More on "Playing By Ear"

[David Barnert]

At the Squeeze-In last week, I had a hand in leading a discussion about playing by ear. There has been a little bit of discussion about the session in this forum, but something occurred to me today that has bearing on what I said at the session.

 

To bring folks up to speed who weren't there, the main thrust of what I said was that you have to put some effort into becoming intimately familiar with each of the notes (or degrees) in the major scale. Each note has an identity and relates in a unique way to the other notes. Each note sets up certain expectations and/or resolves certain tensions. Whether we call them 1, 2, 3, ... 8 or do, re, me, etc., doesn't matter, but not by their letter names, after all "G" plays very different roles in the C scale and the D scale. It is only after we become friends with each note of the scale that we can recognize them in the context of the key the tune is in. (Of course, once we have the major scale nailed, we need to move on to minor and other modes, but I let that pass last weekend.)

 

What I realized today is that the Anglo Concertina (and to a lesser extent, the English, but definitely not the Hayden) works against this kind of thinking. The qualities of the different scale degrees is largely dependent upon the fact that the scale is made up of five whole steps and two half steps, and each note's personality has much to do with where the note is in relation to the half steps.

 

On many musical instruments (any keyboard or string instrument and the Hayden Concertina), the mechanics of playing the instrument make it obvious whether a pair of adjacent notes is a whole step or a half step apart. On a string instrument it is the distance between fingers of the left hand. On a keyboard it is whether or not there is a key between the two keys being considered. On a Hayden, two buttons a whole step apart are next to each other in the same row, while half steps are in different rows.

 

On an Anglo Concertina, the only way to know whether two successive notes in a scale are separated by a whole step or a half step is by listening to the interval, as the button arrangement provides no clue. Since a beginner unfamiliar with the shape of a scale might not know what to listen for, it is easy to believe that one could play the instrument for a long time without realizing that the intervals have different qualities.

 

I see now that this means that playing an Anglo might be much less intuitive than other instruments. To some extent, this is also true of the English, because the "white note" buttons in the center two rows are all similar regardless of their position in the scale and the outer rows similarly have no pattern.

 

As I type this, I seem to remember having a discussion along these lines back in January with Al Watsky (are you still with us, Al?), but I don't remember whether it specifically had to do with the question of the contours of the diatonic scale versus the non-linearity of the diatonic button layout.

[David Barnert]

I typed the above note in a word processor and pasted it here, including the topic title and subtitle. Oddly, in the original, the topic title is "More on "Playing by Ear"" (I just copied it from the same place and pasted it again). I have absolutely no idea how the O got capitalized and the P got uncapitalized in the process, and there seems to be no way to correct it now.

 

I hate when that happens.

 

Edited to add: Thanks, Ken, it's been fixed.

Edited September 26, 2004 by David Barnert

[JimLucas]

I have absolutely no idea how the O got capitalized and the P got uncapitalized in the process, and there seems to be no way to correct it now.

 

I hate when that happens.

Never trust a computer human being!

....... (Heh, heh. Von Neumann strikes, again! )

[Ken_Coles]

I hate when that happens.

It is baffling. But it is one thing the software here lets us edit (and this is one of the few things I am useful for), so I fixed it. (I hope)

 

Your comments on anglo are interesting and very apt. The layout does make it hard to explain to new players how you pick up a tune by ear. I'm left with telling people it is a combination of developing the ear to hear modes and degrees of the scale (years of experience on other instruments has been a big help) and endlessly practicing scales (which for me has been the key to playing other instruments).

 

As for English, in some ways I've found it easier to figure out music by ear than anglo was. Most of the time, if the interval is a third or a fifth, the button is on the same side. If it is a second, the button is on the other side. These intervals cover much of what constitutes (for example, Irish) traditional music. At least, I think that is what my brain is doing subconsciously. Again this also relies on substantial scale practice as well.

[JimLucas]

I hate when that happens.

It is baffling. But it is one thing the software here lets us edit (and this is one of the few things I am useful for), so I fixed it. (I hope)

Oh, great! Now folks coming upon David's post after Ken's change are going to wonder what the heck David was talking about.

[David Barnert]

Oh, great! Now folks coming upon David's post after Ken's change are going to wonder what the heck David was talking about.

I hope it's clear now with my edit.

[Samantha]

Strangely enough, I found my first sorties on an anglo very intuitive, and I think it is very intuitive in the "home keys" once you've worked out which degree of the scale (note within a scale) the tune starts on. Now, I prefer playing my C/G anglo in D and A, so I suppose I'm just perverse! In fact what I enjoy most nowadays is what I refer to as the Rubik's cube quality of playing the anglo - working out which manouevres suit your eventual game plan best. And having said, at the outset of my concertina adventures, that I just can't get my head round a scale which passes from hand to hand as it does on an English, I find that I quite often play a little run in a tune on the anglo which is all pull (or push) and passes from hand to hand ...

 

Meanwhile I have had a tantalising glimpse of what David means about the Hayden making you think about musical intervals in a different way when I have doodled on the one which I have languishing at home.

[Richard Morse]

I'm sorry that I missed your workshop at the NESI, David! It seems that both you and Ken are discussing a sequential way of realizing a tune by note (pitch) intervals? - With some byplay about their relevance with the physical layouts of our keyboards. Certainly the mechanics of finding and sounding the notes we "want" are one issue - and a major one that enticed me into taking up Hayden.

 

Coming back to the "playing by ear" part.... I tend to recopies the *shape* of a tune first, rather than sequences of intervals. A tune's chordal structure usually is very pronounced and usually quite predictive. Given that, within each chordal section the "beat" or strong notes tend to be *of* that chord - which vastly simplifies figuring out what notes those are, and the in-between notes are almost always the diatonic notes that fall between those (or an arpeggiation of them).

 

I find that learning a tune this way lets me grasp it's essence quite quickly and join in - though often playing harmonies at times until it goes around a few and I get the "right" notes. This method is also great for improvisation.

 

For instance, Off She Goes:

 

X: 1

T: Off She Goes

M: 6/8

L: 1/8

R: jig

K: Dmaj

|:F2A G2B|ABc d2A|F2A G2B|AFD E3|

F2A G2B|ABc d2e|f2d g2f|edc d3:|

|:faf d2f|gbg e2g|faf d2f|ecA A2g|

faf d2f|gbg e2g|f2d g2f|edc d3:||

 

Understanding that a tune usually starts on its I chord makes it a no-brainer to discover the F,A. The first chord change is usually a IV or V which easily yields up the G,B. And the next change (2nd bar) would almost always be a V as that's what leads back into the I, so we have ABc and resolving to the tonic, D All the strong notes (as well as important ones as many people consider the jig structure to be):

 

ONE two THREE FOUR five SIX

 

Pretty much this whole tune works like this. And in places you can fill in with interesting notes and harmonies by using this system. The first bar could be played |F G A G A B| A B c d3 |

 

And a harmony could be |D2 F E F G| A2 G F3 |

 

A system of picking up tunes more by cadence rather than by interval? Not to neglect intervals of course as them's an important part of chords and cadences.... But my approach is that the chordal structure is a *larger* part of the tune and knowing where the larger part is going gives a better handle on the smaller bits.

 

Something that I've always have had a hard time with is (are?) the intervals. Maybe with more practice, they'd come easier.... But a string of notes in a tune is rarely of regular intervals, so for me, predicting or understanding a passage (by acknowledging or "counting" intervals) I find to be a difficult approach to understanding (and learning) a tune.

 

Another nice thing that a cadence approach does, is that it gives me insight to OTHER chord (and therefore harmony/counterpoint) possibilites. As in the above harmony example for the second beat I chose notes around the E minor chord. Why? Because the "tune" notes there are simply the G and B which make up a chord for which most people see as a G major chord. But G and B are also a component of an E minor chord which is just as valid, and for harmony work, maybe even more valid (as if I or anyone can validitize a tune or the "rightness" of an improv line?) - maybe I should say compelling when you intend to support the next phrase by starting with the F and working upwards?

 

Just some thoughs and blatherings....

[JimLucas]

[David's] comments on anglo are interesting and very apt.  The layout does make it hard to explain to new players how you pick up a tune by ear.

I fear you're confusing the learning with the "explanation".

 

To me, learning "by ear" means learning music by hearing it, not by converting it into some internal system of transcription which somehow translates between the hearing and the playing.

 

If such a system helps a particular individual to learn to "feel" the music, that's great. But the particular system should not be primary goal, and if the system doesn't seem to fit the particular instrument, then I think one should look for a different system. I don't think the anglo is unsuitable -- or "difficult" -- for learning to play by ear, though it may not fit well with certain teaching approaches. It might even present difficulties in the implementation (i.e., playing) of certain musical concepts -- e.g., transposition, -- but that would be true for playing from "notes", not just "by ear".

 

Learning to recognize intervals is a fine idea, but relating the intervals to "whole" and "half" steps is not particularly intuitive unless either (1) you're working with substantially chromatic music, or (2) you're working with an instrument that is arranged in a pattern of half steps and whole steps. The anglo is not; its layout is based on a diatonic scale. In its two core keys it has a particular and simple pattern which can be expressed in terms of the sequence of notes in a diatonic scale, without ever referring to whole-step or half-step intervals. (The "problems" occur if one tries to go outside the core keys or the diatonic scale. Note that I put "problems" in quotes. I hope to return to that idea in a later post and -- I hope -- show that there are "intuitive" solutions to those problems, though the intuitions may not be ones you have thought of so far.) This is fine. For some people, it's even great! There are plenty of people who know the diatonic do-re-mi scale without having any idea whether the musical "distances" between any of the note pairs are "the same" or "different". They just know how it sounds. Almost certainly they realize that certain intervals are "the same" and others may be "similar", certainly within a single tune/song, and probably between tunes/songs, even when they're in different keys. (They may not even realize that "same" intervals are in "different keys".) But not everyone has developed the same perceptions or concepts. Some of these "diatonically aware" (if I may coin a term) people may realize that the intervals sol-ti and fa-la are identical (at least in an even-tempered scale) and the same (major third) as the do-mi interval, while others will insist that they're all different. These latter aren't hearing the intervals as isolated intervals, but are hearing instead the roles they play in the musical scale. I think this is precisely what David says he was trying to teach, but arrived at as a feeling, independent of any theory. Both perceptions are valid, and one can find contexts for each where it seems stronger than the other.

 

Now I raise another question: In "learning by ear", just what are we trying to learn... or to teach? Is it how to learn a tune, regardless of key, or is it how to learn to play tunes in particular keys, e.g., the keys in which others are playing/singing them? An approach that focuses on the latter from the very beginning may miss some useful techniques and concepts from the former that could be used to make the latter easier and simpler, if taken first. E.g., if one could learn to hear a tune as a tune, without regard to key, then one could use as an intermediate step playing it "by ear" on the simply patterned C or G row, and then as a separate step converting from one of those keys to another key, a distinctly differrent process. Eventually, we hope, the two processes will be merged and become second nature, but I'm discussing here a procedure for learning to play by ear.

 

So what I'm suggesting is that rather than the anglo being "less intuitive", it is simply suited to a different "intuition". Certainly the history of the different kinds of concertinas suggests that the anglo is intutitive. It seems that many more untutored individuals learned to play anglo, and a far higher percentage of anglo players didn't and don't either read music or know even the most basic thing about music theory.

 

I have many thoughts regarding what David and Ken have said and with respect to David's subject. I hope to be able to post them in several stages. I won't be challenging David's ideas or approach; I think they're good. But I will challenge any contention that either the anglo or the English cannot be related "intutively" to David's degrees-of-the-scale approach, and I hope to show him and everyone how this can be done. Among the concepts I hope to demonstrate along the way are (1) that the piano is more like the English than like the Hayden, and (2) that the keys of D and A on the anglo are -- viewed in particular ways -- "just the same" as the keys of C and G (on a standard 30-button C/G anglo).

[JimLucas]

A tune's chordal structure usually is very pronounced and usually quite predictive. Given that, within each chordal section the "beat" or strong notes tend to be *of* that chord - which vastly simplifies figuring out what notes those are,...

Ah, here we come to a significant difference not only in approach, but in intuition. (Rich and I have discussed this before, but I think not in public.)

 

Chords? I don't intuit chords. I intuit melodies... and harmonies. I intuit "lines". I intuit "horizontally", not "vertically". To me, chords are not primary; they do not define the tune. I appreciate good chords and chord progressions, even complex ones, but to me chords are potential decorations which can be added to tunes, but aren't necessary. (There are pieces that I feel are "entirely chordal", but I don't consider them to be "tunes", or even to have "melodies".)

 

I suppose this is in part because of my musical history and experience differ from Rich's. My first instrument was my voice. The fabricated instruments I have played have included trumpet, French horn, saxophone, trombone, flute... all capable of playing only one note at a time. I played in bands and orchestras, but what I played was always treated as my "line", not my "part of the chords". I've experimented with guitar and piano, but I've never been fluent on either. What I understand of chords and chord progressions I've taught myself by deconstructing piano arrangements (some with handy chord markings), not through any formal training in musical "grammar". My harmonies often include transitional "chords", and even a few of my own "compositions" aren't tunes, but are inherently "chordal". But that's because they're built up of the notes I'm using -- the individual notes that sound/feel "right" to me, -- rather than some notion of chords and progressions telling me which notes I should play.

 

I think the significance of chords also depends a lot on the particular genre of music being played. Contra dance music tends to be heavy on chords and harmonies. Jazz wouldn't be jazz without them. But Irish music is most often heard without harmonies. (Some session players will be surprised or even offended if one adds a harmony line, though I've never seen the latter reaction from a raised-in-the-tradition Irishman.) Chordal backup from guitars/"bouzoukis" -- or keyboards in performing groups -- is common these days, but a solo -- completely unaccompanied -- fiddle or flute is not disparaged, and can even be the star attraction in a concert. Also, I think that many old traditional Irish tunes were not composed with chordal accompaniment in mind, because they sound much better unaccompanied than with a backup of simple triad chords. It wasn't until the 1960's, when some young players (Andy Irvine and Paul Brady come to mind) started using other sorts of "chordal" backup (both simpler -- e.g., drones and chords without thirds, -- and more complex -- e.g., "jazz" chords) that many of these tunes started sounding as exciting with accompaniment as without.

 

So I would say that chords may be one way of looking at music, but the melodies have an independent existence and are at least as real as the chords. And for me, it's the melody that will lead me to understand the chords, not the other way around.

[Chris Timson]

On an Anglo Concertina, the only way to know whether two successive notes in a scale are separated by a whole step or a half step is by listening to the interval, as the button arrangement provides no clue. Since a beginner unfamiliar with the shape of a scale might not know what to listen for, it is easy to believe that one could play the instrument for a long time without realizing that the intervals have different qualities.

I'm sorry, but as an anglo player I really have to say, so what? When I'm trying to pick up a tune in a session the interval between two neighbouring notes is almost an irrelevance to me. Whether the notes are part of an arppeggio, for instance, is much more important.

 

I see now that this means that playing an Anglo might be much less intuitive than other instruments.

Again, I can't see this at all. To continue the example given above, arpeggios are almost ridiculously easy on an anglo, so any tune with an arpeggio (which, let's face it, is most tunes) has a built-in advantage. The anglo is an amazingly intuitive instrument to play. I can't comment on other type of concertina because I don't play them, but I guess that like the anglo they each have their strengths and weaknesses. I think this shows the inadviseability of making generalisations about types of concertina (indeed any musical instrument) with which one does not have significant musical experience.

 

Chris

 

Edited to add PS: I think that the instrument one plays colours one's perception in much the same that the language one speaks does. The person who speaks more than one language has more than one way to express their experience. I only play the anglo concertina, but one day I am determined to take up something else to gain that wider perception.

Edited September 26, 2004 by Chris Timson

[Richard Morse]

A tune's chordal structure usually is very pronounced and usually quite predictive. Given that, within each chordal section the "beat" or strong notes tend to be *of* that chord - which vastly simplifies figuring out what notes those are,...

Ah, here we come to a significant difference not only in approach, but in intuition.

Chords? I don't intuit chords. I intuit melodies... and harmonies. I intuit "lines". I intuit "horizontally", not "vertically". To me, chords are not primary; they do not define the tune.

Ah, but that presupposes the tune! Even though this thread is "playing by ear", I guess I was also extending that to "learning to play (tunes)... by ear". I would find it very difficult to memorize hordes of sequential notes without some sort of pervasive framework, which is that chords can be for me.

Given a few sequential notes I can fairly predict the next few, those several bars away, and often the gist of the tune. And a couple times through I've pretty much got it. Without chordal framework I'd be shooting in the dark.

 

OTOH, I feel Jim is absolutely right in that the notes/melody defines the tune. Chords are NOT primary yet they can really "make" the tune (imagine hearing only the melody for "Dancing Bear" - talk about a non-tune! But that's a tune that was composed from chord structure to which a melody was given).

 

to me chords are potential decorations which can be added to tunes, but aren't necessary.

True! (IMHO as well). And as secondary to a tune, chords may vary considerably and yet the tune is the tune. OTOH, a tune's melody can be destroyed by a very few alternate notes (or timing).

 

I suppose this is in part because of my musical history and experience differ from Rich's.  My first instrument was my voice.  The fabricated instruments I have played have included trumpet, French horn, saxophone, trombone, flute... all capable of playing only one note at a time.  I played in bands and orchestras, but what I played was always treated as my "line", not my "part of the chords".

Interesting point. My musical history is had only one one-voiced instrument: clarinet in grade school. Everything else (banjo, guitar, fiddle, various boxes, and piano) was/is capable of playing several simultaneous notes.

 

My harmonies often include transitional "chords", and even a few of my own "compositions" aren't tunes, but are inherently "chordal".  But that's because they're built up of the notes I'm using -- the individual notes that sound/feel "right" to me, -- rather than some notion of chords and progressions telling me which notes I should play.

Now we are getting into creation, which is a great topic of and by itself - which I'd love to pursue but will leave for another time.... Notes (melodies and harmonies) create chords - yes, but to understand the tune to be able to "play it by ear" - I find comes from things "feeling right" for me too, we both do - with different aproaches - get there. Not meant to be a parting shot, but I often find that chords WILL tell me which notes to play. Particularly strongly chordal tunes such as hornpipes. OTOH, I admit that I can have a particularly difficult time picking up some Irish tunes as some of them are so "linnear" and not particularly chordal at all. Which is just as Jim puts it:

 

I think the significance of chords also depends a lot on the particular genre of music being played.  Contra dance music tends to be heavy on chords and harmonies.  Jazz wouldn't be jazz without them.  But Irish music is most often heard without harmonies.... I think that many old traditional Irish tunes were not composed with chordal accompaniment in mind, because they sound much better unaccompanied than with a backup of simple triad chords.  It wasn't until the 1960's, when some young players (Andy Irvine and Paul Brady come to mind) started using other sorts of "chordal" backup (both simpler -- e.g., drones and chords without thirds, -- and more complex -- e.g., "jazz" chords) that many of these tunes started sounding as exciting with accompaniment as without.]

 

So I would say that chords may be one way of looking at music, but the  melodies have an independent existence and are at least as real as the chords.  And for me, it's the melody that will lead me to understand the chords, not the other way around.

And what about your "procedure for learning to play by ear".?

[JimLucas]

And what about your "procedure for learning to play by ear".?

I think that should be "procedures".

I think some very general procedures work "across the board", but certain details may be context-specific, and the context could be a particular instrument. As I said before, I'll try to add some of my perspective incrementally in several posts, but here are a couple of "general" ideas to start off:

 

.. 1) Learning is incremental. It takes time and occurs gradually. This is true no matter what you're learning. You didn't "learn to read", and then start reading. You learned to recognize one word, then a few, then you learned -- either someone pointed it out to you, or you beat them to it by noticing on your own -- that certain sequences of letters always seemed to be associated with particular sounds, and that these groupings could be separated, rearranged, and put back together to form what seemed to be other words, and they were those other words. Then you discovered inconsistencies, which you learned to class as exceptions and variations. And all the while you were reading, but at each stage you could read more, or "better".

 

Learning to "play by ear" also has to occur in stages. The first several of those stages involve more learning to "learn from listening" than to "play as you listen". First you have to learn to "hear" a tune. Does that sound obvious? If someone plays a tune you're not familiar with, and later in the evening they play it again, will you recognize that it's the same tune? Or try to listen to a tune you've never heard before, and then describe something as qualitative as its up-and-down contour. Being able to recall a tune in your head -- whether or not you can reproduce it on an instrument or with your voice -- is an important "first" step. But even that, like learning to read, is learned in stages. (If you already have the "complete" skill, you may have difficulty realizing or remembering that, but it's so.) First, you learn to recognize a short sequence of notes -- e.g., a D-E-F# run leading up to a downbeat on G, or the D-A-F#-A at the beginning of "Harvest Home". Then you learn a few more. Somewhere along the way, probably intermeshed with discovering that you recognize more and more short phrases, you discover you can remember some of them minutes, hours, or even days after the tune is ended. (Of course, you've been able to do that with "Three Blind Mice" since you were small, but do you remember how you went about learning it?) If you're lucky enough to have developed the ability to sing or whistle what you hear in your head, you can try to reproduce what you remember.

 

You could also try the same on your instrument, but that might be harder, because you may have trouble finding the pitches on your instrument that match the "sounds" you hear in your head (which may be the actual pitches you heard at last night's session, but probably aren't), but you may have just as much trouble changing the key you hear in your head to something more appropriate to your instrument. Right now, rather than pursue "playing what you remember", I'll turn to "playing as it happens".

 

.. 2) As mentioned in the Update On Starting A Session Topic, you can start by just finding a couple of notes in a tune, learning to anticipate when/where they occur in the tune, and playing them when they come around. As long as there are a couple of strong players on the melody, no one should feel either that there's something missing on the parts you don't play or that there's something glaringly different on the notes/parts where you do play. Soon you'll learn to recognize and duplicate short sequences that are longer than a single note. Gradually, these sequences will get longer and more numerous. Eventually, some of them will extend to entire tunes.

 

..3) Somewhere along the way you'll discover that little bits you learned in one tune also occur in other tunes, and instead of learning them all over again, you only need to recognize them, and play them. When you find several of these in a "new" tune, you'll just put them in place, then concentrate on learning the bits in the "gaps" between them.

 

.. 4) Also somewhere along the way, you're bound to notice that there are phrases that sound the same in your mind, but don't use the same buttons on your concertina. That's because the musical relationships between the notes are the same, but they're in different keys. Once you compile a sizeable collection of these, you can discover that by shifting from one to another in each group you have "transposed" the tune to a different "key". (I don't recommend that you try this in your local session, at least not without prior arrangement. )

 

.. x) ........ Well, I said I would try to introduce some of my ideas in a series of posts. That's enough for this post. Now I need to go do some other things. But I hope at least some of you find this a useful start, and that the rest of you will at least have some idea of my point of view and the approach I'm taking. Please note, though, that so far the closest I've come to mentioning a particular instrument or keyboard layout is using the word "buttons".

[Samantha]

Notes from my own personal experience with regard to playing by ear/picking up tunes, more or less as an annotation to Jim's pretty comprehensive post ...

1 Strangely enough I remember learning to read words but have no actual recollection of learning to read music ... I am still learning to play by ear.

2 Finding the odd appropriate note is something I try to do in sessions. Other regulars have said that it provides an interesting sort of descant (I usually go for high rather than low notes) to the tune. I find an appropriate note and hold it for as long as it seems appropriate (this is usually, but not always, two or four beats). At least I feel as though I am contributing something. If the tune is going round and round (and round) then sometimes I am quiet for one repetition of the tune - this gives variety for the listeners!

3 In my experience it really is a short step from single notes to little sequences which you recognise and can drop in place as they come around. Pairs of notes, runs of three or more, familiar "jumps". At this stage of familiarity with a tune I will want the session to stay with the same tune all night so that I can add a few more notes to each end of the little sequence I have finally got together: the session obstinately moves on after three or four repetitions. Ah, well, there's always next time ...

4 My other musical experience means that I have experience of this, but as far as fitting into sessions is concerned, it hasn't been of much use to me yet (but probably would be if I were a Hayden player ...)

 

I would add that I took up the concertina partly to get away from a previously acquired dependence on written music. I find picking up tunes by ear just as hard on the instrument with which I am most familiar (the French horn).

[Tina]

This is a great post and there are real good points ... just adding a thought here.

 

Learning by ear … yes undoubtedly ( I too love being in procedures and be it just learning English) (vocabulary) (is it ?) - unless you use your voice alone - the instrument is part of the learning and getting to know the instrument is vital be it Anglo, English or trumpet ... get known which button houses which note (by 'ear intuition'), and proceed with simple combinations and sequences of notes. I think your own ears will teach you best to listen and sometimes it is more about fixed believes than we believe it to be.

 

And maybe you wanna try something different too and just practise cadences (that's what I did on the Anglo) in every single key from c flat to c to c sharp and so on, up and down, major and minor, without written scales but going by ear and how it feels like (even if in real life you doubtedly (?) will ever need them). Or you want to start with just a note, not knowing where this gets you where the only concept is to have none, and just listen and play - in a literal sense - improvise and get the feeling (and who is practising in company anyway).

 

Playing simple tunes that you know pretty well in different keys like f or b flat does help, be it to improve the feeling for tune patterns or the flexibility of your fingering (and even with the Anglo this is not that big a deal. We got a bunch of real nice buttons and we paid for each … I do like the idea of using them all).

 

From playing after tapes when the session is over until playing after the birds outside of your window I think each can develop their own method.

 

And I think any trick that helps to stir and (gently) shake old systems is good.

 

Gotta run now .

Edited September 28, 2004 by Tina

[JimLucas]

This is a great post and there are real good points ... just adding a thought here.

Tina, I think you've given some wonderful ideas and examples. In particular "Playing simple tunes ... in different keys like f or b flat ... and even with the Anglo this is not that big a deal." I think that far too often people conceive of -- or accept from others -- rules to "help" them learn things at one stage, but that rigid adherence to these "rules" at a later time or in a different context inhibits further learning.

 

That's how I feel about David Barnert's conclusion that his teaching method isn't suited to the anglo. He has found that a particular geometrical layout is easy to correlate with the concepts he uses, and that highlighting the correspondence (mathematicians would call it a "mapping") can help some people to internalize the concepts. But then he apparently makes the mistake of assuming that the particular geometrical relation is somehow necessary to the understanding of the musical concepts. But that's wrong. Where one concept (geometrical, in this case) fails, another, related concept may still work. E.g., if you reflect something in a mirror, instructions based on "right" and "left" are no longer valid, but those based on "the same side" and "the opposite side" are.

 

I intend to expand on this in a separate post, but I can't resist repeating an anecdote: A friend of mine (American) had volunteered to drive the van for a group of friends who would be touring England for a couple of weeks, but she confided to me that she was terrified that she would forget to drive on the "wrong" side of the road and would have a serious accident. On her return I asked her about it, and she laughed, "I had no trouble at all. For me it was exactly the same as driving here at home. It never occurred to me that being dyslexic could be an advantage!"

 

P.S. Tina used a question mark to ask whether "doubtedly" was a real English word. Though "undoubtedly" undoubtedly is, "doubtedly" isn't (as far as I know, and I couldn't find it in any of my dictionaries), though it certainly seems as if it should be, and I think it would be impossible to state a rule -- aside from "that's what people do" -- to explain why, when we have "certain" to go with "uncertain", etc.

[Tina]

Thank you Jim ... so does that mean I am not the only one who heard the term 'doubtedly' for the first time ...

 

Talking about language I am reminded of a similar phenomen here which is the well known gap between active and passive vocabulary. As I 'know' - recognize - a lot more tunes than I actually can play ((( by heart ))).

 

So now reading english for me is way easier than to write ... listening often goes with the flow (at least I can nod and pretend I understood) while talking still can get me at a loss where the brain is just blanc ... and like with all learning procedures it takes its own time to level the gaps in between.

 

And sometimes when with a sigh of relief you think now you got the point - they let you know that you have not yet even started, as now you approach the stage of real subtlety and finesse ... lessons galore (I like that one).

 

And again I think the more effective way is going through not around, and practise the 'impossible' (before the impossible gets you).

[bellowbelle]

Well....a lot of reading still to do, here, for me. I've read most of this thread, so far!

 

After the workshop, I commented to someone that trying to tell someone how to play 'by ear' seems, to me, kind of like trying to tell them how to eat their food! But, of course, it never hurts to have a workshop that encourages input and info and gets thoughts going. (And, it was me, at the start, that said, 'Hey, that'd be a good one! )

 

A few extra things, though, that I didn't say at the workshop (or particularly think of, then):

 

1)Ears work from memory.

 

I once read or heard somewhere that the human mind can really only 'think' or retain 2 thoughts at once, meaning at the same time -- of course, I am paraphrasing something probably said much more scientifically in it's original form. This made quite an impression on me, for some reason. I think it made me feel better about playing by ear, since my mind can't remember 4 or more lines of counterpoint all at once, anyway, apparently.

 

Later, though, a classical musician pointed out to me that he would not want to play the works of Beethoven from memory. So -- there's a point in favor of reading music.

 

I think it's nice to do a combination of both. My 'ear' works from memory and does whatever two things my mind manages to remember, and at the same time I use some written guideline, even if it's just scribbled notes and not actually notation.

 

 

2)Shrink the song.

 

The best advice I ever got from my piano-accordion teacher was to take any piece I wanted to play 'by ear,' meaning without written music, and to study how simple it actually was. Find out what parts were simply being repeated, analyze the chord changes and notice that they were usually predictable, etc.. If a song is a challenge, take it apart and see what it actually comes down to.

 

3)I have a piano head.

 

I didn't play the English concertina first, but the piano accordion. I am no great piano player, but, I think 'in keyboard,' I guess!