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This is off subject, but why do you think it true about learning faster with respect to playing by ear?

 

Well, that statement is just part of the running jokes that sight-readers and by-ear players make about each other. There are exceptions to the clichee in both camps.

 

Actually, by-ear players only SEEM to be quicker at getting a tune off by heart than sight readers. This is because, by definitoin, the by-ear player always knows the tune BEFORE he plays it for the first time. He's heard it often enough, and can hum or whistle it. To do this, he has to instinctively know the intervals between the successive notes. Being familiar with his instrument, he can translate the feeling of a third, a fifth, and octave or whatever to the instrument - as he does to his vocal cords or lips when humming or whistling. The first attempt may not be perfect, but with each iteration, the uncertainties are eradicated one by one, and there is less and less "educated guesswork" involved. At some point, he is no longer playing by ear, but from memory, which is the goal that sight readers must also pursue if they are to "get the tune down".

Sight readers also learn by iteration, but they have the disadvantage that they have to first get the notes, then recognise what the tune is supposed to sound like, and then put in the phrasing. The by-ear player has an acoustic model against which he can check his progress.

If a by-ear player's memory fails him, he can recourse to playing the "lost" passage by ear again - the sight-reader in this situation has to dig out his sheet music - or have it on his music stand, just in case ... which makes it appear that he hasn't learned the piece yet.

 

This description is rather folk-oriented, I admit. Traditional music is, by definitoin, music you've heard, not music you've read. Unlike "classical" music, it does not come to you as an unadorned sequence of dots representing a sequence of notes, but as a complete tune, plus the usual decorations, tempo, rhythm, etc. that the sight-reader has to work up himself - and pencil into his score.

 

Basically, I think that sight-reading is the better approach to classical-type music, and by-ear playing the better approach to traditional-type music.

 

Cheers,

John

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Not quite so simple.

As a by-ear player I can usually join in with an average session tune tentatively after hearing it through once, sometimes less thatn that. By the time we are on to another tune after three or four repetitions I'm OK with it. Now it may be that I dont hear that tune again for weeks or even years so the problem then is whether it has gone into long term memory or not.

 

Robin Madge

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There are lots of tunes I can only play in sessions - when someone starts them up, I know them instantly and can play along, no problem, but afterwards they completely slip out of the memory banks again.

 

All too often, when I'm struggling to think of something different to play in my local session, a tune will pop into my head and I'll start off. Halfway through, it will dawn on me that I don't actually know it, or else I know it but play it on a different instrument. I'm not sure which is worse, but they're both challenging situations!

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Hi, everybody!

 

Altough i'm not good neither at playing or reading music, i don't feel that the tablatures are useful at all, since i use diferent fingerings for diferent tunes even if they are in the same pitch... the only thing i've in front of me when i'm playing is this, only with helping purposes... was made with stuff i found around the forum, so feel free to use it you find it useful

 

Regards

layout_3Ob_Wheatstone.pdf

Edited by Fergus_fiddler
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There are lots of tunes I can only play in sessions - when someone starts them up, I know them instantly and can play along, no problem, but afterwards they completely slip out of the memory banks again.

 

All too often, when I'm struggling to think of something different to play in my local session, a tune will pop into my head and I'll start off. Halfway through, it will dawn on me that I don't actually know it, or else I know it but play it on a different instrument. I'm not sure which is worse, but they're both challenging situations!

 

Hi Howard

 

Oh boy - do I know that feeling !

 

One reason I love sessions is the number of long 'forgotten' tunes that rise up to the communal surface. It never ceases to amaze me that they are still in the old memory banks and need just a gentle nudge from someone else to resurrect them ..... and all this from the same brain that often can't remember what I had for dinner half an hour ago :(

 

The most frustrating part for this totally musically illiterate ear player, is my all too regular failure to remember how a tune starts or to remember the name of a tune..... give me the first bar and I'm usually straight in....

 

wierd things these brain boxes :lol:

 

Dave

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There are lots of tunes I can only play in sessions - when someone starts them up, I know them instantly and can play along, no problem, but afterwards they completely slip out of the memory banks again.

 

All too often, when I'm struggling to think of something different to play in my local session, a tune will pop into my head and I'll start off. Halfway through, it will dawn on me that I don't actually know it, or else I know it but play it on a different instrument. I'm not sure which is worse, but they're both challenging situations!

 

Hi Howard

 

Oh boy - do I know that feeling !

 

One reason I love sessions is the number of long 'forgotten' tunes that rise up to the communal surface. It never ceases to amaze me that they are still in the old memory banks and need just a gentle nudge from someone else to resurrect them ..... and all this from the same brain that often can't remember what I had for dinner half an hour ago :(

 

The most frustrating part for this totally musically illiterate ear player, is my all too regular failure to remember how a tune starts or to remember the name of a tune..... give me the first bar and I'm usually straight in....

 

wierd things these brain boxes :lol:

 

Dave

Howard, Dave,

I agree with you two. Amazing how I can temporarily forget someone's name if I haven't seen him for two weeks....and yet I have obscure tunes floating around in the grey matter than only need the first two notes played before they pop out. Something this morning caused me to think of Crabs in the Skillet....a jig from O'Neills...and I played it through at a moderate tempo with only a couple of errors, despite not having played it, I am quite sure, for right at 30 years. Now if I could just find my glasses!

 

By the way, I enjoy tunes whose titles suggest the tune, via (usually) a rhythmic association. The 'Curly-Headed Plowboy' is a good example. Or 'Davy Davy Knick Knack'.

 

Dan

Edited by Dan Worrall
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Not quite so simple.

As a by-ear player I can usually join in with an average session tune tentatively after hearing it through once, sometimes less thatn that. By the time we are on to another tune after three or four repetitions I'm OK with it. Now it may be that I dont hear that tune again for weeks or even years so the problem then is whether it has gone into long term memory or not.

 

Robin Madge

 

Robin,

I can do that on finger-style banjo.

 

We're two of the lucky ones!

 

Of course, session playing is not really playing - just tagging along with somebody else :P

 

Cheers,

John

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By ear players may be fast, but can you learn a tune at one hearing?

Providing they can memorise it, a dot reader can scan through the dots, commit it to memory and play it back.

 

I can pick up tunes at one hearing, but they are usually gone by the next day. I need to ask what the name was, write it down, then go and look it up online the next day.

I try to scan though a couple of pages of new tunes a day, and mark the ones I like. If I see a good'un I will play it a few times. If I can still remember bits of it the next day, that is a "sticky" tune and worth learning.

 

Like many of you commented, I have stacks of tunes I never bothered learning, but as soon as someone starts it, I can play it all. I am sure it is only because I have never bothered learning the name so it never gets filed away in the memorys index.

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