Use Your Ear, Not Your Eye

Whistle
21

Hey Everyone!

Couldn’t resist throwing in my two cents worth here. I’m getting the impression that
many who read these posting come to the conclusion that this is somehow an either/or,
good/bad kind of thing. That hasn’t been my experience at all. I started playing music a number of years ago (mostly guitar and hamonica) allways by ear. Later I became a music major and was forced to learn to read.
I’ve never regreted this and ,in fact,I can
learn tunes faster now than when I didn’t.
Its a fallacy that one who learns to read
music (after learning by ear) will somehow
lose aural ability or even creativity!
Ear training IS important but I think that
both methods of learing tunes can be useful.
I still use both, no problem here.


Alberto

22

I agree with you, Alberto, a good musician should be able to do both: sight-reading and playing-by-ear. I think that the “ear”-thing is more important, but if you can’t read sheet music, you’re kind of an illiterate. And it’s not difficult, anybody can learn it, if they only accept to make a little effort. Music is an international language, if you know it, you’ll be able to play with people anywhere in the world. So - as you all learned to speak and read english - why not learn music?

23

I understand that there are people in Japan who can read and write English fluently, but have only the vaguest idea of how to speak it. Of course, there are also those who understand and speak the language, but cannot read or write. Both of these extremes are missing out on much of the beauty of the language.

If I had to make a choice, I’d put learning to speak and understand a language over reading and writing it. But if possible, I’d much prefer to do both.

I believe the same is true for music, is it not?

Tom

24

hi all,
I learned to read music more “fluently” when I picked up my first whistle. have always played guitar by ear. to me, alot of music that is done on the whistle (mary bergen for instance) is either played at such a fast pace or is so loaded with ornamentation, it’s sometimes hard to follow the basic melody. this is the primary reason I like to get the sheet music, then after I’ve gone over the basic melody a couple of times, I try to pick up speed and maybe get a little fancy. am I listening wrong, or are alot of the tunes hard to follow (they sound good, but just kinda hard to follow). heck man, I like airs and ballads anyway. :wink:

25

Tom, sure this is true. Maybe I’m not objective on this matter, as I learned to read music when I was a kid, so it feels just natural to me. It is certainly harder to learn at adult age. Anyway, I think that a good ear and feeling for the music is the most important thing. Besides, if the only kind of music a person wants to play is traditional, sheet music is probably less important than for other kinds of music.
So - peace - let’s share our music and have fun, and forget about the rest.
:wink:

26

There’s another side to relying on sheet music: Writing it!

One standard pedagogical technique for jazz is to transcribe solos: the idea is to take a recorded solo you like, and write it out as accurately as possible, and then analyze it or learn it yourself or both. It’s hard, and while there’s certainly a school that thinks that soloing is more holistic than “what notes did he play over this turnaround”, it’s certainly useful to take apart what the pros do note for note.

Given the improvisational nature of trad, it seemed perfectly natural to extend this technique to it, and while I’ve only done a couple of transcriptions, there is quite a bit to be pulled out when you listen bar-by-bar. Matt Molloy, for instance, blew me away even more than he does when I’m listening phrase-by-phrase; on some tunes, you’d swear he doesn’t let one note get by unornamented.

Now, that sort of thing certainly doesn’t address the problem of learning tunes; I think it does address the problem of learning approaches to ornamentation (I’ve picked up figures that I thought were rolls or crans but were really quite a bit more complex, that I wouldn’t have heard otherwise), and especially addresses the problem of understanding a player’s style. It doesn’t replace whole-tune or -section or -phrase listening, nor player-to-whistle tune learning without paper in the middle, but I’d encourage anyone who doesn’t have to struggle with the notation itself to sit down with a favorite recording and see if you can not only pull all the notes out, but look at the resulting transcription and see if you can see what the player was trying to do with it.

    -Rich
27

Hmm, here’s some thoughts from complete beginner with no talent…

About reading and listening, I need them both. I need to listen to get the rythm. I now keep blowing int the rhytm when I’m listening to music. But I need to read the notes to play somewhere.

I would be interested to improve my ear.. But I just don’t seem to get it. I sometimes try them with the whistle, and in many occasions find out later that it is in scale not playable with whistle, at least without transposing.

I usually find the notes other than trad stuff from midi files.. as I play the keyboard or guitar solo parts on the whistle with our “band”.

28

I’m a lot like Claudine–I sort of take being able to read music for granted.

I still much prefer to play by ear on the whistle, and I pretty much agree with what people have said in support of that technique. My humble opinion is that listening should come first, and once you learn the style and rhythm, written music can be helpful for learning new tunes. This is, after all, the “traditional” way to learn any folk music.

However, one cannot underestimate the value of a teacher. I know; I don’t have one. (: It is “traditional” to learn music from a person, not a recording. A person whom you can ask to play slower, “How do you do that ornamentation”, etc. Going back to my language metaphor, how would you like to learn, say, Mandarin Chinese by simply listening recordings of people speaking it, without getting to ask them what they’re saying, or see how they’re producing the sounds?

So, those of you who have teachers, or just other good players around, don’t take that resource for granted. For the rest of us, do what works for you, written or aural. It might be harder, but it’s still fun.

And after all, fun, not perfection, is the whole point of this sort of thing. (:

God bless–
Tom

29

Reading (although I don’t do it well yet) is just as important as playing by ear as far as I’m concerned. I can listen all day to Paddy Maloney, Mary Bergin, Joanie Madden ect. play a tune and not have any idea of the notes they played because
a) in whistle solo’s they usually play the tune much faster than it would be played during say a dance to showcase their vituoso status.
b) People of this stature play so well and have played for so long that they ornament just about every note which makes it hard to determine the underlying foundation of the melody.

Listening to a tune over and over allows me to get the feel of the rythm and flow of the tune while seeing the unadorned sheet music in front of me allows me to concentrate on the fundamental melody I am trying to learn so that I can get the basic structure down free of the distraction of ornamentation.

Seeing the music has also, for me anyway helped with my ear training, because I can listen to a passage and then look at the corresponding sheet music and SEE the relationship between the notes that are being played and recongnize a 2 or 3 note pattern when I hear it again in another tune.

One last thought, L.E. McCullough states in his tutorial that contrary to popular myth most professional caliber players do indeed read music and the myth of them all playing by ear alone is nothing more that a myth of trad music. Does anyone honestly think Paddy Maloney could score a film without being able to read music? Does being able to read make him any less a player?

30

I like a lot of what has been said in this discussion and wanted to add some of my own comments, opinions, and views.

In school you are taught to read and in the beginning you focus on the words and punctuation. You learn to read, measuring your progress by the number of words in your vocabulary or the number of words read per minute. But the first time you attend and hear a dramatic or interpretive reading you recognize not all the message is in the written word. The same with music.

Is there a wrong way to play something. I hesitate to say ‘wrong’ but for me there is a poor way to play a tune, poorly played the tune that is just the notes and just the tempo and just what was heard.

To play any type of music well, you have to play what is felt, not just what is written, not just what is heard. For me, music is a medium that allows us to communicate even when words fail, with a richness that goes beyond. For a musician, the starting point is the sounds of those feelings.

That which is heard, is only the starting point. A musician that plays only by ear, misses half of every jig, for what is the tune without the dance? What is the sound and movement of the dance, if it doesn’t express the heart and soul of the dancer? You want to hear great music? Listen to the fiddling father, play the first dance at his daughter’s wedding. The mother’s slow air played at the bedside of her babe as sleep drifts gently in. The last reel of the night where acquaintance have danced their way into friends. Waltz played by brother, sister, son, and daughter as their parents and grand parents dance on their 50th anniversary.

So what do I think is most important in learning I-Trad? Never stop learning.

Each of us has our own talents for learning, many have a better visual memory the aural, while others excel in tactile or motor memory, and some have better emotive memories. My step daughter can hear a melody once and remember it, I on the other hand most fall in love with the tune and listen to it 20 times before I can begin to memorize it.

I’ve been listening to music for over 40 years, when I hear I new tune, my mind immediately flows with emotive response. It also associates the tune with a hundred tunes that sound or feel the same. Seeing the tune in standard notation gives it a back bone, keeps me from morphing the music into a different tune. What I can’t do is let the notation be the tune, nor can I let my aural memory of the tune be the tune. The tune is so much more.

Learning by ear, trains the fingers and breath to follow the ear. Just as sight reading trains the fingers and breath to follow the eye or notation. If I want to join folks in a session playing a new tune, then ear training is the channel that gets me started when I sit down. A good start, but to fully join in, I have to connect on more levels. I have to deal with the variation that is being played that reflects, not just the tune, but also the way the group feels and relates to the tune. If I have a backbone (standard notation) for a tune, I can readily recognize how the group is altering the tune to reflect what the group wants to express. For example, there has been many a time when some lightning fast reel has been played as a slow air. Often these changes are not thought out by anyone, they just occur because of the conditions in the session. If I can only play a tune the way I originally learned the tune, either by ear or notation; then, I’m going to miss the connections. Connections to the tune and connections to the musicians present playing it.

For me, part of enjoying the music is about connections, ears listening, feet tapping, fingers dancing to a tune that connects hearts and souls. Not just aural connections of the ear, but visual, social, emotive, temporal, and the whole gamut of life.

I suggest that you can start to learn any tune through any of those connections, but continuing to learn more through all the dimensions of the tune will help you to truly …

31

I generally think you will be happier if you learn tunes by “ear” because all you need then is a CD of a song you like and you can just go for it. This is true for Irish music as well as other folk music (like bluegrass, blues, etc.) which were never really intended to be written down and played the same way twice. These are improvisational forms of music made by people without formal musical educations by and large (in fact, I doubt if many of the greats in these musical areas can/could even read music). I think if you have a certain level of proficiency with your instrument, just learning a tune from written notation is frustratingly slow and painful-- it is much easier to learn a tune by ear. Many times as a guitar player, I have bought a tab book thinking “this will be great, I can learn all these new bluegrass songs!” All I usually get out of it is what key to start with. I can learn the song quicker and better by just listening to it. And I don’t feel required to match what I hear note for note. I can make it my own. If you read music, you are much more inclined to copy the song note for note.

That being said, I see no problem with reading some tab to get a basic handle on a new song, and then going from there to make it your own. However, as some have said, make sure the music notations do not become a crutch.

Tres

32

I’ll sum up my view by saying that I’m right in the middle of the road - stradling the fence - playing both sides… you get the idea. I do believe, however, that playing by ear and learning by ear are two entirely different things and that this muddies the water a bit.

Erik

33

Mr. Marsh, you have the soul of a poet and a heart larger than most.

"Listen to the fiddling father, play the first dance at his daughter’s wedding. The mother’s slow air played at the bedside of her babe as sleep drifts gently in. The last reel of the night where acquaintance have danced their way into friends. Waltz played by brother, sister, son, and daughter as their parents and grand parents dance on their 50th anniversary.

This section reminded me of one of the best moments of making music I have ever had. The wonderful lady who single-handedly started a contra dance group here in Lincoln had a very bad fall down a flight of stairs while pregnant with her ninth (yes ninth) child. That fall ended up against a radiator in their home and resulted in an extended stay in the hospital and two surgeries to correct a cranial injury. The wonderful miracle of a child, Claire, and her mother are now doing fine but it was a very long road. At the first dance they were both able to attend, the lead guitar and I played a waltz that we had played numerous times before. As we played Claire’s mother and father with Claire got up to dance. As they glided across the floor with tears in their eyes, a family that almost wasn’t, our playing changed. I’ve never played like that in my life that’s been full of music. It was the pure joy of watching them dance that let John and I play till we to couldn’t due to the tears in our eyes.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that it really doesn’t matter how you learn, what instrument you play. The important part is to play, challenge yourself, grow however you can in the music. Someday all the work and joy you put into it will touch someones life in a way it’s not been touched before, maybe even your own life.

Mark V.

34

Hi, All.

I never believed in my heart that I could learn a musical instrument until my dad bought me a Clarke C whistle and the Ochs book and tape. I taught myself how to play the whistle and how to read music, just by using this booklet. The tape was messed up pretty early on, but I didn’t really need it.

I listen to a fair amount of Irish music, but I have only ever learned one tune by ear. The rest I learn with the dots and lines. I really don’t click with ABC notation or any of the other short cuts. I IMPROVE my playing of a tune and my expression if I have a good recording to listen to, but that is not the way I learn it.

The greatest thing about knowing how to read music is that I can learn a tune nobody else around here knows. I don’t participate in sessions, since I can’t really stay out that late (baby boy and tired wife at home, music starts at 8 or so…) and the only get-together in Fairbanks Alaska is sort of clique-ish. I don’t fit in. But I can pick up sheet music for a favorite bagpipe tune and I can transpose to D and play it on my whistle. Or, I can get a modern arrangement of a medieval tune and learn to play something that very few people have heard in several hundred years. With nobody else in town able to play it. If you want “freedom” in music, reading the notes is like being able to read a map that leads you to a beautiful place. If you can read it properly, you can get someplace great. If you even get in the right neighborhood, that can be fun. If you can only go where you are led, you never get someplace that isn’t full of people who’ve been there a while.

Teaching myself the whistle gave me the confidence to tackle the bagpipe (even though I grew up with a piper for a mother, I never wanted to tackle the instrument before I learned to read music) and I will soon be trying to learn to fiddle.

It is always vital to learn to play with heart and soul, but if you can only play a tune after someone else has played it for you, you are not putting your soul into the tune. You are putting your soul into someone else’s version of the tune. It is a step away from being in touch with the composer.

Sorry to ramble, but I feel pretty strongly that reading music was a very important thing to learn. I hope my comments made sense.

-Patrick

35

I’m still very new to the whistle, I just started playing it a couple months ago. I previously had no musical knowledge or experience.

But I bought a lesson book with a cd included. That way I can learn the notes and get the rhythems and feel of the song down at the same time. I don’t think I’m good enough to just play by ear, but I’m working on it.

Is that what you mean by middle ground? Or will I be permanatley whistle-retarded for the rest of my life? :wink:

36

I’m pretty new at this too and definitely fall in the middle of the road category. here’s my take on it.
Reading music: What notes to play.
By Ear: How to play them.
Cheers,
jb

37

Personally, I started playing by ear about 15 years ago, and it is my preferred way to learn a song. The internet and mp3s have finally made it possible for me to pick up more songs by ear, and I’m also glad to find a community of whistlers from around the world. :smiley:

I have tried a few times to learn to read music, but it just starts to feel to scientific, and usually it discourages me. I’m sure that if I practiced, I could learn to read music better, and get some emotional pleasure from looking at a page of notes, but I feel that I’ve already invested much time into learning by ear, and it just feels like the natural way for me.

I think that if one is fortunate enough to have learned music at a formative time, more power to them. but for those who haven’t, I recommend trying to learn songs both ways at the beginning, then you will figure out which way feels more nautural for you.

When I hear a song, I can feel the emotions that are being communicated by both the notes and the player. I enjoy taking that inspiration and expressing it back with my own feeling. Its very pure to me. I only turn to tablature when I just cant figure out a passage of mysterious notes.

Though this is my style of playing, I do support the value of preserving songs through notation, taking the temporal, and making it a static record. Tabulature ensures the preservation of the music.

As do communities of enthusiasts.

38

I think that a lot of what has been said is very good arguments for BOTH sides… but I just have to add a little something:

Written music was developed over MANY years (centuries even) and it is as it is now because it is very useful in describing music. If a song is written properly, the notation will tell you everything you need to know to play it properly. It will tell you how fast, where to put the emphasis, where to hold a note, etc. I am finding that the sheet music I get for irish music is nothing but some notes, not at all what sheet music could be, or even should be.

Coming from a background of classical french horn, you must naturally think I am predisposed to using notation instead of my ear, but the last few years have taught me that you need BOTH to be a really good player, and once you get that good, you only need the sheet music because you will “know” what it should sound like.

Nico

39

It is obvious by the different opinions that there is no clear answer to this question, but I wonder, what does it matter? If you learn better by ear, than fine. If by reading music, ok. Some people learn better aurally and some visually. My background is Highland Pipes and learning to read music was part of the package. Expression is not better or worse because you haven’t heard someone play the tune. If you’ve never heard a tune played and know how to read music, and know, for example, how a reel is supposed to be played, your expression is just that- it’s yours. But really, if you need to hear a tune than listen to it, and if you don’t, good for you. It’s all music. Just a thought…

40

An interesting discussion, gang… let me add my 2 cents in. I have learned many tunes by listening to tapes or CDs, and couldn’t for the life of me tell you where the sheet music might be. But often the advantage of learning by ear is that a piper/whistler has already ‘hashed out’ the tune, and you hear not only the intonations that make it flow as a tune, but possible modifications that make it easier to play. On the other hand…living in a place that’s probably only second to Death Valley in terms of Celtic activities, written music is priceless… otherwise, CDs would probably be my only way to learn new tunes. Is one superior to another? I believe that if you’re having a tough time understanding how a tune flows, then it’s time to travel to another musician and listen carefully… other than that, it’s up to the individual. Those who cannot pick up a tune by ear should not be criticized, as often they are superior technicians on their instrument of choice.