learning to play by ear?

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Oct 12 - 06:28 AM

Jack, what have I said? learning from dots can work for people who have long experience of playing this music. I've said that more than once, I believe. They know what is required in terms of applying the standards they have learned from years of their ear-learning. They know that dots do not, cannot, represent this music in any real musical sense whatsoever. It still isn't the best way but you can get away with it. It might be the only way if you're doing what you did with Miss Gordon of Gight. But you have a good deal of experience. My argument is that learning from dots is not harmless for people who are still in the earlier stages of developing their understanding of this music. It implies that there is a short-cut way of getting into it fast. You yourself didn't, I'm sure, get this music under your skin in a few months by learning tons of tunes from tune books. You've listened, you've interacted with other musicians, you've studied... Slow is best, by a long chalk. That's what I'm saying. Getting out there, drinking beer, listening, joining in, interacting, having a joke, telling lies, swearing, having the motivation to be in that setting - that's what it's about and that is what a music stand in your kitchen can't give you. And if you can't remember how you learned a tune it's because you learned a damn sight more by getting out there and playing it with your mates than you did from that score you might have learned it from all those years ago. But that needed your insight and experience, which is what we all know you have, which is what beginners have not got.

Snail, perhaps you've learned your tunes from books, in which case you would have difficulty in telling.

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: The Sandman
Date: 13 Oct 12 - 06:59 AM

Jack, what have I said?
I suggest this , what did ory say, or, do what ory say http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b77npOKfUsI
do what ory say

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: Don Firth
Date: 13 Oct 12 - 03:30 PM

"Fer chrissakes, I did not make that claim. I can tell straight away if someone is playing a tune in our session that they learned from dots."

Steve, make up your mind.

In the first sentence quoted above, you deny that you made the claim.

Then, in the second sentence, you make the claim you deny having made again!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Oct 12 - 07:08 PM



You claimed I claimed this. I claim I claimed no such thing. My posts do not support you. I really do have better things to occupy me, Don. Nighty night.

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: Don Firth
Date: 13 Oct 12 - 07:30 PM

Okay, Steve, if you want to back away from a statement you made several times in your posts above, having realized that you were flat wrong, that's okay with me.

It's up there for anyone to read. A couple of places.

The real doozy as far as I'm concerned was your saying, essentially, that if you encourage a beginner in traditional music to learn to read music, you will be harming them. I've taught many beginners in folk music, starting them out learning to read if they don't already, and they're doing quite well, thank you. No visible—or audible—harm.

Nighty night. I'm tired of arguing in favor of the obvious.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Oct 12 - 07:47 PM

I should like to remind you that not once have I said that learning to read music will do you any harm. I deliberately learned to read music myself at the age of 46 and I've never looked back. One of the best things I ever did. So will you please bloody stop saying that I'm saying that learning to read music would harm anyone. You either do not understand plain English or you are being deliberately capricious. I am saying that the harm comes when inexperienced players of this music think that it's hunkydory to learn tunes, fast-track, from notation. If you can't see the difference then you are either being deliberately stupid or you have an agenda of some kind that we're not privy to.

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: Don Firth
Date: 13 Oct 12 - 08:36 PM

You're getting hysterical, Steve.

From:Steve Shaw- PM
Date: 11 Oct 12 - 07:40 PM

"But advocating that beginners in traditional music will come to no harm if they learn tunes from books and/or set up music stands in sessions is just nonsense. There may well be nothing traditional about sessions, etc., but there is damn sure nothing traditional about people down the centuries playing traditional music from dots. Nothing!"

[And the assertion in that last clause assumes something about traditional musicians that I think you would have a hard time verifying.]

And you just said it AGAIN, right above.

"I am saying that the harm comes when inexperienced players of this music think that it's hunkydory to learn tunes, fast-track, from notation."

How the hell is someone SUPPOSED to read that!???

I am not stupid. And the only agenda I have here is that counseling beginners in music, any kind of music, that learning to read music will do them harm or inhibit their progress in any way sounds like an attempt to sabotage them.

BAD COUNSEL!

Don Firth

P. S. I've said my say. There's no further point in chasing each other around the bush, repeating the same things over and over again.

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 13 Oct 12 - 08:55 PM

Aarrgggh.

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 13 Oct 12 - 09:16 PM

Don, I think you are missing the point that Steve is talking out for a specific experience. You DO get people turning up at sessions with sheet music and attempting to play from it in that setting. Doesn't work very well at all and if the sheet music user doesn't understand the limitations imposed by what they're doing, it can be a real drag for everybody else and can send them down a black hole where they never get to to the point of playing the stuff in a way that anybody would want to listen to.

I encounter them frequently, in a large city with a very active trad music scene; some of them haven't changed one iota in 20 years (I could say the same about some people who only learn by ear, though). I'm okay about playing with them occasionally; I can usually inject a bit of life into the proceedings. Maybe Steve finds them more frustrating because he lives in a much smaller place with fewer options for getting away from them so that something more inspiring can happen.


the harm comes when inexperienced players of this music think that it's hunkydory to learn tunes, fast-track, from notation.
counseling beginners in music, any kind of music, that learning to read music will do them harm or inhibit their progress in any way sounds like an attempt to sabotage them.

Steve was cautioning against using sheet music as your primary source for repertoire and performance practice, not against knowing how to read it per se. And there ARE people who don't see the point of listening. They aren't a bugaboo Steve made up.

Something else sheet music can do to some folks is focus their attention away from the performance situation, so they aren't thinking about the audience. It's pretty hard to read the audience and a score at the same time. Unfortunately a lot of ear players are also capable of the same failure of attention. Maybe they're focusing on something like a music stand in their heads when they should be looking at who's around them and asking, what am I communicating? are they listening? what could I do to make them listen? (There is a whole package of ideological claptrap about how "a session is not a performance", designed to excuse that).

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: Don Firth
Date: 13 Oct 12 - 10:40 PM

Thanks for clearing that up, Jack.

THAT, I can agree with. As I said some distance above, I (and several other of Seattle's singers) stopped going to Seattle Song Circle when some newbies starting lugging armloads of song books to the meetings and bored the hell out of the rest of us by stumbling around trying to read a song they didn't know, and apparently hadn't even looked at before. Last I heard, they're all sitting around reading the songs out of "Rise Up Singing," like a hymn-sing!

Sorry! I prefer swapping songs with people who are interested enough in the songs to learn them and live with them awhile, not just read them out of a book.

If that's the kind of thing that goes on at some sessions, then I can agree with "leave the sheet music and song books at home!"

But if a person learns a song or a tune from the dots in a collection, then comes to a session and is willing to hold back a bit until they get the hang of it, then I can't see that "learning the tune from the dots" is any kind of problem.

My main objection was the idea that learning to read music or learning a bunch of tunes ahead of time from written music "harms" a beginning player of traditional music.

The "dots," and knowing how to read them is a valuble tool for learning material. Not a shackle.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: selby
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 05:46 AM

I have lost the plot here I learn from dots so therefore I don't understand folk music because i cant play be ear is that what we are saying?
Keith

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: MikeL2
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 06:11 AM

hi Bobert

<" Gotta a $2 pitch pipe, a $20 geetar and a couple folk music books with the chords diagrammed over the changes...">

Gee man you had the same "tutor" as me. lol !!

My father played in a dance band and though he could read very slowly he never used the written music except occasionally to work out a new song he had not heard.

He encouraged me to learn to read and play from the dots but hey I wanted to be a footballer so never got into learning. My sister did go to a piano tutor and took all the requisite exams etc etc She is now a very accomplished pianist.

maybe this background helped me to "hear" the music and I just had listen to a song or tune a few times to be able to work it out on my guitar.

I would describe my way of learning was one of playing from memory rather than by ear.

Of course now the memory is fading and I wish that I had learned the rudiments of music and how to play from written music.

Cheers

MikeL2

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 06:35 AM

THAT, I can agree with.

Well I'm glad about that because it means you agree with exactly what I've been saying all along. In sum, Don:

*I don't think it's wrong for anyone on the planet I can think of to learn to read music. In fact, it's a wonderful thing, I did it myself in my mid-40s and I wish I'd done it sooner.

*I do think it's a bad idea for inexperienced players of Irish traditional music (and "similar") to learn tunes from notation.

Something else sheet music can do to some folks is focus their attention away from the performance situation, so they aren't thinking about the audience. It's pretty hard to read the audience and a score at the same time. Unfortunately a lot of ear players are also capable of the same failure of attention. Maybe they're focusing on something like a music stand in their heads when they should be looking at who's around them and asking, what am I communicating? are they listening? what could I do to make them listen?

That is a very interesting point, worthy of a thread unto itself I'd say. We talk a lot about how to learn by ear, etc., but we don't talk enough about how to listen whilst playing. I try to forget that there are non-players who may be listening. I think that, in a session, that's a dimension you don't really need. If they enjoy what we're doing, great, and what we're doing just might be all the better if we shut them out (in the nicest possible way). Not always easy. I'll try to latch on to one or two of the more experienced melody players and interact with what they are doing. Even eye contact can be a great thing. That seems to automatically tighten up my own playing (in the good sense of the term). You sometimes get that ego thing with some people who, for example, think the tune has started too slowly and who single-handedly try to accelerate everyone else. In circumstances like that the active listening collapses and the whole thing becomes a bit of a chore. Very frequently it's bodhran players who seem to be the worst listeners - they think that possession of a circular section of dead goat in a wooden ring magically imbues them with a faultless sense of rhythm and tempo. Well, I suppose it might have, had the goat be appropriately sacrificed to the correct gods.

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 06:58 AM

been

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 11:33 AM

The learning of Irish tunes from notation is only a first step for people who read music, the next is singing the tune if you can (dowdling) then putting on your instrument and find variations for the tune by exploring your own or others.
Micheal Coleman seems not to play the tune the same way twice. To get to that point, you have to know the tune thoroughly and whether you do that through notes or by ear is incidental.

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 12:10 PM

I am not sure it is. In my experience teaching Irish music I have found there's a significant difference how, say, local teenagers who have learned their previous music by ear and by assimilation and those, often Europeans or Americans, who come to it not only later in life but from a background of (a degree of) formal music education and reading.

The ear-learners approach a tune from a very different angle, often very quick to 'lift it'. Sight learners seem to be very much prone to stick to the notes they learned while ear-learners see the structure of a tune, filling it in in different ways as they go along, immediately varying the melody in the traditional manner.

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: Don Firth
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 06:39 PM

Again, that depends more on the individual's innate musicality than it does on how they first learned the tune.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 06:52 PM

I make a plea to get any petty arguments/personality clashes out of Mudcat forthwith!

I'd call that a hopeless plea from Tattie Bogle - not on the Mudcat where anything can turn into a spat.

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 07:20 PM

I don't agree, Don. Innate musicality has little to do with getting traditional Irish tunes under your skin. That has far more to do with getting yourself steeped in the music (apologies for a cliche I try to avoid), which is achieved by listening a lot to it, loving it and learning to play it with other like-minded people. By ear.

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 07:36 PM

Very frequently it's bodhran players who seem to be the worst listeners - they think that possession of a circular section of dead goat in a wooden ring magically imbues them with a faultless sense of rhythm and tempo. Well, I suppose it might have, had the goat be appropriately sacrificed to the correct gods.

Some other traditions deal with that better. In Indonesian gamelan, the most senior player is the one who beats the gong agung (the really huge one: one beat every phrase). They will have graduated to that by working their way down every metallophone in the group, highest to lowest. Which recognizes that an old-timer might not have the virtuoso chops any more, but gum they'll have the timing right.

In Ottoman classical music from the Sufi tradition, the small kettledrum (kudüm) keeps the beat, again with rather infrequent taps. It has a sound that cuts through anything. It is considered to be an allegory for the creative impetus of God as the Prime Cause behind every event that occurs in the universe.

Perhaps we should insist that bodhran players graduate to the instrument after playing everything else in the traditional lineup, and that they should take on reponsibility for synchronizing every event in earthly time. Is that too much to ask?

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: Don Firth
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 07:47 PM

Academic, Steve. I can't imagine anyone who has NOT listened to Irish music—or Appalachian ballads or Swahili chanting or Bach fugues—digging up a bunch of sheet music and learning tunes in that particular genre without hearing it ahead of time and getting some idea of what it's all about. That's how people get interested in a particular type of music in the first place. Hearing it and liking it. And wanting to play it.

From that point on, it depends on their inherent musicality. And if they have any at all, the more they participate, the better they get.

It has far less to do with where they learn a tune than it does with what they do with it AFTER they learn it. Or have BEGUN to learn it.

Basic.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 07:49 PM

No it isn't! I have two bodhrans at home. I keep the better of the two dubbined but it hasn't been out of the spare bedroom since 1998. I was a typical offender in my early days, filling in with the drum on every tune I didn't know how to play on the harmonica. What a bastard I was! I learned that the best way forward was to listen to the tunes and learn 'em and leave the damned drum at home. I haven't picked it up for about 12 years but I reckon that, within minutes, I could play it just as well as most of the shits who turn up to sessions with it. And, I assure you, that is saying very little indeed!

Two questions: is "dubbined" a word? And am I still that bastard? :-)

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 07:50 PM

That was a response to Jack.

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 08:11 PM

Nah, you don't get it, Don. So I go and buy a few Ded Dannan, Bothy Band and Planxty records. I love 'em and play 'em to death. I get to learn a few of their tunes on the mouth organ. I go to a session. I can't even recognise, let alone play, 95% of the tunes they are playing. So I get a couple of those Mally tune books and fast-track myself into learning a bunch of tunes from them. Think I can play them? Not on your Nelly. I've been too impatient. I've done it all wrong, starting from when I bought the bloody tune books. This is not difficult music but it is still an ancient tradition. There subtleties, nuances and, dare I say it, a few hidden secrets. You don't just swan in and get good in a few months. It doesn't take much technique, not even much memory, and you don't have to be a virtuoso. But you need to learn a lot of things that are not on records or in tune books. To think you can get away without doing all that is to insult generations of people who have preserved the heart and soul of this music. Now, Don, how come I know all this even though I live in the middle of nowhere in Cornwall with no Irish melody players around me? Do you think I deliberately want to make things difficult for myself? Or do you think I'd rather take a long time getting it right even though there a risk of my snuffing it before I get there?

And all that stuff in the first part of my post is entirely true. It's just that I've seen the light.

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 08:15 PM

They're not ded yet. De Dannan.

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: ripov
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 10:40 PM

An inexperienced player won't sound like an experienced one, whichever way they learn the tune and however innately musical they are, and one who is not 'immersed in' or at least familiar with, a tradition or style will not give as authentic (however you define it) performance as one who is (is quality of performance a consideration in a "public" session?).
But I agree that someone learning by ear will probably make a better approximation initially; and playing from memory is better than needing the dots TO PLAY THE NOTES; which really means we haven't learnt it at all (possibly, and forgivably, because of a poor memory).
Although some of us, as we mature, like the dots just to remind us which is the right 'B' part.

But - Steve Shaw - "If someone turns up with a tune they've learned from dots, or from a single recorded source, it's bleedin' obvious."
Well maybe they've been playing it the same appropriate traditional way in the same session for the last 20 years.
Surely what's obvious is that either they're inexperienced (20 years inexperience maybe), and need encouragement and advice, or that they just don't listen to those round them.
Or that they just prefer a different version.

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: Don Firth
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 10:54 PM

Ripov's got it.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 15 Oct 12 - 04:33 AM

Indeed he has.

I feel this thread has got to that point where anything and everything worth saying has been said, misunderstood and repeated - only to be ignored by following posters.

Les

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Oct 12 - 06:02 AM

I've heard some brilliant "inexperienced" players. You can find 'em all over YouTube for a start. Experience is not measured in years, as one part of your post seems to imply. Many of us who inhabit TheSession have bitter memories of a prolific poster and useless player who set himself up as a guru of diddley music with the main qualification that he'd been playing it for "30+yrs" and his ability to name-drop the famous folk he'd played with (I almost said fiddled with but held myself back).

But I agree that someone learning by ear will probably make a better approximation initially

A "better approximation" of what?

...they just don't listen to those round them.
Or that they just prefer a different version.

These are both manifestations of the same problem. Go to a session worth its salt with concepts of "versions" and you'll soon be put right.

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: TheSnail
Date: 15 Oct 12 - 06:25 AM

Been a bit busy with my involvement with Lewes Folk Festival including helping to run a couple of instrumental workshops and going to a couple of others.

Steve Shaw

Snail, perhaps you've learned your tunes from books, in which case you would have difficulty in telling.

I described how I learn tunes in my first post to this thread. Here it is again in case you missed it -

I have learnt some tunes purely "by ear" without ever having seen them and some from "the dots" without ever having heard them. Mostly, I have used a combination of the two; it helps reading a tune to know what it sounds like and the notation can help with those twiddly bits it's difficult to pick up as they race past in a session. Even learning tunes that I've never heard, I know what similar tunes sound like.

I have been actively involved in workshops for around twenty tears and heavily involved in the music for about as long before that as a listener and dancer.

I have also been much helped by attending some of the workshops we run at the Lewes Saturday Folk Club with tutors such as John Kirkpatrick, Alistair Anderson, Pete Coe, Tom McConville, Tommy Peoples, Tim Laycock, Nancy Kerr and James Fagan, Andy Turner, Sandra Kerr, Pete Cooper, Dave Townsend and many more. With one or two exceptions, they sent us written music in advance. It saves time learning the notes at the workshop so that we can concentrate on playing the music.

On the other side of the coin, ten years or more ago a friend set up a practice session to learn the tunes played in the local sessions out of the public eye. This grew out of a concertina players evening that I was already running (he turned up with a banjo.) With support from me and Valmai Goodyear of this parish he started an all instruments practice session. We put together a set of tunes that we could guarantee would be heard in the local sessions and handed out photocopies. The format is to go round the room choosing a tune which would then be played as slowly as people wished and as many times as it took. This is just as edifying a process for the more experience of us as it is for the beginners.

We added more tunes and eventually they were published as The Lewes Favourites http://www.lewessaturdayfolkclub.org/LAFC/TheBook.html.In the introduction to the book it says "Please remember the music here is only a guide!".

We have taken this idea round several folk festivals. The first time we did it, I dropped the others off and went to park the car. By the time I got back, the House Full signs were up.

Several people on this thread have pointed out that learning the notes is only the first step to learning the music. I can't see that it matters whether you learn the notes from the dots or by ear. The best way to learn the music is by playing with others and that involves listening.

I'll ask again, Steve, how can you tell straight away if someone has learned from dots? I'll do my best to understand.

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 15 Oct 12 - 07:46 AM

Well put Ms/Mr Snail,

as far as I can tell this is what loads of people have been doing for hundreds of years - although clearly I am not really sure.

Is it worth making the point that we are talking about playing around 32 bars of faily simple music - either from memory or from the page or somewhere in the middle.

Having heared Speed the Plough (major key version) or whatever, in loads of sessions - and more importantly being played for dancing, I am inclined to think I have heard the same tune played pretty well the same. I don't think I have ever heard it played very differently.

As for "The dots don't really represent the tune" - they are not tunes of masonic secrecy - to be revealed only to people at obscure sessions where the influence of dots can be purged - they are 32 bars of simple dance tunes.

If people can write the dots of classical pieces written orchestras of dozens, jazz pieces by Basie and Ellington and folk played by Bellowhead then I rather suspect that someone somewhere can write the dots for Speed the Bl**dy Plough.

This attitude that only in some obscure session, open to only those who have been purged of dots, can the real soul of a tune be revealed is simply b*llocks.

It reminds of the early collectors who went out and arrested songs and a few tunes and locked them up in CS House because they thought that was the best thing to do.

Best wishes

L in C#

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 15 Oct 12 - 08:26 AM

If people can write the dots of classical pieces written orchestras of dozens, jazz pieces by Basie and Ellington and folk played by Bellowhead then I rather suspect that someone somewhere can write the dots for Speed the Bl**dy Plough.

There are a few different kinds of transcription around. Most of the Ellington ones I've seen were a bit skeletal, and you did need to have heard some Ellington to use them. But anyone who wants to play jazz at all will have done. Many trad music scores are in the same spirit: they do tell you what to do, if you have a reasonable familiarity with the idiom. Which isn't all that hard to come by in an age when so much electronic media is available.

Other kinds of transcription are much more informative and much harder to use. That's the kind of thing Bartok did, and which is still very much alive in the jazz world. They use paper as a surrogate recording machine. You need much less familiarity with the original if you're given that much information, but those scores can be VERY hard to read. The amount of rhythmic precision in some of Bartok's "parlando rubato" song transcriptions has sometimes defeated me entirely, and so have some bebop-era jazz solos on paper.

Then there are some in between, like Dunlay and Greenberg's book on Cape Breton music. It's a long way above Mally or O'Neill in precision and historical doumentation but a good bit more user-friendly than Bartok.

There are SOME tunes with individualized histories and performance traditions that aren't readily available in print. What you do near the end of "Lady Leverpark" when playing it for the dance, for example. But the session scene doesn't transmit that sort of thing very effectively. Nor does it generate interestingly varied versions of tunes in the way that the process operated before the session scene came along: the older process used a mix of one-to-one aural transmission and paper, and like the evolution of biological organisms, the fact that it took place along lines of descent that involved very few individuals meant that things diversified fast. Large-group performance blurs and simplifies, it doesn't often create anything strikingly new.

So, I'd say some of the purported benefits of an aurally based session tradition (over a paper-based one) are overrated. Yes, it does get individual participants playing with much better style. No, it doesn't have much going for it as a creative process that develops new music.

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Oct 12 - 08:45 AM

Agreed, Jack, but sessions are only one part of traditional music. Not a very old one at that. There are people still composing "traditional" tunes that quickly get assimilated and "given the treatment" in sessions. I've been playing some tunes for years that I'd thought were ancient then discovered that they are often less than 30 or 40 years old. Sessions make sure that those tunes get played and, er, "processed". That can't be bad, eh?

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Oct 12 - 10:40 AM

There seems to be a bit of a dichotomy here.
The thread started as "learning to play by ear", but seems to have got mired between playing and learning.
Personally, I can't read the dots (or golf sticks, as we Paddy sophisticates say) so I've learned everything by ear.
In sessions, surely, virtually everybody PLAYS by ear.
As Sir Thomas Beecham said (the British) don't know much about music, but they love the noise it makes".
Surely if one's rendition suits the environment it's played in, all the other arguments are just sophistry - and an opportunity to do a little soap-box oratory by those who feel that their opinions somehow matter.
Go out and play the way you're comfy with - anybody who doesn't like it will (I'm sure, politely), tell you the perceived error of your ways.

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: TheSnail
Date: 15 Oct 12 - 11:39 AM

There seems to be a bit of a dichotomy here.
The thread started as "learning to play by ear", but seems to have got mired between playing and learning.

Just so, GUEST. That is a point I raised in my first post. I don't know what "playing by ear" means. If it means playing from memory, I have yet to see any clear evidence that it makes any difference how you learnt it in the first place. Steve claims he can tell but seems reluctant to explain how.

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: The Sandman
Date: 15 Oct 12 - 11:59 AM

Surely if one's rendition suits the environment it's played in, all the other arguments are just sophistry - and an opportunity to do a little soap-box oratory by those who feel that their opinions somehow matter.
what an excellent comment

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Oct 12 - 12:15 PM

You started the thread, Dick. ;-)

Ah, environment. Can mean a big pub, a little pub, a quiet pub, a noisy pub, a gig, a kitchen, playing solo, playing with a couple of others, playing in a monster session, playing it in a recording studio. Can mean your mates' playing levels, knowledge and tolerance of your "renditions." Yes, it sounded like a sage remark, unless you read it as meaning throwing your hands in the air, saying sod doing it right, anything goes, just play the bloody thing...

Playing by ear, learning by ear, yeah, a bit loose. But if you learn a tune by ear you're hardly going to play it any other way anyway. If you learned it from a tune book, unless you're experienced, you will not be playing by ear. You will be playing it from the dots you remembered by playing them over and over again so many times that you can do it according to the dots but without them in front of you any more. So let's just call it learning tunes by ear. That fixes it.

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Oct 12 - 12:29 PM

"So let's just call what we're talking about learning tunes by ear" is what I meant. Grr.

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: The Sandman
Date: 15 Oct 12 - 12:59 PM

yes, play that thing, but not anything goes, listen to the other players whether you are reading dots or playing without dots

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 15 Oct 12 - 01:10 PM

If you learned it from a tune book, unless you're experienced, you will not be playing by ear. You will be playing it from the dots you remembered by playing them over and over again so many times that you can do it according to the dots but without them in front of you any more.

But, you end up in much the same place by learning to reproduce a specific recording by playing along with it over and over. And that happens. Some people manage to completely lose any feeling for the overall shape of the tune that way (it's most obvious when they've done it with slow airs). At least if you start with notation you *know* you've got some interpretive work to do.

It gets worse. We now have YouTube. Which provides a means of aural transmission of crappy literal-minded insight-free renditions that spans the globe, with the prevailing culture of the medium labelling you a "hater" if you suggest any performance is anything less than wonderful, and a built-in mechanism for hiding negative comments.


In sessions, surely, virtually everybody PLAYS by ear.

There are a few round here where that isn't the case.

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: The Sandman
Date: 15 Oct 12 - 01:27 PM

if you are playing with anybody else, whether you are reading from music, or playing without dots you should be using your ears, or plying by ear, or listening.
for example when i was playing here even though i had the music in front of me i was listening
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kck9jxKgz4

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Oct 12 - 01:31 PM

You should know you have interpretive work to do. Which it I keep saying it's OK for experienced players. I agree about learning from recordings. Just one source is fatal. And YouTube is a minefield. Unless you have experience. There's the conundrum.

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Oct 12 - 01:32 PM

Which is why. Grrr again.

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: ripov
Date: 15 Oct 12 - 02:52 PM

Jack - you're so right about slow airs - I've never heard one played yet with anything like the feeling it must have started with, they seem to degenerate into just a slow succession of notes.

Steve-
"I've heard some brilliant "inexperienced" players. You can find 'em all over YouTube for a start. Experience is not measured in years, as one part of your post seems to imply"
- Yes, some are lucky and gain a great deal of experience, or at least exposure, in a short time, or even grow up in an environment so cultured that "experience" in the usual sense is almost irrelevant. But in general experience increases with passing time if not at the same rate for everyone.

"If you learned it from a tune book, unless you're experienced, you will not be playing by ear. You will be playing it from the dots".
No you won't be, any more than an actor says his lines from the written word. You'll be playing it from memory. And hopefully using your experience to play it, lets say, sympathetically. How many shakespearean actors rely on an unbroken aural tradition dating back to the bard, and how many learn from books - words - letters - we don't play dots anymore than they repeat letters!

"sessions are only one part of traditional music. Not a very old one at that"
-So what is the main part of the tradition, and where is it kept alive?

To me "folk" music is only a small part of the tradition of communal music making that Don refers to (11 Oct 12 - 05:56) and that I love to take part in.

Don't want to repeat anything else thats been said before so I'll stop now

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: John P
Date: 15 Oct 12 - 04:17 PM

I think of written music as a road map. It is useful to show you how to get from here to there, but when you are actually driving you should have your eyes on the road.

It really doesn't matter if the tune is learned by ear or from written music. All that's important is how it gets played. I've played with mechanical readers and readers who get it and play it right. I've played with mechanical ear-learners and with beautifully expressive ear-learners.

Memorization doesn't enter into it -- someone who learns by ear and wants to play the tune has to memorize it. Someone who learns from written music can either memorize it or not. In my experience, most note-learners who memorize the tunes play them more naturally in group settings, but this isn't always true.

Improvisation is different from both ear-learning and note-learning, although it can be used in conjunction with either.

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: TheSnail
Date: 15 Oct 12 - 05:36 PM

It seems we will have to tell our workshop tutors (some of the most highly regarded folk musicians in the land) that they are getting it wrong. Steve Shaw says so.

Steve Shaw
If you learned it from a tune book, unless you're experienced, you will not be playing by ear. You will be playing it from the dots you remembered by playing them over and over again so many times that you can do it according to the dots but without them in front of you any more.

Steve, you don't learn tunes from a tune book so you have no idea what it feels like to play tunes you have learnt that way in a session. Believe me (which you probably won't) it is nothing like you say. Folk tune books give you little in the way of how to play the tune. They give you the notes to play. After that it is up to you based on your experience, your inner muse and, most importantly, playing with other people.

Good Soldier Schweik
if you are playing with anybody else, whether you are reading from music, or playing without dots you should be using your ears, or plying by ear, or listening.

Thank you Dick. Someone has finally come up with a meaningful definition of what "playing by ear" means - playing while listening. I like it. I note that it excludes neither learning from notation nor playing from notation.

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: The Sandman
Date: 15 Oct 12 - 05:44 PM

correct

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 15 Oct 12 - 05:53 PM

In eastern Canada where I grew up, playing by ear is used to differentiate how one learns music and a related instrument. I learned mostly by ear; that is, I have minimal understanding of notation. I listen and duplicate. A key's a key and chords are chords. Same for timing and tempo. YMMV

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 15 Oct 12 - 06:31 PM

Playing by ear is associated often with improvisation. A good grasp of theory, how chords work, the harmonic implications of melody, the memorization of chord progressions,
the knowledge of the various voicing for chords can facilitate playing by ear.

Any good jazz man can play by ear because the music requires it.

There is no reason that a musician can't be proficient at reading, improvising and
playing by ear.

There may be an aptitude for retaining melodies.

Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Oct 12 - 07:52 PM

Quoth ripov: Yes, some are lucky and gain a great deal of experience, or at least exposure, in a short time...

They are not lucky. They are doing it right.

Quoth ripov summore: "If you learned it from a tune book, unless you're experienced, you will not be playing by ear. You will be playing it from the dots".
No you won't be, any more than an actor says his lines from the written word. You'll be playing it from memory.

Well, you truncated what I said in order to be contrary, then ended up saying what I'd said in the first place. Odd. And you forgot that I compared schoolchildren reading Shakespeare out loud from books (excruciating, though you pat them on the head) with seasoned actors doing the same thing (often sublime). If you want children to understand Shakespeare you take them to see his plays. Reading his lines out of a book in a classroom is next to useless, in fact it has turned millions of children away from Shakespeare for life. If inexperienced musicians want to play Irish tunes well they need to go and listen to it. A lot. Not sit at home reading it out of tune-books in their impatience to get going. They'll be able to play it from memory all right, but the only memory of it they'll have is of squiggles on a page that say next to nothing about the heart and soul of the music.

Quoth Snail: Steve, you don't learn tunes from a tune book so you have no idea what it feels like to play tunes you have learnt that way in a session. Believe me (which you probably won't) it is nothing like you say.

I have learned a good few tunes from tune books as it happens. I'm a convert from that nefarious practice. Learning from books taught me entirely the wrong message, that there is a correct version and that you should pontificate about it should you come up against someone not playing it Mally's way. And it taught me precisely zilch about active listening as I learned, the need for flexibility, the subtleties of rhythm and how to vary and ornament tunes. So I have every idea, you see.