by phrase but usually once i have it in my head i can play it.

i dont go in much for mimicking great performers, im not sure why, perhaps, because im not aiming for greatness rather then for being competent on my instruments. Unfortunitly, this precludes adopting any of the wonderfull regional styles that exist and may render my playing a bit mechanical and artless to a trained ear. Hopefully i can get to a summerschool and have a great player cast a critical ear on me.

[benhall.1]

Aargh! Chris - please stop using midis - or any other files - off the session.org immediately. I have had the misfortune to try to play along with people who've learnt tunes directly off the session.org. It's dreadful. And, if you have the midi on loop to learn by ear, that's the way you will hear that tune. I estimate that about 96.7% of tunes on the session.org are transcribed wrongly. So you will now have a repertoire of wrong settings of tunes.

A far better method is, if you find a tune you like on the session.org, do the following:

1 Read and absorb all the comments on the comments tab, including different settings put up by experienced players;
2 Do not ever play the midi. Not ever;
3 Don't listen to anything at this stage - just read and absorb;
4 Find a decent video, maybe on YouTube, but, in my experience, best of all on the Comhaltas site;
5 Find, as a minimum, at least one other decent version - video, audio, whatever;
6 By this stage, you should already be on the way to having the tune, at least in your head;
7 Play it on your instrument. At this stage, I don't have to do any more learning. I already have it, and find that I can play it. This is a knack that simply happens with time, experience, and a determination to avoid other 'quick fix' methods of tune acquisition (which turn out to take longer in the end, anyway).

Now, all of the above comes with the great big caveat that it's way better to get tunes off real live people who know what they're talking about and can play. But sometimes one gets too impatient for that.

I also, occasionally, get the dots from friends, but I just don't normally bother to learn them unless I've heard said friends play the tune first.

[NicoMoreno]

Ditto what benhall said: stop listening to the midi.

Sheet music can be harmful, but at least it doesn't sound like anything. Midi is just completely wrong. Mechanical, no phrasing, no inflection. You're better off learning from sheet music than midi.

Find good recordings or good videos. That means for now that you listen to what good players tell you to listen to, because a beginner won't have developed the ear enough to distinguish between good players and mediocre players.

Listen to those good recordings or good videos.

Slowing down to help you learn is a good idea, but with the caveat that it will also slow the ornamentation down, to the point where you might think that it's ok to play notes instead of blips for the cuts and taps. Even played slowly, cuts, taps and all the larger movements made up of them, should be blips or fast articulations, and not notes.

[chris_coreline]

crumbs... back to tradlessons and bothy band for me then

[Thomaston]

RaininEden,
It sounds to me like you're doing everything the right way. Many people don't listen and absorb the tunes when they're learning. And many others use the sheet music from thesession.org and JC Trillian as a crutch, and those notations can be very different from how the tune is actually played. I was in the second category for a long long while, still recovering and relapsing. But these don't appear to be your crutches, which puts you ahead in the game.
BUT, you say you watch videos, which is all well and good, too. The videos made Michael Eskin and Ryan Duns are great learning materials. Just beware of the audio/video lag that shows up in some youtube videos, those will frustrate you before they teach you anything.

And here's my disclaimer: I rarely play whistle anymore, and never did consider myself any better than the low end of intermediate, so use whatever grain of salt you feel is necessary. I've almost completely switched to the world of tenor banjo and mandolin family these days.

[Hotblack]

Just a question. Surely the Session.org is ok to get the bare bones of a tune isn't it? The ornamentation, lilt and expresiveness etc then comes from practice and playing with other musicians, using YouTube, Spotify etc. It can be a help if used with care.

I certainly agree that those midi files are hopeless for giving the real feel of a tune but they can help with the skeleton of a tune.

And I totally accept that getting to know a tune by absorbing it via YouTube/Spotify/sessions in't pub etc is by far the best way to understand it.

[Rhadge]

I grab a whistle.
Choose a tune I like
Start up "Amazing Slow Downer" and load the track

Pitch can be adjusted according to which whistle key I have and the key of the tune.
Speed is then adjusted depending on the speed of the tune

Very effective for learning a tune. You practice the connection between tone and finger coordination, and the ability to perceive pitch differences.

[NicoMoreno]

Just a question. Surely the Session.org is ok to get the bare bones of a tune isn't it? The ornamentation, lilt and expresiveness etc then comes from practice and playing with other musicians, using YouTube, Spotify etc. It can be a help if used with care.

I certainly agree that those midi files are hopeless for giving the real feel of a tune but they can help with the skeleton of a tune.

And I totally accept that getting to know a tune by absorbing it via YouTube/Spotify/sessions in't pub etc is by far the best way to understand it.

Well, to paraphrase a common poster over at thesession.org, the sheet music only shows you the easiest part of the tune to pick up by ear. If you can't do that, what hope do you have to hear the intricacies in rhythm and ornamentation that are there? Now, that said, I do think that sheet music is a useful thing for picking up a tune, but it is completely useless for getting the music.

I like to say that there are three distinct (but related) things that you have to learn when you are a complete beginner:
1) Your instrument
2) The tune
3) The music

Sheet music will give you 2) only... well, except that in irish music the articulations (cuts, taps, etc) are really integral to the tune and sheet music rarely will give you that... (See how the relations already start? Style isn't shown in sheet music, but it's integral to both the tune and the music)

Listening to good versions will help you get the music. Midi will actively interfere with your ability to get the music because you will be hearing something that is the antithesis of good music. So no, I don't think it is at all good for getting the bare bones.

This all applies less to someone who is already an expert in the music, though. If you already know the style or the music, you can more easily pick up a tune from sheet music or midi, although even there, it is a battle to ignore the style (or lack thereof) of the midi sound!

[NicoMoreno]

One more thought. A music teacher (not irish) back in high school used to say that it takes three repetitions to commit something to memory, but that it takes ten times to undo it.

So if you learn along to midi, you commit that (very very wrong) "bare bones" version to memory and then when you go to "add style" you not only have to learn all the other things, but you have to unlearn the straight, rhythmless and phraseless playing. So rather than something takes, say, 5 minutes to learn, now you have to take 15 minutes to unlearn and then an additional 5 to learn. So if it takes you 30 minutes to learn a tune, now you're taking 2 hours to fix it... When you could have learned it right the first time in about 30minutes.

It's not any harder to play along to a good version than to midi after all!

[Thomaston]

Just a question. Surely the Session.org is ok to get the bare bones of a tune isn't it?

It really depends on the tune. Not all submissions there are created equally. When I finally immersed myself in our local session after having printed out page after page of standard notation, I found that a lot of tunes were the same, but also many would have differences from how it was played in the session. Some discrepancies I've seen range from wrong notes, to phrases that should be in the B part showing up in the A part, to tunes being in the wrong key altogether. It's quite the embarassment when, in your first session, someone starts (as an example) The Swallowtail in E Dorian and you join in in A Dorian (because it's written that way at thesession.org) and wonder why it doesn't sound right.
This isn't meant to be disparaging of that site or of standard notation... thesession.org is a great resource as a whole. You just to be aware the submissions there aren't necessarily gospel.

[Cron-Z]

It's important to look in the comment section of a tune on TheSession.org. A lot of the tunes that need correction have their corrections there... A lot of the ones I looked at anyway

[Hotblack]

Well, to paraphrase a common poster over at thesession.org, the sheet music only shows you the easiest part of the tune to pick up by ear. If you can't do that, what hope do you have to hear the intricacies in rhythm and ornamentation that are there?

Because everybody is different. Some people can pick up a tune very quickly. For others it takes time to get it right and to absorb it. And not everyone can be of a professional standard. I suspect for many people it's the enjoyment of doing one's best that's important and not everyone can attain a high professionalism of playing (for many different reasons). And if the session is a loose, free and easy one then there's no problem. If the session is very strict in it's rules and interpretations then probably a 'lesser' player probably won't fit in.

What's the problem if a tune is played slightly differently? One tune has a whole host of variations in both style, notes and name. That's folk. It changes with different interpretations. There is no one definitive way to play a tune.

[david_h]

Well, to paraphrase a common poster over at thesession.org, the sheet music only shows you the easiest part of the tune to pick up by ear

I'm not convinced about that. Playing the right notes in the right order may be the easiest part once one has them, but I find hearing the rhythm easier than getting the notes -a lot harder to play properly though.

At the moment I do: by ear, listen a few times through, then phrase by phrase, then the whole, then played along with the source as soon as possible (maybe slowed down a bit to start with).

When I can play my instrument properly perhaps benhall.1's way might work for me.

[Daibhidh]

Hey.
I started by doing a one-on-one with my girlfriends auntie just getting the basic Kerry Polka under my belt.
Then I used the Ryan Duns youtube videos to give me a nice rooting.
Now I listen to songs, try to figure them out for 30 minutes and then check thesession.org.
I also go to the scottish culture and traditions classes run in Aberdeen which are useful for picking up more tunes.

So I guess: listen to song on youtube, on a cd and at the pub, then go home and learn.