When teaching an evening class on playing traditional music a while
back, I was determined to get the dots only players to play by ear, &
visa versa too, so they all had the benefit of both techniques. Most
seemed to find it useful.
So after some weeks of working up to it, and following John
Kirkpatrick's writing on improvising within a tune when that half of the
brain takes over, I set us to play the same tune for 25 minutes and see
what happened to it.
Most people hugely enjoyed it. One unrepentant dots-only player was
really quite angry with me. Apparently I'd just made him read the same
32 bars around 20 times, and he was still having to read every single
dot at the end of it, and he was bored out of his skull. And he still
couldn't, or wouldn't, play it without the dots, in case he got a note
"wrong".
After reading your post, Chris, I find I have a bit more sympathy for
him than I had, inwardly, at the time!
Richard.
ch...@harris405.plus.com wrote:
<....>
But it's worse than that. I clearly remember one session in Hexham when
someone suggested a tune that I knew without music, and regularly played.
"Great!" I thought, "I don't need to go scrabbling to find this in the
tune book and come in after everyone else has already started." After the
first couple of bars, I lost my way, and didn't find it again till the
tune was finished.
So now, even if it's a tune I know without music, if I'm in company, I
find the dots just for reference if I need it.
But I think the ability to play by ear is somehow buried somewhere in the
other side of the brain if I could just learn how to access it. Sometimes
I can be playing a tune (on my own, from the music) and my eyes lose track
of the place in the music. But sometimes I can continue, if it's a tune I
know well, for several bars, before my eyes get the right place again.
If someone were to write a book on 'playing music on the right side of the
brain' I'd be a customer.
Chris Harris
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