Nervousness...(AKA sheet music=security blanket??)

[PallasAthena]

I've found that when I'm playing from memory, I tend to tense up. Not immediately, but as soon as it occurs to me that I am not reading music. I then get distracted or make stupid mistakes--either my fingers "trip" or my brain goes blank. Furthermore, I tend to end up playing too fast. However, if I have sheet music in front of me, I play with greater confidence, even if I already have it memorized so I'm not really reading the music. I think having it there gives me something visual to focus on.
I KNOW I can play without music as I do so successfully on tunes I've had memorized for a long time, but it seems that I have great difficulty getting past the stage where I need to have the music in front of me as a "just in case" sort of thing on a lot of tunes. (I don't remember having this difficulty so much in high school marching band, but then I was playing with a lot of other people and, that aside, blind panic is a good motivator ).

Any suggestions for overcomming ties to sheet music?

[Bothrops]

Hahahaha, that happens to me quite frequently as well.
I have a teacher, and the first classes I was VERY nervous, I wasn't able to play a complete tune without less than 10 mistakes
Now, about 5 months later, I'm not that nervous, and I can play with more confidence (anyways, I always tell her: "Give me 3 chances" before playing a tune, lol!)
I think it helps a lot to play in front of other people. I'm thinking in playing on the street soon, although I'm rather scared of it.
At least now I can play in front of my family and friends 'well', without being SO nervous.
Sometimes, when I practice alone, in front of the computer, I open the sheets-music of the tunes I'm going to play, although, like you, I don't really read them, I don't know why I do it.

That's my 0.02

[WyoBadger]

I am not one of the anti-sheet music party--I think it is a perfectly valid way to learn new tunes, especially if you don't have more experienced musicians from whom to learn. However, being dependant on it will severely limit you as a musician. It's time to take off the training wheels!

The first thing I would suggest is to try learning some tunes by ear, without using sheet music in the first place. Find a recording of a tune you want to learn that isn't too difficult and that is in a key you can play, listen to is over and over (and over and over) until it is well and truly stuck in your head. Then grab a whistle and figure out how to play it. Once you've got it, you can play along with the recording. Doing that and making it sound good can be a fun confidence builder.

You can do the same thing with tunes you already know. Put away the sheet music for good. Find recordings of the tunes you want to play. Play along with them, and alone, until it feels comfortable.

One other thing: Don't forget to slow down a bit. Play it only as fast as you can play perfectly (allowing, of course, as admitted in previous discussion, that we all like to let 'er rip occassionally). Once it's comfortable and nigh perfect at a given slower tempo, start pushing it a bit.

Hope that helps. Best of luck!

Tom

[sbfluter]

Once I know a tune I do not refer to the sheet music again unless I need to jog my memory on how to start it (if starting from the B part doesn't do it). And then I refer to it without playing my instrument.

As I learn more, I try to learn on the fly at my session. They are ok with that there. I asked and they have told me that I don't bother anybody. They all say I'm too quiet to hear at all.

I learn on the fly at the session by picking up pieces of tunes. I play just the pieces I can pick up and leave out the rest.

After the tune ends sometimes I'll try to fill in the parts in between the ones I got, until the next tune starts (quietly, naturally). Sometimes even the ones I already do know sound different from how I learned them from the dots. So I will play the part that's like what I already know and listen to the part that is different and try to pick it up on the fly.

I think this is a pretty decent method of learning how to learn by ear. It's working for me anyway.

[walrii]

listen to it over and over (and over and over) until it is well and truly stuck in your head.

What he said.

I'm a noob but here are a couple other things that have helped wean me off sheet music. Get the structure of the tune in your head. This needn't be anything cosmic, just something to help you remember how it goes. I'm working on "The Wind That Shakes the Barley" right now and the "structure" in my head for the A Part is - two bars of that bouncy thing then two bars of up high and back down then repeat those four bars.

Learn the tune backwards. Learn the last two bars first and practice them until yo have them down. Then learn the next-to-last two bars and so forth, working backwards through the tune. That way, as you play the tune, you are moving towards more and more familiar ground.

Don't ever play it wrong, especially the first time. This is a hard one for me as I enjoy noodling without paying much attention to what I play next. But to learn well, we need to think about the structure of the tune, remember the tough spots and then play slowly enough so the first pass is as perfect as we can make it. If there is a spot where you have trouble, play that bar over and over and over and over (slowly enough to be perfect!) until you have erased the wrong way out of your head.

[Ron Jarvis]

There are some very good suggestions already listed, especially the one about learning a song without the music! Worked for me.

It might also help <has for me> to hum or sing the song to yourself. It is called lilting and goes back many, many years. The most interest affect I've experienced is a much better sense of the allusive traditional Irish rythym. I found that I sing them (to myself) much better than I play them. That is beginning to change for the better. Often, I can't get a melody out of head when my head hits the pillow. It's probably a flaw in my character, but find many occasions when I sing tunes to myself. I love music! Good luck.

Ron

[boatgirl]

Hello,
Someone else said on a recent forum to memorize a bar at a time. I've found that to be very useful advice, it really helps to get it in the brain faster than my usual methods. I've also started to make a concious effort to link the starting notes with the name of a tune - because usually if you have that the rest falls into place. Another thing I recently tried to do was play along to my cd in the car - well, I don't tote around my cheat sheets so that is proving to be a really fast memorization exercise as I don't like to mess up.

Happy Whistling!

[Cayden]

Hello,
Someone else said on a recent forum to memorize a bar at a time. I've found that to be very useful advice,

It is probably the most terrible advice they could have given you. As a result you will in your head break up the tune into bars which goes against the true structure of the tune.

Learn a tune, any tune, by the phrase, adapting the inherent structure of the tune and play it by the phrase as a question- answer conversation sort of thing. Only then you will eventually play music instead of a meaningless string of notes.

in the case of the above mentioned Wind That Shakes the Barley reads as:


B|~A3 B AFEF| DBBA BcdB|~A3 B AFEe|fded BcdB|

but would sound, properly played, as:

B [(~A3 B AFE)F (DBBA Bcd)] B (~A3 B AFE) e (fded Bcd)]

[phrase] (sub-phrase)

[Pyroh]

I agree with Peter here - one bar at time is a method used in classical music, where the process of learning a tune is mostly about technique. For non-irish people, the biggest problem when learning irish music, is not purely the technique, but the style too.

I learn with MIDI files, and I always listen to mp3's. When I learn a tune, I put it into my mp3 player, and listen to it quite often - this way, it´s in my head, and since I can more or less play what I hear, I have no problem.

Two years ago, I was using sheet music too, and I found, when I use purely sheet music, and not sound, I concentrate too much on reading the music, while I miss the "essence" of it. So I guess you´ll have to play it over and over, unless you have the record. If you do, just listen to it many times, and it will be all much easier for you then.

[boatgirl]

Wouldn't want to be putting out bad advice. Thanks for jumping in there Peter. I'll go by the phrasing now instead of the bars. Does make better sense really when I think on it. I used to try to memorize all of part A and once I had it down, memorize part B but sometimes, on a lengthy tune, it was easier to use the bar by bar as suggested on the forum. I found it quite good really. Once it's memorized, and in my head, I think it begins to flow when there's no worrying about the reading notes and all. I am very concious of the rhythym keeping and listen all the time to my cds to get that right. Still, tis better to start as we mean to go on. Phrasing now not bars.

[Cayden]

Looking at a tune as a conversation, a question-reply situation, will make you see the structure, it will help make sense and you'll end up more secure with it and more readily remember it.

[clark]

My father, who was a professional Jazz musician, used to tell me, "Don't memorize it! Play it by heart!" While in English to memorize and play by heart are often used interchangeably, my father made a distinction between the two. Memorizing is a rote and rather mechanical process that can suck the life out of a tune if you're not careful. On the other hand, playing something by heart is when a tune comes from the core of your being. When I asked him how do you do that? He said, "Pay attention to what the melody is saying NOT what the notes are saying. A melody is not a collection of notes...it's much much more!"

So how do I actualize this? From beginning to end listen, listen, listen. I want to internalize the tune before I ever touch an instrument if possible. I usually have something to listen to because, for the most part, if I'm learning a tune it's because I heard it on a CD or perhaps someone played it in a session and I recorded it or one of my band mates is teaching us something new. I will usually get written music even for new tunes I've learned by ear. I find the dots a great memory aide when I can't remember how something starts. Anyway, next I'll look at the music while I hear it being played. Then, finally, I'll start playing it all the way through as slowly as necessary. I'm careful to keep listening. Slowly speed and facility with the tune grows and it starts to take on a life of its own as it drifts further and further from the dots. I just keep playing it over and over till I find my eyes closing and there is only listening to the tune. No need to memorize. Just play it till it plays itself. At that point the tune is really yours.

When I'm playing for others at a pub gig, or worse a concert, I sometimes get nervous and find myself getting a little lost. That is a signal that I have stopped listening. I find that all I have to do is come back to the music and be present and listen and then I can find my way again. When I'm really present and listening I can even enjoy my mistakes!

Clark

[walrii]

The discussion of phrasing is very helpful. I don't think I'm following the bars rigorously but I also wasn't using the same phrases as Peter does in "Wind That Shakes the Barley." Peter, could you please post your interpretation of the B part of "Wind"? Thanks.

[Cayden]

The discussion of phrasing is very helpful. I don't think I'm following the bars rigorously but I also wasn't using the same phrases as Peter does in "Wind That Shakes the Barley." Peter, could you please post your interpretation of the B part of "Wind"? Thanks.

On another forum Paul de Grae made the following remark just now, relevant to this discussion so I quote it here:

Phrasing is an essential factor in all this (no, really?). A difficulty that can arise with players who rely on notated music is that the phrases do not usually coincide with bar lines. Typically the phrase begins at the end of a bar, with what you might call a lead-in note. It seems likely that there is a strong vocal element in this kind of phrasing, and of course in speech and song (at least in English and Irish), the accent rarely falls on the first word of a phrase, it's more like this:

the boy stood on the burning deck
whence all but he had fled.

I've omitted secondary accents for clarity. If that was a musical phrase, the bar lines would be immediately in front of "boy" and "all", not at the beginning of the phrase. This seems really obvious when you're accustomed to the music, but I know it can cause problems with otherwise musically adept people

I'll come back to the Wind that Shakes the Barley later, other things needing attention right now

[sbfluter]

I know that you said you don't have a session to go to, but if there is any possible way to see fiddles play the tunes that is very helpful too. Watch the bowing. The rhythm comes from the bowing and seeing it really helps.

If you play a strumming instrument, try to strum the rhythm, too. It helps.

It's hard to translate into the wind instrument, especially when you are new (like me) and barely can coordinate your fingers to make whatever you want come out, but it will mysteriously help anyway.

I realize this isn't about learning by ear exactly, but it kind of is. It's another tool to help you focus your attention which helps your listening. A lot of flute players seem unfocused in their rhythm and I think that is because they haven't learned from the fiddles.