One of my difficulties is that I don't know what tunes should sound like. When I look in a tune book and see "South Australia", "Cock of the North", "Buffalo Gals", then I don't associate them with any tunes. Being of limited musical skill I don't know how these should sound, and so can't play them. I can find the right notes, but while I can see what length the notes should be, I can't yet translate that to my playing. I need to know what the tune sounds like to be able to make a reasonable stab at it.
This means I spend a lot of time looking up tunes on Youtube, or tracking down a MIDI file to be able to find out if I know the tune or not. Actually, I do know most of the ones that I look up, I can remember singing "South Australia" back in "first year" at secondary school. Of course I know "Cock of the North", as soon as I found out that it is also known as "Aunty Mary", I knew what it is - although I don't remember ever hearing the slightly risque lyrics that go with "Aunty Mary".
On the other hand, while I am not religious, I do know many tunes to carols, and can recognise what they should sound like. I've also discovered Paul Hardy's song books - including the Christmas version. This gives me a large number of tunes that I can practice with to get the buttons and their associated notes stuck in my head. Many of them are also quite slow (think: "Once in Royal David's City", "Silent Night", "In the deep midwinter"). This means that that my fingers don't have to fall over each other, and I can build up speed slowly. I know from having learned to type that it is a matter of muscle memory. As I am typing this I am not thinking about what letter comes next - it is automatic. That is what I need to do with the melodeon - it has to become automatic.
As Christmas is only 6 weeks away, now is the perfect time to be practicing playing carols.
Hi Cath,
ReplyDeleteYou should think about getting an ABC program such as ABC explorer. Ask on Melnet (or at Playgroup) if you want more info.
ABC is just the transport mechanism; these programs display the tune as a score, and usually have a midi player to actually play the tune. It's a bit cheesy, especially if there are chords, but can be a big help recognising or visualising a tune.
Paul Hardy's books are all available as ABC, as are loads of other tunes.
I've been using the JC's ABC tune finder, and feeding it into the converter on Concertina.net. I've seen the links on Melnet to ABC Explorer, I just haven't got around to following it up yet.
ReplyDeletePart of my problem is that a lot of the time the tunes are completely new to me, so I have to listen several times to be able to have a stab at getting them right. Then I find that going to try to play them I can't remember the melody. At the moment it's a steep learning curve because I've got to learn some basic musical theory, the tunes themselves, and how to play them. However, I'm really enjoying it, I'm sure I will get there in the end.
In the Bleak Midwinter is one of my favourite tunes and not too difficult. Keep up the good work. - Lester
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