Please don’t shoot… this is not a declaration of war, only an opinion. After going through the threads on this forum regarding learning whistle by ear vs. by reading sheet music. It seems that the majority favor the ear method with a lesser number either learning and playing by reading music or a reading/ear combination. I have to say from the start that I personally read and play directly from the music and could not imagine being able to enjoy whistle playing very much while hearing my own squeeks and bad notes trying to learn a particular song by trial and error. I would agree with the opinions regarding picking up the rythm and flow of a tune better by listening to other good players and trying to emulate the style. I have found that aspect of trying to play from music the most lacking , especially when I play a tune as written and it sounds little like how I have heard others play it. Recently though, I’ve noticed that it’s really pretty easy to just change the rythm of what you’re playing to suit how you “feel” it should sound like, ditto on the ornamentation that you would like to throw in there. It still is nice however to be able to practice for an hour and never play the same tune twice. It just makes the playing more fun. (imho) So sight reading and playing from the music is (at least for me) a nice way to enjoy playing the whistle and have a bit of fun doing it. If the future bring me into contact with others playing in a group session, I would think that by then the sound of the notes with there respective fingerings would be so burned into the brain that picking up tunes by ear would be a bit easier. I hope not to have offended anybody on this board because I know that playing stricktly by ear is a tried and true method that works for many. It just seems sensible that other newbies out there should feel free to learn in whatever way they want without feeling that only one way is best. Happy whistl’in… Robert
Enjoy your music.
If the majority favors something and a person likes something else, fine by me.
The nice thing about whistle music is the freedom. I am free from carrying music; I can rip of many tunes wherever I am! I learned most of these tunes from written music; I like that much better then the “trial and error” of fingering many wrong notes to find the right one. But even there, the whistle rocks. We CAN find the right notes by trial and error!
These are the times it’s best to be alone!
By ear is best, if you can manage it. But some of us aren’t near a session, or don’t get to hear a lot of music for a boatload of reasons. The more tools you have in your workbox, the better your chances of dealing with a problem. Reading music is an extra tool. ABC is an extra tool. Do what you need to do to get the music into your head and your fingertips.
Blow, ye whistler! Set the wild echoes flying!
Peter Laban has posted pictures of study materials commonly given out to students in Ireland. They seem to consist of a form of home-grown ABC format, where someone hand writes “A A A C D D” etc on a piece of paper.
I submit that this is a form of sheet music, perhaps less developed and more practical for folk music, but sheet music nonetheless.
I’m a big fan of reading music, as long as the traditional or semi-trad player keeps in mind that the written notes are just the bare skeleton of the tune. They’re a wonderful way to have access to thousands of tunes, but as they’re written they’re lacking the real music of the thing which only enters when the player has listened to a LOT of the real thing.
I think you can learn tunes from paper, but not music.
Yes. What he said.
My advice: DO learn to read music, and then use it as a secondary tool to your own ear.
Training your ear lends itself to wonderful improvisational skills. This learned skill becomes a really great tool for playing this type of music where improvisation is very useful and welcomed (that is in all the right places. Not to much improv otherwise you’ll lose the essense of the tune).
I think I agree with Peter. Learning the notes is an important part of learning a tune, and it doesn’t really matter much how you do that – sheet music is fine here. But learning the notes is only maybe at best a third of the process of learning the music of a tune. The stuff that really counts and makes the music special can only be learned by listening to good players playing that tune. The shadings of rhythm and accent, the variations, etc.
True story. A couple of years ago I was flipping through Trip to Sligo, looking for cool tunes. And right there in the section for my hero Peter Horan, I found a great one, “Andy McGann’s”. And what I immediately did was start an epic quest to find a good recording of it. I asked around several different places on the Internet looking for a better name for it. I bought several CDs that had recordings of the tune, but none captured what I liked about Peter’s version. I poured over hours of recordings of Peter Horan workshops trying to find it, without success. Finally I got him to play it for me this summer and recorded him. Now I listen to that recording 4 or 5 times a week. And in a couple more months, once it has soaked in properly, it won’t matter how I learn the notes, from the sheet music or using a slow-downer tool on the MP3, because I’ll have the essence of the tune. (At least as well as someone of my meagre abilities can pick it up from a single recording.)
Everybody needs to learn to listen. Reading notes doesn’t help with that.
Learning tunes by ear is a SKILL. Many people get confused by this and consider it a TALENT or GIFT, that some people have and others do not. And these people therefore feel absolved from needing to learn how to ear-learn. I had this misconception myself, and then realized that it was total crap.
Ear learning takes time and practice, but it is more efficient in many respects in the long run, and develops listening skills concurrently.
I like sheet music as an archival record of a tune or as a way to communicate a variation (in the absence of a recording), but that’s about it.
I remember when I first started getting into Irish music many years ago and I could not distinguish any tunes or parts in a set. If a musician or group played a set of three or four reels it all sounded like one “song” to my untrained ear. Now that I have spent years listening to the music, I can hear a set of tunes that I’ve never heard before and tell what kind of tunes they are (jigs, reels, etc.), I can distinguish between the A and B parts and I can tell where one tune ends and the next begins. I think these are the most basic and essential beginnings of the skill of listening to Irish music. After that skill is developed your mind will find it easier to pick up subtleties in pitch, tone, pulse, rhythm, ornamentation, etc. You get out of it what you put into it; the more you listen the more you’ll hear. I’m still (and perhaps always will be) on that journey.
I think that’s it in a nutshell.
I agree with this 100%
yup!
and the usual…
“the above is not genre specific”
I don’t think the issue is playing by ear VS reading music but rather playing by ear AND reading music. I am new to tin whistle but I can read music. On other instruments I play (like guitar) I can hear a note and know right away where it is on the guitar. I am not there yet on the tin whistle so seeing the music is a big help. I would imagine as I get better I will be using the sheet music less and less.
One other thing I have noticed in my short time with Irish music is that sheet music does not represent a tune the same way it does in a symphonic work. It’s more like a template of what the tune sounds like.
In the small repetoire of tunes I am learning to play, I try to find both the sheet music and an example of a player performing the tune. I listen to the player until I memorize the tune and can whistle it reasonably well. Then I take out the tin whistle and sheet music and try to make the whistle sound like what I hear in my head. Listening gives me the rhythm and ornamentation, and the sheet music give me where to put my fingers.
I hope this helps but I should add that I am a mere beginner and may be going about this all wrong. But it seems to work for me.
I agree with Peter. The brillant cellist Pablo Casals was noted as saying this of printed music “The black dots are just the pitches, the white page…that is the music.” This may seem shocking coming from a classical musician yet, many great musicians the world over, have shared this concept.
I have believed this issue transcends genre and culture. There abound no end of mechanical, lifeless renderings of music, even live, that are exercises in sheet music reproduction, not music. This rectilinear approach of never learning to put any of thought into or any of oneself into music, has been fostered by to too many in music education, and turned off too many people to learning music.
While the ability to read music is a very handy and important tool, ear training goes to far more than capacity to improvise. Ear training is essential to the development of any musician of any genre. The mind is another area. You have to be able to hear the music in your head too.
As teacher, I think ABC makes you think less in a linear and visual fashion, and focuses one to listen to what you are playing, because it is difficult to read it. Peter, nor anyone else, should not be faulted for using such things, the key lies in the importance you place on the written page or lack therein.
Nice comments people… I would agree also that sheet music helps with the bones of a tune , not the “essence” of a tune. However at the risk of getting philosophical here, I submit that that depends on what you think of when you think of a whistle. If you took a top notch flute player from a major orchestra and set a piece of music in front of him/her, I’m sure they could play it well and with feeling. (With a little practice obviouslly). But that is classical music… Now if one thinks of a whistle as an instrument for playing traditional Irish or other folk type music only, then I would agree that the Ear only or ear mostly method would definitely be best. I myself love many kinds of Celtic music and even classical music. I like to think of the humble whistle as a wonderful, simple musical instrument on it’s own right. If you told the classical flute player that they could only learn to play a tune, not to make music by playing from sheet music, they might be a bit insulted. There is no denying the historical fact that the whistle has had it’s most important history and use in playing traditional/folk music, but people make music because they enjoy it. It would be nice to think that lovers of the Irish/tinwhistle could take artistic expression in many ways and with many kinds of music… Now where can I buy tickets to that Vivaldi concert, you know, the one with the mixed section of Burkes and copelands in the front of the woodwinds section… Peace, Robert
As to the virtues whistle or of any other instrument, keep in mind this from noted box played and philosopher Paddy O’Brien:
“There are no bad instruments, just bad musicians…” The humble whistle is just as much an instrument in the right hands as a Amati violin can be. Instruments are but material vehicles for music.
For me, the issue is not that classical music is bad or unmusical. It is not a matter of genre. It is a matter of musicianship. Many professional classical musicians I know complain of this same issues; that too many of their colleagues and students are not hearing what they are playing and are merely reproducing notes and not feeling the music.
Music notation is a great tool, just as a brush is for painting. But no brush can magically elevate one’s abilities into a great artist.
Old Father Antonio would probably be more comfortable with trad music than you’d think. Were he alive today, Vivaldi would likely be appalled by the dour, feckless way his music is being played by most. In the same vein, years ago I came across a letter, in some tome from one of Mozart’s adult children to a family friend that said " I am glad that father is not with us to hear the cold, passionless way in which most render his music… poor father may be gone but his music breathes poetry yet."
I feel it can be a Yin-Yang thing. How much of the music can be on the page and how much is interpretation is an ongoing thing. I remember someone talking about when more white people with a more classical background started to participate in jazz, many African American composers were happy to have more musicians that tended to play something closer to what they had intended them to play, rather than loose what they intended in too much improvisation. Many great jazz musicians will tell you that good jazz is an intersection of classical and African American improvisational music. They need the freedom of improvisation and interpretation to give the music its spirit. But the careful attention to get that hard rhythm down just right from the sheet music of the greats of the past and the musical exercises to improve technique and the self-discipline and skill developed through attention to development and study of good technique and the emphasis on practice, all this they have borrowed from classical music, as well as all the music theory to understand what some of what is going on in the music, gives them the skills needed to bring to life what they hear deep down inside.