More on "Playing By Ear"

[JimLucas]

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!

I think I missed your point, Wendy. Do you mean that it's as inborn and natural as eating, or that it's very personal, or something else?

 

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,...

I think the number usually quoted is 3 (though some individuals can supposedly manage one or two more), but the critical point here is what constitutes a "thought". The process involved is called "chunking", because the brain seems to divide "thoughts" into "chunks". While you can only keep 3 things in memory at once, each of those three can have up to 3 parts (and it's possible to go to even deeper levels). So while most people find it impossible to memorize a 9-digit number as such, most can also learn to "cheat" by memorizing it as three 3-digit numbers, which they find surprisingly easy.

 

That may seem a digression, but it goes hand in glove with what I said about first learning individual notes, then learning to put them together into recognizable "riffs", and then combining the riffs into phrases. (This is just as valid when learning to read music, and for the same reason.) If you're learning at the single-note level, you won't be able to remember more than a small fraction of a tune, but if you can recognize a 2-measure phrase from some other tune you already know, that can reduce the "item" count for that phrase from 4, 6, 8, or even 16 to only 1. The right kind of chord sense can also help improve the item counts. E.g., there's a hornpipe (just now I've forgotten the name) where the first 3 measures of the B part have the same chord structure as "Harvest Home", and the individual notes on each chord change can be viewed as "the same" as in "Harvest Home", but varied in one of two ways. So what could have been "impossible" to remember as 24 separate notes reduces to 1) a single known sequence of chords and notes, and 2-3) two rules for modifying that sequence. So that's only 3 "items" to think of at once... except it's not even that, since the rules for making changes don't apply at the same level as remembering the known sequence, which gives the same sort of leverage as remembering 3 groups of 3.

 

Now that may sound impossibly complicated -- and it would be if you had to think of each part as a set of verbal instructions while you did it, -- but the whole point of "learning" sequences and "rules" is that they become unconscious, not verbalized "rules", but feelings about how things fit together and flow. You should no more need to -- or be able to -- describe what you're doing than to describe the centimeter-by-centimeter movement of each part of your body as you walk.

 

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've completely missed the logic here. Why should his personal preference be an argument for or against anything but his personal preference? I think reading music is a useful and even valuable skill, and I don't currently have any Beethoven pieces memorized, but I wish I did!

 

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.

And that, too, works from memory. You remember what your "scribbles" mean, and you remember how to convert them into manipulations of the instrument to (re)produce the desired sound. Similarly, when you play "by ear" you're remembering how the tune sounds -- or maybe what it feels like to push the right buttons -- and also how to convert that into getting the right sounds out of your instrument.

 

.. 2)Shrink the song.  ...

While I think "shrink" is a funny word to use for that process, I think the advice is excellent.

 

.. 3)I have a piano head.

I am no great piano player, but, I think 'in keyboard,' I guess!

By that standard, I guess I must think 'in voice'.

For me the piano is only one of many equally valid -- and equally artificial -- ways to "visualize" or "feel" musical relationships, relationships which existed before keyboards -- or trumpets or concertinas -- were invented.

 

Can you remember how you thought of music before you learned the keyboard?

[bellowbelle]

Quoting Jim:

I think I missed your point, Wendy. Do you mean that it's as inborn and natural as eating, or that it's very personal, or something else?

 

I mean mainly that it's 'very personal.' Of course, since we are all made somewhat the same as human beings, we can help each other and share tips and info (yay, workshops!) BUT....there are many different paths that all lead up to the top of one mountain. Maybe I'm on the west side, and someone else is on the east, and when we meet at the end of our trails at the top, we'll share the same view of the valley, but not until then. ( That should make some amount of sense, I hope.)

 

I think the number usually quoted is 3 (though some individuals can supposedly manage one or two more), but the critical point here is what constitutes a "thought". The process involved is called "chunking",

 

I wish I could recall (hehe) the source I originally got this info from. Anyway, it was interesting as far as helping me not feel so bad about the limits of my mind...it 'is that it is,' I guess.

 

-- but the whole point of "learning" sequences and "rules" is that they become unconscious, not verbalized "rules", but feelings about how things fit together and flow.

 

Exactly!

 

And, without that 'feeling,' the rules/charts/verbal stuff can seem quite weird and over-intellectualized. But, as visual 'maps' of the feelings, the charts/notation/paperwork has value, nonetheless (at least to me).

 

I've completely missed the logic here. Why should his personal preference be an argument for or against anything but his personal preference? I think reading music is a useful and even valuable skill, and I don't currently have any Beethoven pieces memorized, but I wish I did!

 

Argument? I think he said it in self-defense! Heheh. More like, he was worried that I thought he'd be considered more musical if he didn't have to use any sheet music to play long classical works on the piano. -- And, that wasn't the case. I was simply, at the time, investigating the difference between playing from memory (by ear) and playing from music, and noticing the effects that each type of playing was having on myself, and so on.

 

Can you remember how you thought of music before you learned the keyboard?

 

Hardly! It seems that, as soon as I could sing, there were piano players and accordion players around, and that fanatastic pipe organ at church....I was SOOOO impressed by the organ. The earliest time I can recall of it, I was....3 years old, I think. I thought it was so cool...

 

of course, we lived in apartments, though, and it would be years before I could safely make much musical noise!

 

Now I can make a lot of it!

[Alan Day]

I think that the approach to by ear playing is to start off with a simple tune and gradually progress.The theory comes later when you reach a certain standard.

The most important thing is to just get on with it.

The only difference between those that play by ear and those that do not, is that the by ear players have started and those that do not play by ear, have not.

Al

[Robert Booth]

A couple of things about learning by ear: first, you have to hear the darned thing before you can do anything about it. So many times I've sat here reading about tunes whose very names are intriguiging enough to make me want to find them and learn them, or heard one once, and before I could fix it in memory it's gone. No title, no search, no more tune! The midi files, etc are a great aid, but inevitably there are tunes that are not easily come by, so it's a question of jumping on them if and when they come available.

 

Another thing is, once I've got a straight melody down, I have to mess around to figure out how to appropriatly chord the tune. Many times i'm at a loss, and so just play melody lines, trying to rich them up (enrich?) however I can. Believe me, I have made enough muddy honks that I go open a beer and pick up a novel to distract myself from musical distress. At such times I Find myself wishing that I knew something about theory to help me figure out what direction to take my effort.

 

Too, I find that often I can remember the "A" part to a song, or the bridge, but that's all; not much fun playing the same little piece over and over, so I fake it like the devil, knowing that I'm committing an unkindness to the spirit of the song.

 

I suppose that there's nothing for it-I'll just have to dig out the lesson book and take another crack at it.

 

However, to a musician there is no choice whether to make music or not: it is a condition that will assert itself whither or no. What to do? Soldier on. It is better than not making music at all.

[David Barnert]

So many times I've sat here reading about tunes whose very names are intriguiging enough to make me want to find them and learn them, or heard one once, and before I could fix it in memory it's gone.

Forgive me if I'm repeating what you already know.

 

An invaluable resource on the web for finding the music to tunes whose names you know is John Chambers' abc Tune Finder:

 

http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/music/abc/FindTune.html

 

Just type in a word or two from the title and retrieve the tune in any of various formats: abc, gif, pdf, and MIDI.

Another thing is, once I've got a straight melody down, I have to mess around to figure out how to appropriatly chord the tune.

I don't know how much help I can be here. I learned to do it by studying music theory pretty seriously in college. I suspect there's an easier way. Perhaps (there must be) a book on choosing chords for folkies.

[JimLucas]

Another thing is, once I've got a straight melody down, I have to mess around to figure out how to appropriatly chord the tune.

Perhaps (there must be) a book on choosing chords for folkies.

If there is, I'd take it with a grain of salt.

 

As has been discussed in other threads here, different folks have different notions of what are the "right" chords. What's right for you may depend on personal taste (if you're playing solo) or the choices made by the folks you play with (if in a group or a session). There are a couple of pieces where folks I'm with use chords which make me grit my teeth, but for them they're so ingrained that even after I showed them what I preferred and they said, "Oh, neat!," they unconsciously go back to what they've always done. So either I adjust, or I willfully clash with what they're doing.

 

So my recommendation, as usual, is to continue with your experimenting, and the more you do, the easier it will become. And it will more likely fit the music you play than if you applied a set of "grammatical" rules from some musical theory course or slavishly followed someone else's chord recommendations. I don't mean to say that studying music theory isn't useful; when I studied Russian it gave me a much deeper appreciation of English grammar. But it also taught me that the rules for either didn't entirely the other.

 

And another repetition: When more than one set of chords "fit" a given tune, you shouldn't have to choose just one. At least for solo playing, you can play different chords each time through, and the result can be very pleasing.

[Helen]

Hello Al,

 

I like your thoughts. They make playing be ear approachable. And goad me to try.

 

Thanks,

 

Helen

[Alan Day]

Have a try Helen and let us know how you get on.

As for chords I first learn the tune and then try to put in the chords I think sounds correct,unlike David I have had no musical theory tution (or playing ) so I play what I think sounds right and if the chord I want is in the opposite direction I have to play the right hand differently.Sometimes it may mean that I am playing a run on the right hand to enable me to play a base run on the left.Some tunes are easy some are impossible but it`s great fun to have at least a go at them.

Al

[Robert Booth]

Thanks, David: I had not, as a matter of fact, known about that site; I'll be adding it to my list of favorites.

Alan: That bit about the right hand hit a nerve. I came to Concertina from the 10 hole diatonic harmonica, where I had never really played the right-hand end because of the "Break"- the blow/draw reversal. I took this bad habit with me to the new instrument, with the result that I don't play the right hand as much as I could. My chording problems tend to begin with that fact. Conceptually, this has been an aggravation that I'm still dealing with. That "break" just blows my concentration right out the window, although your tutorial tape has been very useful in helping me focus.

Maybe it's some kind of right brain/left brain thing. I was born left handed but trained to be a right hander by a superstious first grade teacher. Sure, that's it, I'll blame it on that!

[Alan Day]

Hallo Robert,

This is changing this thread but with the left hand chords the way I learnt to split my mind to coordinate left hand with right you have it on the tutor.I think you need to spend a lot more time on the first exercise,which will help you with the problems you are having.

Please contact me if you need any more help.

Al

[Robert Booth]

Thanks, all for the kind encouragement, it's appreciated.

Al, You play entirely by ear; presumably you know tens, if not hundreds of tunes. How do you keep 'em straight in your mind? Is there any "seepage", where one tune morphs into another because of similar structure?

I do this in practice a lot, and make the excuse that I'm playing a medley.

Also, must you memorize each new tune? And what happens when (if ever) you forget what comes next?

In curiosity,

Robert