I am a very new player of the tin whistle (less than a month), learning to read music at the same time. I am working on Ryan Duns SJ video series, which I find to be very helpful. I keep reading that one really needs to learn to play by ear. I understand what that phrase means and would really like to be able to do that, I just don’t know how to get there! Anybody got any good suggestions on how to learn to play by ear?
My motivation is that there is an open session at a local Irish pub, that has invited me to play with them, (even after I told them I am just beginning to learn the whistle, they still wanted me to join them!). I am very anxious to join them. In order to start that, I feel that I need to learn at least one tune, and the fingering necessary to make different notes, as well as the note names (not necessarily in that order)! That way I can converse somewhat intelligently with the other musicians and have a basis for understanding.
Playing by ear comes with practice. It will come to you. I can’t really explain, but one day it will click and you will know the sounds of the notes and which ones to play. It is great to have a friendly, open session like that. I would take advantage and go. Knowing the tune is also essential in learning by ear. Also, bring a tape recorder, ask the group if it is okay to record for practice reasons only, then play along with the recorder at home. I can hardly read sheet music, but I find it very useful sometimes too. If I know a tune really well but just can’t figure it out due to trickiness, I go to a website or book with music notes. I just use them as a guidline to figure out how to play tricky parts. It will come to you though. Just listen to a lot of music and musicians play as much as you can. Keep an eye on the other whistle/flute players to see what their fingers are doing too, and when they take breaths. Good luck with that.
Main thing first is to just catch a tune, and the way to do that is to just keep listening - that’s it, really - and in time you’ll remember it and others. Memory’s pretty basic that way. When you remember a tune you can pull it out of your “filing system” and, thanks to memory, do a little work at putting it under your fingers. And that is playing by ear, basically.
Repeated hearing (listening is better, IMO) is a dirt-common element in memory; it’s our natural condition since birth, after all, so there’s no trick to it. And it helps to keep the mind uncluttered by devilish thoughts that it’s too hard, you can’t do it, you’re probably getting it “wrong”, etc. Just listen, nothing more, and the memory will do what comes naturally. It’s okay if you have to revisit hearing a tune now and again for memory purposes.
Don’t worry too much about getting it “right” when it comes to the melody line; in traditional music this stuff shouldn’t be a hard-and-fast “received pronunciation”. Everyone has slight variances, but those variances don’t change the tune’s being what it is at its root. If you have separate recordings of the same tune, odds are that this will illustrate what I’m talking about.
Try playing a tune that you really know well. Not necessarily an Irish tune: it can be anything. Mary Had A Little Lamb? We Three Kings? TV commercials? If you have a tune firmly in your head, you’ll find it much easier to play on a whistle, or any other instrument for that matter. The key is to learn the tune, then try to play it.
IMO you need to ask a friendly musician to play a tune, phrase by phrase, or bar by bar, or even note by note, slowly at a pace you can understand. Possibly a whistler, but then you can end up watching the fingers, rather than using your ears. Also, it wants to be a tune you ‘recognise’ preferably one you like and want to play. This process trains you up. Do this with a few tunes over the course of a few months… after a while you will start to get familiar with the process of finding the notes you hear, on your instrument. Then as time passes you will start to be able to do this as tunes are played live in sessions, at session speed. But to be honest, just pick up a few tunes from the dots to start, if you can read of course!. I know a number of great players who cant read!. Enjoy and good luck.
Remember that, while it may seem impossible (or maybe not) at this point, eventually it does get easier.
When I first started, it took a while to wrap my mind around the whole concept of learning to play ‘by ear’ (while I have played an instrument before, in band there is always music in front of you to learn from, so people who could learn something just by hearing it a few times astounded me. Still do, actually- it takes me more than a few times through to get something). I haven’t mastered learning tunes by ear yet, but have definitely improved, and I feel that I’m a better musician because of it, since I’m listening more instead of just hearing.
As a person who will never be able to read music due to various learning difficulties and a deformed puopil in my right eye that makes notes jump aroung on musiccal staves I learnt to play a harmonica by ear at the age of 7. I did this by learning the normal scale, do, ray, me fa.so, etc. and soon was able to play simple tunes. I did this with the recorder , (disasterous effects) so changed to whistles less that a year ago.
Learn the basic scale ( get a notation chart, great one on the C&F website. You should soon be able to find your way around the whistle, get one in D for Irish sessions or Bb for modal tunes.
I’m sure you will soon be playing along with the rest of the session players.
Yes. It’s the exact same thing that you did when you learned to speak as a child. The only difference being that as children, we didn’t have a desire to engineer our own learning process - we just did it. Like any language, the easiest way to pick it up is to immerse yourself in it. The necessary associations, and the ability to figure the rest out will present themselves with time - and by time, I mean practice, of course.
A good aid for a beginner wanting to learn a couple of tunes (imo) is Vinnie Kilduff’s DVD. It is a poor quality production, but it will get most beginners playing a common tune or two in no time, and it covers the basics of ornamentation. It’s also relatively inexpensive - anywhere from $10-$15 when I’ve seen it listed on eBay.
I just wanted to agree with Fiddlerwill. Learning tunes by someone playing it to you phrase by phrase or note by note is exactly how I learned to play violin. It’s the basis for a whole set of curriculum called the Suzuki Method.
I also agree with everyone’s comments about listening to a song over and over again. The more you do this, the easier it will get!
I guess that’s sort-a what I have been doing. I picked up some sheet music in tab from Whistle & Squeak for some hymns that i am very familiar with. I have been working on learning those. By associating the sounds I make with my whistle with the song that I hear playing in my head, I know when it sounds right and when it doesn’t (the sheet music is helping me find the notes faster). It also is helping me learn the names of the different notes that I can make with my whistle. Learning to play a song, that I already know vocally, on an instrument, is certainly easier than learning a new song from sheet music. It just takes time to become familiar enough with the whistle to know where to find, and how to play, the sounds I want to hear. Practice, practice, practice. I have seen progress already, in the little time I have been playing. I really am enjoying learning how to play! I am looking forward to sitting in on a session and being able to play some simple tune and learning from the other musicians there.
Once you know your way around the whistle a bit more the learning by ear will click in.
Also, if you don’t already know the trad tunes you are hoping to play then you are not only attempting to learn by ear but learning the tunes to start with - that’s two tricks instead of one - don’t be hard on yourself.
I bet you can already play by ear. Many people can pick out Christmas carols easily because they are familiar simple tunes. They don’t need to see the notes written down to know they are playing the right ones.
If you don’t have a person handy to play tunes for you phrase by phrase really slowly, then record some off a CD or youtube, and slow them down on your computer (using audacity.sourceforge.net which is free). Then use the software to make a loop of a few notes and play along with it until you figure it out. Repeat as necessary and eventually you’ll get the whole tune.
While you are learning the basics of the whistle it could be helpful to visit the session anyway. If you listen to the tunes they play there again and again, you will find, that you have them in your head and maybe singing it one morning. This is the moment to learn it on the whistle. It’s very easy then. I use sheet music only to make sure, that I learn the tune right. In the beginning I sometimes was to fast and learned the tune the wrong way. It’s very hard then to get it right again. But you can use a record for this as well. I often take a record with my mobile phone, when I hear something interesting. Not a good quality, but enough to remember.
I find that most people who learn just by ear in sessions tend to not play very well. It seems players like this never really know exactly what they are playing, where they’re going. Even the best ear player/learner I know takes mp3’s and uses a computer app Slow Downer, slowing a tune way down so he knows exactly what notes he will play when–not guess work, not mush, not sort-of-knowing the tune/sort-of noodling. I’ll listen to tunes over and over and not fully get it until I write it out note for note in notation on staff paper. Some of the best players I know take a recording and write it out in the same way. Just learning by ear in sessions takes years and years; if you have that amount of time to learn the basic tunes, fine. For me, I like to use learning accelerators, e.g. slow downer, notation, teacher, etc.
When I started learning my ear I threw myself straight into the water, starting on fiddler Tommy Peoples and masterful tin whistling by Paddy Moloney and Sean Potts on their duet album. Some recordings of Sligo player Seamus Tansey and Clare player Willie Clancy was also part of my listening regime, and mind you with such recordings from the 60s and 70s makes learning by ear much more difficult than just learning from modern recordings for a beginner. I have had music experience prior to starting on ITM but I was told that trad is quite different from most other genres of music, so my ear for music is already there but I did not rely on my music experience to aid me in my learning. So, my persistence and intensive study has paid off much for me. Not only have I learnt to play the whistle and flute well in just one year, I have also gained a greater and deeper appreciation for ITM. I made my first post on C&F thinking that trad will just be another kind of music I’ll play while I focus most of my energies on learning the music I am already familiar with. Now, I have become a serious trad player and not someone who just learn a little smidgin of Irish music and be content with that.
With more months of learning by ear, I noticed that I have a way on learning tunes. When I have a certain CD or a digitized record I would listen to them again and again and again, and after a while I find some tunes which I really like to listen to. Soon I’ll find myself trying to play them out on my whistle and if I stick to it, I eventually end up learning the tunes. Also, I discipline myself by not slowing down tunes most of the time to train my ear to pick up details and nuances even in fast playing. When I do slow down recordings, it’s due to Seamus Tansey flute playing where certain parts can be difficult to learn because of his mesmerizing running notes and octave shifting. You don’t have to stick to fast playing; stick to doing it the way you are comfortable with.
I don’t know whether my music experience had anything to do with my speed of learning, but my personal opinion on learning by ear is to just do it.
P.S. Pardon me for my low post count; I don’t usually post on C&F but I do read it quite a bit.
