Corrupting New Players

Whistle
1

The standard weekend session group here in central CT played at a new AOH hall last night, to a very appreciative crowd. One woman came up and asked if I’d teach her to play. I’m all for new players, and think that playing WITH someone is a hell of a lot more fun than sitting home alone tooting notes, so I said I’d be happy to show her the basics, then she’d have to find herself a real teacher or a decent tutorial.

Only then did I find out that she’s never played any instrument, doesn’t know how to read music, etc. So I’m torn between asking her to work through a tutorial first (Och’s comes to mind) or trying to teach the basics of music too. Suggestions?

Would you take a rank beginner and work by ear? I have given Tyghre a few tentative steps, but teaching a spouse is an exercise in frustration if their level of commitment to learning is different than your level of commitment to teaching.

2

Why not combine the ideas? Have her get the Ochs tutorial and work through it with her (say you and she meet once a week or so, and she works on her own the rest of the time). As she seems ready for it, you can also help her start learning to pick things up by ear. This gives her the advantage of playing with someone and getting pointers from a more experienced player while she’s learning the basics.

Redwolf

3

Redwolf, I took your suggestion and bought The complete Idiots Guide to Music Theory and it is great.Thanx..I new a bit like how to read notation but this an easy to follow book..Tyghress you might even tell her to get this too.. if you think she needs to read music or figure how chords work etc.I dont know just a suggestion.

4

Here’s what I do…
I’ve taught whistle to adults for the past 6,7, years at the Celtic College in Goderich, Ont. In my experience, rank beginners (I mean people with no other instrumental experience and who don’t read music) are more successful if they are taught to play by ear and not with sheet music for several reasons…
I do pass out music to people who can read, but I encourage them to try and learn whistle without it…

5

What is this Idiots Guide? Did I miss something here Redwolf? This sounds like something I might need. If you don`t want to take up forum space could you email me about this book.

Tom

6

Learning by ear is key. It can be slower, but the ear gets trained to the fingers, and before long, with concentration, one can pick up tunes at sessions with surprising speed (well, the simpler ones, anyway). I relearned to read only after a couple of years of trad playing, and that only to nail down the “bones” of a tune if I was having difficulties.

Those who are firmly rooted in reading music in order to play it tend to have a hard time of it when trying to learn to play by ear. I applaud them. But if your student is fresh to all this, may I suggest that use of written material be as spare as can be. Nothing wrong with tutorial stuff as a springboard, though.

Just my $.02 worth…

N, short on change

7

Speaking as a student rather than a teacher…
My first instrument was piano, and I began taking lessons at the age of 10. I also have been in various choruses for longer than that. Getting the notes on the staff ingrained over time, and learning the theory, has been immensely valuable to me. If I hadn’t already had the basics of music in me, I know I probably would never have stuck with the whistle after “Merrily we roll along”.
That said, I’d bet it would be the opposite with a new player who’s older. They don’t have the long background of any form of music to help them as they learn. Not only would they have to learn where D is on the whistle and how to blow just right, they’d also have to worry about where it was on the staff, how the appearance of the note shapes how long it’s held, etc etc and so forth. Plus as we all know, Irish music isn’t determined by notes on a page. It’s all of the little extra things not written that give it its distinct flavor and beauty.
Sooooo, yesh.. I concur with those against plowing into theory. When she gets a good basic knowledge of the whistle under her belt, she can always explore that, if she wants. :slight_smile:
(P.S. I quit piano after 7 years, because my teacher was throwing competition after competition at me and it was just too much. The less she feels overwhelmed, especially at first, the more she’ll want to pursue it!)

[Edited to correct spelling. I promise I don’t take any “lesions”. I get my vitamins elsewhere.]

“All things by immortal power, hiddenly,
to eachother linked are;
thou canst not stir a flower
without troubling of a star.” (Madeleine L’Engle)


[ This Message was edited by: Soineanta on 2003-01-25 18:36 ]

8

I too have the Idiots](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0028643771/qid=1043537592/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/002-0246701-1879245?v=glance&s=books%22%3EIdiots) Guide to Music Theory - good book.

Tyg, when I taught a girl whistle out in Idaho this summer, I didn’t worry about the theory or reading music - mostly because I can’t read it myself. I did, however, teach her to read whistle tab, and gave her tunes written out in that, so she would have something to fall back on when she didn’t remember how a tune went. I gave her a cd to help with rhythm (something the whistle tab is lacking), with the tunes we were working on played slowly and then more quickly, but I don’t think she listened to it much!

It only took a few months of a half hour lesson once or twice a week before she was playing things like “star of the county down,” “foggy dew,” and “cockles and mussles” reasonably well.

Relax, it’ll be fun! I don’t think you’ll have any trouble. One thing I would like to suggest is you two work out exactly how much time you are going to put into this, especially if you are doing it for free. Don’t overwhelm yourself!

[ This Message was edited by: avanutria on 2003-01-25 18:39 ]

9

Whoah, whoah, whoah, there! I hope nobody thought I was putting down theory! I’m getting some training in it myself to advance my cittern-playing. Wherever it’s needed…IMHO, it’s probably less necessary on melody instruments when pursuing trad music, and what I was trying to suggest was that starting out learning trad tunes from written music is not my idea of a good beginning unless the student is doing a lot of listening to good playing and understands that the written stuff is just a framework. More than once I’ve heard “But that’s not how it’s written down in [insert name].”

Variation and individuality count. Above all, lead the student to freedom through skills.

I’ve always envied those who read with ease. And, there are those who have a hard time playing w/o music in front of them, God bless 'em. BUT: if one wants to play at sessions, or perform trad music freely, one really needs to play by ear.

Sorry if my rant is coming off as bombastic; It’s just an opinion, of course.

N, everybody’s got one

10

Tigger,
You can easily teach the basics of music theory…after all, it’s a D scale she really needs to be able to recognize. Note value is crucial to learning music, regardless of how well you play, and especially if you move to a sessionless place, such as I live in. There’s two pipers running amok (one who recently won the Grade III championships at Reno) because I was willing to sit and teach them music. The thing to emphasize to them is that after working on a tune for a while, ya gotta put the music away and play it from memory so that you don’t become unable to boogie on your own!
Dave
p.s.: tell everyone about your new whistles… heh heh heh

11

Dave, EVERYone knows about my newest darlings!

Be that as it may, if I’m going to teach, you’d better believe I’m going to play on a Gen or Meg or Walton. I won’t be part of some newbie’s WhOA! I was shown that a Gen is a perfectly decent whistle by a local player who took my ‘clunker’ and played a lovely tune on it. It was hard to remember sometimes that the problem was ME, not the whistle and that there was someting I could do to make it sound better.

I’ll admit, though, that I’m a little skeptical about teaching an adult…anyone beyond their twenties…who has never played ANYTHING. You would think that if there was any real interest in music that they would have picked something up by that time.

It may be like me, who have never sewn nor knitted deciding to get this funky machine on a whim. If I really have an interest in producing knitted fabric, I’d best really get serious about learning to use this thing. Music always was there. I may not be terribly good at it, but I understand the basics, have practice at rhythm, pitch and breath control.

How old were you when you got the basics of music and began playing an instrument ‘formally’ as opposed to pot-banging, the kind of singing that children do naturally, and free form instruments like slide whistles and kazoos? I had sisters who started taking music before me. I plunked on the piano with them, and started taking lessons at 8, I think. I had music in one form or another into high school, and always played some sort of instrument since then.

12

I’ve only taught guitar, never whistle. I think that the approach I would take would be a bit different, expecially with an adult.

IMO, start teaching tunes by ear by all means. But don’t forget scales and don’t forget to explain how they are constructed and which ones can be played on a D whistle. Also, scale and arpeggio based exercises build up technique in a systematic way. I wouldn’t introduce this stuff straight away and I wouldn’t let it get in the road of the fun. But I do think that it is important that the student know fairly soon whether that tune she is playing is in D major or G major if she is to progress and develop her ear.

Reading should, I think, come after the elementary theory because it relies on that theory: how do you explain the sharps (or flats) in the key signature to someone who knows nothing of scales and keys?

[ This Message was edited by: Wombat on 2003-01-26 09:58 ]

13

Tyghress,

A comment about learning music as an adult:

From a very early age, my mother taught me that learning music is difficult. I believe she told me this to compensate for her own feeling of failure at having been unable to please her violin teacher as a child and giving up.

Anyway, the subliminal message I took from hearing her repeat her story was that if Mother couldn’t do it, certainly, it would be futile for me, as well.

I approached music class in grade school with the expectation that it would be difficult and sure enough, it was. I didn’t keep up with the lessons and gave up, too. I’m sure if someone in my family had been playing music and showing me that I could do it if I wanted to, I would have had a completely different experience.

Anyway, as a teenager and young adult, music was a major part of my culture. My friends were musicians, and I worked as a roadie for a band, all the while feeling terribly left out because I couldn’t do music myself.

Eventually, in my forties, I decided I didn’t have to live out the script I had internalized from my mother’s story, and I began to explore what I could do with music on my own. Lo and behold, I can do it! This transformation has afforded me more satisfaction than I can put into words.

You may be right that someone who hasn’t approached learning music until they’re grown may not have the temperament or inclination to apply themselves to it. On the other hand, you may be offering someone an experience that they will treasure the rest of their days.

There’s only one way to find out which it is. In either case, the whistle is the perfect instrument for such a venture, for reasons we all understand very well.

Best wishes,
Jerry

14

First of all, each student is different. Some will learn better by ear, and some will learn better by Notation.

That said, I personally think that it is best if you are able to give them both; ie. You can teach them stuff by ear, but also teach them to read notation (it helps TREMENDOUSLY when explaining Theory type stuff that they ask you). Plus, if they find out that the Trad stuff isn’t exactly their thing and they want to do, say… Classical, then they have the music notation skills behind their belt to help them in that direction.

When teaching music, I think it’s all about helping the student to learn what they want and what they can learn to give them a well-rounded grasp of the art.

15

On 2003-01-25 21:16, Dave Parkhurst wrote:
Tigger,
You can easily teach the basics of music theory…after all, it’s a D scale she really needs to be able to recognize. Note value is crucial to learning music, regardless of how well you play, and especially if you move to a sessionless place, such as I live in. There’s two pipers running amok (one who recently won the Grade III championships at Reno) because I was willing to sit and teach them music. The thing to emphasize to them is that after working on a tune for a while, ya gotta put the music away and play it from memory so that you don’t become unable to boogie on your own!
Dave
p.s.: tell everyone about your new whistles… heh heh heh

I agree. I also think that learning note reading is easiest for adult or child if they learn it in conjunction with learning an instrument. I can think of no good reason not to teach music reading and playing concurrently. I also think that people who won’t learn music reading are deliberately crippling themselves…there’s so much good music out there that you may never be able to find a recording of (or find a trad player to play for you)!

Blackbeer…the book C4 mentioned, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Music Theory, came up in another thread (one on transposition) and is a wonderful resource for anyone who wants to learn more theory than just basic note reading (but doesn’t want to have to take college level courses in the subject). It lays things out in plain (and occasionally humorous) language and diagrams. I’m a big fan of the “Idiot’s Guide” and “For Dummies” books…they teach so clearly (and are so obviously NOT for “idiots” or “dummies” at all, but rather for us ordinary Joes and Janes)…I think I have about 20 of them on various subjects!

Redwolf

16

I agree with Heather. Music is the sounds produced by an instrument, voice, etc. Musical notation, tablature, audio tapes are all simply tools to the end of learning, remembering and communicating music. Each has its strong and weak points. If the tools hinder learning then they should not be used. But I think the good teacher should be able to use the methods of teaching, or combination of methods, that work for their students. In the end, all these methods of notating music lack the human give-and-take that comes only from playing with others.
Mike

17

Exactly Burns. That’s what I’ve been saying for a long time; you can learn Irish Trad music from sheet music or by ear, but it will never be music until you can feel it, regardless of HOW you learned it.

And, there are pros and cons to both methods. Sometimes knowing too much Music Theory is really a bad thing when it comes to the Trad music, b/c not all Trad music follows the Theory “rules” exactly to the door.

It’s all about what works for the student (or you, if you’re teaching yourself), because there is no “A-1 perfect and completely correct” way to teach it all.

18

This is truly another interesting thread of sight-reading vs. ear training.

First off, let me say that I DO buy sheet music, but I don’t play directly from it. More often what I do is key it into a tone-generating program, such as Finale NotePad, and listen to the results so I can commit it to memory. Sort of the musical equivalent of putting faces to the names. Once I can accurately “sing” the tune all the way through without mistakes, then I can pick up my whistle or guitar and play it from memory.

19

On 2003-01-25 22:45, tyghress wrote:

I’ll admit, though, that I’m a little skeptical about teaching an adult…anyone beyond their twenties…who has never played ANYTHING. You would think that if there was any real interest in music that they would have picked something up by that time.

I have to second what Jerry said:

You may be right that someone who hasn’t approached learning music until they’re grown may not have the temperament or inclination to apply themselves to it. On the other hand, you may be offering someone an experience that they will treasure the rest of their days.

My situation was a little different from Tyghress’s potential student, as I took piano lessons for several years as a child, and also played percussion in my middle school band, so I could read music and knew the basics of music theory. I didn’t enjoy my piano lessons, never got very good at it, and quit as soon as my parents allowed. Then, decades later, I decided to learn to play music. For nearly a year now, I have devoted as much time as I could – probably on average 2 to 3 hours a day – to playing my hammered dulcimer. (And now I’m branching out to whistle.) I definitely have a “real interest” in music but didn’t discover it in myself until later in life.

As for how much, if any, notation reading and theory to teach, let your student decide! Teach it when, or if, he or she wants it and feels ready for it. I’m guessing that it would work best to start off by ear, and then introduce notation later if the interest is there.

Good luck to both of you; I think you’re doing something really great for another person by trying this!

Sarah