Hello all! I’ve been lurking on and off for awhile now and decided to join the fray. A little history: I’m not musically inclined. Dropped out of chior in the 6th grade when my voice cracked. Have always wanted to play an instrument, tried guitar, thumbs down (my thumbs).
I found that I absolutely in all descriptions of the word ADORE the bagpipes. I decided that I can learn this. Decided I needed to start smaller. Hence begins my love affair with the Tin Whistle. I have been practicing off and on for about 3 months. I can play most simple music as long as the notes (letter form) are present. After a rather windy monolouge I get to the point.
What do you feel is the best way to learn to read music while playing. I find that if I write the notes in I still read the letter instead of the notation. Any help would be appreciated.
P.S. I already have 2 clark sweet tone D’s and a Susato D.
Welcome!
Same here. I still count how many lines up from E. I learned to play by ear instead.
If you are comfortable learning that way, go for it. There are plenty of tools to slow music down to make it enjoyable.
First welcome to the board. If you have been lurking you know that all whistle players are “different”. Listen to everybody’s advice and then go and do what you want.
Of course you know everyone is going to tell you the best way to learn is by ear. I would suggest that if you want to play from sheet music that you learn to read the music. It doesn’t take long to learn. If you write in notes you are just duplicating the information that is there. If you use tablature you will find that it is to slow because it takes longer to recognize and act on the tablature. That said try learning a few tunes by ear you might surprise yourself.
If you really want to learn to read music the easiest way is probably to take a transcription of a (really) simple song and try to play it. Every time you don’t know what a note is look it up from some sort of reference sheet, and eventually you should (I was able to, fairly quickly) pick up on what’s what. You can use the basic tricks as well, for example learning where the D’s are and counting from there. If you try enough it just sort of sticks on you.
A word of warning though, reading Irish music isn’t of much value if you don’t already know what a song sounds like. Almost all of a song’s character is in the little things (tounging, length of notes, grace notes, etc) which you can’t get from a transcription. As such, you’d probably do well to figure out how to learn by ear, since it forces you to know exactly how a song should sound before you can even start to play it (for me, at least, that’s a good thing).
Good luck figuring it out! The only other advice I can give you is to try and find a teacher-having someone show you what you’re doing wrong makes everything so much easier.
If you do wish to learn the notes and a little music theory (and like to learn from books) I would suggest a book called “Practical Theory Complete” by Sandy Feldstein. I’ve used it with several students and found that it worked well.
Find a maker and get it on order, then learn the music on the whistle while you are awaiting the beast.
My $6.50 tin whistle led to my habit of obtaining and trying to play the uilleann pipes.
Life was much simpler with a whistle and a set of bones…
I can either read music (limited to treble cleff, either none, one, two or 3 sharps only) or play, but not at the same time. I can’t “hear” the dots, I have to translate to the fingering which can take me some considerable time.
As the others have said, learn the music by ear as the dots are generally the “skeleton” of a tune with all the “neat stuff” you are hearing and enjoying left out.
If you choose the uilleann pipes, NPU has excellent videos to help.
Get all the CDs with solo playing of the instrument(s) you choose and “train your hearing” with them.
I have found it helpful to transcribe a tune myself, however, when there is some “neat stuff” I can’t figure out by ear. I use slowing down software and transcribe all the grace notes as well. Once I have it correctly notated, I it seens as if I can usually play the tune without the music. I then give it away and try to make the tune “mine”, using what I learned.
If you do the letters that is more than half the battle. The acronym FACE helps many beginners. It is the four blank lines on the staff starting at the bottom. From there you can fill in the other letters and move on. Five minutes of practicing this everyday for three weeks (without written letters) and it will probably be second nature.
I ignore the letters completely. All fingers down is the note below the bottom line. If the next note is a line and a space higher, I lift the bottom 2 fingers. I just move up and down the scale along with the notes.
If I use a whistle in another key, I play the same progression and the notes come out in the other key.
It may help, since you’re trying to learn to recognise notes faster, to find notation for a tune you kind of know, but haven’t played - any kind of tune. Then, try to play the tune while looking at the music. If you find the starting note from the notation, you can try to play by ear, but you will also have a visual aid. For me, the trick to sight-reading (I learned by letter names and by ear for years and years) was to reduce the amount of time between seeing the note, and recognising the sound that corresponds with that. So, if you’re having some trouble working in that direction, it might make sense to try from the other direction - hear the note FIRST, and then connect it with the visual representation of the sound. If you can do this with maybe one tune a week (unfortunately, practice and habit are also important !), you should start to make the connection fairly quickly. It’s probably important that you do this with a tune that you don’t know well, though - that way, you’ll need to look at the notation to find the note that you’re missing.
At least, that’s what I think right now!!
Deirdre
Learning to read music is not that different than any other language. I use that term because it uses the same principle of seeing an abstract image on paper and associating it with a particular sound and then of course relating it sonically to a listener.
You are on to a pretty good start from what you have written here, but there are a couple of exercises you could be doing in the mean time that will help you with your sight reading.
You are already making associations with a symbol and a sound-- just not the symbols that will make it very easy to read music fluidly. Do some drill exercises where you play repeated half notes (72bpm works nicely here) on each scale tone over the entire range of the instrument (up and down) and only draw the note names beneath the first note of each bar. The idea here is “See the note and the name, now see just the note” The tempo and rhythm is very important with a drill like this. It gets you used to even rhythms at a speed that is very easily managed and this in turn will build good habits. Now the tough part… don’t space out when you are doing this! Be present. You are trying to commit an association beyond cognitave memory and make your physiological response instinctive. This kind of slow perfect practice is deceptivly difficult. Be very deliberate in the motions you make with this and very focused with the concentration you have while playing these exercises.
It is usually NOT enough to only get that “this dot means this fingering.” It would be like reading english with all the same sounds. (i.e. rough, bough, though) you learn the neuances aurally. Vowel sounds could equate to ornamentation maybe?
Also, read something new every day. Flex and strengthen these skills. You will be amazed at how fast the new associations are built and your reading skill increases.
Get a good whistle book/CD set like Bill Ochs’ The Clarke Tinwhistle and work through the exercises step by step, and you WILL learn to read music. Stick with each exercise until you feel that you are truly reading the notes, not just playing the very simple beginner tunes by ear. The lessons progress in a logical, well thought out fashion and will build your music reading skills gradually but steadily. Even if you are already a good whistle player, there is enough great stuff in there about ornamentation etc to teach you a lot in addition to the skill of reading music.
If you really want to learn to read music, take piano lessons. I’m not being facetious here. Piano lessons taught me to read music, even though they did not succeed in teaching me to play the piano. Drum lessons helped, too. I could read music, but couldn’t sight read rhythmic phrases until I learned drumming.
Learning whistle by ear is still best, though. That’s how I learned to transcribe tunes.
Many thanks to all who replied to my post. Alot of what was recommended I do already and most I will glean through and try to use. I just love my whistle. I do try to pick it up every day if for no other reason than to run a scale or two just to get used to the fingering. Thanks to all and I’ll keep ya posted.
My kid has a little refrigerator magnet which says:
“Ten ways to become a better reader”
Read
Read
Read
Read
Read
Read
Read
Read
Read
10.Read
If it works for books, I see no reason why it shouldn’t work for manuscript. It all comes down to experience, familiarity, drive, and a bunch of other good words.
Practice reading music for 15 minutes each day and you will eventually be a reader. Try writing the letters under the notes. You’ll learn it.
“If you can read this sentence you can read music,” so goes the old saw, and it’s true. The FACE mneomic is a handy tool, too, also it’s counterpart, EGBDF = Every Good Boy Deserves Favor, or as Seattle grungemeisters Mudhoney put it for one of their album titles, Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge.
Bagpipes? A whole can of worms. Literally! “Thank God there is no smell.” Oscar Wilde.
I like John Palmer’s advice. To learn to read you have to read. It’ll be slow at first. Start by listening to the tune (midi?), then once you have the tune in your head, work with the sheet music. This is a sort of compromise between learning by ear and reading. Irish music is very easy to read, especially jigs, which is where to start. It’s easier to read and play jigs slowly then airs. (Airs can be tough with all those variations in note lengths).
