Instrumental order for learning a new tune

[Jack Roberts]

I have a friend who learns new tunes on guitar first, then goes to mandolin.

Until recently I always started with mandolin, then guitar, then fiddle.

Recently I have gone to fiddle first, then mandolin, and skipping the guitar. I do it this way because for some reason I can translate notation and "listen and play" to fiddle faster than I can on other instruments.

I am learning old tunes from 1890s to 1920s that I can only find in notation or scratchy recordings on the Library of Congress National Jukebox website.

What order do you learn in?

[JeffD]

I learn them on mandolin first. Then I write them out in standard notation. Then I play it on mandolin or possibly fiddle.

[Jim Garber]

Usually read them on mandolin or fiddle then learn them... on mandolin or fiddle.

[Mike Snyder]

I learn very slowly and poorly from notation. I have to hear a tune before it ever begins to become mine. Then I can go back to the notation and straighten out things I learned wrong or missed. The mandolin was first and only for me for decades. Now the GDAE tenor banjo has lept into my hands and won't go away and I'm learning tunes on it. The best learning I do is in sessions and the bigger the better. On the fly with all those hammered dulcimers and fiddles and accordions the tunes get more solid each go-round, but it's easy to learn "mistakes", if you feel there are such things. There's a whole lotta "right" and "wrong" around today. Too much for an aging anarchist like me. I am required to play tunes "correctly" sometimes, and I comply........to some extent.

[Randi Gormley]

Generally from notation to mandolin; occasionally by ear but I'll double-check with the notation to make sure I'm not confusing one tune with another. But I'm a pretty fair sight-reader, so I can usually hear the tune when I play it the first (or second) time. The exception is with music in parts and I only have one part -- I need to hear (or see) the whole thing to figure out where I'm supposed to be. It helps to be a single instrumentalist, though!

[UsuallyPickin]

Well I'm pretty sure I was wired crooked so how I go about it is a little crooked too. I have a four disk set of 60 tunes Every PLP should know. I play through a CD on each instrument daily , pretty much. I alternate the CD's daily, 123,234,341 and play the instruments in a stagered order so all tunes get played on all instruments a couple of four times each week. I never have heard anybody kickoff THe Flowers of Edinberg in a jam........Anyway it keeps my fingers nimble and gives the memory a workout....... Mandolin and Guitar do seem a bit easier to learn a new tune on though. I have been playing them longer. I still have to be careful with my bowing. ....... R/

[JeffD]

On another thread it was mentioned that some multi-instrumentalists keep the various fretboard configurations separate by learning tunes on particular instruments. So to play X they pick up the guitar, Y is on the mandolin, and maybe Z on the banjo.

In that case what ever instrument you learn the tune on, there it is.