What’s going on in your head when you’re learning a new tune?
Damien from Ireland asked about my mental process when learning a tune.
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- The short answer: I try to just hear the tune.
- Instead of remembering information like fingerings, the key, counting, I try to internally “hear” the tune.
- This process is called audiation.
- Singing is a learning step that leads to audiation.
- Of course, it’s an amazing practice in its own right.
- Any string player should practice singing what they play and playing what they sing.
- This will help you to play in tune and remember melodies. It also helps you to visualize music and improvise.
- As usual, I suggest starting with a small step.
- Take the first quarter of a tune.
- Memorize it.
- Loop on that small bit until you can play it naturally without thinking too hard about it.
- Transpose that little bit to a different strain. This will help you to learn and remember the melody.
- Then internalize it more deeply by singing (or humming or whistling) it.
- See if you can hear that little piece in your head.
- Take the first quarter of a tune.
If you think about it, a melody has a lot of information, there’s a lot of things to remember. But if you clearly hear it in your head, then you just have one thing to remember. All that information is compressed into a single piece of information (the melody).
Again, you can actively practice with singing and audiation.
Further learning
Joy of to the world of transposition
This micro-lesson is an excerpt from an office hours webinar I gave on December 16, 2020. View the entire live-stream with indexed questions here.
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