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It
is never too early or too late to start to learn, and within a
reasonably short period the beginner - especially the motivated
adult beginner - can achieve a good degree of competency, and
derive much pleasure and satisfaction from learning. Since the
unit of learning is the song or tune, the drudgery of scales and
exercises is avoided. Techniques acquired on one instrument can
be transferred to another.
If
you're new to Irish music, it may seem strange to you that most
traditional players learn tunes by ear, let alone that
there are lots of excellent players out there who don't know how
to read music. The very idea of doing without the dots and lines
is enough to throw some people, especially classical players,
into a panic. It somehow violates their conception of what learning
music should be like, that you see the symbols and reproduce them
and that's that.
But there's a lot more to Irish music than that. Nailing the exact
notes with surgical precision is all well and good, but what matters
a lot more are the things that can't be written down.
Learning by ear helps you to understand the large-scale structure
of your tunes, which allows you to play around with the details.
You can also learn tunes faster by ear and remember them more
clearly, since you aren't putting the music through the filter
of written notation. Learning from sheet music is like finding
your way around a house by looking at a floor plan. Useful in
its own way, of course, but when you learn by ear, you're wandering
from room to room inside the tune, opening doors and peering into
closets, finding your way around it.
Your experience of the music is more direct and intimate.
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