I don't know if this is just me..but I went away this weekend 3 days (Norwich to see Bellowhead). 3 days of not playing then when I got back I had to relearn a lot...I'd kinda forgotten what to do...wierd. (I tried to fit it in the suitcase....but with my selection of outfits and shoes it just wouldn't fit)
I think I'm gonna have to do a bumper load of practice on saturday.

Be honest with us, LDT - how old are you really?

Loss of short-term memory is typical of your Silver Surfer. Perhaps that's why we surf so much - we forget what we read on that site (where was it, now?) yesterday. Or was it the day before? ...
At any rate, tunes we learned 25 years ago are always a safe bet. No bum notes, no omitted verses.

Prepare for it NOW!

Cheers,
John

22 Really. I just have a habit of forgetting everything....its like it sticks for a short while then if I don't keep reminding myself my brain goes 'you don't need that anymore' and I forget it.

In the words of Bart Simpson "Thanks to TV I can't remember what I did 8 minutes ago," lol!


I don't remember usefull stuff..just meaningless trivia.


that should be a poster.

And in the words of Homer Simpson, "Every time I learn something new, it pushes out some of the old stuff."

That's exactly it. That's why I didn't revise for my GCSE's every time I did I forgot something important.

its all about muscle memory!(for me atleast) once your fingers are uber-used to playing a tune, they can sorta go on autopilate.

I appeared in a play about ten years ago which required me to learn about six foolscap pages of words.This sounds a daunting task, but strangely it gets easier as you progress.I learnt it in the same way as I do music,one sentence at a time leading to one paragraph and onwards,one bar at a time to the end of the A etc. As punishment back to the beginning every time I made a mistake.One paragraph however I had difficulty with.I thought that I would knock it out easily over a weekend,some parts equal to a page of learning I could almost do in a day.This paragraph however, I thought many times I had learnt it,only to try it an hour later and it was gone.I started it over and over again and it would not stick in my brain.I analysed why I was having so much difficulty with it and it was two things one it contained words I had never heard before and the other was it had no rhythm.It took me two weeks to learn just five sentences.
With learning a tune by ear, many like me ,once the tune is in your head and providing it follows a normal pattern it can be played within seconds of hearing it.
Monk's March for example was only played once before it was recorded. Peter also sat down and played it instantly without even playing it through once,both of us remembering a tune that I certainly have not played for 15-20 years. So with time and practice the memory does improve,patterns of play are repeated.This leads on to experimentation of your playing methods ,which then slightly alters the way you play an old tune the next time someone jogs your memory, or you suddenly dredge one up from your brain.
Al

Tunes I've learned by ear and those by the dots store in my memory differently. The ear learned material easily slips away in the first few weeks. After going back over them and playing at session a few times, they are burned on the harddrive. I may not remember the damned name, but if someone starts the tune there I go playing along. The dot-learned tunes...I'll forget, unless I visualize the written score, then it pulls up from one of those files that need to be defraged and I'm off to the races. If I keep them in the playing rotation they remain fresh. If not, I have to set out the score and take a look.

Words...another matter I can't figure out. As a young singer I could memorize in Italian, German, French and yes English quickly. By age 40 anything but English took a good deal of routine. Today, I am happy to read from the score, but me noggin' won't retain anything but the English. One other nutty little detail: In opera I would be really in trouble until we blocked the scenes. Then regardless language I was set.

SO any tips on remembering stuff quickly?

NLP or/and hypnosis techniques work.

Ian

Only learn stuff that you really, really like. If there's a tune that you can't get out of your head, give that one priority. If you haven't got one in your head, listen to as many cds, YouTube videos etc as possible until you have. Then learn that. If you've really learnt it into your fingers, you won't suffer from Homer Simpson Syndrome (Every time I learn something new it pushes some old stuff out).

I THINK that learning has become easier, so now I know a few tunes the newer ones seem to learn themselves to a degree.

I do know I need to keep playing them regularly to keep them up to speed.

I think a lot of it has to do with patterns and fingering positions.A tune that is similar and follows the same pattern as one you know is easier to play after a short while.These little tunes that I put together is sometimes created by experimentation with new patterns and recognition of a little tune that is different when it turns up.
Keep at it LDT it gradually gets easier.
Al

I concur with Al and Peter Trimming. Despite Dirge's lack of enthusiasm for playing scales and arpeggios in different keys, I found it very valuable and still do. Folk music is an aural tradition, and learning tunes by ear is, in my opinion, easier to do than learning to read staff notation, or other symbols, and playing from it. Learning by ear, helps you to train your ear to recognise pitch and thus, the sounds different notes make. Playing scales enables you to associate the relevant notes in the scale of a particular key, with the fingering positions on the buttons on your concertina. Gradually, you should be able to identify a particular note with the press of a particular button, and be sure that pressing that particular button will produce the note 'C', for example. By working out scales and playing them regularly, your brain should begin to remember, in conjuction with your fingers, which button to press to obtain the desired note. You may find that certain sequences of notes seem to create a 'shape', or 'pattern' e.g. a triangle, in your fingering on one side of the concertina, which your mind or brain, recognizes as a kind of shape. All this, later on, will assist you in becoming more proficient in finding your way around the instrument and thus more proficient in your playing. People often say that if you know a tune well enough to hum it, you should be able to work out how to play it, once you know which buttons create the right notes. Although I have taught myself to sight read staff notation a bit, I much prefer to learn to play by ear. It gives me independence. To facilitate this, I get hold of a CD with someone playing a tune I would like to learn the melody of, and play the track, ad nauseum, until I can hum it. Jolly tunes, like jigs, are easier to remember in this instance. Then, I have ago at playing along to the recording, a few notes at a time, going back to earlier parts of the tune as necessary, until I feel I can play along to the whole tune. I usually choose tunes that are played slowly (forget your Irish reels played at breakneck speed!), cos they are easier to follow. In the end, it's all about training your ear to identify, to respond, as a musician yourself, to what you're hearing. It may take you a year or more, but it's worth it. Also, you will discover that some tunes have phrases in them that are similar to other tunes, in other words, the notes are the same, and in the same order! And this will make it easier for you to pick up and learn the tune. So, play scales and arpeggios. It may seem boring, but it will help you associate the notes with the fingerings more quickly and hopefully speed up your playing and make you more nimble and able to play a tune that bit faster, should you want to.

Chris

Hi
Ideally work to read dots and play by ear. The thought that playing by ear gives one independence as Chris just mentioned isn't accurate because you are then reliant on finding someone who has already done the work i.e. learnt to play the tune in order for you to 'hear' the tune. In the same way if you can't find a copy of the written music and can only play from 'the dots' you have problems. Learn both- that's much more like independence.
chris

Oh I can hear when stuff the same or not right...just can't correct or put it into practice. I can't relate the sound to the movement if that makes sense. Plus I would only be able to learn about 10 notes before I would forget.

I can only learn a few notes at a time too but the next time I can remember them and learn the next set. This eventually should lead to my knowing the whole tune. My approach is to learn one tune I can play well enough on the melodeon as well as practising scales. At the moment I can manage C and G Major to a reasonable standard and half of a tune. Being somewhat contrary I chose a tune in 3/4 time but it seems to be going OK so far.

I'm mindful of Pete's comments elsewhere and keep going no matter how I feel about my present playing. I am taking each new challenge as it comes and trying to enjoy the whole process. 'Fake it till you make it' is a watchword I've learnt in another context and it seems to help with music too.

Another challenge is to play in front of others. The first time I tried this with the melodeon I found I hadn't a clue where to start, even though I was not aware of being nervous and am well used to singing in front of hundreds of people without any nerves at all. Humans are curious creatures.

Ian

I think it's all part of the process of learning an instrument. We live in a culture where we tend not to rely too much on our memory - we can write things down, or look up information in books or the internet. So it takes time to train the memory to retain tunes and songs (actually, the memory probably always retains them, the problem is retrieving what's in the memory). The more you do it, the easier it becomes. This is how actors can memorise long speeches, and singers and musicians can remember long songs or pieces of music.

Similarly to Al, with a lot of tunes I don't have to remember in detail how to play them, in the sense of remembering all the fingerings. All I need to do is remember how the tune goes - I then have a lot of fingering patterns which over time have become hard-wired and which I can call upon to reproduce the tune. ( Sometimes this catches me out - a tune pops into my head and I start to play it, only to realise half-way through that I usually play it on a different instrument and/or a different key and that the "standard" fingering patterns don't work. Then I have to bluff my way through!)

It's different with those musical phrases which can't be played with these standard fingerings - those I do have to think about, practice and memorise, and when I come back to a tune after a long interval I may have to struggle to recall the fingering I'd worked out. But the rest of the tune I can play by ear, I don't have to memorise the fingering for every note. I can concentrate on practising and memorising just the difficult or unusual bits.

LDT, at your early stage of learning this probably sounds impossibly difficult and almost Zen-like. But it come down to practice and time. In time, if you work at it, you'll become so familiar with the instrument that you'll have the fingerings for common phrases hard-wired into your brain and will be able to call them up, and even decide between alternative fingerings, almost without thinking. And practice and repetition makes it easier to remember.

I too am well used to performing. Nevertheless, the first time I play something new in public, no matter how well I can play it in private, I will usually make a mistake. Even if I'm not feeling nervous, there seems to be a sub-conscious anxiety which makes me forget how to play!

I always try to give new material its first public airing at my local session, where mistakes matter less than in a concert performance. Sessions are also good for knocking the rough edges off, so by the time you come to play it for real I'm more prepared.

This may read as if I don't treat the session with proper respect - that's not the case. It's just that it's a different, more relaxed atmosphere to a concert. There's more improvisation and experiment as well, and a corresponding acceptance that things may not always work. Finally, we're among friends, and mistakes can be laughed off and we move on to something else. You can't always do that in a more formal setting.

As one who has only ever played the Anglo straight from the head, or by ear, (for want of better expressions), I ask the question.... ' Am I in a minority amongst you ? Surely not ? I can, and indeed was compelled to read music in a brief career as a professional musician many years back but would dread the prospect of having to revert to such a system where I was dependent in any way on those wretched 'printed dots'. If a tune is not sufficiently embedded in my head I have no wish to play it.

I can read music, but I can't play it because I've never learned where the notes are on the instrument. When I taught myself to play concertina I did so by playing tunes. I know how the buttons relate to each other in the scale, but I can't name the note, unless I count up the scale from the C or G button.

I suppose I could learn, but I can't be bothered because I've never found it that much of a problem. I can learn tunes from recordings, or by picking it out on recorder (the one instrument where I did learn the correlation between the fingering and the note on the staff), or nowadays by playing ABCs on the computer.

To bring this back on-topic, it means I must rely on memory for my repertoire. Having the dots is at best a prompt to remind me how the tune starts, so I can then play it from memory.

Yes Howard. That more or less what I was trying to say.

This is the way I am with the guitar, an instrument I've remained faithful to for almost forty years. It's a bit like the quote from an old timer who was an exceptional player, used by Pete Seeger in his banjo tutor - "Hell, there ain't no notes on a banjo, you just play it."

In my eccentric little duet world I would have no repertoire if I didn't read music. I play alone, am not particularly folk orientated, and I get all my stuff off the printed page, particularly because I want a full arrangement rather than just the melody, not having the patience/skill to create them myself.

But hunting new pieces isn't a chore, it is a pleasure if you can sight read a bit. (it only takes enough skill to think 'Oh that might sound nice. I'll try it again.') I surf the net looking for free music. I buy job lots of old sheet music I see locally (cheap!) to sift through looking for interesting pieces, and I settle down to explore them sometimes as a holiday from regular practice.

There must be five times as much trad stuff as anything else on the net (copyright laws are on your side); if you don't 'do' written music you miss out on all that potential, not to mention the fun of the chase. I can see you wouldn't need to do this in the trad music world, but I do think you might enjoy it if you got to grips with it.

I learn from printed music and memorize the piece. I wish I was able to pick things up by ear on something other than voice. People learn in a variety ways and have a various learning styles. Me, I sight read a piece through first, and then start learning phrases. I have learned recently that I can take a piece I have learned on the concertina and bring it over to the dobro, though I imagine that still isn't quite like learning by ear. Like Dirge, I set and play by myself a lot, so having a printed sheet helps a lot. Also this doesn't limit the keys I play on the anglo as much, because I do have the keys memorized to the notes on the page. Oh, there are keys I don't attempt yet, and some that I know that are just going to be a pain on a CG anglo, but I know that I can get through Bflat, F, D, A and E as well as C and G because I know where the notes are. I do find that I need to run through pieces I have in my head on a regular basis to keep them there, usually using them for a warm up before I start in on new pieces. I make sure I rotate them though. I have also learned to use TV advertising to my advantage by picking up the concertina and playing through a verse or two while they play. This also helps keep them fresh in my mind.

Alan

I've never really had a problem with learning tunes and having them stick, for me it happens automatically. Especially when it's a tune I like and that isn't too hard for me; by which I mean that I can hear it in my head and it relates to other tunes I know already, not by technical difficulty. Technically challenging pieces I can memorize as well with relative ease, provided I like them and play them enough.

I've found that most tunes that I learn by "dots" I can work on for about 45 min. and I'm done. By the time I have gotten the song to the desired speed and played it at that rate at least 5 times, I have it completely memorized. If it's something that I play fairly regularly (every day to once or twice a year, in some cases) it's likely to stay in my head for some time, all I have to do is be reminded that it's in there and that I should dust it off and play it now and then. Of course, I still play with it and change it around some, in that case I'm never "done" with a tune. I just mean that I know basically how it goes and can play it competently.

I don't learn as much by ear, although I can do it. On average it takes me longer to fully get a piece when I don't have the music in front of me. If I do learn something by ear, it's off CDs that I can listen to over and over again, I'm not anywhere near fast enough to pick something up from a session or something I hear only a few times. (I might be able to reconstruct it if I can find other fragments, but I can't pay it right off.) I can't make things up on the spot, either. Faking a tune and playing drones or a simple ad lib harmony is something that I cannot do. I haven't ever learned, or had the chance to try it out as I get rather few chances to play with anyone besides myself.
the tunes I do learn by ear stay pretty firmly stuck to my brain, as far as I can remember I've never forgotten how one goes that I've learned that way. (The only tune I can remember totally blanking out on for any amount of time was College Hornpipe, which I simply could not figure out how to play, so I got out the music. After that it came back no problem, but it was a quite unsettling experience.)

I can remember tunes, but don't expect me to remember whether my iPod is charged, where my shoes are, whether someone called and left a message, what so-and-so's name is or where I put my sweater...oh, there it is, I was wearing it......
I forget everything. Heaven help me when I get older, I'm senile already!

Much of the fun is, of course, taking the process a stage further and improvising on a basic theme or even coming up with a totally new melody straight from the head and the heart. When you perform alone you have the advantage of only having yourself to please !

I think my problem is relating the sound, button (push or pull), and name of note and where it is on written music. I can't find a logic to it...or a way of remembering how they relate. I just..do as I'm told.


I know what you mean..I write lots of lists to remind me..I even have a list of where the lists are.

Howard and Rod,
This would have been my reply, word for word!

Except that I don't play the recorder, and I use the PC by entering the tunes - from staff notation if need be - in Capella, using the mouse keyboard, and listening to the midi file that Capella generates.

And, in 90% of the cases, the pieces I want to learn are ones that I already know the melody of, so I can just take them straight to the Anglo.

I'm seriously considering learning to sight read on my new Crane duet. In contrast to the Anglo, the Crane (like the English) maps the staff notation, with the naturals in the midddle and the sharps and flats outside, and only one button per note on each side.
But I haven't got round to that yet.
There are so many tunes in my head that I have no sheet music for, and playing scales has got my fingers accustomed to finding the intervals I need for them. The chords are not as intuitive as on the Anglo, but no less so than on the banjo, which I play quite fluently. So I can take a tune straight from my head to the Crane, too!

Cheers,
John

I don't recall saying that I can't read music, it's just something I don't do for guitar. There were other options open to me so I didn't feel the need; chords were good for basic song accompaniment, tab taught me to finger pick a rhythm and I've never used guitar as a melody instrument as such. 'Tis my 'time out' instrument which I love and that's just as it should be.

Concertina is different again at the moment, I'm back to playing from notation, as I have from my youth. That's not to say I have any real skill but I do understand the rudiments and can apply them to some extent.

This is what happens when I try to play form memory
http://www.soundlantern.com/UpdatedSoundPage.do?ToId=24581
Can you guess the song?

Unmistakeably Shepherd's Hey.
OK, yes - so there are hesitations, mistakes and stops. BUT - there are also good lengths of correct music, both melody and chords. So quite a bit of it has definitely gone into your brain and is becoming hard-wired. I recommend doing more of this, but keep the tempo steadier and more even - go much slower at first and then gradually speed it up as your 'finger memory' improves.

I know that you are tackling all sorts of tunes. Try working on short bits of them at a time, first with the music/tablature and then getting each short section committed to memory. By breaking it down like this you will have more chance of memorising each fragment correctly, i.e. you will not be learning the mistakes. Soon you will have got the whole tune into memory. But the key thing is to get the tempo steady and even to begin with.

What happens when you play along to a recording?

The more I panic the faster I go....which is also the reason I don't drive.



Haven't tried properly.

Have you considered a career in F1?

Back to the music. We need to get you nice and relaxed, so that you can immerse yourself in the music whilst letting your mind wander onto other things.

It's not quite trance-like, but you'll recall some recent comments about musicians in YouTube videos "not looking like they are enjoying themselves while they play". These musicians have reached that stage.

Then there is a further stage where the musicians interact with their audience (except on very complex pieces of music). As a performer, this "involves" the audience with the performer, and brings greater enjoyment to both. The audience might be just a few friends, or family, or hundreds at a concert; the "rules" are the same.

As an example from nearly 20 years ago, I went to see John Kirkpatrick at a club somewhere in London. I sat about three rows from the front so that I could watch John's right hand whilst he played concertina (which he supported by having the right end on right leg). John obviously saw where my eyes were looking, and gradually slipped the concertina to the left, and behind the leg, blocking my view. Result? I obviously looked up at John, to see him grinning. So, a "private" joke which most of the audience would have missed, but some would have "got".

I'm more a Touring Car kinda girl...apparently other cars are not there to help you go round corners...and you should see my playstation scores.


Does watching TV while practicing count? I was doing scales very quietly last night while I watched the 'star in the reasonably priced car' segment.


Zen Concertina playing?


I try not to think anyones listening...people unnerve me. My hands get all sweaty and fingers slip and mind goes blank.

That's exactly what I mean!!!!!!!!!

If you can play a tune whilst watching the more exciting parts of Top Gear*, then you've cracked it. Even I would probably be laughing too much, at this point, to play.

* for the non-UK Forum members, if you can access this show, it's well worth watching. Might be seen as sexist, and elitist, but it's fun even for those of us who can't afford to run a car!

Jeremy and Tom Jones comparing hair problems...not the most exciting bit.

But the engine powered rocking chair.

They've got another 'challenge' one next week I think. Anphibious bikes in vietnam. If its anything like the anphibious cars.