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accordionstu wrote:I don't disagree that learning to read notation is a benefit, like using stabilisers on your first bicycle.
No, nothing like using stabilisers, which are of purely temporary and possibly dubious benefit with some folk apparently learning quicker in the end without having to readjust to their removal.
Learning to read notation is a valuable tool of lifelong benefit with uses way beyond temporary crutch to aural learning of short tunes, which is not a skill mysteriously negated by musical literacy. Not essential to everyone, but a quantum leap beyond 'stabilisers'!
ytliek wrote:Learning to read notation is a valuable tool of lifelong benefit
I won't disagree with you on this but it certainly isn't essential and just because one can read the music doesn't mean they have learned the tune. If music had never been written down, we would still be playing it.
Boyd Flutes - For Soprano D Flutes, Fifes and Piccolos. Made in the UK
ytliek wrote:Learning to read notation is a valuable tool of lifelong benefit
I won't disagree with you on this but it certainly isn't essential and just because one can read the music doesn't mean they have learned the tune. If music had never been written down, we would still be playing it.
But a lot traditional music has been written down over the centuries, and actually preserved for later, through times where the aural tradition did decline. I am very grateful for this preservation of music by all those people collecting tunes, and writing them on paper.
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ytliek wrote:Learning to read notation is a valuable tool of lifelong benefit
ytliek wrote that? How strange when I thought it was me!
I won't disagree with you on this but it certainly isn't essential and just because one can read the music doesn't mean they have learned the tune.
Don't think anyone's actually suggested it does!
If music had never been written down, we would still be playing it.
The bits that survive through purely aural transmission, yes. But not only would we still have lost many of our cherished traditional tunes as per Hans's post, but there are whole areas of music presumably beyond your personal sphere of interest that are quite unthinkable without notation!
I don't understand the "this vs. that" mentality with many things discussed, especially on the 'net. Reading sheet music and learning by ear are both good tools to have, so why not improve upon and use both?!
Mr Ed wrote:I don't understand the "this vs. that" mentality with many things discussed, especially on the 'net. Reading sheet music and learning by ear are both good tools to have, so why not improve upon and use both?!
I think it's because that, particularly within the Irish Trad context, we are enjoined to learn that music by ear at every possible opportunity. And I think that's a good, even the more desirable, approach for that idiom. Unfortunately in the course of those efforts people may take a leap and infer that this means notation in itself is bad, but this is a mistake of reasoning, or at worst, just another example of the human tribal reflex toward division.
"If you take music out of this world, you will have nothing but a ball of fire." - Balochi musician
Mr Ed wrote:I don't understand the "this vs. that" mentality with many things discussed, especially on the 'net. Reading sheet music and learning by ear are both good tools to have, so why not improve upon and use both?!
I think it's because that, particularly within the Irish Trad context, we are enjoined to learn that music by ear at every possible opportunity. And I think that's a good, even the more desirable, approach for that idiom. Unfortunately in the course of those efforts people may take a leap and infer that this means notation in itself is bad, but this is a mistake of reasoning, or at worst, just another example of the human tribal reflex toward division.
All good points. I think that in this information age and fast paced way of life a lot of people choose, taking time to reason things out isn't happening as much with a lot of people.
Mr Ed wrote:I think that in this information age and fast paced way of life a lot of people choose, taking time to reason things out isn't happening as much with a lot of people.
Could be. To be honest, I'm not wholly convinced that we're reasoning less than ever; seems overall like the same flawed, dodgy business as in the past I recall; we're just doing the same old stuff faster to a wider audience. We're more heard than we ever were. But I do think that for all its benefits and potential for the better, the information age has also brought to glaring light some of the worst in us, and it must be admitted that splash has more entertainment value than reason does. There's a seductive world of bread and circuses out there, and now we can be part of the show.
"If you take music out of this world, you will have nothing but a ball of fire." - Balochi musician
Ah yes, our lack of reasoning (and other flaws) are just more noticeable now, and to a wider audience. Lately I've been cutting down on social media. I can be enough of a pain in the backside in the real world, let alone subjecting people to it online. It's been a great way to improve my general mood, and have more time to get things done, along with actually having fun playing the tin whistle lately. And going whole days without even firing up the PC.... More people should try it!
killthemessenger wrote:When I learn a new piece of music, whether it's a baroque gigue or an Irish jig, I simply play it over and over until I've memorised it. I read sheet music and start from there, and I have a good memory for music once I've learned it, never having been a very hot sight reader. But I've never developed a more methodical approach to learning a piece than to simply play it over and over until it sticks. Does anyone have a particular method?
Now that I've thought about it a bit, I don't really have a particular method for learning a tune, with the tin whistle anyway. Maybe in a few more years. Sometimes a tune will be in my head (whatever the style) and I'll work it out without evening listening to a recording of it, other times I use sheet music, and then other times I'll listen to a recording and learn by ear. Come to think of it, it's been a few months since I've learned any tunes. All of the focus has been on getting better at overall playing, relaxing, and having fun. There are a few that have been standing out lately. Maybe it's time to add a new one to the repertoire for some variety.
Nanohedron wrote:
Mr Ed wrote:And going whole days without even firing up the PC.... More people should try it!
Tell us something.: Playing Scottish and Irish music in California for 45 years. These days many discussions are migrating to Facebook but I prefer the online chat forum format.
I'm like Mr Ed there, I might hear a tune on a recording and learn it off that, or see it in a book and learn from that (though the arrangements of book-tunes never seem quite right to me, and many things get changed around).
As far as sightreading not being a necessary skill, it is if you do gigs where they plop sheet music in front of you and you have to play it! There are many gigs I would have had to turn down over the years if I couldn't sightread.
About the somewhat different topic of 'knowing' a tune, with me there are many different categories.
With sightread tunes:
-tunes I can sightread cold
-tunes I can sightread after a couple run-throughs
-tunes I have mostly memorised but still want that music in front of me like a crutch
With ear-learned tunes:
-tunes I can play at a session, following the group, but that I couldn't play on my own
-tunes I can play on my own in a basic straightforward way, more or less the way I heard them
-tunes I've spent much time working on, which have been considerably reworked to suit me, and for which I've come up with a number of variations
Richard Cook c1980 Quinn uilleann pipes
1945 Starck Highland pipes
Goldie Low D whistle
Tell us something.: Whistle player, aspiring C#/D accordion and flute player, and aspiring tunesmith. Particularly interested in the music of South Sligo and Newfoundland. Inspired by the music of Peter Horan, Fred Finn, Rufus Guinchard, Emile Benoit, and Liz Carroll.
Richard, I'm guessing it's merely an accident of how you phrased things, but notice how in your sightread tunes, the highest level is "I don't need the music but keep it in front of me just in case" whereas with ear-learned the highest level is "I have made this tune fully my own."
Even so, that's kind of representative for me. I'm a decent sightreader, but I don't think there's any tune I learned solely from the dots that I've really reached a high level on. If you hear me playing a tune and just rattling off variations, that's a sure sign I've either listened to it hundreds of times or perhaps composed it myself.
That said, there are plenty of such tunes that I've listened to hundreds of times AND used the dots as a learning aid, usually because there was a passage I couldn't suss out properly by ear. (That reminds me, I meant to use that lovely collection of fully notated flute tunes that popped up on here earlier this year to figure out that turnaround I've never properly gotten from Peter Horan's "Boys of the Lough"...)
