Posts Tagged ‘Learning By Ear’

Picking with Others is the Easiest Practice

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

Red Henry

Red Henry


Folks, we’ve discussed practice several times on this blog lately. Some of my own entries have had to do with how to keep up with your practice when you don’t have much spare time available. But there are other aspects of practice to talk about, including “What’s the easiest way to practice?” and “What kind of practice is best?”

In my own case, I discovered in 1967 (about a week after I started playing) that for me, picking with others was the easiest and best way to practice. It’s that way for others, too. When you are playing with other people, (1) you don’t have to provide all the musical energy– energy circulates around the group (even if it’s only two or three people) and comes back to help you; (2) practice time passes so much more quickly that three or four hours playing music with others make seem shorter than one hour at home; and (3) it’s a lot more fun. And you sure learn a lot, painlessly. This is why Murphy says over and over at the end of our videos, “Find some people to pick with!”

Now, I know that in some parts of the country (and the world) there are few other players of bluegrass, country, folk, gospel, or other similar material whom you can get with. For example, I spent a year at an Air Force base in Del Rio, Texas, and didn’t find any other musicians that year. Nowadays, of course, things are a lot better: we have our Murphy Method Slow Jam and Picking Up the Pace DVDs, and you can have a jam session any time right in your house!

So as I said, when you’re picking with others, you not only have a better time than in solo practice, but you learn faster. You also begin improvising, and backing up other players, in a live setting where people are having a good time. Playing in almost any kind of group is not only the easiest kind of practice– but the best.

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Flying and Picking (6)

Friday, February 5th, 2010
Into the Wild Blue Yonder

Into the Wild Blue Yonder

Folks, a few days ago I mentioned that my flight instructor and I had gone on a cross-country flight to another airport here in the Shenandoah Valley. Well, yesterday we went on another longer cross-country, and a parallel really struck me between flying and playing music.

The first time, we flew to an airport near Harrisonburg, Va. I had my hands full trying to identify my checkpoints, keep my log of the time at each one, and dial in my radio navaids to confirm my navigation. We got there right on time and course, but I had my hands full just taking care of those “mechanical” things.

Then yesterday, we flew down to Charlottesville. I was able to do all those things, plus keep checking on the chart to make sure that we were in exactly the right place every minute, and looking ahead to what came next. This time the forecast winds were not as perfect as last time, so we might get a little off course, but this time I could detect it soon and correct for it. I was able to make everything go more smoothly. I think I kept us within a half-mile of our planned course the whole way, and when we were about 15 miles from the Charlottesville airport I spotted our destination runway straight ahead (and we were, almost eerily, nearly lined up with it again). Not only had we arrived on target and on time, but I’d been able to look ahead and think of the flight as a whole, instead of as a series of individual steps.

How does this connect with playing music? Well, you start out learning the notes to a tune, and you play them as well as you can. You eventually get to where you can play all the way through the tune without (hopefully) losing your place, or, at least, if you miss a lick you can recover and keep playing in time. This means that you have the “mechanical” part of the tune under control. But as you keep listening to the DVD over and over (for example, Cripple Creek on our Beginning Banjo Vol.1 or Earl Scruggs playing his original version on the Foggy Mountain Banjo CD), the more you hear. You may automatically pick up the subtle way Murphy and other players syncopate the notes to make the tune more listenable. You start hearing notes that are more accentuated than the others, which define (or at least imply) the melody. You start hearing the overall tune, which is more than just the notes.

You come back to the DVD lesson or Earl’s CD a few weeks or months later, and you can hear more than you did the first time. You start hearing more than the notes. In other words, you start hearing the tune as a piece of music. So keep listening to Murphy, keep listening to Earl, and keep picking!

Red

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What If I Don’t Have Any Talent?

Monday, March 9th, 2009

Murphy HenryThis Blog was inspired by Marty who read the following in the March Banjo Newsletter and sent me an email. This is a quote from a banjo player and teacher:

“All teachers occasionally get a student who has no musical promise at all. What do you do with them? I just keep trying to teach them until they reach their own conclusions.”

Marty then wrote, “My heart stopped for a minute and I thought, ‘Hey, he could be talking about me.’ Then I decided that if he couldn’t teach them, they should have tried a better way and used the Murphy Method….I still agree with the perspective that if a willing student can’t learn it is more about the teacher than the student.”

I replied thusly:

Bless your heart (as we say down South). I’m sorry that article gave you even a moment’s pause. You have plenty of promise! And I mean that. And what is more important, you have stick-to-it-ness and desire. Which, in the long run, is the most important. If, as the Good Book says, you have a talent and bury it, what good is it?

I agree with you about it usually being the teacher. In fact in my BNL article in 1983 (!), I quoted a professional tennis teacher who said that the attitude of many teachers is “If you don’t learn what I teach you, you’re a dummy.” His approach was, “If you don’t learn, I’m the dummy.” That’s the philosophy the Murphy Method is built on.

I have found that most people, regardless of age, have some musical ability if you just explore deep enough. For instance, if I encounter someone who really seems to “lack talent” on the banjo, I make things as simple as possible. In the beginning this might include simply strumming the open G chord and trying to play in time. In that regard the banjo is the easiest of the instruments to teach, because the string are so light (not like guitar or mando) and the chords (G, D7, and even C) are so easy to make. I then take that foundation stone and build on it.

Unfortunately the musical talent we all are born with sometimes gets buried by inattention or covered up by other life experiences. Or, worst of all, a well-meaning adult (parent or teacher) tells a child that she or he has NO MUSICAL ABILITY. Kids then carry that damaging—and false—belief into adulthood where it is very hard to shake. But it can be shaken!!! I make it my job to shake it! If any of you believe this about yourselves IT’S NOT TRUE! And it’s not too late! (I feel like I’m giving an alter call and we should all stand and sing “Just As I Am.” Perhaps in a former life I was a preacher!) 

I have taught many people who have come to music late in life and who get a great deal of pleasure out of being able to play a few songs. I get a reciprocal amount of pleasure watching them learn and hearing them play. I have also taught a number of adults who come to the banjo in their middle years and learn to play lots of tunes, learn to jam, learn to improvise, and even form bands.

The keys are: learning by ear, sticking with it, taking it slow, and never giving up!

So if you’re asking yourself right now if you have any talent, the answer is: YES!

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Fiddle Stuff

Thursday, December 18th, 2008

Murphy HenrySuzi, one of my fiddle students, has graciously allowed me to post the list of tunes she is working on. She has taken up fiddle at the age of 71 and is doing very well. And what makes this especially interesting to me is that she’s not following the “normal” path for a beginning fiddle student. Of course we started there with my conventional first songs for fiddle: Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, Mary Had A Little Lamb, Are You Sleeping Brother John, and so on. But Suzi quickly became bored with practicing these over and over. So she started picking out tunes on her own. By ear.

And here is the list she’s come up with. So far! Since she was raised in the Grace Brethren church, most of these are hymns. Since I was raised Baptist, I know them. And love them! I think this is an interesting pairing of student and teacher.

How Suzi picks these out I don’t know. And by that I mean, I have no idea of how she arrives at each starting note. But somehow she ends up playing in easy keys, mostly D, although she herself is not aware of what key she is playing in. (I told her this week that you call tell what key you are playing in by the last note in the song. If the last note is “D” then you are playing in the key of D. Cool, eh?) I have indicated which key she is playing in, in case that helps you in your own playing. I have also included the notes she starts on, in her own words which I have put into italics. (‘Twould be better if you figured out your own starting notes, but I’m just being picky!)

You’ll notice that at the end of the list are some suggestions I made for easy songs that were not religious.

SUZI’S SONGS

Amazing Grace: Key of G: D open to ring finger

When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder: Key of D: D open to index finger

Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee: Key of D: D middle finger

Jesus Loves Me: Key of D: A open to D middle finger

It Is No Secret What God Can Do: Key of D: D middle finger

Stand Up, Stand Up For Jesus: Key of G: Open D to ring finger on D

Oh, For A Thousand Tongues To Sing: Key of G: D open to D ring finger

Joy To The World: Key of D: ring finger on A

(more…)

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This Is How It’s Supposed To Happen!

Thursday, October 30th, 2008

Murphy HenrySandy, who is about my age (the best age!) has been taking fiddle lessons from me now for two or three months. Maybe even four. She’s never played an instrument before. Knowing that if she invested a lot of money in an instrument, she’d feel obliged to stick with it, she bought a good new German fiddle.

We started out slowly, as I always do, just learning to pull the bow across the open strings. Then it was on to “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.” We just took it in pieces and Sandy had it down in about a month. She’s very dedicated to her practice. This tune is on our Beginning Fiddle DVD so she had a reference. During this time we were also working on the A major scale.

Because Sandy is an adult and is not clamoring to play in a bluegrass band or even a bluegrass jam session, I veered away from the DVD at this point. I don’t think “Cripple Creek” makes a whole lot of musical sense to someone who had never heard it. Instead, I started her on “Are You Sleeping Brother John.” Since this tune is not on the DVD, Sandy had to memorize each section during the lesson. (I’m not sure why we didn’t use a cassette player. Maybe she doesn’t have one anymore.) Again, we took it in sections, doing only four notes at a time. In addition to playing the song on her fiddle (and since I told her not to write anything down), Sandy would sing the song to herself when she took her daily walk. Again, we had it down in about a month. And “Twinkle” kept getting better.

It was when Sandy was learning her next song “Mary Had A Little Lamb” that the ear training started to pay off. Sandy had mentioned that “Twinkle” was easier to learn than “Brother John” because you stayed on the same note for more bow strokes, so I’d picked “Mary” for exactly that reason. So I showed her the first phrase “Mary Had A Little Lamb” and when she had no trouble with those seven notes, I’d added the rest of the line. Then I told her the first part of the next line was the same as the first phrase. She played that easily. Then she did the most astounding thing: on her own, and never having played this song before, she played the last part of the song ALL BY HERSELF, “its fleece was white as snow.” I was SO HAPPPY! And so proud of her. And she was happy and pretty pleased with herself. As she should have been.

And like I told her, this is how it’s supposed to happen. When you learn by ear, especially if you’ve never played anything before, the first tunes almost have to be learned by rote—with the teacher showing you the notes. And if you stick with the “by ear” part of the program and don’t write anything down, then your ear starts to develop and, sure enough, you start to hear where the notes are yourownself. And then you are on the road to being able to pick out other tunes—whole tunes—by yourself without the aid of a teacher. This is not to say that Sandy will be picking out “The Star-Spangled Banner” next week or even “Old MacDonald” but I’m sure the tunes she’ll be learning will be much easier (we’re fixing to start on Christmas carols from our “Christmas Fiddle Tunes” DVD) and she will be able to pick out parts of them by herself.

So to all of you out there, struggling with the fiddle (or any instrument), I hope Sandy’s story encourages you to hang in there!!!!!!

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Let’s Talk About Improvising

Friday, July 25th, 2008

Murphy HenryOkay, here we go! First of all, as I mentioned earlier, bluegrass is all about improvising. By its nature, bluegrass is an improvisational music. That’s part of its charm. In spite of the fact that banjo players like to “play it like Earl,” the beauty of bluegrass is that you really don’t have to play it like Earl. Or anybody else. You can play it like you! How boring would it be if everybody played all of Earl’s songs exactly like Earl all the time? Where’s the creativity? (Although don’t get me wrong! Learning Earl in the beginning is essential!)

And frankly, almost everyone wants to play with other people. There are few true closet players. So eventually this means one thing: improvising. Improvising is the skill that allows you to play along on songs you don’t know. It would be a mighty boring and one-sided jam session if it only included songs one person knew. And bluegrass would be a mightily tough row to hoe if you had to memorize the breaks for hundreds of songs! That’s where improv comes in. It’s sort of like a short cut to the whole bluegrass repertoire.

What exactly is improvising? In a nutshell, improvising is making up stuff out of your own head that fits the chord progression. So, how do you get there? First of all, there’s the learning by ear part. [NOTE: RANT AGAINST TABLATURE COMING UP.] The worst thing about tablature is that is does not lead to improvising. I have had plenty of non-believers come up to me and say, “I don’t have any problem reading tablature. I can read tab fine and play the banjo (or mandolin or fiddle or guitar). I can play twenty or thirty songs from tab. I even have them memorized, I don’t have to look at the tab anymore.”

Well, doubting Thomasina that I am, I almost never believe anyone who says this. Too often when I have heard a “tab eater” play, the renditions are choppy—starting and stopping—and out of time. No one could accompany them on a guitar.

But suppose someone could actually play a decent arrangement from tab. I confess, I’ve seen some of this too. But can that person trade off breaks with someone else who is playing the same song? Vamp (chord) while the other is playing the lead? Come back in appropriately when it’s time? Sadly, the answer is usually no.

And to ratchet it up just one more notch. Suppose a person could do all of the above. Trade breaks, vamp, and come back in. Could that player take a break on a song s/he didn’t know? A three-chord singing song? Probably not. No matter how well you play from tab, you are still confined to the tab. And that’s why I rant against it. [RANT OVER.]

Fortunately, improvising is a learned skill. And most people can learn it (if they just listen to me and do what I tell them! ) And the cornerstone to improvising is LEARNING TO HEAR YOUR CHORD CHANGES. Need I add BY EAR? (more…)

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Promises, promises

Wednesday, July 16th, 2008

Thoughts on improvising are on hold yet again. I just got in from teaching and I am zoned out! I did pick up one tidbit from a student that I want to pass along. Mark has been taking lessons for a couple of months now and is doing well on the current BIG THREE for beginning banjo students: Banjo in the Hollow, Cripple Creek, and Boil Them Cabbage Down, low and high breaks. He is also going great guns on his vamping, which is something I try to introduce as early as possible now so that students will have the necessary tools to play in a jam session. (If you can vamp, you can jam!) Once he learned to make those awful four-finger chord shapes (OUCH!), he really put in the hours of practice. And one of the tools he was using was our new Slow Jam DVD. He’s been playing along with that a lot.

So we’re jamming today at the lesson, both on banjos, trading breaks. S-L-O-W-L-Y of course. Mark is doing great but he keeps having trouble with the chord changes in Cripple Creek. I am concerned. I ask him what he’s doing differently from what he does when he plays along with the Slow Jam DVD. He thinks a minute and then says, “I usually watch Casey’s hands making the guitar chords.” (On this DVD we have one of those little inserts, that little screen-within-a-screen, so you can always see the guitar chords that Casey is making.) [Editor's note: Through the magic of video editing, the hand in the box is actually Murphy's.]

Aha! I think. He’s not really listening to the chord changes, he’s just changing when he sees Casey change. He was thinking the same thing. “I think it’s becoming a crutch.” You’re darn tootin’! And furthermore, it seemed to me that he might actually be COUNTING the number of beats for each chord. (Always risky because what if you get lost? And you will get lost, you will!)

So of course I told him to stop counting and to START LISTENING! And because he really does have a good ear for the chord changes (he plays some guitar), when he started listening, he did much, much better. It wasn’t perfect, but he could tell when he missed the chord and the next time through was more likely to get it right.

The moral of this story? Don’t let watching the guitar player’s hand become a crutch for you. Even on a DVD! Use it to get your bearings, but then stop. And start using your ear. I don’t call it learning by ear for nothing! Listen, listen, listen. (See Mark, I warned you. Everything is now fodder for The Blog! Tell Ellen heads up! Next time I might talk about Beginning Guitar!)

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You Got Questions, I Got Answers

Tuesday, July 8th, 2008

I was planning on talking about improvising today, but we got such a nice response to my first blog, asking how I learned to play that I thought I could justify taking off on that side road for a bit.

So thanks for asking! Here we go….

“How did you get into Bluegrass and who taught you to play the banjo? Did you learn to play by ear or did you dabble in tab? Be honest now, were you ever tempted to take down any notes?”

I got into bluegrass courtesy of the great Gamble Rogers. In the early seventies, I was attending the University of Georgia, in Athens, where instead of concentrating on my pre-med studies, I was spending large quantities of time at a club called the Last Resort, watching Gamble pick his guitar, Merle Travis style, and spin tall tales. One night Gamble told the crowd that there was a bluegrass festival in nearby Lavonia, Georgia, and that we should all go. He was going. Well, if Gamble had said we should all jump off the Tallahatchie Bridge, I’d have been the first one in the water.

My friend Paula Lane (where are you now Paula?) and I went and not only did I see my first live bluegrass, I also met my future husband, Bryan “Red” Henry. Gamble introduced us around a campfire. Red was drinking something out of a Mason jar that looked suspiciously like water. He didn’t remember me, but I remembered him!

Shortly after that, I got my first banjo and commenced learning to play. My friend Buddy Blackmon showed me a few things but mostly, at first, I tried learning from the Earl Scruggs Book. Yes, I was using tablature. That’s why I know it doesn’t work! And, hey, I had a musical background. I could read music enough to play church piano, could play guitar by ear, and had taken a year or so of violin. I was not musically ignorant nor slow on the uptake.

Still I hadn’t heard much bluegrass and I didn’t know what the songs were supposed to sound like! So I struggled with the tab, circling eighth notes because they lasted longer, and trying to make some sense of the music. (You should see my Scruggs book. It’s all marked up!) The results were pitiful.
(more…)

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