Author: ohsuzan
Date: 2006-08-14 23:43
>>how did you actually learn to play back what you hear, by what process and over what period of time did you acquire this skill?
Since you 'just know' now (you're on what i call 'automatic pilot') were you born with the talent to just do it, or did you actually learn it some way at some time in your life?<<
I believe I learned how to do this, over the period of my whole life thus far.
My earliest memory of making instrumental music was playing the Flutophone that my Auntie gave me. I didn't have any music, so I just played it by ear -- for hours on end, actually (I was a rather solitary child). A great experience for learning to gauge how far apart the various intervals were, relative to the fingerings required to make them.
Then in school, they were constantly giving us these "Seashore" tests (that's what they were called -- had nothing to do with the ocean). We listened with headphones while a series of pitches was played, and we had to tell whether one was higher or lower, and the like. I was always really good at this, but the important thing here is that at some formative point, I was being taught to pay attention to pitch relationships, and my habit of listening that way was developed.
I recall taking an ethnomusicology course where transcription (from tape) was required. This was before I had taken any formal ear-training classes, and I recall being able to do it, but that it was very, very difficult for me.
The really big boost came when I finally took a formal, college-level ear-training course ("Solfege"). One semester was devoted to melodic and rhythmic reading, writing, and listening; the second semester was harmonic reading, writing, and listening. Again, dictation (transcription, actually) was required -- you listened to something and then tried to write it down. It's amazing how much more precise your ear gets when you have to represent what you have heard on paper, for a grade.
That was years ago, and by virtue of the fact that I have continued to use these skills in the meantime, I can now do it, as you say, on "automatic pilot".
I think developing this skill is not unlike developing skill at sight-reading -- it just takes a lot of conscious doing of the deed, at a high enough level, for long enough, so that eventually what once may have seemed unreachable becomes routine. It's not magic -- although it sometimes feels that way!
Susan
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