Sure, it’s the real joy of playing an instrument.
Sure, it’s the real joy of playing an instrument.
Hmmmm, wouldn’t you think it’s probably more like the joy of playing music? The instrument is only the vehicle.
Well, to be wilfully pedantic, I haven’t found a way of playing music yet without playing an instrument. But I’m no expert.
But seriously, each instrument has its own delights. I think there’s more to it than just being a medium. Playing a fugue or sonata on the piano is definitely a different experience from playing a jig or air on a whistle. The instrument is not a characterless medium or empty vessel by any means.
All your mastery of your instrument is of no value if you don’t fully grasp the music you’re playing. Equally I have met people who had maybe not the greatest technical mastery of their instrument who could put over a tune with loveley little twists and great musicality. But ofcourse both skills feed off eachother, I’d still go for musicality as the more important factor though.
No argument with that. 
That’s exactly my case!
The way I think of it is that I have two separate brains, the sightreading brain and the earlearning brain.
When I’m sightreading an Irish jig or reel or whatever I definitely am NOT literally playing what’s on the paper! I’m using what’s on the paper to generate a traditional performance with rolls and breathing spots and all sorts of things not on the page, and moreover changing the melodic shapes to suit the way I play. (Or as ‘traditional’ as a hillbilly who has never been to Ireland can do.)
But as you say nothing sticks. I think my sightreading brain knows there’s paper to rely on.
I have notebooks full of tunes I’ve transcribed and never learned. I’ve concluded that to transcribe session tapes is a waste of time, as regards learning tunes. I have one notebook of tunes transcribed from our local session and I’ve played through all those tunes a hundred times and almost none are memorised. (I can sightread them all at speed, though!)
No, if I want to learn a tune it’s far more effective to not use sheet music at all. If I need to learn a tune from a written source (say I have the tune in a book but no recording of it) I make a recording of myself sightreading the tune, put the sheet music away, and learn the tune by ear.
I pick up tunes very quickly by ear. At a session, if they play a new tune, I usually have 90% of it by the time they hit the third playing. But I won’t retain a tune I just hear/play once in my life, like that. To retain a tune I need to play it by ear several times.
Amen Richard.
Is it a chicken and egg thing? Surely music was played on bone flutes, long before a system for writing the tunes was even thought of. It would appear that playing music by ear is more natural to us than reading dots and squiggles, its all chinese to me.
Various blah that I no longer see the point of.
Typical response from someone who doesn’t read dots and squiggles! So what about those of us who see notation (yes, in real time!) when listening to unfamiliar tunes? Which I do sometimes (not all the time), just like I sometimes see words when listening to speech.
Reading music is honestly no harder than reading text. It’s just that fewer folk have stuck with it long enough to achieve the same fluency at it. In much the same way as many of us don’t stick with foreign languages long enough to be properly useful. But staff notation remains the best and most readable way to notate 99% of music (if it needs notating at all), with other ‘easier’ alternatives invariably proving less instant and more cumbersome to those properly versed in it. So of course the ability to play by ear is valuable, but likewise that to play from notation or transcribe what’s been learned by ear. And, while the one may be more associated with some traditions or genres than others, the ability to do both quite simply opens more doors in all directions. Nothing any more unnatural about reading music (despite the number of naturally great musicians who’ve never learned) than reading words (where you’ve also got whole traditions of great wordsmiths who couldn’t)…
Very good analogy there Peter!
Because I’m guessing that nearly all the people who denigrate music notation read and write language.
They accept all the limitations of written language, and use it every day warts and all, but use the presence of such limitations as the reason they don’t use written music.
They’re not bothered by any conflict that might arise from using both spoken and written language with equal fluency but take the position that with music ear-perception and eye-perception are necessarily at odds.
While I do read music, I have gotten most of the ITM tunes I play by ear, either from recordings or by sitting in sessions and catching them on the fly. I have no problem with supplying students with sheet music of the tunes I teach to help jog their memories of what we work on. Many who have had music training which relied solely on the dots are often in fear of not having sheet music in front of them when they practice or play. This can become an impediment to learning by ear. I often ask the most fearful of learning by ear how they learned the song “Happy Birthday” when they were kids. This is how we all learned songs as little kids, by ear. Developing learning by ear is less difficult to learn than learning to read music, which is like learning a language. It requires practice, as does any other skill. Locally, I have never been to a session where music stands are present, although I have heard this has been done some places. I strongly encourage ear training as a skill to be mastered, so one can eventually be able to catch tunes on the fly in sessions.
Sure, but we learn to mimic speech, understand it and generate it ourselves before we learn to read and write. We have evolved the ability to do that so it is ‘more natural to us’ than reading and writing text. Did we also evolve the ability to learn to sing songs like Happy Birthday ?
Not disagreeing with the language analogy but in both cases the notation is something that comes through education rather than ‘naturally’.
Any argument about cultural matters that appeals to nature is doomed to futility.
Any argument about cultural matters that ignores evolution is doomed to be …
… controversial.
The emergence of written language or musical notation are cultural processes, not evolutionary developments due to the selection of mutated genetic replicators by environmental forces. Pre-literate man was evolutionarily no different from us. I know because I live next door to one.
Fine. So taking the view that reading writing and playing music from notation are cultural what’s the problem with me supporting accordianstu’s suggestion ?
Unless you neighbour grew up in a pre-literate culture (rather than, say, in a community that rejected schooling) they are no better reference point, in this context, than those of us who who didn’t have the sort of music training that leads to the skills that Peter has. Peter already mentioned “whole traditions of great wordsmiths who couldn’t [read]”.
I think there’s something missing in the argument of “naturalness” in favor of ear-learning over paper; you still have to learn to do both. The difference is that one can learn to learn by ear on one’s own - it’s an innate capability, although probably not universally easy - but learning to read notation means you have to have notation in the first place, and usually a teacher, to learn from; an external method, if you will. Still, either way, ability at either involves the will to internalise and practice at the process before you can fly. I think “innateness” and “naturalness” are fine persuasive arguments when encouraging budding ear learners who are trying to learn that way, but that’s as far as it goes.
That said, while there’s no question that notation skill gives one the ability to immediately perform, ear learning by its very nature is memorisation. On the flip side, one can memorise from notation, but from what I’ve seen, it’s a longer process. And by the same token, learning a tune by ear is no guarantee that one will play better for it.
Of course reading music is like learning to read a language. I am not saying learning by ear is natural to some. I certainly hold no disdain for reading music. What I find with some individuals who only read music is the utter horror of turning over the music sheet on the stand and trying to play without it. They have gotten to a point that they feel the dots must be in front of them in order to play at all. They refuse to even try, saying they are not “any good” at learning by ear. This may be true if they can not hear music “in their head”. I usually find that this is not the case with these folks. I usually have a separate class time where I have them figure out how to play Mary had a Little Lamb or Happy Birthday (and other tunes learned before they learned to read) on their instrument without the dots. The talent of learning by ear is not “natural” with an instrument, but rather a skill that can be developed, as is reading music. What becomes automatic with either method is the ability to find the needed notes subconsciously by either looking at the dots or responding to the inner tune. When the fingers find their way without thinking, the skill has become ingrained. Either way can be learned with time and effort. Both are useful to competent musicians. Most tunes an ear player can pick up and play by the third time through it in a session. The “dots only” player must get the name of the tune so they can look it up on The Session or from some other source. A tune learned by ear seems to be more easily committed to memory. Some can memorize a tune from the dots as easily, but some seem to always need the dots in front of them in order to feel secure, whether they refer to them or not.
Nanohedron’s reply was posted while I was writing this and is saying much the same thing. I agree that and ear learner is often better at memorizing tunes. This is due to the extra step that reading imposes.
I think per the topic title, this is where we need to define what we mean by “learn”. For me, in the end it means “memorise”. 