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Thread: Trying to play variations that I hear in my head

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    Default Trying to play variations that I hear in my head

    I'm a learn by ear player but I often get stuck with whatever I learned the first time. Every so slowly I am getting better at making small variations to what I've learned. But in my mind, I can come up with great variations, really (what I think is) cool stuff. But when I sit down to give it a try, my fingers get stick with the same-old-same-old tune and whatever was in my mind evaporated. Is there a trick to doing this? I'm not a bluegrass player, but the way, not doing anything quite that fancy.

    Edit: what I mean by learn by ear player is that I learn the tunes at the jam, played at full speed and I learn them either right then and there or maybe after I hear 'em a few more times, then they're mine. I'm pretty good at learning by ear, just not at making variations.

  2. #2
    String-Bending Heretic mandocrucian's Avatar
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    Default Re: Trying to play variations that I hear in my head

    Just sing/vocalize your ideas/variations over and over without the distraction of an instrument in your hands. Burn it into your ear and once you do that, make your hands follow the ear.


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    Default Re: Trying to play variations that I hear in my head

    Based on how quickly you say you learn tunes by ear, my guess is that you need to practice playing these variations slowly. Speed at any new skill comes with lots of deliberate practice.
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    Unfamous String Buster Beanzy's Avatar
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    Default Re: Trying to play variations that I hear in my head

    Get the chords down really well in your head. Then sing it out & if you can also play them on the mandolin too that's a bonus.
    Then once you have the chord progression really solid while running the tune (singing or in your head), try switching to playing an accompaniment to the tune you can hear. Experiment and don't be afraid to fail, that's normally where the intersting or edgy ideas hide.
    I call it "playing anything but the tune" because the tune is already playing in your head so you're just playing around it making sure it fits well.
    As you do this you'll find some great licks come out that really work with the tune, keep running them for as many passes as it takes for them to be part of the tune for you & they will make great variations for when the tune is being played by others.
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    Default Re: Trying to play variations that I hear in my head

    Thing is whatever is in my head evaporates as soon as I try to do it out loud. I can't sing for ####, either. I guess I just have to try harder and hope for a breakthrough or something.

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    MandolaViola bratsche's Avatar
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    Default Re: Trying to play variations that I hear in my head

    I hear ya on the "can't sing" part - I have to do something like that with the instrument in my hand, or it isn't happening at all. Perhaps you could loop a somewhat slowed-down recording of the particular tune(s) you want to do variations on, and practice noodling along with them. Just a thought.

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    Default Re: Trying to play variations that I hear in my head

    That's a good idea. I should maybe tape my friend surreptitiously and then just copy him.

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    Registered User T.D.Nydn's Avatar
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    Default Re: Trying to play variations that I hear in my head

    Maybe don't try to play what's in your head, but just wing it instead,,take chances,,different notes and ryhtms,double stops,etc,, as you improvise along,..

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    Registered User Tom Wright's Avatar
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    Default Re: Trying to play variations that I hear in my head

    I well remember the feeling of notes being just beyond reach, evaporating as I tried to really "hear" them in my head (much less play them).

    I don't think there are shortcuts to being able to play what you imagine. I feel I have only recently arrived at some capacity to just whip it out, and the process was simply learning a bunch of stuff other people play, and working out some painfully developed variations, over years of work. To improvise sensibly you need practiced vocabulary, in the sense that it's not singing, but asking your fingers to do stuff that is NOT instinct. After enough time you have a stock of patterns, phrases, figures, chord alternates, etc.

    It takes practice to improvise music (as opposed to just sounds). No escaping the time-on-task, I think, but enough time should get you there, if you are imagining now.
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    Registered User Ivan Kelsall's Avatar
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    Default Re: Trying to play variations that I hear in my head

    From sbhikes - "...and whatever was in my mind evaporated." You too !. It happens to me all the time,especially if i come up with a melody line of my own. I'll sit,play the melody over & over,but when i come to fill the tune out,in coming up with a second or third part,the first part vanishes.
    One thing that i read in the book ''Masters of The 5-String Banjo'',by Tony Trishka & Peter Wernick - when they interviewed Bela Fleck for the book,he said that he records new ideas for tunes on tape. BF was obviously well aware that 'new stuff' can vanish !.

    Unless you have a heck of a musical memory,i think that recording 'new stuff' is possibly the only way to ensure that you don't loose it. I sit & noodle around all the time,but i find coming up with new ideas hard & if i do come up with something,i have to play it LOTS of times to get it into my head - there's no 'easy way' (for me),
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    MandolaViola bratsche's Avatar
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    Default Re: Trying to play variations that I hear in my head

    I once wrote down the melody of something lovely that I heard in a dream. Couldn't wait to write it down when I awakened. Then months later, I realized it was music already composed, that had come up from my subconscious mind, when I heard it on the radio one day. I had evidently played it once upon a time, retained it, but had no clue what it was. Good thing I never tried to pass it off as my own - that would have left a lot of egg on my face. Since then, I've played it quite a few times, but this happened a few decades back.

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    but that's just me Bertram Henze's Avatar
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    Default Re: Trying to play variations that I hear in my head

    Quote Originally Posted by bratsche View Post
    I once wrote down the melody of something lovely that I heard in a dream. Couldn't wait to write it down when I awakened. Then months later, I realized it was music already composed, that had come up from my subconscious mind, when I heard it on the radio one day.
    This has happened to me as well, and it is much more common than you might think. There's only so many notes, as they say, and they've all been played already. You get used to the effect when you play Irish music, where every tune seems to be made up of snippets of all other tunes.
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    Default Re: Trying to play variations that I hear in my head

    I read they created a computer program to make Irish music from snippets. Turns out most of these computer-generated tunes lack soul and just don't sound quite right.

    The other night I composed a speech. I was going to write it all down so I could give it, but I never got around to it.

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    Registered User Pete Martin's Avatar
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    Default Re: Trying to play variations that I hear in my head

    What Niles said, sing these out loud.

    Another thing to do is sing a short phrase, then play it.

    I don't mean the following to be a criticism of you or anyone else, but an observation that may help folks who want to play better by ear.

    I often have had students tell me they can hear variations in their head, then it stops once they pick up the instrument. In order to play something you must be able to CLEARLY HEAR EACH NOTE IN YOUR MIND. I believe many players hear a general sound, but NOT specific notes. Slowing something down in your mind and singing it out loud forces you to hear EVERY NOTE in DETAIL. Doing this regularly, along with singing a phrase and playing it, is the best way I know of getting clear phrases in your mind, then onto the instrument. If practiced regularly, it comes around pretty quickly, usually in a few months time.

    Hope this helps!
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    MandolaViola bratsche's Avatar
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    Default Re: Trying to play variations that I hear in my head

    Quote Originally Posted by sbhikes View Post
    I read they created a computer program to make Irish music from snippets. Turns out most of these computer-generated tunes lack soul and just don't sound quite right.
    Haha, sort of a "bonded leather" approach to music.

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    Default Re: Trying to play variations that I hear in my head

    If you can't play the variation you want from the get-go, take some time to play through slowly and make sure every note is where you want it to be.

    Sometimes it's even worth it to sit down and write it out (by hand or using one of the many programs) for the more complex ones.
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    but that's just me Bertram Henze's Avatar
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    Default Re: Trying to play variations that I hear in my head

    Quote Originally Posted by sbhikes View Post
    I read they created a computer program to make Irish music from snippets. Turns out most of these computer-generated tunes lack soul and just don't sound quite right.
    I am not surprised. The music is not in the snippets, it's in the way you connect them. The snippets really exist only virtually in somebody's analytic mind, but analysts are not good musicians.

    This is a nice example of a reel taken apart (the B part, that is) and reassembled again, with a waltz found in the process:

    the world is better off without bad ideas, good ideas are better off without the world

  22. #18

    Default Re: Trying to play variations that I hear in my head

    Good stuff so far.
    What I'd add:
    Be sure you're able to talk in 3 step scales, 5 step scales and 8 step scales.
    Be sure you know the chord under the melody. Because the chord or chord arpeggio can be a gateway to the departure.
    But it seems like scale work really helped me connect my head to my left hand. It sounds so simple, but if you've been just copying melody, you're missing what the melody is built upon.

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    Registered User James Rankine's Avatar
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    Default Re: Trying to play variations that I hear in my head

    I've been exploring variations in Irish trad for a while now, which is fairly tightly controlled if you want to do it in a session. I've found this a lot harder than improvising blues electric guitar solos, for instance. The thing that has helped me is playing along with an accompaniment track, which in itself is a rather more fluid thing in Irish music compared to a lot of other styles - the chord changes are not always so set in stone. It's a lot easier to experiment with things if you have the structure of an accompaniment track. I get ideas for variations from other players - particularly in sessions, but experimenting yourself in a session is not really on the cards with this style of music. I've been using backing tracks from the online academy of Irish music - you can have the track with melody as well which also gives lots of ideas for variations.
    Here I am playing along with one of these tracks with some on the fly variations with varying success. Sorry it's not the mandolin but the dreaded B!@£$


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    Default Re: Trying to play variations that I hear in my head

    Quote Originally Posted by James Rankine View Post
    Sorry it's not the mandolin but the dreaded B!@£$
    I see the mandolin as a sweeter version of the (tenor) banjo in a way. I can do minor variations like some of yours were.

    I think my variation blindness is some kind of holdover from the piano lessons days of way yonder. This Be The Tune. Once my fingers get the tune, it's set in stone and super hard to depart from it, even if my head can do it while I'm out riding my motorcycle or taking a shower or whatever.

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    but that's just me Bertram Henze's Avatar
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    Default Re: Trying to play variations that I hear in my head

    Quote Originally Posted by sbhikes View Post
    I think my variation blindness is some kind of holdover from the piano lessons days of way yonder. This Be The Tune.
    This may well be the case, and it calls for a jailbreak. Start with playing wrong notes. Learn to love them, and with time you'll trust your fingers to play the right wrong notes.
    the world is better off without bad ideas, good ideas are better off without the world

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    MandolaViola bratsche's Avatar
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    Default Re: Trying to play variations that I hear in my head

    I was thinking along similar lines, but that is very well put, Bertram! I couldn't have said it better, or more succinctly.

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    Registered User James Rankine's Avatar
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    Default Re: Trying to play variations that I hear in my head

    Quote Originally Posted by sbhikes View Post

    I think my variation blindness is some kind of holdover from the piano lessons days of way yonder. This Be The Tune. Once my fingers get the tune, it's set in stone and super hard to depart from it, even if my head can do it while I'm out riding my motorcycle or taking a shower or whatever.
    I think the thing to do is not learn a version of the tune but just pick out the basic melody - the target notes as Mike Marshall puts it. Know where you should be at any point in the tune to retain the basic melody then vary how you get to those points. In other words don't learn a really busy version of the tune but a stripped down version - like a lot of old time basic melodies, then fill in the rest yourself.

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    Innocent Bystander JeffD's Avatar
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    Default Re: Trying to play variations that I hear in my head

    Quote Originally Posted by Pete Martin View Post
    I often have had students tell me they can hear variations in their head, then it stops once they pick up the instrument. In order to play something you must be able to CLEARLY HEAR EACH NOTE IN YOUR MIND. I believe many players hear a general sound, but NOT specific notes. Slowing something down in your mind and singing it out loud forces you to hear EVERY NOTE in DETAIL. Doing this regularly, along with singing a phrase and playing it, is the best way I know of getting clear phrases in your mind, then onto the instrument. If practiced regularly, it comes around pretty quickly, usually in a few months time.!
    I was going to say this, but Peter said it so much better.

    This is so important! Many times I have a great idea, but not really. It is perhaps the embryo of an idea, but if I can't sing the idea, in detail, how are my fingers going to play it, even if they are mind readers, if there is nothing concrete in mind.
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    MandolaViola bratsche's Avatar
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    Default Re: Trying to play variations that I hear in my head

    Quote Originally Posted by JeffD View Post
    I was going to say this, but Peter said it so much better.

    This is so important! Many times I have a great idea, but not really. It is perhaps the embryo of an idea, but if I can't sing the idea, in detail, how are my fingers going to play it, even if they are mind readers, if there is nothing concrete in mind.
    Well, for this vocally limited player, it's actually quite a bit easier to get an idea "concrete in mind" by thinking it, developing that "embryo" into a full-fledged thought, in detail. Especially if it's something including large interval jumps, octave shifts outside my vocal range, or string-crossing work, in which situations attempting to sing it, and doing so badly or even terribly, would actually be an additional hurdle, and an impediment to progress... 'tis much better, in that case, to enlist the aid of a music notation program... but, I've said these sorts of things before. LOL Carry on.

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