Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann Boston Fall Concertina Classes

[chrisstevens]

The fall term of the Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann Boston Traditional Music School begins September 8th. Anglo Concertina instruction in the Irish style is again offered with yours truly instructing. Check out the new web page at www.ccebostonmusicschool.org Hope to see some of you there!

[MitfordRI]

For those of you who haven't tried the Irish Music School in Boston (CCE), I highly recommend it. Chris is a terrific teacher. Patient, kind (never rolls his eyes) and pushes you to learn more (in a good way).

 

I swore I could never, ever, ever learn to play by ear. And in a few weeks I'm sure Chris will tell me that I haven't. But he did inspire me to spend the summer 'trying' to learn to play by ear.

 

The classes are fun, informal, cheap and convivial.

 

 

Lucy

[ceemonster]

i'm here to say that if i can learn to play by ear, YOU can! i know that feeling so well, that it simply could not happen in my case. i had to laugh (ruefully) in a one-day concertina workshop a year or so back, gearoid o'hallmhorain prefaced giving us a tune by ear by saying that once someone had left his class in tears at not being able to get it. that person wasn't me, but six or so years ago, it could have been....i spent a few years learning piano with written music as a kid and spent my formative years as a verbal, linear, written-conceptual-paradigm type. when i started irish music i simply could not learn by ear. but i really, really, wanted to learn. and a friend who is a celtic fiddler said, look, you are great at languages, you have a degree in french literature-----this is another language. you learn it just like any language. this turned out to be true. i went to college ear-training classes at night for three semesters. they train you using "solfege," or the do-re-mi scale system, where each note gets one of those syllables, or a number, from one to seven. then, you drill, either listening to the music and writing out the notes. or the reverse---looking at written notes and singing the do-re-mi syllables. and just like a language class, there was lab time where you sat at a computer with headphones and a mean little voice would DING! ya when you guessed wrong. i aced the classes, though i had to work really, really, really hard. it didn't make me an instant irish ear learner overnight, but i can learn by ear now and can tell you the key a tune is in and kept up in clancy week classes with all those little irish kids who were born doing it, and all that stuff. the experience was actually character-building.

Edited August 28, 2007 by ceemonster