Any tips for visual learners?

Whistle
1

I have realized that one of the reasons I have such trouble memorizing tunes and learning tunes by ear is that I am a visual learner with a strong visual memory and a poor auditory memory. This means that if I already know a tune I can pick it out by ear. It also means that if I hear a few bars of a tune I cannot remember it long enough to try and play it. I am not saying this is impossible, but terribly time consuming and frustrating. The best way for me to learn a tune is to have sheet music and a recording of the tune and i read, listen and then play along with the recording.

I have gone through the archives on memorizing, but most of the advice is geared towards those with good auditory skills. What I know about learning styles is that I cannot be the only one out there. Anyone else like me with a tip to share?

2

You’ve got the most important part already - if you already know a tune you can pick it out by ear. Now you want to practice picking up tunes that you don’t already know.

Take a recording of a tune, put it on repeat, and listen. and again. and again. and again (at this point you will receive scathing looks from any nearby roommates or relatives). See if you can start to join in on bits and pieces of it - skip the parts that you can’t grasp quite yet. In each repetition, you will find you get a bit more of the tune.

You can also try breaking the tune into smaller parts in an audio editing program, and working on repeating one small piece at a time. I did this for the five-part tune “Kid on the Mountain”. First I learned each part on its own, then parts A and B together, then parts B and C together, then C and D together, etc, and then connected them all like legos. :smiley:

3

I seem to generate images of fingering patterns and progresions in tunes like arpeggios and similar figures in my mind to help remembering tunes. Hard to explain what it exactly is but there’s a strong visualisation involved.

4

If your goal is to only memorize the melody notes of a tune, load an abc file into a player and read the notes while you listen and play along. You can adjust the speed up as you progress. This way, you’ll see, hear, and feel the tune at the same time.

For warnings on the pitfalls of abc’s and written music in general, do a search under ‘Hell and Damnation.’
Tony

5

Lizzie, maybe this is obvious, but have you tried singing the tunes you’re trying to learn? I’m learning tunes from Geraldine Cotter’s tutor CD, and I just loop the songs, humming, whistling (with lips) or singing along until I feel pretty comfortable that I know the melody. Then I sing the first phrase by myself and try to find the notes on the whistle. It’s slow going, but I’m finding that I’m improving fairly quickly.

I’ve used a similar trick as a jazz bassist–when I have trouble improvising solos, humming or singing quietly seems to “re-connect” my musical ideas to the instrument. My voice isn’t so great, so I generally do this in practice sessions as an exercise, then keep my mouth shut at performances.

I’ve spent a considerable portion of my musical life tied to sheet music, or at least thinking of music “visually”; i.e., memorizing music as it looks on the page, not how it sounds. I am positive this has limited me in many ways. In fact, 50% of the reason I took up whistle/ITM is as an excuse/opportunity to learn music entirely by ear.

Anyway, my unscientific opinion is that “visual learning” is more of a habit than a result of anything inborn. Stick with learning by ear, slog through it, and I’d wager you’ll be happier for it!

6

I didn’t address memorizing: the better you get at learning by ear, the easier memorization gets. I’ll bet you wouldn’t have trouble singing any number of rock or pop songs from memory, that you’ve never seen sheet music for. That’s because a) You’ve heard the songs a number of times, and b) it’s not as challenging to produce music vocally as on the whistle. When you have an aural connection to your instrument, “memorizing” is really just not having to struggle connecting the melody in your head with your fingers.

I know you said you quickly forget the piece of music you’re working on, but I’ve found that it’s actually the process of fumbling for the notes before the tune is solidly in my head that sort of “corrupts” my memory of the melody. If you can get through a piece vocally (a capella), you may have more luck when you pick up the whistle again.

7

Oooh, good topic! I have similar problems, to the extent that I often say that I’m “audio-dyslexic”. In school I had such problems absorbing anything from lectures that I went to the university’s learning resource center, where the tests indicated that I’m a primarily visual and kinesthetic learner, so I learned various strategies for leveraging those strengths to make up for my auditory deficits… come to think of it, I should maybe brainstorm on how to translate more of those strategies to my music stuff…

But anyway, I run into the same sorts of problems when attempting to learn things by ear – tunes tend to go in one ear and out the other, unless I’m doing something interactive to burn them into my kinesthetic memory. I’ve heard suggestions to sing along with recordings, but my singing voice is so truly abysmal that I’ve converted that to just tonguing & half-whispering along with my recordings. I’ve found that it helps to do this alone in a dark room, where there’s nothing to distract me from the structure & feeling of the melody I’m trying to absorb.

I’ve also found that it works better for me to use the my cassette player than the repeat button on the CD player, 'cos the cassette player is the kind that’s optimized for studying language tapes, the kind that lets one listen while backtracking so it’s easy to target and repeat specific phrases, and there’s a little dial to slow them down. I hear there are computer programs (which ones??) to do this with CDs (or MP3s?), but I don’t have one yet (suggestions welcome – I’m on a Mac)

Once I have the tune firmly lodged in my head, I listen to it a few times while looking at the dots (no whistle yet), so I get an intuitive sense of how the melody I’ve learned relates to the dots on the page. Then I go on to playing it on my whistle, still using my sheet music, but I find that I’m not so much sight-reading as using the dots to supply the occasional note that I have trouble locating by ear. When I feel ready to let go of the sheet-music security blanket, I turn away from the music stand and try playing the song by ear and muscle memory, and am often pleasantly surprised by how much of the tune I can reproduce.

Sometimes I’m impatient with this longer learning process, so I do what you describe and just play along with the recording using sheet music, but I find that I don’t learn the song as well – it goes right out of my head as soon as the recording or sheet music is put away. To memorize the tune efficiently, I seem to need to get it into my head independent of the sheet music, and then just use the dots to smooth over the process of connecting the fingerings to the tune I hear in my head.

Finally, I find that I learn things better when I study them right before going to sleep at night, or during the day if I take a brief nap right after the study session. So I bring my little cassette player to bed with me, and repeat the tunes I’m trying to learn, tonguing & whispering along with them, until I fall asleep… and voila! I wake up with the music going through my head, and half the battle is won right there.

Noel

8

Peter wrote;

I seem to generate images of fingering patterns and progresions in tunes like arpeggios and similar figures in my mind to help remembering tunes. Hard to explain what it exactly is but there’s a strong visualisation involved.

I wonder if braille would work as in an ABC file for music?

MarkB

9

Heh. You’ve clearly never heard me (or my father) attempty to sing – we’re the ones that people (oh so politely) request to please, PLEASE desist. No matter how well I know the tune, it comes out malformed when I try to send it out thru my vocal apparatus. It feels as though the mechanism lacks certain vital frequencies, so notes slide off in truly appalling directions.

I believe I’ve always been attracted to wind instruments because they give me the sensation of singing, but with the amazing benefit of being able to use my fingers to make the notes come out in tune.

Noel

10

squidgirl, I use Amazing Slow Downer for Windows, and I see there’s a Mac version. It does:

  • changing tempo without changing pitch
  • changing pitch without changing tempo
  • loops

It’s not free, but not terribly expensive if you’re really into learning by ear/transcribing. Very handy for Cotter’s CD, since she plays the tunes way too fast for me. I also use it to learn tunes on my G whistle.

11

Oh, that’s YOU? Yes, please stop. :laughing:

12

It may be overkill, but take a look at Transcribe! at http://www.seventhstring.com/

It lets you select part of a tune and play just that portion with a single mouse click. There’s a 30-day demo, so it’s easy enough to see if it is useful to you. My demo has expired, so I think I’ll buy it now. (There are Windows and Linux/x86/GTK versions, too.)

If you get into software-buying mode, here are some more useful items available for the Mac:

The Amazing Slowdowner ( http://www.ronimusic.com ) - slows down music without changing pitch, but can also make pitch adjustments to get the music in sync with your non-tunable whistles.

BarFly ( http://www.barfly.dial.pipex.com/ ) - takes ABC notation and produces both sheet music and sound.

Dr. Betotte ( http://homepage.mac.com/seishu/ssworks/DrBetotte.html ) - a very versatile metronome application

I use BarFly a lot, but the other two are great when I need them.

13

The art of knowing without playing tunes is know as ‘lilting’ in Itrad, and it does make a very big difference to one’s playing.

There are contests for it and experts at it, as well as ..tad dah CD’s of it.

On some of the Chieftains CDs you may hear some, but that does not fairly represent it ..IMHO some of the best lilters are also musicians – and OC some musicians get into it so that they can learn/improve their skills.

Highly recommeded and lots of fun as well.

:0)

14

I agree with the singing / lilting of a tune. I’ve got a good ear myself, but have been in classes where the others just could not follow what the teacher was teaching, because (obvious now) they too were visual.

I felt bad for them, and wished they could see the tune on a staff while they were learning it. Of course, they’d have to do away with the sheet music at some point if they wanted to work on getting the feel of the tune.

I’m classically trained (yep, lay it on me, I know I’m the devil’s child because of that!!) so have read music since a very very young age, but am insisting as much as possible on not seeing a tune until I know it well by ear - singing it, lilting it, definitely helps me.

I still feel the best way to learn a tune is by ear - but at first, you may feel the need for the sheet music. Hopefully that habit will change with time, and you’ll enjoy the music even more when it does change :slight_smile:

15

I have the same type of memory you do. It does help if you use the sheet music as a sort of “road map” to use in tandem with a good recording in my experience, as long as you don’t rely on it too much. Of course, I also have the bad habit of totally forgetting tunes I haven’t played in a while, so I’m useless anyhow. :stuck_out_tongue:

16

Thanks so much for all who have taken the time to respond so thoughtfully…..some of these things I have been doing…gosh, I listened to one tune all the way home in the car about a gazillion times. You can reach the point where you almost hate the tune!

Tony, I am not sure why using ABC notation would be better than using regular notation…seems like the same process to me….and I have heard all about the pitfalls of using sheet music…..but ya gotta do what works for you and the purists be darned! I think I partially get past this by using recorded music in conjunction with the sheet music..I listen and read at the same time.

I do use some visualization, especially to remember how a tune starts..I can remember what the sheet music looks like….I think I should try to do that more deliberately.

Jeff….learning style theory is pretty well grounded…..I think it is much more than a habit….it is how your particular brain is wired…visual learners are in many ways fortunate because they generally do better in school, learning to read comes more easily and so does text book learning….it was great until I decided to take up some music! Jeff, I think I will try more vocalizing of my tunes. I thought of even putting a few words to the first few bars…..I find tunes with words are much easier to remember than straight tunes.

Ah…. Squidgirl and Telegram Sam…someone else who really understands this…. I do use Slowdowner (on my Mac) and that is helpful as I can loop a small section….(aside: I wonder if visual people are more attractive to Macs ‘cause they look so nice?) I do put away the sheet music and continue only with the recording……and eventually I play on my own….I do ‘know’ a number of tunes, but they have been hard learned and I have to keep coming back to them or they are gone….

Moxy..I am not sure that ‘visual’ people do not have good ears…..at least not necessarily. I think I have a fair ear as reflected in my ability to play what I do know and pretty easily….it is just hard when you can’t remember what you have just heard…

Plodding on……

Liz.

17

Lizzie…I learn the same way you do. I don’t see it as being any problem and you surely aren’t the only one out there who learns tunes this way. At least you have me!

I need the sheet music, and like you said, a recording of the tune is very helpful. I learn the tune with the sheet music and when I have played it enough times I find that my fingers start knowing where to go of their own accord and the tune is fixed in my head. Then I abandon the sheet music and can go on to make the tune my own, adding my own flourishes, speeding up certain parts or slowing them down…that sort of things. I have got around 30 tunes stored in my head using this method, and while that is not a large amount compared to some on the Board I think it is nothing to sneeze at either.

I think we sometimes try to make rocket science out of something that should be fairly simple. If you can learn to play a tune just by listening to a CD…GREAT. If you need to start by using sheet music…COOL. What ever works for you. The most important thing is that you are enjoying yourself.

18

I always listen to the version of the tune I’m trying to learn since each person puts different articulations and ornamentations on a piece. Take a popular trad piece like Morrisons, Inisheer or Lilting Banshees for instance. I’ll find the version that fits my ears and playing style that best fits into my own or even a differnet style that I’m trying to learn, listen to it 137 to 652 times :smiley: and print the standard notation out to use as a reference for those difficult runs. Having the songs written music I’ve learned in a spiral notebook helps to jog my memory when I haven’t played something in awhile. I can look at the first passage to get the tune rolling, after that my muscle memory takes over. (hopefully)

19

You’re right about visual people and their ears - I have no knowledge of what it must be like not to have a good ear, and I’m not sure why mine is so good. There is definitely a relationship between my good ear and some sort of visualization though.

Have you ever seen the movie “A Beautiful Mind”? I have a VHS copy of it, and after the movie’s over, Ron Howard talks about John Nash, the real guy. He says something about people like John Nash, and how they don’t think in terms of numbers, it’s all about shapes and relationships.

That’s what I’m like. So I have difficulty relating to someone who doesn’t have the same facility as I do with music - and other things too, I’m good at remembering patterns and stuff like that.

I do believe though that being able to sing or hum or lilt a tune is a good precursor to memorizing the tune for playing on any instrument.

20

I learn best using everything
i.e. sight, listening, practice little & often e.g. 1 tune
5-6 times x as many times per day as I feel.

I use MidiNotate - free midi player that shows the score.
Slow it down/speed it up etc.
Some midi files are great, others are poo!
So listen to an mp3 etc to make sure the midi is
at least following the tempo/melody etc.
There are thousands of free midi’s available.

Some tunes ‘go in’ by themselves,
making me wonder if I choose the tune,
or if the tune chooses me!

Other tunes take a lot of practice to memorise
i.e. weeks!

Whatever works for you is your answer.

HTH