Learning a piece of music

[Classic Banjo]

Hello everybody

Another newbie question. 

I find it hard remembering how to play a piece of music from beginning to end. Frankly, even just remembering the chord accompaniments is a challenge for me.

Can you suggest ways/systems that might achieve this?

Thank you

Eric 

[Jody Stecher]

Well said, Donna. You are right and so is Ian. However I also disagree with one small aspect of Ian's position. Reading ability and knowledge of music theory are two different skills. In over 50 years of teaching many hundreds of private students I have found that the ones who first learned from reading had the least understanding of music theory, and had the weakest grasp of chords and harmony. They could not intuit chord changes. they could not "hear it coming" and would inevitably guess the wrong chord. By the way I'm happy to say I've  had a high success rate in curing them. 

[Steve Harrison]

Hi Jody, I first started it playing classic banjo as the result of having a pile of banjo music given to me by a retired banjo teacher. I knew nothing about classic banjo at that time, and had never heard of any of the tunes or heard any recordings of them. The internet was in its infancy so I didn't have the obvious advantages that players have today.

I learned to play them just by interpreting the dots, I had no idea whether I was 'doing it right' until about a year after I'd started playing classic style when I attended my first rally. Until then I'd only ever heard my rendition of the tunes. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I'd made a reasonable stab at it and watching and listening to other players inspired me to progress and gave me tips on the correct technique. The first two tunes I learned were the Dashwood Quick Step and Life in Louisiana.

I had being playing melodic style previously so I wasn't a complete banjo novice and my music reading skills came from years of playing accordion and guitar. 

I taught myself melodic banjo by taking the tunes that I played on the squeeze box and guitar, mostly traditional folk tunes, figuring out where all the notes were and getting on with it by trial and error until It sounded OK.

None of this would have been possible without my ability to read and interpret music.....Steve.

Jody Stecher said:

Sorry, Steve, it just ain't so. I doubt whether more than 90% of the world's musicians can read music. When it comes to banjo playing I doubt whether even a quarter of a percent are literate (can read dots). And they all memorize music with ease. It's because they listen that they can remember.  I have heard a lot of superb musicians who are literate. But the best musicians I have heard are ear players. The starting point is listening. The great literate players are the ones who listen. they listen to their own playing. They listen to their fellow musicians. One of the greatest assembly of musicians I ever heard was the San Francisco Symphony. This was a few years ago when I and two other banjoists were seated in front of them (photos and discussion are on this site). Let me tell you something. The coordination I heard from that orchestra came from one skill and one skill only and it wasn't reading. And it wasn't following the batton. It was from listening. 

Steve Harrison said:

Hi Ian, I pretty much do the same but the point I was trying to get over to Eric is that reading the music is the starting point from which all else follows. You have to be competent in reading the dots before you can memorize any tune...Steve.

[thereallyniceman]

It is good to hear all the different views on how to learn to play Classic Banjo.. all that actually matters is that you do!

If you are lucky enough to find a teacher all the better as it is quite a hill to climb single handedly. Tutor books are useful, but don't tell you when you have made a mistake or that your technique is wrong... and these errors can stick with you and are very difficult undo!

Advice from professionals like Jody and Donna is always appreciated so beginners please take advantage and ask even what may seem the daftest of questions on the forum as we are all here to help.

Don't forget that we all started by not knowing which way up to hold a banjo... just like you  ;-)

Don't be embarrassed to post videos, start discussions... that is what the site is for!

We want to get as many new players as possible to keep the style alive.

[Trapdoor2]

This has been a fun discussion!

I pretty much stopped playing banjo for all of 2013 when I started playing the 'cello in an adult learners group sponsored by our local symphony orchestra (I want to do that again, except on the viola). One of the things I took away from that experience is that almost everybody learns differently. The symphony professionals I met all considered the dots to be a 'reminder', not a 'driver'. They all memorize to some extent...some more than others. Like Jody said, they're professional listeners.

I must say, watching a professional sight-read a new piece is simply amazing.

Listening is crucial for me. If I've never heard a given piece of music, I will have a terrible time learning/playing it. This is the primary reason I have been entering all those dots into my computer for all these years...I need to hear the tune! Once I have it in my head, the rest is simply muscle-memory (well, not quite that 'simply').

I'm lost in the CB world when it comes to structure. I'm not playing chords (even though I'm making them with my fingers), I'm playing the tune. I have no idea what key I'm in or what chord is next. Oh, I hear the changes and the cadences, I just don't need to know their names. I just follow the instructions (in my case, TAB).

With the cello, I learned to sight read the dots. Took me very little effort to do so...but it was very linear, no chords!

In the folk world, I either play the tune or I follow the structure (or both) by ear (usually. I do use TAB sometimes). I know the key and the chord changes...but it is a very different world there. Big plus, I've been playing it for 35yrs...so much of it has been ingrained over time. I certainly spent years not knowing what I was doing...just doing it.

[Donna Stewart]

Hello Eric:

By way of a direct answer to your question, there are several steps you can take to solve your problem but first you must figure out an approach and stick with it.  The Really Nice Man describes an excellent system for learning pieces without having to acquire a music degree.  I suggest you follow up on the ample amount of information he makes available here.  Or better yet, find an instructor, which is really the best way.

Meanwhile, I suggest you train your ears to listen to a piece of music—the simplest piece you can stand.  Learn the melody alone without the full chordal treatment.  That is, extract the melody and play only the notes you can hum, whistle or sing.  Break the piece into fragments that are the equivalent of sentence fragments.  Tunes have "punctuation" just like spoken words, and you can usually pick out a phrase.  Work on one phrase at a time and then begin the hard work of stitching the phrases together.

This may seem simplistic but it has worked for my students over the years.

[Jody Stecher]

Donna: those are words of wisdom; and clearly of experience.

Steve: your experience is yours and could not and should not be disagreed with. In your earlier post you did not say that learning from the dots has served you well. You said that nobody can learn to play without first looking at a written score. That is what I disagree with. The facts are in evidence: people can and do learn to play without ever looking at a page. I'm not Dissing The Dots. I use em myself. 

As to your question “why the need to play from memory?”  the answer is that when we know the music *by* heart we can more readily play *with* heart. Playing with feeling, playing so that we activate feelings in the listener is enabled by  "playing it like you wrote it", by internalizing the music.  Playing with expression does not require charisma, a gift from the gods. Everyone is naturally expressive in the absence of inhibitors. 

[Steve Harrison]

Hi Jody, I never actually said that nobody could learn without reading music, I was giving advice to a novice banjo player as to my suggested approach and the one I have always used when teaching. Poor old Eric must now be totally confused with all the conflicting ideas and maybe we should reach a common consensus however, what that will be I've no idea...Steve. 

Jody Stecher said:

Donna: those are words of wisdom; and clearly of experience.

Steve: your experience is yours and could not and should not be disagreed with. In your earlier post you did not say that learning from the dots has served you well. You said that nobody can learn to play without first looking at a written score. That is what I disagree with. The facts are in evidence: people can and do learn to play without ever looking at a page. I'm not Dissing The Dots. I use em myself. 

As to your question “why the need to play from memory?”  the answer is that when we know the music *by* heart we can more readily play *with* heart. Playing with feeling, playing so that we activate feelings in the listener is enabled by  "playing it like you wrote it", by internalizing the music.  Playing with expression does not require charisma, a gift from the gods. Everyone is naturally expressive in the absence of inhibitors. 

[thereallyniceman]

Steve, you have said many times that you are self taught and have thus developed your own methods of both learning and teaching. I was taught by Chris Sands (child protege of Tarrant Bailey Jnr.) and was given hints and help by TBj himself. Both taught by the method that I described in an earlier post, using the fret position numbers and chord shapes. The notation was of course important but the reading and understanding of it built up over time and with much practice and experience!

I have been holding on to a file that was kindly sent some time ago by our friend Ray Jones in Australia. Ray received audio cassette Classic Banjo lessons from the late great Tom Barriball, first class player and teacher of maybe the country's greatest Classic Style player Rob Murch !

This is the first part of around 40 minutes of an audio lesson sent to Ray. Tom, being "The Cornish Banjo King" speaks in a strange language often unintelligible to us mere mortals :-)  BUT listen hard and you will be able to decipher what he is saying. 

It seems that the "original guys" did  learn and teach by using the score "hints and tips"  and chord numbered shapes with the notation taking second place in the short term... the way I did.

SPORTS PARADE LESSON Part 1 by Tom Barriball

[Jody Stecher]

I was responding to this: "….reading the music is the starting point from which all else follows. You have to be competent in reading the dots before you can memorize any tune."

Steve Harrison said:Hi Jody, I never actually said that nobody could learn without reading music, 

[Steve Harrison]

Hi Ian, My approach to the banjo has been shaped by the way I was taught to play accordion many years ago as a youngster. In those days, playing by ear was positively discouraged, my music teacher would give my accordion a sharp rap as soon as my eyes moved away from the page. It was a traditional and classical approach and not the way things are done today. Once conditioned to a particular way of playing, it's very difficult to do anything different.

There are however,advantages in that there is a world of written music out there waiting to be discovered and played and having the musical knowledge allows access to it. This is shown in some small part by my enjoyment of arranging tunes, many of which were not intended to be played on banjo when they were first written. Trying something fresh and getting away from the 'usual suspects' is what keeps my interest going. It's also an informative way to see how different composers approached the way they wrote their music.

Having said all that, it still doesn't help Eric very much with his original question.....Steve.

 

[Jody Stecher]

You are lucky that it was your accordion that received the sharp rap. On this side of the Atlantic in the old days it would  have been the knuckles of the student that got walloped.!  

Steve Harrison said:

In those days, playing by ear was positively discouraged, my music teacher would give my accordion a sharp rap as soon as my eyes moved away from the page.

[Donna Stewart]

Thank you, Ian, for this delightful example.  I listened to the thoughtful and detailed description on the recorded lesson and it dawned on me that this is precisely the way I approach all the instruments I teach—perhaps excepting the violin.  The subtle difference is that I like to concentrate on the melodic qualities of a piece (interpretive) and reinforce with information regarding melodies that are derived from arpeggiated chord shapes (mechanical and theoretical).  So we do not differ so much in approach after all.

Tom Barriball was indeed a first-rate player and teacher: Was I hearing steel strings in the recording?

thereallyniceman said:

Steve, you have said many times that you are self taught and have thus developed your own methods of both learning and teaching. I was taught by Chris Sands (child protege of Tarrant Bailey Jnr.) and was given hints and help by TBj himself. Both taught by the method that I described in an earlier post, using the fret position numbers and chord shapes. The notation was of course important but the reading and understanding of it built up over time and with much practice and experience!