Open discussion about how best to learn new tunes

  1. Michael Romkey
    Michael Romkey
    I’d be interested to hear any advice you have on working up new tunes, assuming the goal is to be able to play the piece at tempo from memory. (The older I get, the more addicted I get to the little lines and dots on a page.)

    What’s the best way to learn a new tune? What’s your approach? Work on it all at once? In sections? Memorize short phrases until you can put it them all together?

    I admit I really don’t have a consistent approach. I’ve gotten so that I can read OK. I tend to play through the entire piece slowly, sometimes with a metronome, and then speed things up gradually until I get up to speed. But the problem is, for me, is that I can play the tune at tempo for a long time *with the music* before I have it committed to memory. Long time as in a month or more.

    My bad habits include wanting to play too fast. And I tend to make the stupid mistake of not having the patience to stop and work hard on any tricky parts until I have them totally nailed down. I’ll play through the piece too fast and fumble through that tricky measure before the end of the A or B part time and time again, like a broken record.

    Lately I’ve been working on a lot of Old Time American fiddle tunes, like “Indian Ate the Woodchuck,” which is a longish 3-part tune with some irregular stuff in it. I’ve been working on it for a month an am just getting to where I can look away from the music.

    I just started working on “Soppin’ the Gravy,” a Texas contest-style fiddle tune. Not only is it longish and complicated, but it’s also one one of those tunes (like “Woodchuck”) that don’t sound like much of anything unless you play it pretty fast — one of those tunes that are hard to make sound like music if you play it slow, but too complicated to play fast right off the bat.

    I’m going to try a new strategy with “Gravy.” I’m going to memorize 8 bars at a time. I’m going to work on sections slow and then more up to tempo. I’m going to look at the notes and try to form some mental representations about how the notes and phrases are put together. When I get 8 bars down solid, I’ll move on to the next 8.

    Thoughts?



    https://www.fiddlevideo.com/wp-conte...he%20Gravy.pdf
  2. Simon DS
    Simon DS
    1. Memorise the first measure of a tune so that your fingers can do the fretboard movement without having a mandolin in your hands. Always know the key of the tune.
  3. John Kelly
    John Kelly
    What an amazing bit of fiddle playing, Mike. It is a tune like this that highlights the huge differences between fiddle bowing and mandolin picking, with the slurs and slides that work so well on fiddle but need special attention on our chosen instruments.

    Like yourself, I use the notation a lot more nowadays and I have to admit that a lot of the tunes I have posted here have not been learned by heart but are played from the notation and often are not played much at all after this. The SAW group has got me playing a much wider range of genres nowadays and is one of the reasons I keep returning to it! In contrast the majority of the tunes in our live sessions here are learned not just from notation but by ear either from recordings or from sitting in with the other musicians regularly and just picking up the tune over time. This is why so many versions of the same tune exist! I regularly play in an accompanying role with fiddles, accordions, etc and as Simon says knowing the key is useful here, though it is generally a fairly quick task to find it, either by listening, or by watching the fingers of a fiddler or accordion player and getting the key from this. The more you do this sort of playing the easier it gets. In sessions too there are tunes which we will play in a set and all the regulars in the session know which tune will follow; always fun when someone joins in from another session and their sets are not the same as ours! Variety is the spice of life.

    When I learn a new tune, and especially all those 4-part tunes from the piping repertoire, I do very much as you say above. Take it a section at a time, play through it slowly from the notation and try to memorise the repeating patterns that occur in the phrasing, often arpeggio patterns. Simon mentions muscle memory above, having his fingers know the tune away from the fingerboard. I try, too, to get the rhythm and timing accurate early on. As in the fiddle lesson you have included here, there will be sections where I will have to work out how to try to play something which the piper will handle with comparative ease on his chanter but which might need some wee bit of trickery on the mandolin. As long as the bagpipe has air in the bag it will continue playing a note - sustain is enormous: conversely we are playing an instrument with very sharp attack and little sustain, so we have to adapt. I know that this is not really wholly on the topic of actually learning a new tune, but I think it is always important to know what the tune was written for and listen to it on the original instrument, then adapt our own playing to that. When I am working with small groups here locally I often find myself using the technique that many of the traditional fiddle teachers who teach aurally use: play a bar slowly then get the group to play it back to you; repeat this till they have it, then go on to next bar and repeat. Add in bars as you go, including those already learned. Again, I like to reinforce my own learning with the notation as well as the aural learning, and in a group there are always players of varying abilities and speed of learning.

    In so much of the music we play there are very definite patterns emerge which occur throughout a tune, and also from tune to tune. You will be finding this in your current playing through the O'Neill tunes. A phrase pops up and your brain tells you that you already know that phrase, and there will be patterns in the tunes which let you almost predict just where the tune is going next - again, in piping (and other genres too) there is a regular phrase and response pattern in a tune. So much in the learning comes from just playing and playing that particular tune until we have it under our fingers and are not fully aware of just exactly what we are playing as far as the notes go! How often has someone asked you to show them how to play something you know well and suddenly you are all fingers and thumbs trying to break down something you are playing without thinking, and at your normal tempo?

    Interesting thread you have started anyway, Mike.
  4. Jill McAuley
    Jill McAuley
    Most of the time I'm learning tunes that I've heard and really like, so I'll listen to the tune over and over beforehand and then start learning it by ear. If parts are proving tricky I'll look up the ABC's over at thesession.org to check. I also start throwing in triplets/trebles, chords, double stops where ever an appropriate spot becomes apparent. Learning by ear I take the tune a few notes at a time. I find that for me tunes learnt by ear are retained better - on the occasions where I've used ABC's to learn a tune I find it takes a lot longer to commit to memory - the ABC's act as a "cue" for playing the tune, so if I don't fade them out of the picture I'll become reliant on them.

    Another thing that I find helps commit tunes to memory is to play them with my eyes closed - many things in our environment can act as "contextual cues" and we unknowingly become reliant on them when we sit down to play a newly learned tune - the location where we're playing (if we always play in that location) can act as a contextual cue, looking at the fretboard as we play can act as a contextual cue, etc. If we don't generalize our behavior to different settings it can impede our ability to call the tune up from memory when we're sat in a different room, or we're trying to play it at a session for example. By closing my eyes and playing the tune through a few times it eliminates any potential visual contextual cues and for me (YMMV) it helps commit tunes to memory.

    One last thing that also seems to help commit tunes to memory for me is putting them together in sets - putting a new tune into a set with one or two other tunes for some reason really helps embed it for me.

    As for things about the tune and my playing that I focus on, first it would be feel, then speed. Variations usually come later in the learning process - once the tune is committed to memory I'd then start working on variations for certain phrases, or when transitioning from the A to the B part etc.
  5. Bertram Henze
    Bertram Henze
    I have walked much the same path as you, Mike, and I have stumbled over the same stones (could somebody please remove these, so future generations will have an easier approach?) I always start with a small sheet printed from thesession.org, and with one only, which brings me to
    Rule #1: concentrate on one tune at a time.
    I also listen to as many versions of the tune on YT as possible to find out any variations that are out there, but mainly to get the melody in my head until I can sing it or whistle it. The tunes are meant to be learned as heard, not as written, and the feeling, the groove cannot be obtained from the sheet.
    Rule #2: Get a mental recording of the tune in your head.
    I make a scientific expedition through the tune to make it playable on the OM - how do I manage up/down strokes, where can I place double stops etc. It is like a round around the racecourse behind a pace car. After that, I have a personal customized version that works best for me.
    Rule #3: Explore the tune on your instrument to make it your own
    I detach from the sheet slowly, measure by measure, like a snake peeling out of its old skin. At the end of that, I have the music in my head and some kind of visual path across the fretboard before my eyes.
    Rule #4: Get away from sheet music as soon as possible.
    I start playing slowly but regularly, keeping a constant pulse from the beginning. This provides early detection of severe obstacles that require changing the personalized version. It is the phase where I exchange pickstrokes for HOPOs or vice versa to maximize fluency of playing. After that, I almost never have to make changes later in the speeding-up.
    Rule #5: slow, regular beat first.
    Of course, in all the videos they play much faster than I do now, but I relax about that, confident that growing control over the tune will increase the speed as a side effect in its own good time. And it always does. Speed must not be rushed (paradox).
    Rule #6: Speed is a side effect of control.
  6. Michael Romkey
    Michael Romkey
    Thanks for the many great insights. I especially like John’s thoughts about looking for familiar, identifiable passages, Jill’s insights about contextual cues, and Bertram’s recommendations about making an effort to dissect and analyze a tune (“make a scientific expedition”), and to work on one new tune at a time (I have too many new tune balls in the air), and to focus on a slow, regular beat at first.
  7. Bren
    Bren
    i have no advice to give here but plenty to learn from.

    from Bertram's rules
    Rule #1
    I'm easily distracted and find it very difficult to concentrate on one tune at a time. If I have music playing while I'm working , I'll often grab a mandolin and try to play along.
    Or I get bored and suddenly switch genres. Or think of some tune while out walking the dog and pick up the mandolin as soon as I get home.

    Rule #2.
    OK, I do that.

    Rule #3
    And that

    Rule #4.
    yes & no. I know many many tunes by ear but sometimes refer to a sheet music version to see what I've been playing "wrong" - not through personal style but just because I never mastered some tricky bit. if I leave bits out, I would like to do it from choice, not necessity. I work during the day and often find myself practising late at night when my wife is asleep so it's preferable to learn quietly from written sources than playing recordings over and trying to play along by ear.

    Rule #5
    Slow regular beat. Yes! And breathing regularly. I really have to remind myself to do that, strange as it may seem. Holding one's breath, as I often do when executing a tricky bit, leads to tension and death grip and lack of fluidity. Once I got a Skype lesson from Enda Scahill and Martin Howley after I bought a book and CD and made a small Patreon-type donation to We Banjo 3 in their early days to help fund a tour. The main advice they gave me after watching me play was to relax and breathe regularly.

    Rule #6
    Speed and control. Yes.
    Eventually you have to crank up the speed, if only to identify the knotty bits that you need to work on.

    Question:
    What is/are HOPOs?

    *Never mind, I got it. Hammer-ons, Pull-offs.
    I must admit I had eliminated a lot of those due to playing in noisy sessions where often you need to pick every note to be heard. But in a quiet setting, they are much more attractive to the listener than relentless picking.
  8. Don Grieser
    Don Grieser
    I've got to hear a tune a lot to get it in my head and from my head to my fingers. I do like notation to go with what I'm hearing. I'm a slow learner. I could never keep up with the tune a week let alone learn one a day.
  9. Michael Romkey
    Michael Romkey
    I'm realizing -- as I continue to work on this Texas contest fiddle tune -- that step one actually happens to be patience. It's going to take as long as it takes, right?

    People who know me would be surprised to hear this, but I sometimes give up pretty quickly on tunes that seem "impossible." While there might indeed be some tunes that are too technically demanding for a normal person to pull off, if you're willing to work (1) patiently and (2) methodically, isn't it possible to learn any tune?

    I think this began to dawn on me a few months ago when I started to learn the Baker version of "Ducks on a Millpond." Same with "Soppin' the Gravy". I start out with the transcription saying, "What the?!? Is there even a tune in here?!?" But with patience, perseverance and a methodical approach (the "vital ingredient" list keep growing), the music reveals itself.

    There is something truly hopeful and inspiring about this process!
  10. Simon DS
    Simon DS
    I think you're right Mike. The thing is that as we gain experience, that long list of required technical abilities begins to shorten. For a beginner or beginner intermediate I think it's much better to drop certain tunes that are difficult in favour of learning tunes that are technically quite similar -boring tunes even, in order to improve on fluidity and rhythm and accompaniment/ double stops.
    When I first started I had a list of about 10 very complicated tunes that I really had to learn, I loved them.
    I spent a lot of time trying to learn these, and some of them I still can't play! One way around this I have found is to get notation for the same tune but in a different style.
    The worst thing for me is when I have in my head a very fixed idea of how I want a tune to sound. I practice for a long time to try to get that sound, and often succeed, to my satisfaction at least, but I lose other qualities of the tune.
  11. Jim Garber
    Jim Garber
    Michael: the big problem with a tune like Soppin the Gravy is that learning from that video is sort of bass ackwards. Texas/Contest fiddling's foundation is improvisation. Sure you can spend days, weeks, years learning Casey's version note for note from that video but I can just about guarantee that if you sat down to play with him he will play different variations in different orders and never play any two parts the same way twice. There are a bunch of these contest players jam sessions on YouTube and each fiddler will play one tune for multiple times with each person showing their skills improvising off that tune and throwing as many notes and complicating rhythms into each variation.

    If possible I would first find a bare bones version of a tune and learn it as well as you can. Then add the variations as you like them even finding them in different musician's versions. Same with jazz or blues tunes. You have to learn the basic version first and then work on the variations. Otherwise you will drive yourself crazy. I just listened to maybe 4 or 5 versions of Soppin the Gravy and no one plays it the same way. Here's one version that is more distilled: Soppin the Gravy/Jack Mears and three other fiddlers on this page (scroll down under Soppin the Gravy). Anyway, that is just my two cents.

    Otherwise, I agree with those above that say, nothing wrong with learning from sheet music but the best method is to get away from that paper as soon as possible.
  12. Kevin Stueve
    Kevin Stueve
    from marching band in college to learning fiddle tunes, I have always looked at music as a series of connected sentences or phrases. I tend to learn the phrase as a whole. and from there the phrase before or after it
  13. Bertram Henze
    Bertram Henze
    Mike said: Is there even a tune in here?!?
    Kevin said: I tend to learn the phrase as a whole.

    I think these are ends that meet. That's what I wrote under Rule #1 - you have to hear it as a whole before getting lost in a forest of dots, because those are for the details.
  14. Michael Romkey
    Michael Romkey
    Yeah, Jim, you are exactly right. (Actually, everybody is right!)

    I realized after about a week into “Soppin’” that I needed to start with the basic tune. There a decent version in the Phillips book.

    I’m working off of Casey’s transcript and have it about down. I can play it with the music in front of me but I don’t have it memorized. It’s complicated. (!) I *always* go hunting for sheet music rather than learning from videos or recording. Some people would say that’s a bad way to do it, but it works for me. But I did realize, somewhere in the process, that, yeah, this is improv. It doesn’t have to be verbatim.

    On the plus side, working on a couple “impossible” swing-y jazzed up tunes has stretched my brain. When I took a look at Hellebore yesterday, I was able to pretty quickly break down the phrases and spot the parallel sequences, etc. Progress may not happen as quickly as I would like, but it does happen. : )
  15. gortnamona
    gortnamona
    i tend to use the abc's of the session org, i mix and match from different versions sometimes to find one that i prefer, then i play the bones of whole tune repeatedly, until its committed to memory, i find once your playing the bones of a tunes up to speed, accidental ornaments starts to creep in : i would prefer to be learning by ear but im absolutely hopeless at it
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