Learning by ear vs learning by sheet music, my experience

[jeffw]

Hi all,

 

Some reflections on learning by ear vs learning by "the dots", from someone who has "been there, done that".

 

First, to the "wayback machine"

 

2001, after playing guitar/piano for 20 some odd years for personal enjoyment, I had been looking for something really different, and found button accordion and Irish Trad Music.

 

I borrowed one that summer, and got my own B/C around Christmas 2002.

 

What a mind twister it was, and great fun to learn. Having essentially no one to play with other than a video tutorial, I spent many an hour popping up tunes on my computer and learning to play the notes I saw.

 

I eventually hooked up with some very nice folks who allowed me to come and listen to them play in their "kitchen sessions", and also to play with them. Whenever I heard a tune I wanted to learn, I usually did have a recording of it, but unerringly would look up the sheet music for the tune to gain insight into the structure of the tune, and the tricky little corners I had trouble deciphering from the recording.

 

After several years of that approach, I started working at learning a tune or two entirely by ear. I found I could do it but it was very, very difficult.

 

6 years or so into the accordion, learning by ear was possible, but it did not come naturally.

 

Along comes 2007, and in the summer I was experiencing some soreness in my right forearm, and I got the idea that playing anglo concertina would still let me get my tunes played, but the ergonomics might be different enough that my arm issues wouldn't get in the way.

 

(Turned out to be tendinitis, the sports medicine people had me back to 100% in just a few months).

 

When I started the the concertina (C/G anglo), I already had a fair number of tunes under my belt from accordion work, I understood the mechanics of press/draw, and the C row was identical. So I didn't need to look at sheet music to get going on the concertina.

 

Now here's the cool thing, and I've really only realized it had happened about 6 months ago -- I've discovered that when I play concertina, my whole mind-body experience is centered around making the "right sound" come out of the concertina, to match the sound I already have in my head. It is a completely different experience than I had with accordion, and in my estimation a better experience. When I'm practicing, I'll sometimes have to pause and not play a note until the neurons have time to determine which button, and whether to press or draw. Both the numbers of times I have to pause, and the mistakes at getting the note right have dropped significantly in the past several months. I very rarely look at sheet music any more,

 

The other cool thing, is I've been able to take this experience back to the accordion, and its helping with my proficiency there too.

 

That's my story, it's been a great journey so far, and I'm looking forward to the journey ahead.

 

Cheers,

Jeff

[Mikefule]

Making the right sound is the whole point of the exercise, so that's good!

 

I don't think the Anglos lends itself particularly well to playing from the dots anyway: sometimes one dot on the stave may give you three different fingering options, and sometimes the same dot twice in a row is two different buttons and bellows directions.

 

Music has this unique "mystique" attached to the written form. If an actor took the script on stage, it would look pretty poor, and if another actor was illiterate, but could do every part in Shakespeare from memory, we would think him a prodigy. A poet who can declaim her works on stage without the book is more exciting than one who reads the poem from the page. At a folk club, the singer who sings from the words is not quite "doing it right". But somehow, musicians who play by ear and from memory but who cannot read the dots are often regarded as being somehow incomplete.

 

Maybe it's because nearly everyone can read words, but only a few can read music. "Not many people can do it" becomes "it must be difficult" becomes "anyone who can do that is pretty clever" becomes "anyone not doing it is somehow cheating. Hardly fair, bearing in mind that music has been part of human life for thousands of years, but the dots have only existed for a few hundred years.

 

Written music is every bit as useful as written poetry, a script for a play, or a libretto for an opera, and is a great way of storing or exchanging information about music. I wish I could read music better - I can read and write it like I can read or write French - I can translate it given time, but with no fluency or nuance.

 

But I don't think I know a piece until I can play it, not just from memory, but "by heart".

 

Which I think means I agree with you! :0)

[david_boveri]

Hi all,

 

Some reflections on learning by ear vs learning by "the dots", from someone who has "been there, done that".

 

First, to the "wayback machine"

 

2001, after playing guitar/piano for 20 some odd years for personal enjoyment, I had been looking for something really different, and found button accordion and Irish Trad Music.

 

I borrowed one that summer, and got my own B/C around Christmas 2002.

 

What a mind twister it was, and great fun to learn. Having essentially no one to play with other than a video tutorial, I spent many an hour popping up tunes on my computer and learning to play the notes I saw.

 

I eventually hooked up with some very nice folks who allowed me to come and listen to them play in their "kitchen sessions", and also to play with them. Whenever I heard a tune I wanted to learn, I usually did have a recording of it, but unerringly would look up the sheet music for the tune to gain insight into the structure of the tune, and the tricky little corners I had trouble deciphering from the recording.

 

After several years of that approach, I started working at learning a tune or two entirely by ear. I found I could do it but it was very, very difficult.

 

6 years or so into the accordion, learning by ear was possible, but it did not come naturally.

 

Along comes 2007, and in the summer I was experiencing some soreness in my right forearm, and I got the idea that playing anglo concertina would still let me get my tunes played, but the ergonomics might be different enough that my arm issues wouldn't get in the way.

 

(Turned out to be tendinitis, the sports medicine people had me back to 100% in just a few months).

 

When I started the the concertina (C/G anglo), I already had a fair number of tunes under my belt from accordion work, I understood the mechanics of press/draw, and the C row was identical. So I didn't need to look at sheet music to get going on the concertina.

 

Now here's the cool thing, and I've really only realized it had happened about 6 months ago -- I've discovered that when I play concertina, my whole mind-body experience is centered around making the "right sound" come out of the concertina, to match the sound I already have in my head. It is a completely different experience than I had with accordion, and in my estimation a better experience. When I'm practicing, I'll sometimes have to pause and not play a note until the neurons have time to determine which button, and whether to press or draw. Both the numbers of times I have to pause, and the mistakes at getting the note right have dropped significantly in the past several months. I very rarely look at sheet music any more,

 

The other cool thing, is I've been able to take this experience back to the accordion, and its helping with my proficiency there too.

 

That's my story, it's been a great journey so far, and I'm looking forward to the journey ahead.

 

Cheers,

Jeff

 

thank you for sharing! that's a great way to play. it's really cool that you figured that out yourself. i didnt, and i dont know if i ever would have. noel hill had to tell me to play like that. i do the same thing--when i am practicing, there are pauses between the notes as i hear the note in my head and let my fingers find it. i have hours and hours of noel hill's teaching on minidisc, and he always pauses just as you describe when playing for instruction. i have learned how to practice as if it were the sound of him teaching, and it really makes for a better experience all around.

[jeffw]

thank you for sharing! that's a great way to play. it's really cool that you figured that out yourself. i didnt, and i dont know if i ever would have. noel hill had to tell me to play like that. i do the same thing--when i am practicing, there are pauses between the notes as i hear the note in my head and let my fingers find it. i have hours and hours of noel hill's teaching on minidisc, and he always pauses just as you describe when playing for instruction. i have learned how to practice as if it were the sound of him teaching, and it really makes for a better experience all around.

 

Cool! Thanks for that info. If its good enough for Noel Hill, its good enough for me!

[tombilly]

I experienced the same sort of thing when I moved from accordion to whistle & flute. I simply took the tunes I had learnt somewhat laboriously on the box and played them on the fly on the new instruments as I knew how they should go in my head. I then found it much easier to pick up new stuff on the whistle/ flute, catch the rhythm, catch the phrasing etc. I gave up box though and then latterly came to concertina as I found it suited me better than accordion. Done much the same thing learning the concertina (anglo) although the fingering is no way as intuitive yet as the wind instruments. Tunes in G, I can mostly knock out without thinking about it but I'll often get caught in D with a new tune or one I haven't played in a while as I still have to refigure the best button option - get caught playing on the right when I should be on the left etc.

 

So, the key thing is the taking up of the second instrument and making the effort to just take what you know and play music on it without thinking too much about it.

[michael sam wild]

I took up Anglo in about 2005 after years on other instruments. After the laborious but stimulating working out of fingers, bellows etc etc I worked slowly through tunes. Many I then left on the backburner I find I can now play quite well on returning to them so some latent learning must have gone on

 

I learn by ear but write down intial phrases in ABc often helped by 'dots' as aa aide memoire

[David Barnert]

So, here's *my* story.

 

My first instrument was the cello(!). I started playing when I was 10. I learned to play from music and over the years became very good at sight reading. Then I started playing "folkie" instruments when I was in my 20s (banjo, hammered dulcimer, penny whistle). I learned to play them by ear and found myself quite critical of violinists who fancied themselves "fiddle" players but could not play anything that wasn't written down in front of them.

 

Then it hit me: I couldn't do that on the cello, either. It took many years to effect the crossover, but now I can play tunes by ear on the cello and read music on the folkie instruments (the concertina came in my early 30s).

[Larry Stout]

My story-

I took classical violin lessons from the ages of 6 to 18 (using a full size fiddle from the beginning). Because my main recreational interests are in folk music and in Scottish and English country dance I started playing those genres on fiddle in my 20's (still largely using written music). For one year I was the second string fiddler for a morris team. I am able to play along with traditional tunes at speed by watching fingers (sometimes on other instruments-- I have no idea how that works) or hearing the basic structure of the tune and playing a somewhat simplified version. I have just about never been able to learn a tune that someone is trying to teach me by ear-- they always break the tune in different ways than I would and concentrate on the details to the detriment of the whole. I might get so I can play along, but the tune leaves me almost immediately. Tunes I've learned at sessions only made it into my fingers after about a year of weekly repetitions watching other people's fingers.

 

I've played mandolin since my mid 20's (a mandolin to me is a fiddle held in a different position, I never learned chording). I also tried lute. I have a viola d'amore that I play by ear (it is tuned to a D minor chord and establishing a relationship between where the fingers go and where the notes are on the staff is complicated-- most of the music written for the instrument used scordatura). I took up English concertina at 55 to reprogram my brain. I really enjoy the EC. I play mostly, but not entirely, from written music.

 

Part of the reason I have stayed with written music for a lot of my playing is that I play for a monthly dance which varies what it does sufficiently that my band has to prepare on the order of 200 tunes a year in a variety of meters and keys. I don't have the time or ability to memorize all of that.

 

I have macula dystrophy and (following the family pattern) may go blind in about 10 years, so I'm trying to learn how to play by ear. It's getting easier, but I'm not there yet.

[Hooves]

Reading music is very useful, especially if you want to play with other poeple, as nothing says "I'm right" better than a printed piece of paper.

 

Playing by ear is more fun, but in my opinion takes alot longer.

 

I like to improvise with my boxes, and once in a while I will recognize a tune, for example, this weekend I started goofing around with my MaCaan duet, and realized I was playing "Star of the County Down".

 

That happens to me frequently when playing on my guitar, so I have a mixture of reading and by-the-ear tunes/songs.

 

For a lot of the music I want to play, there are no tabs or sheet music, and you have no choice but to figure it out on your own. However in the traditional realm, I find almost any song somebody asks me to learn is available online or in one of my many books, of sheet music (I have no books with dots).

Edited March 3, 2009 by Hooves

[Anglo-Irishman]

Music has this unique "mystique" attached to the written form. If an actor took the script on stage, it would look pretty poor, and if another actor was illiterate, but could do every part in Shakespeare from memory, we would think him a prodigy. A poet who can declaim her works on stage without the book is more exciting than one who reads the poem from the page. At a folk club, the singer who sings from the words is not quite "doing it right". But somehow, musicians who play by ear and from memory but who cannot read the dots are often regarded as being somehow incomplete.

 

At least with regard to performance, as opposed to learning, I think what you call "mystique" is more a sort of "ritual behaviour".

Musical performances are not just art or entertainment, they are rituals. The music focusses a group of people on one theme, gives them a feeling of togetherness, or of segregation from others, by class, age, nationality, etc. There are not just different musical forms and lyrics - for a lot of musical genres, you have to dress up - or ostentatiously NOT dress up - appropriately for the culture or subculture you're playing for/in. And there are other performance conventions that vary from culture to culture, like whether you introduce your pieces, or just sit down and play them.

 

It's all a bit analogous to a church liturgy, in which the words, movements and objects used all have a significance. Differences in liturgical details usually point to differences in theological emphasis between the denominations.

 

The "credo" of classical music is that music is a composer thing. People go to classical concerts to "worship" Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. Jazz, folk and rock are more a player thing, with improvisation as an important element - people go to "worship" Noel Hill or Eric Clapton.

 

Accordingly, the classical musicians prop up a score in front of them and look at it ostentatiously all the time. The covers of classical scores always have the name of the composer writ large on them, emphasising that you, the audience, are not listening to the Music School String Quartet - you are listening to Haydn.

The folk/jazz musician's ostentatious lack of a written score, on the other hand, emphasises that this is not something someone has composed and someone else has learned - this is being created right before your very ears by the performer there on stage.

(In either case, the effect may be illusionary, but that's the principle.)

 

Since you mention words - if we get back to church, we have different kinds of words: sermons and lessons. Usually the sermon is delivered extempore, whereas the lesson is read word by word from a large Bible. This is the same symbolism as in musical performance. The sermon is what the Minister personally wants to tell us in his words. He knows what he wants to say, so he doesn't need to read it off. The lesson, on the other hand, is not the word of the lector, it is the word of God, and is ostentatiously read from the Holy Scripture.

If a Minister reads his sermon, I get the feeling that it's not his own work - he's downloaded it from the Internet, or borrowed it from a colleague. And if someone stands up and recites a passage of scripture from memory, I can't really be sure that that really is what is written in the Bible. Both make me a bit uneasy.

 

I agree about recited poems being more satisfactory than read ones. Bear in mind that verse was invented before people (other than monks) could read, so the rhythm and rhyme were essential to make it memorable. The reading of verse is a modern thing. Novels are different. They are always read, not recited, because the novel as a genre is a product of the time when people of leisure could read.

What about Shakespeare? Why is it important to have the role of Hamlet off by heart? Again, it's a ritual thing. The actor standing there spouting forth iambic pentameters is NOT saying "I'm an actor faithfully reproducing the words that Shakespeare imagined Hamlet might have said." He's saying, "I am Hamlet, and these are Hamlet's own words!" It's important for the ritual of a theatre play that we all assume that this guy IS Hamlet. It's self-deception, of course, but that's what theatre is all about!

 

Just playing music for your own pleasure is much simpler ...

 

 

Cheers,

John

[hjcjones]

I have a theory that learning to play by ear makes you more familiar with the instrument, in the sense that it requires more initial exploration of the instrument, and develops a direct relationship between the actual tune and the instrument, rather than having to filter it first through the written medium.

 

When you're learning a tune by "ear", or more accurately from memory, you spend a lot of time hunting around for the right button which will produce the note you're looking for and create the sound you want to achieve. Certainly to begin with, it may require a lot of trial and error. With experience, you will begin to find the notes more easily, with less hunting around, and in time you will be able to play more or less any tune which pops into your head, and will only have to go back to trial and error to resolve any tricky or unusual phrases. By this process you learn to associate the sound with the right button (or buttons) until it becomes instinctive.

 

Playing from dots introduces another step in the process - the note on the staff represents the sound, but the player is associating the button with the printed note, not the sound itself. They may be able to play fluently from written music, and able to tell you which note each button plays, but they won't have the direct association between the pitch of that note and the button which an ear player develops.

 

Because the notation tells them what note to play, and they know (or can look up on a chart) where to find the appropriate button on the instrument to produce that note, there is less exploration and discovery of the instrument itself.

 

I think this is why some players who have learned from notation find playing by ear such a mystery - they need to know what notes are being played before they can map them to the instrument. It's a more intellectual process. As an ear player, I don't know and I don't care what the notes are called, I simply map the sound of them straight to the appropriate buttons.

[tombilly]

Yep, that's the process HJC. When we formulate a thought in our heads and then speak it, we don't have to think how to manipulate our throat, tongue, lips etc. We've mapped out the sounds that make speech - that's the ultimate aim when playing a musical instrument as far as I'm concerned.

[Alan Day]

I used to play violin at school and later played trumpet, I could not play a tune without the music in front of me.When I joined the Broawood Morris Men and took up the concertina,I realised that it would be impossible to play from the dots outside a pub,with the wind blowing etc so decided to play by ear.I started with simple one note at a time playing and progressed from there.Eventually if I know the tune in my head I can play it, or at least get near it.I did find music useful when playing in the band to remember how tunes started, or if we were playing a set of tunes help to remember how each one started.A music crib sheet was useful with the first couple of bars to get me started.The name of the dance against the music was also useful as the caller usually forgets to tell the band what tune he requires.There is nothing worse that the caller starting the dance and the band looking at each other wondering what to play,not very professional.

Al

[Roger Gawley]

I think this is why some players who have learned from notation find playing by ear such a mystery - they need to know what notes are being played before they can map them to the instrument. It's a more intellectual process. As an ear player, I don't know and I don't care what the notes are called, I simply map the sound of them straight to the appropriate buttons.

 

Yes, but as a dots player I don't know and I don't care what the notes are called, I simply map the position on the written notation onto the keyboard.

[hjcjones]

I think this is why some players who have learned from notation find playing by ear such a mystery - they need to know what notes are being played before they can map them to the instrument. It's a more intellectual process. As an ear player, I don't know and I don't care what the notes are called, I simply map the sound of them straight to the appropriate buttons.

 

Yes, but as a dots player I don't know and I don't care what the notes are called, I simply map the position on the written notation onto the keyboard.

 

But my point is that the position of the written note on the staff isn't music, it's just a representation of the music. I go straight from the music to the keyboard.

 

The disadvantage, of course, is that I have to know the tune first - I have to already have it in my head, or to hear it being played to me. But it does allow me to play tunes when they come to me or when someone starts up in a session, and also to improvise, without having to hunt for the dots.

 

My other point is that my knowledge of the keyboard maps the pitches to the buttons, rather than the notes, whether it's by name or just their position on the stave. I don't know where to find B without counting up the scale, but when I need a note of that pitch in a tune I know which button to press. It seems to me that this allows a more direct relationship with the music.

 

Of course, many dots players also develop this understanding, but my guess is it takes them longer. But I could be wrong - as I said before, it's just a theory.

[Steve Mansfield]

I have never understood why the two skills are considered as being in some form of opposition to each other.

 

I can do both (personally I think I learnt to read music first, and then to play by ear as time went on), and both are valuable tools to have at your disposal as a musician.

 

If you're in a session you don't want to be scrabbling around to find the sheet music for a tune whilst everyone else is already half-way through it - and if you get home from the session, find the bit of paper you scribbled the name of that tune you really liked, you can then look it up on t'Internet and learn it from the dots.

 

I can't remember who said it, but the skill in playing traditional music from sheet music is in playing the bits between the notes. The shape of the tune is contained in the sheet music before you, but the pulse and lilt and (gulp) soul of the tune is in the stylistic nuances of timing and expression that sheet music would expend a lot of ink to convey, but your knowledge of how English (or Irish or French) music works supplies. But if you missed how that rising figure in the B part went, you can learn it from the sheet music and be ready to dive in next time that tune goes past.

 

I'll also sometimes download books of tunes from sites like the Village Music Project and play my way through them - it's excellent practise, and it brings me into contact with tunes I might never otherwise have come across.

 

Nobody has expressed it here, but there is a lot of snobbery amongst folk / traditional music about using the dots, as if it was some sort of barrier to authenticity or betrayal of the oral/aural tradition. I happen to think that's utter nonsense - if you can learn material by ear, AND from sheet music, you are increasing your repertoire, giving yourself greater opportunities, and making yourself a more complete musician, no matter whatever level of musicianship you are currently at.

Edited March 5, 2009 by Steve Mansfield

[tombilly]

I don't think the original poster was suggesting that one is better than the other - but reflecting that on taking up a new instrument, they found it easier to play by ear on that and improved skills on both instruments as a result.

 

Yep, I'd agree that many trad/ folk musicians do learn to read music as a means of learning a tune - one elderly box player was telling me recently how it was made out to be more difficult that it was and that he 'learnt it' in one evening years ago!!

 

But as for snobbery - I find it the other way round. I know a couple of people who have to have music stands and scores in front of them and they would tend to look down on any lesser mortals who just play what's in their heads.. they don't play trad of course, I need hardly add.

[Roger Gawley]

Nobody has expressed it here, but there is a lot of snobbery amongst folk / traditional music about using the dots, as if it was some sort of barrier to authenticity or betrayal of the oral/aural tradition. I happen to think that's utter nonsense - if you can learn material by ear, AND from sheet music, you are increasing your repertoire, giving yourself greater opportunities, and making yourself a more complete musician, no matter whatever level of musicianship you are currently at.

 

I find a lot of snobbery in both directions, mainly arising from lack of personal confidence. I would absolutely love to be able to pick up a tune by ear. I would also like to read music better than I do. Life is short.

 

What I would never do is deride anybody for what they cannot do at present. Seen that one lots of times.

 

Seems to me that many people learn tunes in a hybrid way. This has been said implicitly here already. It does not have to be one of the other.