Lot's of people with good points about learning to play by ear, but what I think some of you may be forgetting is that this is really hard to do without some lessons, or at very least LOTS of listening AND watching. You simply can't learn to play an instrument without going through the basics and learning the fingerings. Now if you grow up around accordion players, and listen and watch, then perhaps a good musician could pick up a box and learn to play it, but that just isn't reality for lots of people. It's kind of like learning French by immersion in the language. If you live in France, and are forced to speak nothing but French, sure, you will learn, or starve. But in place of learning by immersion you take a class, and learn basic vocabulary using written text. Eventually you learn the basics and can speak "by ear". Same with music. If you are immersed in it you might be able to learn without music, but most of us are not that fortunate. A beginner must have tabs, or if you read music, written scores. That way you can learn the basic fingering, get the riffs and rhythms, and start to train your ear. You just can't train your ear and get the muscle memory in your fingers without working through some basic songs first. I don't believe anyone ever suggested you go through life playing nothing but songs written in tabs. But you have to start somewhere, and we all must learn to crawl before we can run.

so I say keeps those tabs coming folks. I know I appreciate them, as do many others.

Hal

Hal, I agree with you. In fact before all these DVD's were around, in fact before CD's were around, Larry Miller produced his "You Can Play Cajun Accordion" instruction book. It includes a book, with basic instructions for a real beginner and is full of tabs for various songs and a cassette tape (now a CD). You had to listen to the music over and over, but with out being able to watch any one else play, the only way to learn was to follow along with tabs. For those of us in the hinter lands, it is a great way to get started. I agree that eventually you won't need the tabs and will be able to play by ear (I can't wait till that happens), but it does take awhile and the tabs help. So, I guess there are lots of differant ways people learn and this is just one of them.

The ability to play by ear alone is most certainly a gift. Most people find written instructions most helpful when listening and learning.

Prior to literacy, generations of musicians learned by asking grandpa or dad or an uncle etc. "Show me how you did that".

RPr

Right on. Do whatcha gotta do. We just here listening and waiting.... Show us what ya do with them tabs....

......t

I can tell you, learning by ear is difficult. The first year I started playing, we were living in Baton Rouge and bear in mind that this was in 1992, not much cajun going on other than Mulates which was a 30 minute drive from where we lived. Once we moved back to Lafayette in 1993 it came much faster due to the simple fact that it was everywhere you turned around. I totally agree that being around it and listening and watching it almost religiously had a big impact on how I learned and the time it took me to learn it. The one thing I have seen time and again on the forum is to learn that song in your head backwards and forwards to where when you grab your box you know exactly what note you should be looking for. At least that's what I did and I still do to this day, I'll wear the cd out before I try to play it but I can now bring it from my ears to my fingers much easier beings that this is how I learned to play. My two cents of course, everyone is definitely different and has different abilities, it is however something that can consume you until you get it whipped !! Believe me, I recieved many *** chewings because I was still playing at 3am in the morning bound and determined to learn that certain turn or lead that I was trying to figure out !

I'm starting to get the feeling that the TABS/EAR disucssion may replace, for a while, the MITER CORNER/BOX CORNER discussion. Yeeeeeeha!
First, to Mr. David Sousa, you are one of the people on this board who has consistantly offered solid, sound input to any and all. Altho we have never met, you have taught me loads, & I thank you for that!

Different people learn in different ways, I guess. For me, playing with tabs has never been an option. I just can't get the hang of what number is supposed to go with what button. Then you have bellows direction, on top of that...(Maybe it has something to do with being kind of dislexic)
My buddy JP in Arizona sent me a tab one time, to see what I thought about the way he wrote it out. It was to a song I knew, & I STILL couldent figgure it out! That's just me. It seems too much like work.

When people are talking about "playing by ear", what they are really talking about is "playing by feel".
This does not require an instructional video to learn. It requires TIME spent making sound with the accordion. You pick up the instrument & begin making sound. Figure out the scale. Figure out "Mary had a little lamb". Figure out "Three blind mice". Figure out "jingle bells". Then figure out the "99 year waltz" "j'ai passe devant ta porte" or what ever simple song you want. Then you can start to use the instructional video to begin learning tecniques on how to play. Then you can start listening to CDs or whatever & start having "ah-ha" moments on how this or that is done. One thing I am sure of is that IF YOU PUT IN THE TIME, YOU WILL LEARN TO PLAY.
If tabs help you ENJOY putting in the time, then they are usefull! Because if you ENJOY putting in the time, you will keep doing it!

I once had a short, and very usefull lesson from Jude Morreau. (Thank you again for that, Jude) He asked me "When did you stop looking at the button board?" My reply was something to the effect of "I never looked at it". I never knew you were supposed to. That's why, rather than calling it "playing by ear" I would call it "playing it by feel".

Another thing that Jude spoke about was having the "want to" to play the accordion. He said, & I agree, that if one has the "want to", to play every day, one will learn to play.

When David Sousa, talks about the importance of playing by ear, or I talk about the importance of playing by feel, we are just sharing our best information based on what we have learned. If playing with tabs helps you learn, then NOBODY WANTS TO TAKE THAT AWAY FROM YOU. As a wise man once said, "nothing suceeds like sucess".

In the meantime, let's continue talking about music...it seems we have really "turned the corner" in our discussions!

Tommee... Dude... you hit the nail on the head. If you have to watch your fingers on the buttons, you're missing it. And if you're having to "look" at your fingers, well why don't you have to look at your bellows, too? Ha. I can understand a person trying to learn guitar having to watch how to finger chords, strings and frets -- there's a lot more going on there than just 10 buttons that are facing away from you anyway. BINGO!

R!CK

Improv. jazz is amazing (ever give it some thought?)... stuff that simply rolls off and is instantly felt by other musicians that lend to the complete spur of the moment for what comes off as sound. That form of music can not be accomplished without total control of what an instrument can do, with you calling the instantanious shots at any given moment as a musician in complete control of your instrument. No beginning horn player can replicate this form of sound... just as no beginning accordion can hear a dose of sound and instantly get that result without the dues of long yrs of aquaintence with such an instrument. Yet, there is that faction of musician within French music (dynamic players) that is so exacting with an accordion that they can regurgitate instantly what they hear.. and ... emulate any style of playing that speaks to specific individuals (some of the masters as it was once played).

Is it feel? Is it the ear?
I think it is both. It is the sweeping consuming effect of what you hear and how you feel about what you hear that determines how you play and lay it out for what others will interpret... some perhaps call it some type of baptisim of sound, or immersion of all things associated with what it represents... what ever it is called, it is part of that "Cross Road" that says: I am either gonna latch on to this thing and nail it if it takes eons.. or, it is gonna kick my U know what, and remind me that I am not where I think I am with what I want out of all this stuff.

Feel or ear??? That is a smidgon of the PSY of this music and instrument that everyone must personally assess for themselves as part of the personal cross roads thing.

Selling your soul to U know who is optional... unless you are looking to finance a new Falcon and it may be a requirement (just joking).

Nonc D

I have been playing and learning music by ear for years on numerious instuments. I find instructions books, tapes and CDs, usful for are the filler notes and techniques.

The most obvious for the Cajun accordion would be the use of octives. I probably would have spend months or years trying to figure them out if Dirk had not shown them on his video.

My personal preferance for banjo and dulcimer music are tabs, for the fiddle, sheet music. But for any instrument, my first chioce would be video CDs or tapes.

That is what works for me, you mileage may vary.