Who learns how?

[Aodhan]

Just a quick survey of who learns how.

I can't really learn by ear, it takes me way too long to be able to pick out the notes. What I usually do is listen to the tune, play 6 or 7 notes, and then transcribe them after I play them. By the time I get to the end of the tune, it's pretty much locked in.

How does everyone else prefer to learn?

John

[RudallRose]

learning by ear is, like reading music, an art form that merely requires constant practice and a sound familiarity with your instrument and its sound.

When I was teaching I'd get students comfortable with a variety of notes by sound so that if they heard these notes they could recognize them instantly. D, G and C for instance, in all pertinent octaves.

What transpires when you are trying to learn a tune by ear is not recognition of all the notes, but of the note PATTERNS following your "bell" tones, or the ones you recognize. By that I mean a pattern of notes stepping down the scale from your bell note, let's say D.
So if you hear the D (let's presume middle D) and the tones after it turn out to be B,G,D (the classic G-major triad) after it, your ear should catch the triad, not the exact notes by name.

Again, it's recognition of the patterns of sound after your bell note.
Try it....it works well.

I learn, by the way, both by ear, by SIGHT (seeing another player's fingers) and by sight reading music. All three are a challenge that requires consistent practice to remain sharp.

dm

[dow]

...I can't really learn by ear, it takes me way too long to be able to pick out the notes...

John,

Can you whistle? Can you hum the tune? Do that. learn the tune in your head, I mean really in your head. Think of your favorite song on the radio. You may have known that song for years, and not heard it in as many, but hear the first couple of notes, and it all comes pouring out of your memory. What you've done is learn it by ear. Once you really get it internalized, it'll move fairly easily to the flute, or whistle, or keyboard or whatever. That's what I do, anyway. I've got a 45 minute drive to work, so I do a lot of that. Mostly it's playing the same tune on the CD player over and over, until I can whistle it with the recording. Then I move to whistling it without the tune, and then it moves to flute pretty easily.

learning by ear is, like reading music, an art form that merely requires constant practice and a sound familiarity with your instrument and its sound.

Yep, pretty much.

Again, it's recognition of the patterns of sound after your bell note.
Try it....it works well.

Patterns... I've not heard it put better.

How do you get from your house to the store? Down this road so far, then right at the old tree and then straight on until the next landmark... Patterns. Learn the pattern in your head and then move it to the instrument.

I learn, by the way, both by ear, by SIGHT (seeing another player's fingers) and by sight reading music. All three are a challenge that requires consistent practice to remain sharp.

I hadn't ever thought of that, but I learn tunes by SIGHT too, when I occasionally get a chance to really watch someone else play. Thanks for bringing that to my attention, David.

[chas]

Seldom can I memorize a tune from JUST hearing it. But I almost always listen to a tune, get a bit of a feel for the shape of it, then transcribe it myself. Then I play it over and over from my transcription.

I was always a book learner in school. Even in graduate school, one professor told the others in the class to remind me when the midterm was. I didn't bother going to class because the aural part of learning didn't do a thing for me.

I've been known to learn tunes from the old books -- Neal, Joyce, etc. -- that I've never heard. I make some sound good enough that I've gotten kudos from some well-respected people. It's not my preferred way of doing things, but if I have the itch to learn some new tunes, and I haven't heard any good ones recently, learning from a book is better than nothing. Of course, if my goal was to play with others, nobody would know those tunes, so it'd get me nowhere.

[fluti31415]

Just a quick survey of who learns how.

I can't really learn by ear, it takes me way too long to be able to pick out the notes. What I usually do is listen to the tune, play 6 or 7 notes, and then transcribe them after I play them. By the time I get to the end of the tune, it's pretty much locked in.

How does everyone else prefer to learn?

John

when I have the notes in front of me, I can pick up the tune quicker and learn it quicker, (after only a few times through the tune) but also forget it more easily. When I learn by ear, I remember the tune longer, but it takes longer to learn it.

[Cork]

My second vote goes to those pints!

[Aodhan]

My second vote goes to those pints!

Yeah, I always "seem" to learn better after the first 3 or 4

John

[Berti66]

quite NOT as the tradition "prescribes" I learn tunes by sheetmusic mostly, because of a hearing problem I cannot learn by ear

berti

[Flauta dolce]

I always was able to pick up by ear extremely well and I used to be good at sight-reading music.

Sight reading is a skill which requires a good bit of work. I never really enjoyed it as much as learning by ear.

I don't think ITM is particularly hard to sight-read but something gets lost in reading the notes straight from the page.

[Gabriel]

I learn by ear only. I can read sheetmusic, but I find it awkward and simply don't like it. And since my ear was always quite good, I don't have much trouble to learn tunes by ear exclusively. Maybe that takes more time than learning with sheetmusic, but, well...I don't like sheetmusic.

[dwinterfield]

I read the notes and hear the tune. For me, either approach by itself will not produce music.

I'd love to be able to pick out tunes by ear. And with slow, careful, trail and error, I have been able to figure out a few familar songs. It's nice to know I did it, but, with the emphasis on slow, it doesn't have much practical value. I used to wonder whether my inability to pick up tunes by ear was an indication of limited musical ability. In the Irish tradition, learning by ear seems to be considered the "right" way. I think it might be better to consider it the "old" way. I gather that some of the last 100 yrs. of education research has shown us that different people learn in different ways. We don't all receive and process information in the same way, whether it's music or anything else. I don't think there's a right way to learn music. Instead I think there are many ways to learn and the key is to match the presentation and teaching of music (or anything) to the student's ability to hear it, internalize it and play it.

[Il Friscaletto]

I learn by ear these days. When i first started, I would do both ear and sheet music, but now I am better at recognizing the bell notes and patterns that David M is talking about.

It's funny, because I've learned common tunes from the local session without necessarily trying to. I'll say to myself, "hey, I know this one, where the hell did I learn it?"

I do want to make an effort to read sheet music better. I want to learn some obscure tunes that I can surprise people with, and to do that, I may have to go to stuff that hasn't been recorded all that much, and only sheet music is available.

[neilC]

One of the things about 'bell notes' is that they can be instrument dependant. So we have an advantage as wooden flute players due to the complex harmonics of each note and the subtle (or in the case of some cross fingerings, not so subtle) differences in tonal quality between notes. I find it much easier to learn tunes by ear from a flute recording or player than other instruments.

The comments about patterns are exactly the same for reading the dots - like reading a language, after a while your eye is able to scan ahead taking in whole 'words' ('arpeggio starting on G', 'scale run D to A'), and they are recognised by the brain as whole patterns not individual dots. The relatively predicatable rhythmic nature of much traditional music makes this exercise easier than reading much of the classical repetoire. Of course, you have to interpret the traditional much more, knowing that the dots in a reel for example don't give you the 'swing'.

[crookedtune]

I prefer to learn by ear, and usually rely on that most. After I know a basic version of the tune, I like to read sheet music to get alternative ideas. I pick and choose from a combination of what I hear, what I read, and what I make up on my own. Reading has its pitfalls, but it's a valid tool, and shouldn't be discounted, IMHO.

[Caroluna]

By ear, using one of those "super-slow-downer" programs (the one I have
is called Transcriber).