A bit of background first: I’ve been playing the whistle for nearly a year now, having received a Clarke Original as a Christmas present. Started learning from a cheap ‘learn to play the whistle’ style book with CD, then found Ryan Dunn’s series on Youtube helpful.
Since then I’ve been playing a Dixon Trad, and as of 2 days ago my new Burke!
I play the piano so I’m used to reading sheet music, and up until now that’s been the way I’ve learnt new tunes.
Having read about all the pitfalls of relying on sheet music, at least alone, on here I’d like to try and get away from the habbit.
I was in Pakistan earlier in the year and took my whistle with me, several times there were groups of people playing drums and harmonium asking me to join in, but of course I had no sheet music for the songs… I’d love the freedom of just being able to pick the thing up and play.
Anyway… I’ve started and seem to have no problem picking up theme tunes, carols, anything basic.
As soon as I come to jigs, reels, and the like though I’m totally lost. They are so fast paced, and even if I slowed them down with software all the ornamentation and subtle changes throw me. If I’m fortunate I may get the notes to form the rough outline, but all the parts in between seem to merge together.
Even Michael Eskin’s Trad Lesson series, which is so slow and simple seems so tedious.
Any tips? Or is it just a case of keep persevering until it clicks?
When you’re new to Irish music you will need to spend a lot of time listening (even when you’re not trying to play along) to the music before you will really know what you’re hearing. You’ve heard Christmas carols your whole life and therefore have a sense for the basic structure of them, where the melody is going and sometimes even what to expect. In many cases we can come up with the melody for these tunes even in the absence of aural input- just from memory and repeated exposure alone.
This familiarity brings these elements together and gives your ear the ability to discern specifically what you’re hearing. The other part of it is being able to quickly replicate what you’re hearing on your instrument and this too just takes practice. Right now you’re used to seeing the notes on paper and putting your fingers to it quickly but you now have to get that coordination between your ears and fingers. Jigs and reels are full of 8th and 16th notes which is a lot more for your ear to pick up in a short space of time as compared to, for example, Christmas carols which are less intricate. Think about when you learned to read sheet music. It happened very slowly at first. Sheet music is static and waits for you to decipher it, allowing you to go at your own pace; however, when listening, music is perceived in time (rather than space) and therefore you have to keep up with it. This is where learning to play by ear is more challenging than learning to sight reed (in my opinion).
These are all things that will take work and time to accomplish and there is no shortcut or quick route to get you there faster so just keep at it and it will come in time.
They offer a basic core repertoire of tunes played very slowly, at a moderate tempo and at full speed so you get to hear what it should ultimately sound like and then can go back and work through the slower versions.
Be careful that you don’t allow your ears to just be influenced by what is convenient. I listened to a few clips on that site and I wouldn’t cite them as a good source for learning to play Irish music; the playing style doesn’t sound very Irish to my ear. I don’t know who the players are or if they post on this board so I hope I’m not offending anyone. Even though it’s a little more work, I’d focus more on just listening to really good players, no matter what speed they’re playing at. There are plently of great pipers out there who record at a nice relaxed tempo without sacrificing good rhythm, articulation and phrasing. Beyond that there are free ways of slowing down an MP3 file (Windows Media Player, for example) to help with the speed but still have quality music in your ear. Your playing would be better for seeking out something like that. Again, I’m not trying to start any arguments but if someone had told me this six years ago I’d probably be much happier with my playing today.
Be careful that you don’t allow your ears to just be influenced by what is convenient. I listened to a few clips on that site and I wouldn’t cite them as a good source for learning to play Irish music; the playing style doesn’t sound very Irish to my ear. I don’t know who the players are or if they post on this board so I hope I’m not offending anyone. Even though it’s a little more work, I’d focus more on just listening to really good players, no matter what speed they’re playing at. There are plently of great pipers out there who record at a nice relaxed tempo without sacrificing good rhythm, articulation and phrasing. Beyond that there are free ways of slowing down an MP3 file (Windows Media Player, for example) to help with the speed but still have quality music in your ear. Your playing would be better for seeking out something like that. Again, I’m not trying to start any arguments but if someone had told me this six years ago I’d probably be much happier with my playing today.
Yes, always an awkward moment, that. I would agree that you might be a bit careful with that site. (You have to commend the effort and the dedication, and it’s not horrible or anything, but it’s not phrased right and whoever it is can’t play rolls.)
If you’re looking for stuff to play along with, I’d recommend Foinn Seisún 1-3 put out by Comhaltas. Lot’s of tunes, sounds like a session, speed isn’t insane, and you’ll get the phrasing. Nothing brilliant but you don’t necessarily want brilliant at this point. You want steady and solid. You’ll still need to slow it down initially. Thing to remember is that even just getting 3, 5, 10 tunes under your belt will make things seem a lot easier. If that already seems like a chore, then perhaps there is another musical style out there that excites you more.
I’d sincerely recommend sticking to Foinn Seisiún. Ryan Duns is fine and there are one or two other sites, but, um, not Toraigh, IMHO. You won’t get the sound of the tunes in your head.
Yep, agree with Bloom and Ben. Fionn Seisiún is good. Those Toraigh recordings have a strong “American accent”.
It’s like learning a foreign language from a non-native speaker with a faulty accent. You may get the gist, and it’s a start if that’s all you have. But there are plenty of native (and nearly-native) speakers of ITM around as models.
The Toraigh recordings are part of the unfortunate trend of anyone with an internet connection thinking they can give lessons. Youtube is another site full of players who can barely play themselves giving “lessons”. Avoid. Fionn Seisiún looks like a decent place to start.
I don’t know about slowdown software. I’ve never used it and when I started playing Irish music it didn’t exist. I did have a tape recorder that could be set at half speed and that was very helpful sometimes. Interesting that at half speed the various melody instruments, say the fiddle, flute, and pipes had more tonal differentiation and I could hear which instrument was doing what.
But the vast majority of my tunes were learnt at full speed, either off albums or from live playing.
I think that, in the main, the skill of picking up tunes at full speed comes from doing it a lot. Put on an album and just hack away.
Rolls, rather than being an “ornament” that brings confusion, are your best friend, because they represent a spot where the melody parks for a bit; a rest amongst the torrent of notes.
Here’s something pulled from a post I wrote a while back:
The first thing my ear latches onto is the places the tune “parks” or rests, these usually being “long rolls”. In jigs the long roll occupies an entire beat, so that my first impression of the first four bars of a certain jig might be:
6/8 | ? / A roll | ? / G roll | ? / A roll | ? / rising scalar triplet |
Then I’ll realise that the first ? is some sort of jumping around in a D chord, the second ? is jumping around in an E minor chord, and the third ? is the same as the first.
This “jumping around” is some sort of inversion of an arpeggio… after the rest of the people at the session play through the tune a time or two I’ll realise that the first is
AdF# and the second is GBE giving the first part of the jig Sport:
6/8 | AdF# / A roll | GBE / G roll | AdF# / A roll | GEE / c#de |
In a reel, a long roll either occupies the first three notes or the last three of a group of four. Oftentimes the LAST thing I pick up in a certain reel is what that last note is.
In order or perception, I usually first hear rolls, then arpeggios, then scalar runs, these all being the main bits or motifs that define the tune. Last to be perceived by me are the little filler or transitional bits, which might well vary from player to player anyhow.
I should add that in addition to long rolls, arpeggios, and scalar runs, another stereotypical motif that often occurs in Irish reels is the “rocking” motif.
Some are more or less a form of arpeggio:
D2F#D ADF#D
E2GE BEGE
G2BG dGBG etc etc
some use the fifth and sixth or seventh above the root:
D2AD BDAD
E2BE dEBE
G2dG eGdG
some use the third and fourth above the root:
F#2AF# BF#AF#
B2dB eBdB
Long rolls can be thrown in to these situations either as a variation or maybe as a particular player’s version of the tune:
So G2BG dGBG can become G~3B dGBG or G~B3 d~B3 etc.
As others have mentioned, the trick (well, one of many) with Irish music is getting down those motifs. You’ll find yourself finishing tunes you don’t know simply because you can hear where it is going. Personally, I use slowdown software. Be sure you know the tune that you want to learn. Then loop the first bar. Play it until you know it fairly well. Do the same with the second bar etc. Once you have the first part of the tune down, play that over a few times. Now do the same with the second part. By the time you finish the second part you’ll have forgotten the first part so go over that again. Now put it all together. Increase the speed once you are playing smoothly. Play along with the recording until you feel you have it then start playing without the recording. Now you can start playing with some variations and the fun begins.
I find using this method I can learn a tune in an hour or two and once it’s stuck in my head it’s in there for good.
Everyone learns differently but that is the method that I find works best for me. It’s also how I learn tunes when I’m working with my instructor minus the looping bit.
Beginner comment: This sort of approach suites me. http://www.mattandshannonheaton.com/totm.html - only the archived tunes seem to be working for me at the moment though, and at least one broken link in them. I normally use a ‘do it yourself’ version of it much as misterpatrick suggests, but phrase at a time rather than bar at a time.
Learn to hum the tune. Seriously, the better you can hum or whistle (with your lips not a tinwhistle) something, the better you can play it. You’ll also find yourself ornamenting as you hum adding things like grace notes and rolls without thinking about it. That’s probably why people pick up familiar tunes faster. They have the music in their head already so translation to the instrument is easier.
Once you can do that, it’s much easier to just play something on really just about any instrument I would think but I’ve found it to be true of tinwhistle, flute and guitar.
The only caveat is that sometimes you hum something that’s not quite what is on paper if you look at a song so you may end up learning a song incorrectly but it’ll probably still sound good even if it’s not note-for-note correct.
I know a lot of people say to play the song slow and I agree with that to some extent but really, play it slow to start and to make it exact but make sure you are listening to it at normal speed otherwise the song in your head isn’t going to be the song you want to play if that makes sense. You don’t want to turn a jig into a march or a march into a slow air.
I still have a lot of problems around that in my playing and it’s taken me a long time to realize that is one of my problems. Get it set right in your head and everything else will fall into place.
Oh yeah, one more thing, this was a tip from Bill Ochs which it took me a while to figure out what he meant. Learn to lilt songs. It’s sort of like the humming thing but more like making specific noises to the rhythm of the song. Like when you don’t know the words to a song so you sort of make a sound that sounds like what a word at that point in the song should sound like I guess.
but really it does help you learn where the rolls and such are in a tune…
I know sounds a little silly when you first hear it but really it’s sort of like listening to someone singing scat to a jazz number or something. Just by comparison here’s some Ella Fitzgerald doing some scat jazz http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbL9vr4Q2LU
I’m not good at it but I do it sometimes when I am learning a tune. It does help.
What really helped me was to pick up a fiddle or mandolin and attend a local old-time jam. Yes the music isn’t the same at all, but it’s easy to learn and the old-time jam is welcoming to beginners. They expect you to learn the tunes on the fly. The tunes are easy to learn. They’re American tunes and the melodies are really predictable to me. There are less notes than Irish tunes, but enough notes that I was forced to learn an outline first, then fill in with more notes as I went along. I learn everything at full speed, too.
Doing this was tremendous help in learning to break the association between sheet music and playing tunes, and between thinking a tune = every single note exactly as written or heard.
Now when I go to the Irish session I sometimes find myself playing tunes I’ve never actually tried to learn at home. I just know the tune in my head and it can come out my instrument. There are now several tunes I’ve never seen the sheet music for that I can play, and whenever they have the tune learning portion of the session, while it used to be a struggle to hear something and repeat it back, I have no problem at all with it anymore. It is also easier to “fix” a tune on the fly if I learned a different version than what they are currently playing.
It’s kind of a roundabout way of doing it, but you don’t have to stop learning Irish tunes while you are doing it. If you don’t have an old-time session, you might try seeing if it works with youtube videos or recordings or even with other genres. I have found that having all the people around me and being able to watch fingers and stuff has been part of the learning process as much as just the sound.
What do you guys think about Johnathan looking into one of the cd sets sold on Homespun tapes like Irish Pennywhistle by Cathal McConnell? Do you think this would help him or any person trying to get back into playing the pennywhistle? The reason I ask that is because I am looking into that set because I too would like to learn by ear but at times have a little trouble with it and have a program that I am going to try on some of my Irish Whistle cds. It slows the music down but keeps the same pitch. I am not sure but figure I will do what it takes because I really want to succeed at this. Any advice for us would be greatly appreciated. Hang in there Johnathan I am sure your will find something that will help you. I know for sure because I am looking too.
Have a great day.
