This is essentially how I learned to play

[Mike Snyder]

So many ways to learn. Many more than we know, I suspect. I love catching tunes on the fly, so much fun, but too easy to simplify the fussy bits. Sessions are for fun and players seldom want to do tutorials. Most are willing to help suss out a particular passage, briefly, after the tune ends, at least the folks I've played with. What certainly does not work for me is a vacuum. Until I play a tune in session I will never feel ownership of it. I have worked tunes at home using recordings and YouTube and it won't work. Probably has something to do with the collective vibe.

[Bertram Henze]

Some people just play way too fast and I need it to be at a more normal speed.

I think very fast players do not really play exactly the same tune, to the note. They're playing simplified versions with less notes, merely hinting at ornaments with the odd HOPO flick of a finger here and there. Playing their recordings slowed-down should show this difference when compared to a slower "full" version. Try it with this guy:

[sbhikes]

I've wondered how those Irish trad people ever learned the tunes at home in the old days before youtube. If you go to any Irish trad discussions or sessions they're very finicky about you not playing unless you have the tune down like a pro. They also scoff at the use of sheet music for learning and they insist that if you don't learn by ear you don't get the "lift", the timing and flow, correct. But they do not provide a means of learning by ear that old-time or bluegrass music does. By "means of learning" I mean a social, aural, friendly and welcoming means.

It really does make me wonder how it was done in the olden days. Was it always a teacher-to-student thing like classical music?

[Bertram Henze]

I've wondered how those Irish trad people ever learned the tunes at home in the old days before youtube.

I recommend reading "The Road from Castlebarnagh" by box player Paddy O'Brien, where he describes how he grew up with a harmonica first and a single-row accordian later, in the 1950s. They heard many of those tunes in special radio broadcasts once a week (a battery-powered radio, since electricity had not arrived yet in rural areas). If you heard a tune you liked, you soaked up as much of it as you could, and then you had to wait for another week or two until you could hear it again - that is, if your father brought the battery home in time from the garage where it had been recharged. If you were lucky, a neighbor or relative was a player you could learn tunes from. Very few people could read music.

All in all, the process was much the same as today's, musically, only much slower.

[Randi Gormley]

Certainly within the past, say, 50 years the ability to pick up tunes through the internet has greatly expanded people's repertoire. But I remember when I was in college in the 1970s that we had tape players, and when I was trying to learn the words of a song (this was before I began playing ITM and was interested in tunes) I would just replay the tape over and over and write down the words to the different verses. So there was some learning going on at home alone! Before that, I remember hearing that people would just keep replacing the needle on the record player to pick something up. And we shouldn't forget about the traveling musician, who would go from community to community (like o'carolan) to play for parties, barn-raisings and dances. And whole cultures of travelers who would raise their children as musicians and play from community to community as they were chased out of one place for another. There was cross-pollination before the internet, just not as available 24/7.

[catmandu2]

Generally, prior to mass/electronic dissemination of the music, it was an aural tradition (wrt trad, efforts such as Bunting, O'Neil et al began to collate the music in notational resources). There are still wholely or predominantly aural traditions around the world. (There's a terrific video on regional styles I've posted here a time or two)

Re 'travellers' tradition in Ireland, here's an excellent video

https://vimeo.com/131638804

[foldedpath]

I'm seriously jealous of folks that have a quick ear for melody. At the Houston ITM sessions there are some of them. I am humbled because although I can often absorb the chords, I might never get the tune during the set. I have to play a tune many many times to remember it. I assume that a serious trad person like foldedpath would clean my clock in this regard. I'm much more at home in BG, swing, jazz or similar so that I can hide my leaky memory with faking it.

Oh, I'm not that good at it, but I can pick up some of the easier tunes based on recurring patterns. There is a "faking" element to it, where you learn to play just the notes you're sure of, and ghost the rest.

And it still doesn't work for the really tough tunes with tricky patterns. I think it took me a week to learn "The Tarbolton Lodge" reel from a mix of recordings and the dots. Or all those pipe tunes in five parts that are basically subtle variations on the same thing. I get lost in those easily, and it's just hard work to memorize all the parts.

I've wondered how those Irish trad people ever learned the tunes at home in the old days before youtube. If you go to any Irish trad discussions or sessions they're very finicky about you not playing unless you have the tune down like a pro.

The reason for that is to preserve the flow of the session. With tunes that only repeat a few times, and that slide smoothly into another tune without skipping a beat, you really have to know the tunes ahead of time. Most sessions will encourage recording what's being played for home study, if you're an ear learner. Some sessions also maintain web sites or books with sheet music for home study.

You learn at home from recordings or sheet music, and then play the tunes you know at the session, sitting out the tunes you don't know. That's a key point -- sitting out a tune you don't know at an Irish session is okay! Nobody will think less of someone who sits out a tune they don't know, even if it's half the tunes. At least that's been my experience in local sessions.

This is one of the big differences between Irish sessions and OldTime and Bluegrass jams, where everyone expects to play on every single tune in the jam. It can make OldTime and Bluegrass jams seem more "social" on the surface, where everyone is encouraged to play on every tune. But it's more a function of the way the tunes are structured.

It really does make me wonder how it was done in the olden days. Was it always a teacher-to-student thing like classical music?

As I understand it, it was the usual mix of learning by ear and also written example, depending on the musician and the environment. The ability to read music wasn't that uncommon, especially for fiddlers, and even more so for pipers. I think those of us who moved from guitars to mandolins don't realize how much of the rest of the instrument world involves reading, even in "folk" music.

Here's a famous example, about the origin of an Irish tune called "The Bank of Turf" (not sure if it's the hornpipe or jig of that name):

"When no manuscript paper was available Padraig [O’Keeffe] would improvise by drawing the lines for the tablature using his bow as a ruler. On one famous occasion he met Denis Murphy who was cutting turf. Denis wanted to learn a particular tune and so Padraig drew lines on the turf and marked out the notes. Denis named the tune "The Bank of Turf" in consequence."
(Music from Sliabh Luachra by Alan Ward, 1976)
(Sourced from the tune comments at thesession.org)

[SincereCorgi]

The ability to read music wasn't that uncommon, especially for fiddlers, and even more so for pipers. I think those of us who moved from guitars to mandolins don't realize how much of the rest of the instrument world involves reading, even in "folk" music.

I think the disdain for writing 'folk music' down is a relatively recent thing, probably arising around the time that people started to consider it 'folk music' instead of 'music', connecting it with cultural identity and purity. A lot of people today who play old time or Irish want very badly to feel connected to something old and pure, and if it makes their lives harder it's even better because it feels more authentic.

[fatt-dad]

I think my aim (not there) is to be able to play as well as I whistle. To be able to translate something in my ear to sound.

My second aim is to be good at whistling - i.e., knowing what to say. . .

f-d

[catmandu2]

F-path, I have difficulty retaining those pipe/harp tune sequences too. All my life, i'd not encountered that structure - ornamental, figural, formal structure (rather than melodic-harmonic) - til a few years ago. It's kinda different, yet increasingly feel kin to other forms - the power of time and play you get, a strong rhythmic feel comes with lots of space, repeated phrases..it reminds me a little of Indian raga, but it's memory and counting challege - a bit like mem'rising classical stuff. one of my favorite pieces is about 20 or more minutes long (an ap Huw piece by Paul Dooley - which is no longer online!...I have to keep it in memory as I don't yet know where to obtain a recording).

*I guess wrt topic, i'd love to have manuscript (and impeccable reading and deciphering skill!) for all the repertoire I've learnt.

[Fretless]

I've wondered how those Irish trad people ever learned the tunes at home in the old days before youtube. If you go to any Irish trad discussions or sessions they're very finicky about you not playing unless you have the tune down like a pro. They also scoff at the use of sheet music for learning and they insist that if you don't learn by ear you don't get the "lift", the timing and flow, correct. But they do not provide a means of learning by ear that old-time or bluegrass music does. By "means of learning" I mean a social, aural, friendly and welcoming means.

It really does make me wonder how it was done in the olden days. Was it always a teacher-to-student thing like classical music?

I've talked to a number of excellent musicians (mostly fiddlers) about how they learned to play the tunes in "the olden days" before YouTube and without naming names I've gotten quite an array of answers. Many Irish fiddlers learned from their parents, as did a few Cape Breton players, while another Irish player said he was thrown into session playing at a very young age. What he did was to only play the notes he knew, at tempo, and over time he learned more and more notes of the tunes. Okay, that was Kevin Burke.

For me anyway I've found that Irish musicians stress ear learning more than Scottish or Cape Breton and as a result are more tolerant of different versions of tunes. In a session (ones that I've attended anyway) it's not unusual to hear players adjust the notes on the fly in order to get in synch with each other.

Most of the Cape Breton players I've worked with insisted I learn the tunes as they were written and played in Cape Breton, whether by ear or by sheet music. Once I knew the tune and could add appropriate ornamentation and embelleshments I then had "permission" to introduce some minor variations.

Certainly beginners should be encouraged to hone their ear learning skills but eventually after investing lots of time listening to the music hopefully they would internalize the various rhythms and yes, the "lift" of the phrases well enough that it should no longer matter how they learn a tune.

[sbhikes]

Thanks, that is interesting. Playing just a single note until I could get two, then four, and so on is how I learned, just like Kevin Burke.

If I thought there was any chance I could play as fast as Irish players, I would give it another try, learning this same way. But I just don't seem capable of playing anything as fast as Irish music and I'm not certain it's just a matter of needing more experience. It's more a matter of I simply can't move that fast, and it goes for any genre of music or sport or anything.

[sblock]

Thanks, that is interesting. Playing just a single note until I could get two, then four, and so on is how I learned, just like Kevin Burke.

If I thought there was any chance I could play as fast as Irish players, I would give it another try, learning this same way. But I just don't seem capable of playing anything as fast as Irish music and I'm not certain it's just a matter of needing more experience. It's more a matter of I simply can't move that fast, and it goes for any genre of music or sport or anything.

Well, you might be surprised how fast you can learn to move with sufficient practice. It turns out that most folks, until they reach a relatively advanced age and lose some movement, that is, are fully capable of keeping up with the tempo of Irish traditional playing, once they've learned to master their instruments. And if that were not the case, there would probably be no ITM, because there would not be enough people around to play it! You'd written in an earlier thread that you were having problems achieving enough volume on your mandolin to be heard well, and this issue, too, seems attributable to right-hand technique. I would urge you not to give up prematurely on getting up to tempo (or up to volume, for that matter). YES, you probably can move that fast, assuming that you have normal coordination. But it will take plenty of hard work and determination. Go for it, I say, and don't give up before you start! I am vastly faster now than when I first started out, and even though I'm getting older (approaching retirement age), I'm still getting faster every day, and am able to play at ITM tempos. And so can you.

[sbhikes]

I've been playing the mandolin for more than 10 years now and anything that's remotely Irish-like, such as various notey tunes like hornpipes or some cross-over tunes like Flowers of Edinburgh, there's just too many notes to play as fast as they go in an Irish session. I just can't do it even with this much time and even though we sometimes play these tunes at our old-time jam.

[sblock]

I've been playing the mandolin for more than 10 years now and anything that's remotely Irish-like, such as various notey tunes like hornpipes or some cross-over tunes like Flowers of Edinburgh, there's just too many notes to play as fast as they go in an Irish session. I just can't do it even with this much time and even though we sometimes play these tunes at our old-time jam.

As we have seen from the responses to this thread, there are many different ways to learn the mandolin by ear, and many different ways to teach by ear, too. There may be no single "best" way, because we all learn just a bit differently, it would appear. When learning a fiddle tune by ear, some folks like to have the entire tune well established in their heads before even attempting to play it, and then work it out slowly (note by note) in during practice at home, eventually bringing it up to speed. Others like to have it broken down for them by another player, learning one a melodic phrase at a time, and build up from there. Some like to play the occasional note or phrase in unison while other players perform the tune, and gradually try to fill in the bits that they can't yet play (as you have said that you do). Some like to work from recordings, played back either slowly or at full tempo. And there are probably a bunch of other ways, too. You tend to go with what seems to work out best for you. But please don't assume that just because you currently use one method, that some other approach (while unfamiliar now) might not be more efficient!

And I haven't even mentioned yet the many other ways of learning that become available to you once you can read notation or tablature. These skills can open entirely new vistas of learning, and they can be combined with learning by ear very easily. Others have already written to comment about this.

And that's just to learn the tune at first! Once you're familiar with the melody, you need to perfect it and bring it up to tempo. You need to really "get it down." By that, I mean that you need to have it in your fingers, so to speak, and not just in your head, so you can play it easily from what folks call "muscle memory," and scarcely be thinking about it. You might also want to work in some extras, like ornamentation or alternative phrases, or playing in the octave, or melodic variations, and so on. Here again, there are many different approaches that folks use. But playing the tune over and over and over (hundreds to thousands of times!), by yourself during practice, is a common theme. But exactly HOW you practice at home makes a HUGE difference. Do you just replay the tune? Do you work on the isolated hard parts? What do you tend to do when you make a mistake? Do you ever use a metronome? Do you work to increase tempo? Do you practice with others? So many questions...

If, as you write, you've been playing 10 years and still can't pick up the "notey" tunes, or manage to play the Flowers of Edinburgh at a typical ITM jam tempo, then I'm inclined to suspect that you may not be practicing and learning very efficiently. My guess is that you probably tend to play -- and practice -- almost entirely within your comfort zone. You may not be pushing yourself very hard, and you may not be exploring some of these other ways of learning by ear, most likely because you do not feel comfortable with them. In a phrase, you are not learning efficiently. You are playing and having fun, which is terrific, but you are not making very rapid progress. The "notey" tunes still elude you because you have not raised your skill set high enough yet. This comes down to an inefficiency in practice, I'd contend.

Again, there are many ways to learn, either by yourself or with others. You might need to explore some of the other ways more seriously, to see if these might lead to more efficient practice for you. There are many threads on the Mandolin Cafe about how to achieve better efficiency in practice, and many opinions on this subject. Please explore some of these threads. And please be encouraged to do better. Yes, you can learn to play louder, faster, and more accurately, and handle the tempos of ITM or bluegrass. You try to can do this entirely on your own, or you might consider getting the advice of an instructor or better player. Either way, a whole world of music awaits you. Get the courage to leave your comfort zone!