Question about learning, forgetting, learning again, etc

Whistle
1

OK, so the subject line is confused, but so am I. When I learn a new tune, I go through a period of getting it down fairly well at slow speed. Then, I’ll go through another period of having muddled fingers in passages that I did just fine in the day before. It seems to me that I’m going to have to play a tune many, many times just to get it down. I’ve read somewhere that I need to play a tune at least 100 times before it becomes mine.

I was just wondering if anyone else has a similar problem. I am learning by ear, a new experience for me, and backing it up with music. Right now I’m working out of Mel Bay’s 110 Ireland’s Best Tin Whistle Tunes, V. 1. They one I seem to have the most trouble with memorizing the muscle memory with is Father O’Flynn (p.22)

I also seem to need to keep playing it at a slow tempo, which is OK by me, but I keep losing it when I speed up a little. I agree that slow is good to learn, but am I rushing things by wanting to play fast(er)? Probably am.

Anyway, thanks for listening, and best regards to all.

Steve Mack

2

Your learning process seems much like mine. I have just grown to accept the fumbling stage. Generally, I start learning a tune one day…the next it seems like I have never seen the piece let alone play it…then suddenly on the third day it is back under my fingers again. Starting slow is good. Keep playing it that way until you start to anticipate what comes next without hesitation. When you start to speed up, maybe only do a notch or two on the metronome. I don’t speed up until I can play through four times comfortably at the same tempo. Everyone has their own “method of madness” when it comes to learning a tune, but that is my general process.

Good luck and just be patient!!

3

I think many of us tend to try to go too fast too soon. It certainly takes a number of repetitions to get a tune in your finger memory, and getting it wrong just slows the process down, or worse, you learn the tune wrong.

Once it’s REALLY in your fingers, after those 100 slow plays, you should be able to take it much faster with no problem.

Some tunes are easier than others. Tunes are built around runs, scales, arpeggios, and other bits, and it’s the other bits that cause the problems for me.

4

This is a problem. I tend to play my favourites and the most recent. The result is that some tunes that I used to really enjoy I no longer play. I think a 100 plays is a little conservative. My learning technique now is to play from the dots over and over til I get up to a reasonable speed and then I find it pretty easy to play by ear. I have a record of all the tunes I have learned together with opening notes, which I keep meaning to make serious use off but don’t get round to it. eg along with regular practicing toss some coins to decide which of the old ones to resurrect on that day.
The power law of practice is interesting. speed to carry out a task is proportional to a fixed negative power ofthe number of times the task has been performed. I haven’t found any research on finding the power for tunr learning. It’s a more accurate measure than the well known idea of diminishing returns. Clearly there is a limit to how fast a tune can be played.
25 seconds seems a good time to go for for a jig. Yes?

5

I think that having trouble with bits of tunes that you had the day before can be one of the side effects of learning from the dots. If you learn by ear, the tune very definitely gets in your head - sort of by definition before you can have it under your fingers. With the dots it doesn’t. You are basically doing two seperate things; trying to learn the tune and then trying to learn how to play the tune. If trying to get it under your fingers depends on an imperfect understanding of the tune (or imperfect site reading like mine) your fingers will struggle with it. If your brain stumbles over how the tune goes, even for an instant, your fingers will stumble immediately too. One more reason to learn by ear I suppose.

As to the speed and consistency of remembering tunes, memory studies strongly suggest that inconsistent repetition really helps with this sort of memorization. That is, it is better to play the tune for 15 minutes, play or do something else for a while, play it again for 5 minutes, play or do something else for a while, play the tune for 20 minutes, etc. etc. Your 40 minutes total on the tune there will be more effective than if you just went round the tune for 40 minutes straight. If you alternate it with other tunes, of course, it has the happy side effect of associating that tune with other tunes and thus bringing it to mind whenever you, or someone else plays one of those tunes, however, complete disociation with the task at hand (whistle playing) by doing something unrelated (the dishes) is also supposed to help.

As regards speed, a disciplined and gradual increase in speed is a useful way to go, but probably only after you have got the tune well in your head and under your fingers (I don’t really believe this 100 times stuff as, for me anyway, it varies wildly from tune to tune both in number of times played and time spent). The old metronome is really useful with this. Start at say 72 bpm for a reel. Play it 5 times say. turn the metronome up 2 notches, play it another 5 times - another two notches, another 5 times etc. up until you a speed you begin making mistakes and stop there for that session (or if you are really enthusiastic turn it back down and start working it up again). I usually finish with a relatively slow few times round it at a speed I am perfectly comfortable with to be sure I’ve well got it and to be sure that I’m getting good variation and solid ornaments and not pushing myself into a fast, but boring way of playing it.

6

Try listening (great if you commute to somewhere) to a tune over and over, with some iterances slowed down.

Also, lilt/sing the tune. This accesses a different part of the brain and helps the reinforcement.

Nice article in the current Scientific American on learning and the expert mind - the article concentrates on chess but extends to other endeavors.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=00010347-101C-14C1-8F9E83414B7F4945

7

Really enjoyed the article, at least the middle bit that actually talks about theories and findings. The modified chunk theory, particularly as regards variation of the template, really speaks to the way we vary tunes as well as the way we apprehend and learn at speed by ear. Hmmm…

Ever read Treitler’s Homer and Gregory? - fantastic notions of reconstruction, formula, memory etc as applied to orally transmitted artistic traditions (plainchant and epic poetry)

8

Jim,

Thanks for the link. VERY interesting article! Now I have to figure out how to apply it.

Reyd

9

Food for thought from this quote:

what matters is not experience per se but “effortful study,” which entails continually tackling challenges that lie just beyond one’s competence. That is why it is possible for enthusiasts to spend tens of thousands of hours playing chess or golf or a musical instrument without ever advancing beyond the amateur level

10

They say it takes two days after learning something for it to truly be ‘there’ (in your fingers, etc.) I’ve definitely found this to be true in my own playing and practicing, so your noticing it being better the third day makes sense! :slight_smile:

I usually rotate what I play or practice every other day, that way I don’t learn anything in ways I wouldn’t want to play it! :smiley:

11

One of the best tools to hear what is happening in your playing is to simply record yourself. Recording yourself as brutal as that may sound lends itself to so many possibilities for advancement.

If you can hear the mistakes on a very regular basis, you will find the most trouble that you are experiencing.

Since you are learning to play by ear, play along with the CD. Record yourself alone as well as you following the music. Any mistakes will show itself. If you realize that you are having the most trouble with timing, then learn to tap your feet to the tunes. As it was already suggested, play them slowly at first, then quicken the pace. Again, the recording device can be your best feedback.


Talbert St. Claire

12

are you “concentrating” on certain parts or passages of the tune, and not the entire thing? I found myself doing that, and it didn’t work.

What I’ve come up with now, if I need to concentrate on a certain spot, I ALWAYS play the part of the song leading into it when going over that spot. I found just concentrating on the “hard” part, I wasn’t really getting the tune as a whole, but only picking up bits and pieces. By working with the lead ins, and the parts afterwards, it really becomes a whole to me.

However - I also find for some strange reason I often can’t remember the A part of a song. I need to start with the B part, THEN I get the A part. I have no idea why this is! :astonished:

13

‘She will leave you and then, come back again.
A pretty girl is just like a pretty tune.’

Aint the brain fun? The hardware is too soft
to run the software.

Thanks for the helpful thread.

14

This is excellent as well as playing the tune(s) for someone - whether or not they are into the music or not. The ‘pressure’ to pull it all together, even for a non-trad person, extends your comfort zone and becomes helpful!

This is also used as a recording aid in the studio - in the headphones is some great musician that you play ‘along with’ and hopefully get a better result on tape.

15

I was also struck by this point. It’s similar to what I’ve heard about athletic training, such as weight lifting. To grow muscle, you have to push youself a bit beyond what you’re currently capable of. That spurs growth. Doing just (or less than) what you can will keep you in shape, but it won’t improve your shape (so to speak).

Walt

16

I was heartened by this part of the article:

‘‘Surely, they will say, it takes more to get to Carnegie Hall than practice, practice, practice. Yet this belief in the importance of innate talent, strongest perhaps among the experts themselves and their trainers, is strangely lacking in hard evidence to substantiate it.’’

I don’t think I have much natural talent in music, but I love it and I’m very persistent. So maybe there’s hope for me as a musician after all. :slight_smile:

17

I do 2 things:

  1. I practice finger speed and tempo by trying to play along with a tune I dont know. Dont care about melody, just think of reels, jigs, or whatever the beat is.

  2. Stop playing tunes and practice scales whenever I start muddling tunes until I settle down.

  3. Put the whistle down for a week or so if #2 doesnt work.

18

I learn a lot by ear but I also learn some from the dots. My first goal is to sing/lilt the tune from memory. I may sing it for a week or two before I try it on the whistle.

19

I suffer as well from the “forgetting” phenomenon.

Just reading all these replies has been very helpful! Thank you all!

Here’s my little drop in the ocean:

I have found learning from the dots and to targets to be very hard and not helping much. What I am now doing is just scales, arpegios and cut/tap/roll/cran exercises. This is helping enormously. So now, I am finding that once I hear a tune enough I can play it. In short, I am working on the vehicle, so when I know the road, I can drive it and the fingers will get the tune under them like the gravel under my wheels.

I had a similar thing on guitar. There is an exercise that was the bestest ever for guitar and I’m finding it really excellent on whistle as well. It goes like this:

Start on each note and do the following pattern:

1 2 3 4 5 4 3 2 1 2 3 4 5 4 3 2 1 5 4 5 3 5 2 5 1 5 2 5 3 5 4 5

It’s easy enough up to where you have to cross into the second octave. And this is where you need to do it most. The rules are = play at an even tempo, if you break tempo start again, start on D then E, F# G, A, B, C# all the same tempo, when you fumble and have to start again, slow it down a touch - a metronome is handy, when you do the lot without breaking tempo THEN turn the tempo up a notch. This exersize was invented by Andre Segovia - It works.

Ultimately, you think in melody and the muscles already know where to find the notes. This connects your creative heart to what you’re playing. With technique, there is a crossing point - you will pick up your instrument one day, and it will seem somehow smaller - Frank Zappa said “Little Guitars”.

The other thing, since we are talking about how the brain works is this - practice new stuff in a noisy environment, then refine it in a quieter one. Never practice in absolute silence - noise is essential for removing “local minima” where you think you know but you don’t. This also applies to listening to new tunes - have the TV or another piece of music playing as you listen to your target. Idealy you would gradually reduce the environmental noise with each listenning. Silence is what an audience gives you when you perform - that audience might be you or a microphone when you record yourself.

Be careful about “Associative” technique - if you key a string of tunes to an association, you will lose the lot if you lose the association. You could die by chunks. We are a continuum - keep your options organic. Policy works better than rule, this is because policy is based on natural justice and can be re-constructed - policy morphs and keeps its history, while bald rules exist as dogmatic symbols in void - they are subject to extinction - which is OK if you only need them once.