The learning curve

[Ubizmo]

1 hour ago, David Barnert said:

 

This might be a good time to mention a valuable book by my friend, Judy Minot.

 

Best Practice: Inspiration and Ideas for Traditional Musicians

 

Practical Advice for Adult, Self-Taught Musicians

This looks like a very good suggestion. Thank you!

[SIMON GABRIELOW]

The saying of 'Never too old to learn' is a good old-fashioned phrase [ I believe].

I think people often think that all educational activity is solely for a perceived 'younger' audience, but I have never believed this is the case; It is good to learn new skills, and instruments as it makes the mind have to reconnect with the prime need for new stimulating tasks.

[Stephen DOUGLASS]

When we start the journey on a new instrument we mistakenly get caught up in the rush to rapidly improve. The early hill of the 'curve' should be the most enjoyable, best enjoyed through wandering the new paths, while surprising ourselves with the new discoveries. The only way is up!... It is the 'plateau' that I find the hardest, (I'm sure you have been there with other instruments). It is flatter terrain, so not as easy to see where you are heading, easier to get lost, and then we realize that there is no end, just a continuous gently undulating 'steppe' that we learn to love. Don't forget!... Don't rush the hill, the plateau requires much more energy and commitment.

 

Edited October 23, 2023 by Stephen DOUGLASS

[wunks]

Like taking the blinders off a buggy horse.

[SIMON GABRIELOW]

I think a good teacher will, or should, enthuse students in learning a new skill. [in any subject] 

My late mother was sent for piano lessons - but never bothered attending [ instead preferring to go and buy and eat an ice-cream in York [UK] before returning home. Her mother did eventually catch on.  The point is here maybe a good teacher would have encouraged learning. It need not be too structured, but made interesting, with time [ in musical things in my experience] where you can 'let go' and just improvise or 'play about' to get to know your instrument, and then do some academic stuff when required.

[Ubizmo]

I agree with much of what has been said here, especially Stephen Douglass's point about enjoying the early part of the curve. I have indeed hit the "plateau" part with other instruments, where improvement is harder to notice. Indeed, playing the tin whistle, improvement has two utterly meanings. One is simply learning more and more tunes for session play; the other is better phrasing, ornamentation, and general musicality. It eventually occurred to me that learning more music is far more important for someone like me, who's not a soloist, not in a band, just playing at sessions. In fact, a lot of ornamentation can be counterproductive in a session setting.

 

With the concertina, I'm trying to put ornamentation out of my head entirely. Of course, I listen to concertina playing on Spotify and YouTube and I hear things and wonder "How do they do that?" But I'm avoiding the temptation to go there, for the moment.

 

I've started working on "Off to California" in Gary Coover's book. I'm very familiar with the tune, and it's a massive challenge. It's in G, so no C# to throw me off. I can limp through it quite slowly, without too many fumbles, but if I kick the tempo up even a little, it falls apart. I think I'll stay with it for a while, breaking it into sections, and not move on until I can at least play it smoothly. Between that and "Carolan's Concerto," from earlier in the book, I'm pushed to the limit.

 

If I can find an in-person teacher in the area, I'll try that before I go to online lessons. I plan to ask at the session Wednesday night. Meanwhile, as I indicated at the start of this thread, I try to focus very intently for ten or fifteen minutes, then when I feel my attention flagging, I stop and do something else for a while, then come back to it.

 

Incidentally, it's mind-boggling to me that there are people who are able to play both Anglo and English (and Duet too, no doubt), switching back and forth between them. It feels to me like that should short-circuit something in the brain...

[Anglo-Irishman]

21 hours ago, Ubizmo said:

Incidentally, it's mind-boggling to me that there are people who are able to play both Anglo and English (and Duet too, no doubt), switching back and forth between them. It feels to me like that should short-circuit something in the brain...

Hmm!

As I see it, different people have different "propensities." In the case of musicians, these can be a propensity to play fast and remain accurate, or a propensity to make an inferior instrument sound great, or a propensity to get listeners' feet tapping, etc.

What boggles your mind is the propensity to learn several related instruments, and to play one or the other of them without thnking about which one it is. This is the propensity that a multi-instrumentalist needs. I, personally, can't play any instrument really fast and accurate, nor do I set peoples' feet tapping. But I can accompany my singing on a wide selection of instruments. Some of these are closely related string instruments, like the banjo, guitar and Waldzither, or concertinas, like the Anglo and Crane. I seem to have a particular receptor in my brain that reacts to the look and feel of the instrument I pick up by loading the appropriate subroutines in my musical cortex. 

Without this receptor, it's quite likely that switching between two related instruments ould cause a cerebral short-circuit!

Cheers,

John

[Cathasach]

On 10/13/2023 at 12:24 PM, gcoover said:

The major downside of the Bertram Levy book is the numbering and tab system, which is not used by any other books, including Bertram's later book!

 

In all honesty I can shamelessly recommend Easy Anglo 1-2-3 to get you up and running really quickly.

 

There will be lots of advice and opinions here on cnet, often conflicting but also often helpful.

 

You are right to think of it as a typewriter (it's called "keyboarding" now!). And learning in spite of its many quirks will provide you with hours of enjoyment. Welcome to the concertina world!

 

Gary

 

 

I can't recommend Easy Anglo 1-2-3 as a starter book enough. It got me playing in few hours and once you're playing an anglo the rest sort of comes

[Ubizmo]

4 hours ago, Cathasach said:

I can't recommend Easy Anglo 1-2-3 as a starter book enough. It got me playing in few hours and once you're playing an anglo the rest sort of comes

I'm using it, and glad I chose it. The progession of material makes sense to me and the tunes are good. 

 

I find the tablature distracting, though, and tend to ignore it, which raises the question, Is there any reason why I should learn tablature if I can already read music? I know that there are often multiple fingerings available for any note, but for me the process of learning a tune involves figuring out which fingering works for me and practicing it that way. 

[Steve Schulteis]

43 minutes ago, Ubizmo said:

I find the tablature distracting, though, and tend to ignore it, which raises the question, Is there any reason why I should learn tablature if I can already read music?

 

For melody playing, it's definitely optional. I mostly just use standard notation for that. Sometimes I'll use tab to remind myself of an unusual fingering sequence or where to find a seldom-used note. It can also be handy for communicating with others.

 

Where tab really shines is harmonic playing. At this point I can sometimes play harmonic style from just a lead sheet, but reading multiple notes on a staff and figuring out which combination of buttons and bellows direction is possible (if any) in real time is still mostly beyond me. Using tab removes the uncertainty and makes it much easier to pick up an arrangement. I'll still sometimes write out full staff notation to have a better view of voice leading and such, but tab is what I rely on when coming back to a piece I haven't touched in a while.

[Ubizmo]

4 hours ago, Steve Schulteis said:

Where tab really shines is harmonic playing. At this point I can sometimes play harmonic style from just a lead sheet, but reading multiple notes on a staff and figuring out which combination of buttons and bellows direction is possible (if any) in real time is still mostly beyond me. Using tab removes the uncertainty and makes it much easier to pick up an arrangement. I'll still sometimes write out full staff notation to have a better view of voice leading and such, but tab is what I rely on when coming back to a piece I haven't touched in a while.

That makes sense. I'm not far enough along to understand harmonic playing very well, except as the odd punctuation. My original goal was simple enough: Irish session tunes. But already I'm feeling the pull to learn other things, including harmonic playing. Maybe when I get there I'll have a better appreciation for tabs. At the moment, I haven't yet mastered all the buttons.  I watch harmonic players on YouTube and find myself asking how they can do that...

[Clive Thorne]

Not disagreeing with Steve's approach. Many ways to skin a cat & all that, but my own approach is to learn the position(s) of all the notes on your keyboard, and fingering for all the main chords you're likely to use  (both directions where possible), and take it from there. Eg, if you need a 7th chord, and know the standard major (or indeed minor) than you can soon find the 7th.

 

I wouldn't pretend that this is perfect, and I can't do it on the fly (but tthen I can't read tabs on the fly either) and on many occassions I still find myself having several attempts to get the right correct chord/note/melody combination, but every time you mess up you learn a bit more.

 

Please Note: No cat's were hurt or skinned in the writng of this post.

 

[Steve Schulteis]

1 hour ago, Clive Thorne said:

Not disagreeing with Steve's approach. Many ways to skin a cat & all that, but my own approach is to learn the position(s) of all the notes on your keyboard, and fingering for all the main chords you're likely to use  (both directions where possible), and take it from there. Eg, if you need a 7th chord, and know the standard major (or indeed minor) than you can soon find the 7th.

 

That's pretty much what I'm doing when I play from a lead sheet, so I won't disagree with you either. 😛

[gcoover]

The whole tablature thing is indeed a curious invention that is just an intermediate crutch. I think learning ALL the notes and positions on an Anglo is hugely daunting for beginners, and further complicated by many of the same notes being in different places and different directions, hence the need for some guidance as to which one to choose. The C and G rows are somewhat intuitive if coming from a keyboard or harmonica background, but then that wacky top row defies all initial logic. For many, their first 30-button Anglo is a bit terrifying (personal experience speaking here). 

 

It's unfortunate that there are over 35 (and counting) different tab systems that have been proposed for the Anglo - some are very simple and others are incredibly difficult even bordering on the bizarre. In spite of a lot of overthinking, IMHO the Old Masters back in the middle 1800's got the button numbering mostly right, but they struggled with how to best show bellows direction.

 

I learned EC years ago by note from the Frank Butler book, but it has taken me ages to learn where the notes are by pitch on the Anglo and to be able to read some music, and I still need to refer to the layout chart on a regular basis for the more seldom used notes.

 

For the written page, I think tab is still the best way to go, especially for harmonic playing. For single-note ITM style, the many videos by OAIM and Caitlin Nic Gabhann are perhaps better since they show exactly how they play the notes. And ITM only uses about 15 or so buttons so it's a much simpler and faster learning curve.

 

As for the approach in Easy Anglo 1-2-3, I think it's important to get folks up and running as soon as possible with a few tunes, give them some early confidence, and then give them the basic tab and tools and patterns they can use to have fun exploring and developing additional familiarity with the keyboard as they progress to more challenging tunes. 

 

Gary

[Ubizmo]

On 10/25/2023 at 4:31 PM, gcoover said:

For many, their first 30-button Anglo is a bit terrifying (personal experience speaking here). 

 

Yeah. I still remember opening the case of my first sax, a Buffet Crampon (wish I still had that horn), when my dad brought it home. I was 10. He put it together for me and I stared at all those buttons and levers. The overall effect was of something built by a mad scientist. It seemed impossible to make sense of that.

 

Sixty years later, sitting in the Liberty Bellows accordion shop, when one of the guys handed me a concertina and said, "Here, try it out," the feeling was similar. The buttons...didn't even look like buttons. More like little pistons. How can anyone play an instrument like that? Moving the bellows felt utterly clumsy and awkward--it still does, if I'm honest.

 

The fact that there are 35 tab systems suggests that there is no system that jumps out as the obvious right way to do it. I suspect that if and when I finally get into chords, I'll use the approach of just memorizing the ones I use and hope that eventually I'll be able to produce them on demand. I've tried, at various times, to learn to play from piano sheet music, and I found that, to the extent I got anywhere at all, I learned to recognize that cluster of dots on the bottom staff as a G major chord, or whatever, rather than seeing the individual notes. 

[Anglo-Irishman]

9 hours ago, Ubizmo said:

I suspect that if and when I finally get into chords, I'll use the approach of just memorizing the ones I use and hope that eventually I'll be able to produce them on demand.

I suspect you're right!😉

This is just the way those camp-fire guitarists and ukulele-strummers learn their instruments. I have good experience of the method with finger-style 5-string banjo and Waldzither - and also with the left-hand ends of the Anglo and Crane duet concertinas!

You don't need to know what notes are in the chord; just that, for C major, your fingers go here, here and here, and for G7 they go there, there and there. Then find the finger patterns for F major and A minor, and you can start chording along! Gradually add the patterns for G, D7 and Em, and keep going, step by step. 

With the Anglo, as with the fretted-string instruments, you'll find different finger combinations for one and the same chord - inversions - which you can choose from. Sometimes you'll want the inversion that fits best harmonically, sometimes the alternative inversion will make for a needed change of bellows direction.

 

With this initial approach, you can later learn to "thin out" the chords where appropriate, and how to treat them rhythmically. And when you've got the 3 or 4 chords that make up a certain key (e.g. C major), you'll soon learn to re-organise your fingers on the fly to move between them, and with practice you'll learn to hear when a chord change is coming up.

That's what playing by ear is all about!

Cheers,

John

[Ubizmo]

A couple of learning curve updates as a begin my third week of learning...

 

1. It's going to take a while to get that low F# to feel natural, being on my left pinky. The higher F# isn't a problem. But when I need the low one, which is often, there's almost always a hitch in my playing before I connect. 

 

2. I've started the harmony version of "Flow Gently Sweet Afton" in the Coover 1-2-3 book. It's pretty difficult. But I like the harmony, and seems so worth it that I've also ordered his "Harmonic Style" book. I'm already certain I don't want to limit myself to Irish session tunes.

 

 

[Clive Thorne]

5 hours ago, Ubizmo said:

1. It's going to take a while to get that low F# to feel natural, being on my left pinky. The higher F# isn't a problem. But when I need the low one, which is often, there's almost always a hitch in my playing before I connect.

 

Only to be expected after just 3 weeks!