|
|
#1
08-10-2013, 02:12 AM
|
|||
|
|||
Story from changing from TABS to EAR PLAYING only.
This is my first topic here and while reading few topics I wanted to put little thoughts here.
I read about Tommy Emmanuel stating "If you can't work it out by ear, get a job at a hardware store" I was surprised how offended people got. World is changing. Even the world of learning to play the guitar. When something old dies, something new will born. When we realize that the anger we are spreading is just making us feeling more guilty and depressed. It is time to accept that things develop. I hope my story will help you to see things differently and learn what are the benefits developing the ear playing skills. Here is my background as a teacher, organizer etc. I have playing experience of 25 years. I have graduated as a classical guitar teacher 10 years ago. Teaching experience with music institutes and privately 20 years. I can read music well (Haven't read music past 6 years). Have studies of Music Science at the university etc. I studied music a lot from books back in the day. Dogmatic rule based classical training was not for me really because if I wanted to change something from Mozart Variations or Bach piece: The verdict was "Get the original score" or "Do you think you are better than the composer?". No freedom. Something was missing. I was not happy to be as a teacher in a classroom where is not much actual music to learn from. Just a book in a front of a student and you kind of try to get the music out from the sheet music but "perfect connection" is not there. Before I tell you what was missing I will tell more about my journey. After my graduation I found fingerstyle guitar playing. Learned from Buster B Jones videos some Jerry Reed and tried some songs by ear from Don Ross. My ear was not good that time. There was a internet playing room called Texas Fingerstyle Guitar room where I played 2004 almost daily and learned a lot. I had a courage to travel to USA first time in July 2005 and visited CAAS in Nashville (Chet Atkins). End of that year Youtube officially came out (Official launch November 2005) and I was so inspired about the freedom of fingerstyle players that I changed my approach and felt that "Who is there to judge what I can do with the instrument, if I am having good time and I feel good". I made a clip of Bon Jovi's Livin On A Prayer to Finnish music forum and someone (still don't know who he is) put it to YouTube only 1 month after YouTube's official launch. Here is the link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DctCyO-E3s I was just a guy from 13000 people small city from Finland and I did not know what was happening and what all this new technology was creating. Well at the end: YouTube and internet changed and shaped my whole life. Before the first CAAS 2005 I already had my life changing moment online 2004 when I saw Tommy Emmanuel's Guitar Boogie video. I went to see him live in Germany few months later and it was the best guitar lesson I've ever had. What he did was out from this planet. No other guitar player has done it to me before. I felt him. He was a personality and the music was him. He told a story and he had a great groove. But back to the learning to play part (sorry that I jump alot here). After 2005 I visited Nashville total of 7 times every year and did research. I was pretty good player myself. Jerry Reed, Chet Atkins, Tommy Jones and others were pretty easy to learn from tabs because with proper classical training there was not too difficult things to do with. Only the rhythm and feel was the issue. Something was still missing. I was playing the songs pretty well but I was not connected the way the masters like Tommy Emmanuel, Richard Smith, Doyle Dykes etc. were. What they do differently. How they learn songs? Should I spend my time with the instrument the way they do? During the years I had a change to make friends/connections with these amazing players. I arranged Tommy Emmanuel first time to play in Finland 2006 and last time in 2009 when he filled 1200 people hall in Helsinki. He made an impression to shy Finnish audience the way that I've never seen a solo guitar player done before. I have the video about the expression here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBltUdPpHGg Adam Rafferty played in Finland few gigs as well and he played couple songs after that amazing Tommy Emmanuel performance. If you know Adam you can ask how he felt after Tommy's reception. I also brought Joe Robinson from Australia to his first gigs in Europe after his win at Australia's Got Talent TV show. He surprised me playing my arrangement of Livin' On A Prayer. Actually forgot to mention that 2008 we arranged an event where Tommy Emmanuel, Michael Fix and Joe Robinson shared the stage in Bangkok (my new home town) and after the show Joe was picking up the Living On A Prayer and I said "I have tabs for that", he answered "No Tomi let me learn it by ear". There was some other players I've had a change to hang out and share thoughts like Paul Yandell, Masa Sumide, Andy McKee, Sungha Jung, Muriel Anderson, Don Alder, Justin King, Vitaly Makukin, Alex De Grassi, Dan LaVoie etc. Well anyway by talking with the greatest players: I've learned something which connects everyone one of them: They all learn mostly by ear. No exceptions. Most of them only by ear. I had maybe 100-200 books and it was a big decision to not use them anymore. Like a crossroads. I had to ask from myself "Do I want to be good or not and what I need to do to be great?" I already knew the answer but the step to go out from the comfort zone is not every time easy. You kind of want to keep those help wheels there because you will not fall but the guys who know how to ride a bike without help wheels are much cooler and have more freedom and abilities. At the end I made a decision to get rid of tabs and sheet music totally. From now on I will learn music by ear. Everything I play comes from understanding of the music. If I don't understand it, I don't play it. It is like "why open your mouth with opinions, if you are not totally behind of them". Everything felt much more honest and natural. Tommy Emmanuel said to me last October that some people have fooled him about knowing the song. And what he means that they know how to go from start to finish mechanically pretty ok but when it is time to play the melody or rhythm individually or talk music: these people go often locked and don't know or hear what is going on. You are kind of there but you are not. I use the phrase "You know many things but you don't know what to do with them". For example you know I-IV-V chord progression but you are not able to play a lot of songs with it. My transition our from tabs took few years and after I learned the skill the playing was so much more fun. I can play whatever I want and I don't need to spend money buying books or instructional material. At my professional classical studies ear training was my weakest part of development. I failed my final tests 3 times until I got it right. So there is no way I was born with a special gift. So if you suck don't feel bad because I sucked very bad. In a world where at the lesson 1 of guitar studies someone puts a piece of paper in front of you, the game is basically lost there. Your mechanical abilities take over the musical development almost immediately. It should be other way around. This will change slowly because there will be more and more understanding how this skill can be taught. And especially because now we have access to the actual music. Youtube is 8 years old. Earliest music notation is around 4000 years old. You do the math. There was no access to technology in the past. World is changing and the ear training/transcribing is the most important skill every musician should develop right now. It is never too late. I had already 15 years with tabs and sheet music until I did the change. Now I have the skill and I am extremely satisfied. I know I can learn anything. If it is something I haven't done before, it will just take some more time. What I've done before I can learn fast because music repeats itself often. I've been teaching this skill to online students 1 year now and many have learned it and most of the students have changed their approach to learning totally. Some of them are becoming performing musicians. I taught 10 years with books and not even one of my students made it to the "professional" level. I would start everything from totally different perspective but I was a product of the system and I did not know that something better was out there. I cannot change the past and at least learned what is the important thing to do and the tabs died and ear training was born. I don't regret a single second the decision. And out from the classical tradition I don't know even one single great performing guitar player who plays from tabs. And to be honest even in classical world the best performances I personally like come from ear training musicians. Joaquín Rodrigo has mentioned Paco De Lucia's performance of Aranjuez Concerto is his favorite. Paco did shortcuts but had an amazing rhythmic feel to it. Paco is ear player. Like Django Reinhardt was and all the other best guitar players out there. If you have any questions, I am happy to help. I do this now as my profession. I am willing to help people at this forum to get more friendly towards ear training. It is nice to get people inspired because we are still at the early stages of the change. And always music related forums it is nice to let the music do the talking to back up your opinions. I saw a Axis Of Awesome video posted somewhere and actually I did similar inspired by them. Here is my video "60 songs with 4 chords". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1JWKjVboYk Thanks for reading Tomi Paldanius 
|
|
#2
08-10-2013, 02:46 AM
|
|||
|
|||
welcome to the forum !!
i have a couple of questions you said : "I have graduated as a classical guitar teacher 10 years ago" Can i ask what music did you study in your school ? What pieces did you play in the end to get your guitar degree. Did you study solfege and dictee in your school? Thanks.
|
|
#3
08-10-2013, 03:59 AM
|
|||
|
|||
|
Quote:
IOW - and it's the best support for your main point - for the vast majority of human history, and even now in many musical cultures around the world, music was(is) learned and played entirely by ear. (Look at how Indian classical musicians learn raga.) It's only in the west (post-European culture) that we regard notation as so important, probably because it made classical music possible. (Without staff notation, no orchestral symphonies, no Mozart or Beethoven. And even if they had become composers, we would not know their music now.) And of course, western culture is terribly chauvinistic about classical music. All other music is considered highly inferior, looked down on in the way that literate people look down on those who can't read. I quite like some classical music myself (at least I enjoy playing some pieces on guitar), but that critical snobbery really pisses me off. (Personally, my life would be no poorer if Mozart or Beethoven had never existed. Although I might miss Bach....) I fully agree with TE's comment: "If you can't work it out by ear, get a job at a hardware store". Musicians who can't use their ears have no business being musicians. That's not supposed to sound cruel or elitist. Everyone has a right (and enough inner ability) to play music to some recreational level, though of course only a few will be able to stick at it long enough to make a career out of it. But the point is, MUSIC IS SOUND; nothing else. If you can't get into the sound as sound, you're missing out big time; learning from tabs or notation alone is wasting your time. (That's why you may as well do something else, if that really is the case.) When we listen to music, we know nothing apart from how it sounds; we don't need to know anything else, because that's how it works on us. So there's every reason why a performing musician should work the same way; by ear alone. Of course instrumentalists need to conquer certain physical techniques to get the sounds out of their instruments. And sometimes written music can be useful as teaching aids. But notation is not music; it's just "some information about the music", as a famous conductor once said. That information only becomes music when it's turned into sound by musicians - who are (even in classical music) expected to supply a lot of their own taste and experience of listening in order to make it work.
__________________
"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." - Leonard Cohen.
|
|
#4
08-10-2013, 04:48 AM
|
|||
|
|||
|
I played Villa Lobos, Bach, Sor, Giuliani, Takemitsu, Brouwer, Albeniz etc.
All the same stuff they play at concerts today also. I am not into modern stuff but it was mandatory. I played the difficult stuff and have some recordings I can share if you want? Classical training is good for many reasons but it did not bring me happiness. I play now Mozart etc. by ear. Not by the rulebook but the way I enjoy. Professors at the university would not give many good comments about my approach. Solfegeand dictation was a mandatory. I was very bad with those. Rhythm was my strong area but when I tried to introduce Luis Bonfa and others I got pretty straight answer about what I have to play. There was attitude of better music and then music with less value/meaning. Quote:
|
|
#5
08-10-2013, 04:56 AM
|
|||
|
|||
|
Hi, interesting subject.
Different people "think" differently. some reveal their way of thinking away by saying things like "I SEE what you mean, or "I HEAR" what you say" or "I FEEL this or that" etc. this often shows whether that person is visual, aural, or tactile/emotional etc. (I'm no trick-cyclist). I have occasionally attended a great bluegrass / old-time tuition school - but rarely actually learned much from the actual tuition-because the chosen way for the tutors that I have had (with one exception) was tablature. However not all tutors there use it. I got in trouble by suggesting that tutors for forthcoming schools wrote a few words describing "how" they taught, but this was seen as my being a trouble maker, and I have been all but banned from the school, as - it was explained to me- tablature is the standard way of teaching music and that was what tutors are encouraged to use. Then why, I wonder, when I was last there and in the company of a very fine American flat-picking guitarist, when I asked him to simply sit and play a piece in front of me a few times, (after which I picked it up) many others in the group sidled up to me and asked me to teach it to them (after working with tab for hours? As I started trying to learn guitar before tablature was known of, I developed the only way of learning there was - by ear and by rote. I simply don't "see" music in terms of dots or numbers on paper - I do "see" it in my head - some sort of personal synaesthesia perhaps, but I wonder if all those folks like Stefan Grossman and Dave Bromberg who sat at the feet of Rev Gary Davis , had tablature or notation given to them by the rev? How many blues men wrote tablature ? How many bluegrass banjo men, or old timey fiddlers wrote everything down in notation? I doubt it. Some people are what I call "technicians" and can cope with breaking down a tune or instrumental into visual terms, and will practice until it is "as written" and some of us are (dare I say) more instinctive. An example that led me to this theory : I used to play with a banjo player in a five piece, and one day he said to me - "the solo that you just played was quite different to how you played it last week - which is right ?" I said - I never know what I'm going to play - I just think the melody and improvise around it - it's never going to be the same twice is it?" He looked at me as if I'd just confessed a crime and said - "that's very dangerous!" His observation explained to me why he always fought against our making our own arrangement of a number that he'd learned from a record or some tablature. He thought that if it was written or recorded that was IT - no alternatives. which is why (I think) his music was so mechanical and lacking in feeling. When I was discussing the audience appeal of one very long and complex piece - he replied - "I don't give a *** about the audience - I just want to get it right!" That to me demonstrates a horizontally opposed point of view to the instinctive player.
|
|
#6
08-10-2013, 05:04 AM
|
|||
|
|||
|
Quote:
Well , you talked about ear training when Solfege and Dictee are the ear training courses of conservatories and music schools. I want to say that in classical music education ear training is very important thats why they teach it!!!!
|
|
#7
08-10-2013, 05:06 AM
|
||||
|
||||
|
Potential to be an interesting thread, but a lot of reading! I agree, but just add the following comments:
Quote:
Quote:
|
|
#8
08-10-2013, 05:11 AM
|
|||
|
|||
|
I would love to see classical education to progress more. Every single song is still learned from a piece of paper front of you. Ear training there is not important enough to my taste. But to learn Bach it will take time to transcribe.
Quote:
|
|
#9
08-10-2013, 05:18 AM
|
|||
|
|||
|
Think about how great it would be if teacher gives actual music for example short phrase of Mozart to the student and says that learn this for next week. Sadly it is a piece of paper with dots, numbers. What a waste of hearing sense development.
|
|
#10
08-10-2013, 05:18 AM
|
|||
|
|||
|
Quote:
Well this piece of paper brought us this magnificent music of the last 400 years. Yes now we have recordings of that music but because of this piece of paper
|
|
#11
08-10-2013, 05:55 AM
|
|||
|
|||
|
Hi Tomi,
Excellent post, and I'm in agreement with you. I teach using primarily an ear approach. I prefer my students not to read notation or tabs when possible (this does not mean that they can not read it). We will do sight reading now and again to keep reading skills up to a reasonable standard, but mostly recordings and "transcribe" software are my teaching base. Some people seem to be terrified (initially) of working with the ear alone. They cling to their pieces of paper like a lifeboat. What many people seem to forget about the classical masters is that they were surrounded (and taught) by great musicians and hearing music every day from a young age. They didn't become masters by paper.  Thanks for your insight and experiences. Michael.
|
|
#13
08-10-2013, 06:14 AM
|
|||
|
|||
|
Quote:
However if every musician spends a whole week listening to many great recordings of the piece before they lay eyes on the score it's going to come together pretty quickly. I didn't say that reading doesn't have it's place, but if the ear is educated first, a musician doesn't have to rely on their weaker sense (concerning music) of sight.
|
|
#14
08-10-2013, 06:22 AM
|
|||
|
|||
|
Quote:
|
|
#15
08-10-2013, 06:33 AM
|
|||
|
|||
|
Quote:
Why would you want to learn something that you haven't heard and enjoyed? That's something I don't get (in the age of recorded music). For orchestral music, learning by listening initially, then listening whilst following a score is training the ear and learning to rely on it before picking up the instrument. Sitting down and looking at dot's first is the slow road to nowhere (for most people).
|
