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Learning By Ear


JimLucas

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I love using written music to get the correct notes and then listening to the tune to get the nuances. This is the quickest most enjoyable way for me to learn a tune.

 

I'll get to the learning by ear, but not just yet. Right now, I want to play.

Learning tunes "by ear" comes with practice, just like the other means of learning music. There are two good ways to develop the skill:

...1) You can start by using a music slow-downer. As you gain experience, you should find that you can pick things up without slowing them down as much. With enough practice, you may find that -- at least with some tunes -- you can start playing along at speed after hearing them only once through.

...2) While listening to others playing tunes in sessions, learn to pick out a note here, an interval there, a run somewhere else. Then gradually extend the bits and fill in the gaps. Again, with practice you'll find yourself dealing with larger and larger chunks and needing less and and less time to pick up a tune.

 

But one very important "by ear" skill is to learn to recognize and deal with differences between the version others are playing and the version you may have already learned. And of course, you need to be able to do this up to speed as it's happening. First you need to be able to tell that there is a difference. Then you need to being able to tell where the differences occur. (At this point you should leave gaps in your version, to avoid discordant interference.) Next you need to be able to identify the details of what the others are doing. And finally, you need to be able to override your previous learning and play their version, rather than "yours".

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It seems to me that there are several interrelated abilities that contribute to learning by ear and different people will have these abilities to different degrees. As a result they will learn in different ways. If you have a better idea of your strong points it may influence the way in which you approach learning a tune.

 

Firstly, how good is your hearing? Not just volume, where is your best frequency range. My wife cannot pick up a tune if I whistle it to her, I have to sing it. She is much better at spoken voice frequencies.

 

Next, once the brain starts to work on interpreting the sound you came across all sorts of factors. The time taken to process a note may be longer than the gap between notes so you have a “top speed” that you can listen at.

 

Do you have perfect pitch and identify a note against an absolute value or do you just compare it to the previous note and find the interval? You may just know that a certain sound is on a certain button.

 

Do you construct a chord sequence from the notes. I find that I identify the chords behind a tune as it is played. I suppose this comes from years of singing bass harmonies.

 

I can tell the key of a tune after a couple of notes and I don’t know how I do it. It is just obvious to me and frustrating to my wife, who has to guess and look out for sharps and flats in the tune to find it.

 

Once you have processed a few notes of the tune the brain can start to make predictions. “The next note has a 50% chance of being a C.” etc. The more tunes you know the bigger the database to work from. This is where chord sequence comes in again. You can find yourself just taking note of the unexpected notes, the correct predictions having slotted into the tune automatically. This can work remarkably rapidly on occasions. I once managed to accompany a new song after the first line had been sung to me (but I did know his style well).

 

Are you comparing the heard tune to a remembered one? All sorts of analysis come in here. Is it in the same key and does this matter to you?

 

So far we still are just listening to the tune, the playing is a long way off. Or is it? If you have come across a tune that is similar to one you already play you only have to remember the differences.

 

Now I realise that some of this is totally beyond control but perhaps if you can analyse what you do it may help you use your stronger abilities.

 

So what other distinct processes do you use to learn with? I am sure to have omitted loads.

 

Robin

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Robin, you've made some good points.

 

Most of the "abilities" you mention can be learned. Which are easier or more difficult for a given person at a given time depends on both inherent factors and prior training. (E.g., most of the time I don't think in chords, probably because all my early training was on instruments that could play only one note at a time, and even the harmonies were not the bass.) What matters is finding useful ways to expand your repertoire of abilities.

 

I suspect -- based on experiences of myself and others -- that what you attribute to frequency range is more complicated than that. But so what? You've discovered what you need to do to solve the problem, and that's more important than any presumed theoretical understanding of it.

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I've been learning tunes by ear for 30 years, but find that it gets harder as time goes on. Usually, I can play a tune as soon as it's in my head -- if I can hum it, I can play it (if it's in one of the Peoples Keys)

 

Listening to the tune over and over again is the essential first step for me. Playing along with someone who knows it speeds up the process.

 

A fiddle player I play with regularly learns tunes by stripping them down to the skeleton, learning the stripped down version, then gradually adding notes back in, all by ear. But I find this difficult on concertina; the fingering patterns get hard wired into the brain, and I find it hard to change them once learned (is this an individual quirk, or is this common?)

 

Especially in the past 5 years, I've suffered tune overload; I can learn quickly by ear, but tunes fade out again, or get confused with others. The B part of Katy's Rambles morphes into the B part of Sailor's Wife. The A in Reel de Montreal suddenly transforms itself into Magpie.

 

That has led me to use notation as a crutch. My learning is now a blend of by ear and by the dots.

 

I've been using the Amazing SLower Downer for about 9 months, and find it useful in learning by ear without straying too far from the original. I love the version of Paddy Canny's Toast on the newest John Williams CD, but couldn't pick out exactly what he was doing at speed. At 70 percent, it was easy to figure out (not so easy to replicate).

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Hi Jim,

 

I hate to have to break the news to you but I share your symptoms and have reluctantly come to the conclusion that it is all part of the early stages of becoming a folk wrinkley! The older we get, the harder we have to work for our pleasures :D

 

Maybe we need to eat more fish or something ?..... could that be less Beer? ;)

 

My biggest difficulty is remembering how a tune starts. Whistle the first 3 or 4 notes, however, and I'm away.

 

Any tips for remembering how tunes start other than by adding wacky or lewd lyrics to the tune in your head?? ..... I do hope I'm not the only one who does that !! :unsure:

 

Regards

 

Dave

Edited by Dave Prebble
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>My biggest difficulty is remembering how a tune starts.

> Whistle the first 3 or 4 notes, however, and I'm away.

>Any tips for remembering how tunes start other than

> by adding wacky or lewd lyrics to the tune in your head?

>? ..... I do hope I'm not the only one who does that !

 

Nah, I do it all the time. Some tunes naturally suggest silly lyrics that help you remember ("Fly Away my Pretty Little Miss," an AMerican old time tune, is an example; once you sing it, you never forget it). There's a really dorky jig we play at contra dances -- St. Laurence -- and someone started singing "This is just a dorky jig, a dorky jig, a dorky jig, this is just...." Now I ALWAYS remember how it starts.

 

Others don't.

 

Often, I cue to a particularly interesting part of the tune. I can never remember Galopede, although I've played it a zillion times. But I can remember the thumpy measures in the C part, and use that to get back to the beginning. I always remember the slows in Trunkles, and use that to find my way to the start.

 

THere's also an interesting correlation to knowing the names. Often, in a group, people will start playing a tune I sorta recognize but can't quite get -- until I remember the name, at which point I can play it just fine. I suppose remembering the name opens the neural pathways to remembering the fingering.

 

But all this might just be the post-50 mental deterioration that has added so much spice to playing.

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My biggest difficulty is remembering how a tune starts. Whistle the first 3 or 4 notes, however, and I'm away.

 

Any tips for remembering how tunes start other than by adding wacky or lewd lyrics to the tune in your head?? ..... I do hope I'm not the only one who does that !!  :unsure:

 

As a fan of ABC I just note down the tune name and the first half a dozen notes or the whole tune even look here a scoll towards the bottom for an idea.

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I hate to have to break the news to you but I share your symptoms and have reluctantly come to the conclusion that it is all part of the early stages of becoming a folk wrinkley!

You and me both, old son. The only thing I can add to playing by ear is what happens when I meet a tune I'm not or only partially familiar with. Most tunes seeem to have bits or short sequences that crop up in other tunes. For me, playing by ear consists of picking out and playing those bits, and then trying to fill in the gaps.

 

Chris

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I've found that singing, or adding, or in some way using solfeggio syllables is helpful in memorizing a song. For me, too, that kind of brings a tune or a song into a new 'room' in my head....if that makes any sense...

 

Solfeggio is thought of as a tool for the voice, for singers, but I think it's useful in giving any instrument a 'voice.'

 

And, since it's the same for any song (unlike verbal lyrics), it can be a 'constant.' In other words, I'll group a set of songs as 'the songs with the fifths,' Do So, etc..

 

As for playing by ear -- well, I never really ever learned how to read music, and I played by ear, but mainly just memorizing chord progressions. Now, I've struggled a bit to sight-read music, and I'm starting to find a nice blending of the two, ears and eyes. (I think I really do prefer to play by ear, though.)

 

I don't know about Anglo, or Duet, but I think the English concertina is really great for people who already can play by ear but want some help getting a grip on sight-reading. I tried it with a piano keyboard, but, it's too 'easy' and I couldn't really tell if I was sight-reading or not. With the EC, though, since the fingering is kind of tricky for a 'piano head,' if I'm reading the music and playing the right notes, I know that I'm sight-reading it!

 

I'm all for playing by ear, though. I think it's a whole different thing, and I prefer it.

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As I have been thinking over what has been said it occurred to me that in most instances I find it easier to pick up a tune from a band rather than from a single instrument. I suppose this is my "hearing chords" ability coming through again.

 

There are certain tunes that I think I shall never learn properly. I may eventually be able to play them and reproduce all the notes but still not understand them. There is one that my wife plays, it may be called "spatter the dew" or I might be confusing the titles, that just does not make sense to me as the timing changes just when you think you've got it sorted out.

 

On the other hand there are tunes that I know well that just don't fit with my playing style so I prefer to pick up a whistle instead.

 

Robin.

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... in most instances I find it easier to pick up a tune from a band rather than from a single instrument.

Hmm. Just the opposite for me. In fact, I get really annoyed in sessions when the "backup" instruments "bury" the melody in sludge of chords, so that I can't tell which of the many notes I'm hearing are those of the melody.

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After performing a very long monologue on stage, when joining the audience a friend of mine said" I just do not know how you remember all that".This particular person was an amazing joke teller and I reminded him, that if I told him a joke, he would be able to repeat it the next day word for word what I had told him.The key is that he would during my joke, totally concentrate on what I was saying, to be able to repeat it.In the same way remembering lines and remembering music is the same principle.One word with the next word etc., one sentence with the next and one paragraph with the next untill you get to the end and then when memorised ,work on the finer details.Note to next note,bar to bar,A music with B music.

Why had I achieved the monologue and my friend had not was not due to memory but due to the fact that I had started to learn and he had not.Music by ear is the same,I started to learn by ear and others who cannot play by ear have never started.Like most things in life it is never as difficult as you think it is it is starting that is difficult.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Guest Jim Wright

I am a newbie too! but I have studied music for some 27 years and always put all my mental energy into sight-reading and memorization. Not properly developing my ear has been a foolish thing because I now know that it is with your ear that you are able to respond musically in real time. Since I have grown more confident with my ear my enjoyment of music and spontaneity has increased beyond what I had previously believed I could ever achieve. I have also grown very tired of making things so hard and have found that one of the easiest ways to train your ear is to simply start finding some of the simpliest and best known melodies by ear. I started by playing kids songs by ear; Row Row Row your boat, Twinkle Twinkle little star, Mary had a little lamb, just start playing notes and next thing you know all kind of things just start poping out. Christmas songs and folk ballads are easy to spontaniously play. I am now playing Beatles melodies spontaniously. And what is really a trip is when you hear or think of a song and you play it correctly from begining to end without making any errors and you never really put any concience thought in it at all. Sometimes the hardest thing to learn is how to disengage your left brain and let the right brain take over. Thank You! for letting me share my thoughts and I hope that this is helpfull.

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I think we have two separate threads going on here -

1) Learning to play by ear

2) Learning tunes by ear

 

The first involves an instrument and unless you can do the second, playing by ear will be difficult. (Unless you can play "air-ango" and imagine the buttons and bellows direction).

I have always thought of learning tunes by ear as learning to hum or whistle them rather than play them (as there will always be tunes you know and will never be able to play - flight of bumble bee?).

 

Again, the learning tunes has two separate threads -

1) learning tunes

2) remembering tunes (and their names)

 

and most people have problem with the second even when they know tunes by the thousand - (everyone, even decent musicians, has mental blocks occasionally).

 

I saw quite a good patent method in the session, from someone who composes poems to remember tunes, although I don't think he composes that many poems - just uses them to learn tunes initially.

 

This is a tune called "The Geese in the Pratie Hole"

This is a tune that begins on F Sharp

This is a tune you can play on accordion

Whistle or fiddle, banjo or harp

 

There you have the tune name, the basic rhythm and the key (D maj) - quite clever.

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