think many people who argue against using sheet music are assuming the worst about what use people might be putting it to.
The tunes I’ve transcribed myself are the ones that really stick in my head. The ones that I’ve never transcribed seem to leak out of my brain over time.
I think this is spot-on, on both counts.
Nothing will teach you a tune like transcribing it from someone else’s playing!
–James
Actually, I find that there are quite a few different kinds of reels and jigs each with their own feel/style. I wouldn’t go so far as to say each one is different, but there are quite a few different, and maybe not obvious, breeds.
Do others find this to be true? I find it especially true of jigs.
-Brett
I promised several friends here that I would, occasionally, chime in on pertinent topics, other than my selling my baroque flute. Great flute, BTW, for a good price.
And I also mentioned that, eavesdropping here and there, some topics just seem to stick around, as if I’d never left. This is one of them, but – well – here’s my two cents on it, yet again… as if I’d never left… 
Reading notes has little to do with traditional playing. Playing has little to do with literacy. But it helps with learning, for those that can do it, and that’s no small thing. Let me clarify with a non-music analogy.
Actors generally work with scripts, and have for centuries, although illiterate actors (or foreign born, with another language more fluent for them) probably still exist, and once upon a time, they were probably pretty common. They learned by memory. Bela Lagosi barely spoke English when he was cast as Dracula, and his quirky preformance and rhythms are largely due to phonetic memorization – he did not understand a large part of what he was saying.
But, while reading and memorizing have little to do with acting and performance, reading surely helps the process along for those that read. I learned some 300 tunes early on, long before these tunes were under my belt, by reading them and practicing them as I grew. My teacher, a traditional player of some repute, wrote them out for me (and his other students). Do I stick to the “script” now? Probably not, but they are nice settings - nicer than many heard in sessions - and they were the basis of my early ITM education. And most of these tunes – and many others by now – are well ingrained in my brain, fixed just as surely as any pop song or commercial jingle heard growing up. And fixed just as surely as the tunes I originally learned by ear.
My point? I guess playing the music is the point. How the tune got stuck is immaterial, later on.
All for now..
Gordon
Here’s an interesting read on the subject…
http://alan-ng.net/irish/learning/
And, to bring us full circle, the above article makes mention of the great notation debate of 2001: http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?topic=198&forum=1&28
One good thing about the “dots” is that they don’t have any speed. The fast tunes that I like are impossible for me to learn by ear at full speed since I really want to get the melody notes correct. I’m sure that some have the ability to pick out individual eighth notes at 220 bbm but I cannot [yet].
So what I do is slow down the tunes to 1/2 speed and transcribe the melodies using ABC notation. Many times I do this using my ears (relative pitch) w/o using my instrument. I listen to the tape/CD at full speed and read my transcription just to make sure that I’ve got the melody right. I usually don’t transcribe the ornamentation etc. of a performance unless I’m intentionally trying to study something specific. Then I work on it (visually for awhile) to quickly get the melody notes under my fingers, and then after about 100x’s for a difficult tune I file the sheet music away in a notebook and play it from then on by memory. After many months I might pull the sheet music out again.
We as players need to practice the tunes long enough that we internalize them. We cannot effectively improvise on a melody until we have committed it to memory. Then we can mess around with it and spice it up.
There are programs that will slow down CDs or MP3s (without
changing the pitch) so that it is easier to pick out the notes. It’s great
ear practice!
See http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?t=31862&highlight=bestpractice
http://www.ronimusic.com/
i understand what you are saying, transcribing is something i enjoy and has given me insight into how i might play or how others play. but never has it given me the ability to play. transcribing a tune is different than actually learning to play it, which is another process. i have transcribed literally thousands of tunes, for myself and friends etc.. i enjoy it. i enjoy trying to figure out what i hear being played. i actually taught myself how to read and write music this way. i think that is why i enjoyed it so much. but… i still cannot play all those tunes myself. why? because i have not actually taken the time to learned to play them myself; or i simply lack ability to play them, or some tunes i just can’t seem to get the feel for etc..
tune recognition, while it is a nice thing, is not the same as the ability ‘to play a tune’; or as they say ‘have’ the tune.
how would you (in general) answer this question:
‘have you got so-and-so tune?’
a)… well yes, i have it written down right here. why i did it myself.
b)… i think so, it is in o’malley’s tunebook which i own.
c)… of course, i have it on cd, by so-and-so and i listen to it all the time.
d)… oh i have the abc’s which i got off the 'net.
e)… i am currently playing a version i got from so-and-so. would you like me to play it for you? (hehe, i know what you’re thinking here)
Rama, what you say is certainly true: transcribing is a different art than playing. The ability to transcribe a tune doesn’t equal the ability to play it–or even a guarantee that you understand the tune. After all, the ability to write it down doesn’t necessarily equal understanding the structure of the melody.
Having a written version of a tune in front of you is one possible tool you may use to help learn the tune.
It’s not the only tool, and it may not be the best one, but it’s one more tool than you’d have without it.
I think it’s a mistake to blow this whole thing out of proportion. Sheet music isn’t evil, it’s not the Antichrist of ITM, it won’t catch fire if you walk into a church with it, and it’s not going to cause you to start dreaming of Cthulhu if you use it to learn tunes.
Sheet music is a tool. So is your computer, for that matter. So is your flute. So is your brain. So are your ears.
In the proper combination, diligent use of some or all of these tools might–just might, not necessarily will–teach you to play a tune. However, it’s just as possible that you can use any or all of these and never really learn to play a tune well at all.
Also, for what it’s worth, we don’t use sheet music in our sessions–I haven’t played publicly “right from the dots” at a session in years now. However, if someone shows up with some music, we don’t frown them down, either, although digging through the books and finding the tune in time to play it is its own challenge.
All of this is just my own opinion, one opinion among many.
And you know what they say about opinions. 
–James
Even classical music.
Imagine my disappointment when I learned this..
Though, Some people might catch fire if you walk into a session with it…
Cooley’s Fhtagn!
Perhaps this will make it better.
Lol! I collect all things Cthulhu…
I even have this tshirt (though in the older, lighter green color)
I see the dots vs the learning by ear debate much in the same light, as learning a language. ITM being a type language. As with any language you have native speakers, and the written language to guide you. The written language (dots) won’t give one the flavor of the dialect(sp) being spoken or played. By listening closely one picks up the accent or dialect(sp).
I first learned to play reading the dots and was terriblily intimedated by the idea of trying to learn by ear. In the US. it’s much like learning the ABC’s. The letter “A” instead of the phonic sound, “ah”, “B” instead of “bah”, etc. By learning name of the letter first, instead of the sound it makes, is putting a barrier up that one must jump over to learn read. I now see the dots, in much the same way in music. The dots are a great tool, if you speak the language, but to learn the music it’s the listening to that music (learning by ear) that gives you the accent or character of the style music.
There are great resources available in ITM to learn by ear, which is very fortunate.
Cheers,
Tjones
I find it amusing how many people who avoid notation, either because they haven’t learned to read, or - worse - declare it non-traditional and therefore wrong, will advocate a slow-down technology to assist learning. By slowing down the tune greatly to figure out individual notes, both the lift and feel are altered. Kind of like reading the notes. Both spoon fed.
There’s a misconception that reading precludes listening to ITM. But, why would anyone want to play music from, say, O’Neill’s without knowing what Irish tunes sound like in the first place? Try playing a transcribed lead solo by Jeff Beck without hearing it, too; all those dots make little sense. OTOH, once you know what it’s supposed to sound like, the notation has meaning. Kind of like suddenly re-speeding up your slow-down tune; now it makes musical sense.
This said, notation, like slow-down technology, is for private learning. Anyone showing up to a session with notation, expecting to play along, should be thrown out of the pub, forth-with. If you’re not ready to play along, this is where you sit back, preferably with a beer, and listen.
Gordon
Sheet music is only one of many reasons…
Aaaggghhh!
But how do you pronounce that?!?!?!?
M
“Cthulhu” is usually pronounced /kəˈθuːluː/, /kəˈθʊːluː/, or /kəˈtʰʊːluː/ (IPA transliteration). However, according to Lovecraft, this may simply be the closest that human vocal cords can come to reproducing the syllables of a name in an utterly alien language[1]. In fact, Lovecraft speculated that “Khlul’hloo”[2] might be closer to the actual pronunciation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu
Hello Mary please say Hi to Jack!
HaHa, thought you’d make me fall for that one, eh? Around here, we say “Hey, Jack”!
Mary
Sound like left over pirates…
Hey, Ho, we’re flyin’ the Jack!
Fully aware that I’m extending a 4-page “classic” topic …
Dots are useful. Even to ITMs. Playing by ear is useful. Even to classical musicians.
I dodg – uh, served my country during the Vietnam war by playing oboe in an Air Force band. Some band members were able to sight-read essentially any tonal music at performance speed, and transpose at performance speed if necessary. By asking questions I eventually found out how.
They were adept at sight-singing. Someone had forced them to get that way. They read music to the sounds in their heads, then PLAYED THEM BY EAR. I set about teaching myself to do the same, but the end of my enlistment came before I was really good at it.
The same people weren’t usually much good at reading atonal music. You have to understand the style.
Since then I’ve become a bit of a session junkie, although there isn’t one in Corpus Christi where I now live.
A few years ago I played in a session in Honolulu where several players had photocopied tunebooks. I was usually able to play along, at speed, by reading the dots. I also make a point of reading through O’Neill every few years, often picking up a nice tune that nobody seems to play these days.
I’m not trying to set myself up as an example, since I don’t do either ear or dots as well as I would like. I just think both are useful, to anyone. Dots are required for classical; ear is required for itm; both are useful for both.
– Don