playing by ear

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playing by ear

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Miguel de Maria

Posts: 3532
Joined: Oct. 20 2003
From: Phoenix, AZ

playing by ear

I have been gigging a lot lately, coming off a 4 hour hand and back-buster yesterday. So I thought I would treat myself, lay off the gig rep a bit a work on something I really want to play. I started trying to figure out how to play Barrio la Vina, a nice alegrias Paco plays on one of his albums. Now with the Amazing Slow Downer, it's not really that hard to figure it out. I've gotten about 1:30 down of the song tonight, but it's been really hard mentally. I hate figuring things out by ear, it's so much mental work, I'm exhausted! But this will be a beautiful piece for me when I get it down.

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Mar. 22 2004 6:45:48

Guest

RE: playing by ear (in reply to Miguel de Maria)

Miguel,

I agree, learning by ear is very mentally exhausting, and at the moment I can´t because I am so busy building, which takes a lot of my (small) mental capacity. Therefor playing for me, at the moment, is relaxing with the guitar some 2 hours a day, not learning anything new, but enjoying a lot and focussing a lot on tone quality and control.

I think that one of the reasons that learning by ear can be more exhausting than by score, is that you learn the phrasing at the same time. Using scores, I learn the technical part first, and then later the phrasing.

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Mar. 22 2004 7:29:49

Billyboy

Posts: 389
Joined: Aug. 18 2003

RE: playing by ear (in reply to Guest)

Playing by ear, can make you ears sore I would think:-) I thought there was a tabledit version of that piece somewhere on the net.If not I'm sure Faucher does it, It would be worth buying the transcription with all the time saved. I have done a lot of transcribing in the past, and it is very time consuming.
Dave

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Mar. 22 2004 10:03:19

Miguel de Maria

Posts: 3532
Joined: Oct. 20 2003
From: Phoenix, AZ

RE: playing by ear (in reply to Miguel de Maria)

Well, I've gotten about 40% of the song down, it took maybe 6 hours... That's actualy faster than when I read, because I seem to memorize much, much better when I transcribe. But it's very intense effort for me.

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Mar. 22 2004 17:00:37

Billyboy

Posts: 389
Joined: Aug. 18 2003

RE: playing by ear (in reply to Miguel de Maria)

Transcribing stuff by ear also trains your memory, although it may seem time consuming it stimulates parts of the brain which deal with certain memory aspects, also improving your memory for non musical things, too bad I can never remember my log in password, now where did I put that Capo

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Mar. 22 2004 20:41:57

Miguel de Maria

Posts: 3532
Joined: Oct. 20 2003
From: Phoenix, AZ

RE: playing by ear (in reply to Miguel de Maria)

That reminds me Dave, nice playing on the Riqueni. This is a guy who I haven't investigated much but the more I hear of him the more i like it. My friend showed me this Columbianas falseta which was absolutely inspired. would you recommend a specific album of his?

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Mar. 22 2004 20:44:06

Billyboy

Posts: 389
Joined: Aug. 18 2003

RE: playing by ear (in reply to Miguel de Maria)

There are many, some with Orchestral bits which might not ne to many peoples taste, his second album 'Flamenco' don't know if you can still get it, is a classic, many many inspired pieces on this album, which would take an average guitarist a life time to compose, incidentally when I met him, and asked him about some fingering on a few of the pieces on this album, I was astounded when he said he had forgotten most of the stuff on that album, and was interested in a transcription I had brought with me of one of his pieces, as he could only remember the intro.
Dave

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Mar. 22 2004 20:56:07