I’m a beginner with the whistle and find that to learn a new tune, even one that has a good recording easily available on Youtube, I cannot pick it up by ear.
I need to have a copy of the sheet music (dots) in front of me in order to become familiar with the basic notes, then to apply the rythm from the recording. Many times the recording differs from the dots quite significantly and in more than just ornamentation. Of course the player may have learned a variation of the tune that is not the same as my dots or have changed the tune to his/her liking. This is fine, in fact it is part of the appeal that player can change a tune to suit their taste and abilities, I hope to do the same one day.
I have tried to learn/copy a very simple and slow tune, only to find that I am lost after the first few notes. With the dots as only a guide, I would be more able to cope. My point here is that I think that one has to be a fair musician to be able to pick up a tune by ear.
Is it normal to improve this learning ability as one gets more used to the whistle?
I hope to attend a local session (for the first time) but am put off by comments I have read along the lines of…“don’t take sheet music to a session!!!” I guess that I could learn a few session favourites at home well enough to follow the session, before I turn up…but even then I like to have some dots to give me a start into the tune…Maybe it’s an age thing?
It is perfectly normal to develop the ability to learn by ear. In my opinion you’re going the right way, start with dots and getting the rythm by ear, in no time you’ll develop your own way to memorize the tunes.
As for the session I strongly recommend that you go to your first mainly to listen and talk to the more experienced players, you can even ask them if it’s ok to take music sheet on a next session.
I suppose web sites like TheSession which have music to thousands of session tunes have changed the way session players learn, but traditionally Irish session players learned their music by ear.
It’s a skill which can be learned like any other, I suppose.
Now that we have YouTube you may be able to find a number of slow tunes where you can clearly see the player’s fingers. I find it much easier to pick up a tune from a whistle, flute, or pipe player because I can watch their fingers and know exactly which notes they’re playing. Anyhow maybe if you can find a number of videos of whistle players playing airs where you can see their fingers and just try playing along over and over you’ll get the hang of it.
I too came to Irish music as a person who was used to depending on the dots and it took a while to develop that other way of learning, of forgetting about dots and really listening and remembering.
I find that I learn tunes faster, and retain them better, if I learn them by ear. For whatever reason “remembering” isn’t a part of my brain’s dot-reading approach and I can sightread a tune over and over again and not remember it later. But if I listen to the tune and learn it by playing along I have it memorised fairly quickly. So, if I need to memorise a tune I only have in sheet music form I’ll tape myself playing it (sightreading the dots) then put the sheet music away and play along with the tape.
Your ability to learn by ear will definitly improve as you practice. You ear can already hear the tune and, with a little practice, you can hear when you are and when you aren’t playing the same note as the tune. Now the big step is for your fingers to go where they need to go to make the right note come out. As you practice, your fingers will develop the ability to go where they need to go.
It’s an age thing only if you let it. Anyone can learn music. We old f**ts take a little longer but we can still get it.
For the record, I’m an old f**t who is just now figuring out how to play along with a tune I don’t know. I’m getting there.
Not necessarily. You didn’t pop out of the womb reading sheet music: you learned it. What did you have before that? Your ear, your natural condition; as a child, how many songs could you recall at will from ear memory? Scads. I wager that even now you memorise songs without consciously realising it.
Admittedly Irish traditional music puts forth particular challenges not to be found in the usual run of popular music. In memorising Irish tunes I look to certain aids: first and foremost hearing past the ornamentations and getting the “bones” of the tune, and this by noting and recognising themes that recur throughout the tradition, nonstandard or surprising quirks in a tune, overall “topography”, hearing melodic runs as “chords” in time, noting repeated signature themes in the tune itself, and so on. Some tunes are more readily memorable than others and require little effort to memorise, but, for me, ear-learning Irish music in general is often a very hands-on process, if you’ll excuse the awkward metaphor, although the process has become more automatic and unconscious over time.
I don’t know about “normal”, but I think it’s possible, given that ear memory is your natural default condition, and wherever its level of ability is, even if it may have atrophied, it stands a good chance to be exercised into shape like anything else. Continued effort, particularly in actively observing the tune’s nature, should get you there. I think it shouldn’t matter what instrument you play, by the way, although I’ve encountered folks who claim to have more difficulty hearing a tune on certain instruments than others, and I don’t know why that should be. It may be they are confusing a player’s ornamentation and expression with the instrument itself. Personally, I think that one should normally be able to train one’s ear to hear tunes well, if they’re well-played, from all instruments if that’s an issue. I don’t accept, in most cases, the idea that memory and hearing are set in stone and that’s that.
No, it’s a training thing. You were trained, and trained yourself, to go by notation. You can train yourself to redevelop - or at least further develop - your ear memory, too. But if you are to be committed to developing your ear memory, you need to keep away from the dots for a time, not because they’re “bad” (they’re not), but because old go-to habits will trip you up and make the process even more difficult than it need be.
Instead of notation, I would recommend you bring a recording device to sessions to help with developing ear memory if you’re to be serious about getting there. Dive in, and get to swimming!
Even though I learn tunes from the dots, Im still learning by ear! I listen to the tune that I play and when I can remember the tune thats it. Its like having a teacher who plays the notes slowly and as many times as I like.
You really need, IMO, to have a whole bunch of tunes, that you can play by memory before being tempted to join a session. But then there are sessions, and sessions. just ask about and perhaps you can start your own kitchin session with some other beginners, dots can be welcome if its your session in your house!
When I first started playing the whistle, three or four years ago, I was also stuck to my sheet music. Like you, I used the sheet music to get the notes and recordings to get the rhythm. However, I already had experience picking up a tune by ear on my guitar. The challenge for learning tunes by ear on the tin whistle was that I was unfamiliar with the instrument. As I got more comfortable with the whistle, though, learning tunes by ear got progressively easier. It’s like a second voice. Unless you’re tone deaf, most people can sing or at least hum a song right after hearing it because they’re so familiar with the way their own voice works. It’s the same with the whistle. The more you play the more you instinctively recognize the notes coming from another instrument and are able to replicate that.
Welcome to C&F. I’m an ear learner too (mostly) IMO probably the reason it’s harder for you to learn by ear right now is because you are new to the whistle. Once you develop some chops and know your way around the whistle you’ll hear a passage & be able to knock it down quickly once you have the necessary chops to play it. That’s been my experience anyway. I use notation some & ABC but mostly try & play along to youtube videos. Just keep finding songs you like & learn them and before you know it you’ll be all over it.
I have found that if I am learning a tune from another player I can learn note by note, but if I’m learning it from a recording on my own it works best for me to listen to it enough times that it is firmly in my head, so that I can hum or sing it. It does become easier with practice.
I’ve been trying to learn pieces by ear from songs on You Tube and I find it to be an impossible task. When I was young, I could never remember tunes by ear. I know some people can learn by ear, but I think most need sheet music. I’ve played Japanese music for over 20 years. And I know many songs by reading the sheet music in Japanese notation. I could never have learned all those songs by ear. I use the sheet music as a guide while I’m playing the piece. With sheet music one can learn the subtleties and the different ornamentation. It’s very difficult to learn all of that by ear. I wish there was a program that you can play a piece say from You Tube and the sheet music appears. And then I could easily transpose it into Japanese notation. I find that Japanese notation is much easier to learn than Western notation. The music is written vertically and from right to left. So easily.
It helps considerably to slow the tune down, or to listen to a slow version of it, of course.
Then the trick is to divide and conquer. That is, you take a phrase and learn it methodically:
play the recording of the passage,
play the passage on the whistle as best you can, repeat the recording at that point, play the passage, repeat the recording,
and so on till you get it. Then move on to the next passage. Fine if this takes several
days. Patience. It does get easier.
Always be ready to divide into smaller bits–the change between two notes, say.
Recording, whistle, recording, whistle.
Sheet music and ABC notation are really only methods for playing music. For many people they do not work as methods for remembering music. In an aural tradition such as this the remembering part is kind of a core element. I always hear people say “I can’t learn by ear” or “I have to use sheet music” and that is more of an attitude or temporary circumstance than it is a handicap (I say this because it is something that can be overcome with time and effort).
When I first started playing the whistle it would have been correct for me to say “I can’t play the whistle”. When I began learning to read sheet music (or the English language for that matter) it would have been correct to say, “I can’t do this”. The fact is you have to learn the instrument, you have to learn to read music, and you have to learn to use your ear.
Not everyone has the experience with the music, their ear and their instrument to be able to pick up a tune on the fly. This takes much time and practice. When you want to learn a tune by ear, what you need to do is to listen to that tune over and over again. Before you sit down to actually learn it you should be able to at least hum along with a recording of it. You have to know the tune as well as you know the happy birthday song or twinkle little star; you may not be able to play them on your whistle at this moment, but you know the tunes in your head. At that point you can sit down and figure the tune out by ear, one phrase at a time. Even then it will take some time and replaying the same parts of the tune over and again until you can get that one note that is escaping you. As you learn more tunes this will happen quicker and quicker for you and I guarantee that you will truly memorize the tunes in a way that you will never experience with sight reading.
I would have forgotten a thousand tunes by now if I didn’t have the ability to pull up the notation, play the first five notes, and say “Oh yeah, that one!”.
Yo, I’ll let this go. I’m just sayin’, “Standard is the best notation, ever!”.
Thanks for your comments and good ideas. Seems then, like many things, as I become (should write “if I become” but I am positive) better with my whistle, then maybe I will be able to pick up tunes more easily.
As some have mentioned, I am already catching phrases, but have problems in catching certain notes/rolls/cuts etc. Perhaps as I get better with ornamentation, I will be able to recognise and understand how to replicate it, or not worry about it and stick to the bones of the tune and work on my own ornamentation once I’ve caught the tune…
Thanks for your encouragement.
PS, I am a beginner and I don’t much care how long it takes to learn whilst learning is fun and rewarding, but things just got a whole lot more inspired since I actively tried to master a few slow airs. I bought the book (should have really got the CD version, really…) and seeing how low whistles seem to suit many “slow airs”, I bought a Dixon G. Oh mommy!!
I can’t put it down, can’t sleep for hearing wonderful tunes that I am struggling with…It’s a wonder that I find a little time to get some beer down…
Tunes first, by ear. If you are very new to this.
Learn ornamentation second or in parallel.
Practice ornaments separately. Later fit them into the tunes.
It’s very hard to grasp the ornaments at first by ear.
Methodical, patient practice.
Now if we’re talking about trad Irish jigs and reels, you’ll soon discover that they’re mostly cobbled together out of stock phrases, stock motifs one could say.
That’s why people who’ve played this music for a time, and especially people who have a large number of tunes memorised, can pick up new tunes by ear quickly. They don’t need to remember a long continuous stream of uniquely occuring eighthnotes (which is how an Irish reel or jig can seem to someone new to the idiom), rather they just need to learn the unique sequence of stock phrases which comprise a particular tune.
When I’m picking up a tune it’s the long rolls that I usually latch onto first. Rolls are easy because they’re a resting point, a static point, a place where the melody parks for three notes.
Then perhaps it’s the arpeggios and scalar runs.
So say I’m hearing a certain jig for the first time. What I hear is
ascending D major arp > middle D roll > descending A major arp > asc run > high f# roll > high G roll > desc A major arp > desc run
rather that a linear sequence of disembodied notes
DF#A dc#d eC#A ef#g f#f#f# ggg eC#A GF#E
not that I would pick up everything I mentioned on the session’s first playing of the tune: first I would hear where the long rolls sit, then probably hear the arps, and have to fill in the runs etc on the 2nd or 3rd time through.
I find that it’s the fisrt couple of bars of each section that I need to remember. Once I get going I’m OK. So I’ve got a small pocket book with just the first few notes of tunes written in. It’s not too embarassing to take into sessions with me and it’s especially confidence giving if I am thinking about starting a tune off.
