I’ve played jazz guitar for several years and originally learned to play and sing by ear. I was wondering, though, why I’ve heard people say that learning tunes by ear is preferable to using notation. Most of my ‘legit’ friends show great disdain for my tendency to deviate from what’s written, and while I always thought improvisational music was much more interesting than most of what they do, I always thought that sentiment was peculiar to jazz and the American styles that grew out of it (or were influenced by it). I’m rambling, but my point is that I’m very perplexed. How is improvisation treated in ITM, would I be out-of-bounds to improvise in a session, and why is ‘by ear’ better than reading the music?
Hi Aaron, “learning by ear” doesn’t necessarily mean improvising. It just means learning the nuances of a tune from someone else’s playing (hopefully someone who knows what they’re doing), since in many cases the written music can’t convey the subtleties involved.
However, one aspect of learning by ear and aural traditions is that little bits of improvisation (intentional or otherwise) do creep into the music and it changes over time.
Many tunes have variations that are considered acceptable within the tradition, and ornamentation is a kind of improvisation. However, improvising the way you do in Jazz music probably wouldn’t be acceptable at most traditional Irish session (as far as I know).
-Brett
I don’t think it is, necessarily, preferable. I think there are advantages to learning by ear and there are advantages to being able to read and learn from notation, and often what works best is a combination of both.
Redwolf
The answer is on between C and C# in equal temperament.
just kidding. 
I think it is necessarily preferable. Which doesn’t mean reading isn’t also useful.
This all applies if you want to learn Irish traditional music. It is a very distinct style, and what makes the music is in the details: In all the stuff that isn’t written. Especially if you haven’t been exposed to it for a long time, or have been playing another style, it will be a challenge to hear the nuances that make or break the music. That is why you should learn by ear, and from good players.
Run a search on this, when you have a moment, it’ll bring up interesting discussions.
I couldn`t agree with you more Bloom. I might also add that this is music of the soul. When I learn, or attempt to learn, a tune it is because it has touched some part of my soul. It wants to become part of me. I think you will find that the great players express a very deep part of themselves in their playing. Traditional music is like that. It was rarely written down and when someone gave you a tune it was a special thing. The sheet music might give you the bones of a tune but not the soul.
In my humble opinion that is.
Tom
If “learning” refers to the first couple of times you play the song, then I think that reading it off paper is extremely helpful. Especially for those like me who have a poor memory. But once I know the bones of it, when I get to the point where I don’t need to see it on paper anymore, that is when I can add nuance, and all the other important things that cannot be explained or written down.
This seems to work for all instruments, because everything has its unique styles.
I’m the opposite. I like to hear a tune several times, getting all the nuances & style sorted out, until I can lip-whistle along to it. Then I use sheet music to fill in any notes I couldn’t quite catch from the recording.
At the moment I’m trying to learn a couple of Kwela-style tunes from The Positively Testcard. I don’t have any sheet music for the tunes, and even if I did, I doubt I could read the notes off the page and come up with a Kwela style.
This also suits me bacause I can listen to tunes while on the move, on CDs or minidisc, but reading sheet music is essentially a stationary activity.
Yeah, what she said… both are invaluable. Reading music gives you instant access to literally thousands of tunes, and being able to learn by ear lets you put the flesh on the bare bones that the musical notation represents.
What’s interesting is that many good musicians in Ireland won’t even read music, and many don’t care about theory. I once asked a very good player “in what key” was the tune he was playing, and he answered “it doesnt matter, you’ll feel it when you play it”. It shows that irish music is more about “feeling” the music from inside, and not from a sheet and through your eyes.
The problem is that “most” musicians I’ve seen with a classical music background just can’t get away from sheet music. It’s as if they were stucked with it, and it looks harder for them to stop reading and start learning by ear than it is to stop smoking.
For me the greatest delight is improvising, so I
play a lot of non-trad–which provides more opportunities.
I can barely read, so there’s no practical issue for me,
but I can’t imagine why reading at some point
couldn’t be helpful. But the heart of trad is
on the wing, and like Azalin I’m amazed
by people who play well with sheet music
but can’t play without it. Best
I have to go with what Blackbeer said, although you could easily say the same about classical music (being music of the soul, that is–very well said). Whatever the style, it doesn’t really become music until it is internalized and becomes part of you.
Since I’m shy of people to learn from around here, I occasionally use sheet music to get a tune in my head, they actually learn to play it from what’s in my head rather than what’s on the page. (But what can I say, I’m a music theory geek too)
Sheet music can certainly be helpful for getting the tunes down. But for the STYLE of the music, there is nothing like listening, especially live.
As others have already pointed out, there are nuances in Irish music that can’t be written down; they have to be heard, felt and understood. Again, this is true of other forms as well, especially jazz (how do you write down the concept of “swing”??? You really can’t–it’s something you have to feel). Even classical musicians, though, don’t exist in a papercentric bubble–everyone benefits from hearing expert players. But traditional music was really never intended for writing down; it’s an aural tradition and as such it is particularly important to HEAR the tunes.
As a side note (maybe), not having the music written down is what allows the tradition to evolve and truly belong to the folk. Mozart doesn’t evolve because he wrote it down a certain way. I personally don’t think that folk traditions are supposed to be static.
Of course, I don’t see anything wrong with a soloist learning a piece of music and completely throwing tradition to the wind and doing it your own way. Just realize that, at a trad session, originallity really isn’t the point.
What say all of you about improvisation when it comes to ornamentation? I’ve never really seen or heard any sort of standardization with ornaments; it seems entirely up to the individual player, even when playing with other players? True, or am I wrong?
Tom
I don’t think it gives you “instant” access. I know this from my own experience. You cannot learn the Music from the sheet music. You can only get that by ear. The big problem is that when you start out, and you learn a tune from the sheet music, you think that it sounds about right. But to someone who has developed their ear for the music it doesn’t. It just doesn’t cut it. And you can only develop your ear by listening (which is not such a surprising proposition, if you think about it).
That is not to say that once you can play the Music, and your jigs sound right and your phrasing is good, you couldn’t use sheet music to pick up a tune, or to browse through tune collections. Reading music is great for that. But you’ll have been on the road to ITM for a while, probably years, and there is nothing “instantaneous” about it. Just my views, of course.
I also use musical (or abc) notation to transcribe and save tunes I’ve learned by ear.
Personally, I really need both to learn a tune. Just seeing the sheet music isn’t enough to know how it sounds, but just hearing it isn’t enough for me to be able to figure out what notes to play (at least usually). There have been a few tunes I’ve gotten just by ear, but others I’ve struggled with and never gotten even the first bar.
That’s why I like L.E. McCullogh’s session tunes book so much – it has CDs so I can hear what the tune is supposed to sound like and get some of the feel and rhythm of it, plus the sheet music so I know what notes to play. Very helpful.
Steven
Both and…
I use sheet music more as a reference if I have a poor recording, no recording & or one with an over exuberant accordion player of the tune (Uh… Grammar anyone?)
One advantage of learning by ear is that you don’t have to take those stinking charts everywhere with you… Your friends say"Hey play us a ditty" and you say"Uh… I would if I had my blasted music with me!" That is, unless you take the time to then memorize it (which I do when I use sheetmusic)…
Also, I find that I enjoy playing tunes that I learned by ear much more than the ones I pulled off the page so that I’d have it in the databank (brain) for the session. Hopefully then though the session would influence how you play the tune…
For example, I just learned “The Bank of Ireland” and right now I think it’s a stinky tune but I’m sure someday I’ll hear some Celtic Ninja play it how it is supposed to sound - then I’ll learn it and love it!
At least the places I’ve been, sheet music at the session is a definite no-no. But then, every session is different.
This is a beginners observation. After asking a similar question a while back, I decided to listen and learn some tunes by ear. I found that those I listened to until I knew them; I learned much faster. I also retained them better. I can read music but those I learn by listening and then learning by notation are forgotten quickly. I frequently have to resort to going back to the sheet music. In either case it is essential to listen to a well played example to learn the rhythm, ornamentation, and nuances. I don’t think you can put that on paper. This may be one of the big differences between classic and traditional music
Ron
I think it’s even more than that. It’s a matter of respecting a “culture” or “tradition”. I don’t think that people at a classical music concert would appreciate someone who sits with his violon and start improvising on Bach. He might be the best player ever, it’s a total lack of respect of that type of music. Even though I don’t like classical music, I can respect it.
From my point of view, it’s all about respect and selfishness. If you sit down in a session, knowing that others don’t play their tunes from sheet music, and you start playing from a sheet, it’s because you don’t care about your environment and only care about playing. I’m the type of person who will try to adapt to it’s environment, why can’t other people do it? I’m not even talking about why not playing from sheet music is better, it’s beyond sheet vs “by ear”.
Tell me, if I were to start a thread in a classical music forum titled “Learning from sheet music vs by ear”, what type of feedback would I get?
In all my years of playing and teaching Irish music I have not met a single person who plays it well that has not learned to get away from sheet music.
I don’t think most people who utilize written music plan on NOT memorizing tunes (I don’t anyway). My main goal is always to get the tune into my head to be played from memory. Sometimes seeing the written music gives my memory a framework in which to put what I learn by ear. It’s kind of like having an outline or template to the tune.
If I’ve never seen the written music and have learned a tune completely by ear, I sometimes have difficulty with not being sure where exactally A and B parts start and end, and which notes are part of which measure, etc… maybe I shouldn’t worry about that.?
A side isssue: I almost always create (transcribe) my own sheet music from a recording of a tune I’m learning (using ABC2Win). This really helps me get the tune down because I have to go through it note by note. Once I’m done with this process I’m usually close to having the tune memorized.
-Brett