I don't know where this "if you don't learn it by ear it's no good" crap comes from, but I'm fed up with it. It's bull.
I think I do. It most likely goes back to the point that you can't learn Irish music from a book. Which is a general statement which holds true for all sorts of music. You need to hear it to grasp the idiom and you need to be around musicians to retain it.
I think you can apply it to an extent to tune learning: when you learn a tune by ear I believe you are more flexible with it, if you approach it the right way. Now that last bit is a bit of a caveat because you can learn a tune by ear and still be rigidly stuck with a version that becomes set in stone. Ideally you learn tunes from an understanding of the material, anyone who has seen an experienced traditional musician pick up a tune will know what I mean. You come to it with an understanding of how a tune works, where the nuts and bolts of the structure are, which notes are the foundation and which are passing notes and fill ins. First you pick out the main ones, the you put your phase structure in place and more often than not, third time round you have it. Although only to find you have lost it again when you get home. Next time it will come back though.
Once you have reached that stage, you can just as easy lift a tune from a book and bring it to life. The trick is not to learn any tune exactly by heart.
Now, to get back to where this post set out: the book-learning thing has become gospel on the internet and is repeated over and over again.
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Cross posting galore.
@ Mr Gumby: just as an aside, if you're talking about resurrecting tunes, as opposed to living tunes that people play, then why not get 'em from books? It's the only place they'll be, right? But, if they're live tunes, why bother? Simpler just to get your mates to show you, surely?
As I said, I take them where I find them. How often does it happen you play through a book and stumble into some tune that's living in the back of your mind? What do you do? You lift it.
Another Padraig O Keeffe story. Seamus Ennis was out collecting in Sliabh Luachra in 1948. A meeting was set in the public house Scartaglen so Ennis could notate tunes O'Keeffe played for him on previous days. O'Keeffe turned up with a stack of manuscript paper with all the tunes Ennis had asked for written. Ennis asked why he had taken the trouble. 'Why waste valuable drinking time?' was POK's reply.
No need to waste anyone's time in other words (I am not the drinking sort but the story seemed to fit the occasion) for tune learning purposes.
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