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[AirTime]

After about 16 months on the melodeon, I feel like I am still making slow but steady progress. I can now pick up the basics of most tunes in a couple of hours. Another 2 or 3 hours to get some kind of fluidity & rhythm. But then comes the hard part - days/weeks of plugging away until I can get it to the point where I can pick up the box & confidently play the tune without making mistakes or forgetting what I'm doing.

There are so many great tunes out there  ...  I'm going to run out of time! 

[Pete Dunk]

Many of us do 'run out of time' and move on to new tunes before really nailing something once and for all. To be honest it's all to do with self discipline, if a tune is worth learning it's worth learning well, keep it in the current repertoire until you have it nailed then add it to the 'revisit once a month' list for a year or so.

People learn at different speeds of course and for me tunes are randomly easy or hard to commit to memory depending on fingering, push-pull patterns and so on rather than the technical difficulty of the tune in a musical sense. Most tunes that are childishly simple like Shepherd's Hey and Winster Processional are the ones I'm most likely to mess up on because I'm bored witless after the first three notes!

[Lyn]

There are so many great tunes out there  ...  I'm going to run out of time! 
[/quote]

I am SO identifying with this, Airtime! Hence my Tuna Week Challenge. I am aware I am just scratching the surface of each tune, but I do try and play each one I've recently picked up, every day. I've done about 8 in the last 4 plus weeks. My excuse for 'speed learning' them is so that I can join in at session without cheating and reverting to my fiddle all the time. I'm learning 'other stuff' at a deeper and more interesting level. Lester's Tune A Day is immensely helpful for my challenge, but he just makes matters worse as I am anxious to get so many of them under my belt then another really good one comes up!!

[AirTime]

I have perhaps a couple of dozen tunes "on the go" - I can basically play them, but haven't finalized the form. In other words, I'm still working out the order of repetitions, variations & embellishments. I find this part a bit uninspiring & want to move on to a new & fabulous tune I've come across. However, without properly finishing & (laboriously) memorizing each tune, I know it hasn't truly become part of my "repertoire".

[Daddy Long Les]

Yep.  A kindred spirit here!  The main reason that I do my blogs is to almost force myself to nail a tune.  I definitely put myself under pressure by doing this but I think I'm a better player for it.  I've still got a long way to go but I'm definitely enjoying the journey.  Not only do I fret about all the tunes that I want to learn but also worry that I can't play the ones I learnt a few months back that I'm no longer working on!   I like to have a few tunes on the go so that I don't go stale on a piece.  When I sense that I'm getting close on a piece I concentrate on it for a few days so that I can film it.

Currently working on: The First Nowell DG /Rudolph GCF / Dunking Biscuits (one of mine!) GCF /Donkey Riding DG - trying to improve my bellows technique/Granton Fish Bowl - English Concertina

All the best to all beginners and improvers out there!

Les

[george garside]

I think a reasonable compromise   is to choose a  reletively  small number of tunes , perhaps 5 or 6 as 'sunday best'  and hone them to something like 'performance standard'  and at the same time build up a larger group of tunes that you can bash out in a session with varying degrees of quality i.e some better than others!


This satisfies both urges -the desire to play ( some) tunes really well and the desire to have  a large 'join in' repertoire.
'
Tunes can of course be moved  from 'join in'  catagory to 'sunday best catagory'  and 'sunday best' stuff can be  relegated to 'join in' so as to  prevent the select 'sunday best'  group from becoming stale.

george

[Thrupenny Bit]

I also worry about too little time - you're not the only ones!
As my wife said I've a past time that will keep going ...... maybe, hopefully, even until I go to the Great Session in the Sky!

I get distracted too, a new tune happens along and I simply *have* to learn it, thereby dropping what I've already started learning.
I also find sometimes I get bored, leave a tune, then driving home it comes on the cd player.....and it re-invigorates me and the 'time off to rest' somehow has allowed it to be ingested. The fresh look then allows me to start again, but from a platform of being half way there, so the journey to the top isn't as bad.
Then again polishing up tunes, as George says' for sunday best' is good too. An added effort sometimes gets a 'nearly there' tune into something really good.
I find the whole learning process really good, enjoyable and thought provoking, but it has a lot of funny unfathomable twists and turns between seeing a set of dots and being able to play it at a tune session.
.....but it's all Jolly Good Fun!
Q

[george garside]

Seing and presumably playing from a set of dots can prolong the time taken to be able to paly a tune (from memory) in a session etc.  This seems to be  becausps pe something in the brain says ''I don't need to remeber this as I can get the bit of paper out again'' and so the machanism that transmits  stuff from the short term to the long term memory is reluctant to come into action.  If on the other hand a tune is learned by ear  the process of transmitting it from the short tem to the long term memory is much quicker and once this is done it is stored ready to be recalled  . For dotists the trick is to play once through and then try to keep going while looking away from the dots .  If or whn you get stuck start aagain and reeat the looking away process etc etc.

george

[Thrupenny Bit]

Geoerge, I agree, it's what I try and do.
I get to know the tune by ear simply by listening a few times, check the dots to really get to knw it accurately, then glance away,  increasing my distrations.
I find a combnation of both sight reading and listening in the end produces a good version of a tune.

My daugher is a superb flautist and through orchestra work plays by looking at the dots, which is what they need to do. it is frustrating as she has an accurate ear, but finds it difficult at present to committ the tune to memory simply because she doesn't need to in any of her other musical avenues.
For morris she'll have to get over it. Those she's learnt are played well, full sound etc. and lovely pace so i need her to get the learning process sorted - so I understand the point you make looking from both sides of the mirror!
Q

[Lester]

Geoerge, I agree, it's what I try and do.
I get to know the tune by ear simply by listening a few times, check the dots to really get to knw it accurately, then glance away,  increasing my distrations.
I find a combnation of both sight reading and listening in the end produces a good version of a tune.

My daugher is a superb flautist and through orchestra work plays by looking at the dots, which is what they need to do. it is frustrating as she has an accurate ear, but finds it difficult at present to committ the tune to memory simply because she doesn't need to in any of her other musical avenues.
For morris she'll have to get over it. Those she's learnt are played well, full sound etc. and lovely pace so i need her to get the learning process sorted - so I understand the point you make looking from both sides of the mirror!
Q

Every Christmas for the past few years I have gone to a carol singing/playing do at a chums house where his friends and neighbours give the Oxford Book of carols a seeing too. One of his neighbours is guest leader of the Halle, so is quite good, but seems to be unable to play Good King Wenceslas without music and really admires the folkies ability to play tunes from memory.

His 1695 Stradivarius is very nearly a match for my Pokerwork though

[Thrupenny Bit]

 
Yes but is it the Stradavarius Penguin of Death?
 

I remember a long while back a group of extremely talented classical musicians were talking to us at Sidmouth. Likewise, they had no concept of playing without music and were stunned and incredibly impressed at what us rabble were thrashing out.
In many ways I wish there wasn't such a divide..... and more opportunity to mix.
Q

[malcolmbebb]

I know a gentleman who plays with a local band, well respected. He sight reads from a VDU, but rarely would you know it - guess he has practised the tunes anyway.  Trouble is, if the dance runs over, he has been known to run out of music and stop.

[Thrupenny Bit]

Now that's another can of worms - looking at the audience if in a band, or at the dancers if playing for morris.
You *must* do it in both cases or else how do you know if you're playing for the dance?.....which is the whole object of playing!
That is an example of why you need to have internalised the music to do what we are talking about.
Q

[AirTime]

I can't see how it would be any kind of a handicap to be able to read music fluently. Surely, you would still be able to commit a tune to memory easily enough by just playing through it enough times?

I have to admit that one of things that attracted me to the diatonic accordion is the fact that it is such an "unusual" instrument here, that there is no expectation of receiving any kind of formal training. This leaves me free, for better or for worse, to "do my own thing", & learn what I like, when I like, how I like. There is, in addition, no melodeon "community" to play with (or, for that matter, to learn from).

I am amazed (frustrated) at how, when it comes to some tunes, I don't seem to be able to remember how to start them without a prompt. In most cases, I remember a little phrase, not necessarily from the beginning that jogs my memory & allows me to put the whole thing together.

[Lester]

I can't see how it would be any kind of a handicap to be able to read music fluently. Surely, you would still be able to commit a tune to memory easily enough by just playing through it enough times?

My experience is that people who play from music seem to be wed to it and don't make the leap to internalising the tunes

I am amazed (frustrated) at how, when it comes to some tunes, I don't seem to be able to remember how to start them without a prompt. In most cases, I remember a little phrase, not necessarily from the beginning that jogs my memory & allows me to put the whole thing together.

I have been playing for 30 years + and am in the same place. Many tunes I can only play by quickly running through the B part to trigger off the A. I carry a crib list of the first few notes of tunes in ABC format on my phone for when all else fails 

[Six Stars]

My experience is that people who play from music seem to be wed to it and don't make the leap to internalising the tunes

With my very limited experience I am surprised at how little 'cross over' there seems to be. I don't seem to be able to learn tunes by just playing the music. I've been playing from the dots to help me gain some fluency in moving my fingers, but I can't remember what notes I've just played - I am having to go through a completely different process to hammer the sequence into memory. I think that the skills must be organised in different ways or in different parts of the brain.

It really shouldn't surprise me. Many years ago I learned to touch type - and worked my way through uni by typing up reports for local firms needing a temporary typist. I learned that I had very little idea about what it was that I had just typed up, the words are just translated into key strokes by the brain without being aware of what you are doing. Perhaps you have to concentrate so much to get the words to the keys that you haven't got any spare capacity for being aware of what it is that you are typing. Is reading music the same, I wonder?

[malcolmbebb]

I have the same problem getting started as Lester - but we're only a couple of months apart age wise, that might have a bearing  . I can't read music fast enough to play, I have to learn a few bars at a time from the dots. Although most tunes I am learning I already know to listen to.

[george garside]

I can't see how it would be any kind of a handicap to be able to read music fluently. Surely, you would still be able to commit a tune to memory easily enough by just playing through it enough times?

My experience is that people who play from music seem to be wed to it and don't make the leap to internalising the tunes

I am amazed (frustrated) at how, when it comes to some tunes, I don't seem to be able to remember how to start them without a prompt. In most cases, I remember a little phrase, not necessarily from the beginning that jogs my memory & allows me to put the whole thing together.

I have been playing for 30 years + and am in the same place. Many tunes I can only play by quickly running through the B part to trigger off the A. I carry a crib list of the first few notes of tunes in ABC format on my phone for when all else fails 

In the main the relatively few dotists who caan play from memory do so in the same rigid way as they would if following the dots which can be aat odds with the byearists who add to the tune by playing the gaps by making small aadjustments to note length on the hoof.


george

[Ollie]

I can't see how it would be any kind of a handicap to be able to read music fluently. Surely, you would still be able to commit a tune to memory easily enough by just playing through it enough times?

My experience is that people who play from music seem to be wed to it and don't make the leap to internalising the tunes

I am amazed (frustrated) at how, when it comes to some tunes, I don't seem to be able to remember how to start them without a prompt. In most cases, I remember a little phrase, not necessarily from the beginning that jogs my memory & allows me to put the whole thing together.

I have been playing for 30 years + and am in the same place. Many tunes I can only play by quickly running through the B part to trigger off the A. I carry a crib list of the first few notes of tunes in ABC format on my phone for when all else fails 

In the main the relatively few dotists who caan play from memory do so in the same rigid way as they would if following the dots which can be aat odds with the byearists who add to the tune by playing the gaps by making small aadjustments to note length on the hoof.


george

I don't... (at least I don't think I do...)

[Andy Simpson]

What is it with this stupid folkie complex about people who are able to read music?.

Try sitting in with dozens of other musicians you've never met to play a 25 minute piece you've never heard and play all the parts required of you correctly on cue, in time and in synch with everyone else without any mistakes. Then try being as smug and disparaging of "the dots" as before...