Learning tunes by ear

I love playing within the aural tradition because after a while it becomes very easy to take on new music, new tunes. Once you've got an established technique, if you can hear a tune accurately, then you can reproduce it. That said you have to be able to retain and reimagine the tune to be able to play it - until you can play with it, it's not yet your music. The nicest bit is that you can just absorb tunes passively, have the music on in the background and gradually the tune just becomes a landscape you know intimately. Bizarrely this can be just as helpful in helping you to learn tunes as really focused attention, so right now I get to learn tunes and write... wooo!

I've been up to the Edinburgh harp festival a few times now and the tune teaching method for trad stuff is as follows...

• hear tune about 4 times through
• teacher plays first phrase a few times, you have a go getting it
• few minutes practice while teacher comes and checks everyone has it
• go through rest of phrases in the same way, often taught by hand shape and certainly broken down into small easy chunks
• all the time consolidate what you know, through group playing or listening to teacher play again
• once melody is stitched together, add bass hand

Throughout the learning process you hear a bit, try it, hear it again, refine it. The teacher may slow it down for you if you've not caught a bit, or show you a tiny fragment at a time.

I don't like learning tunes from dots anymore because the dots don't give me the groove. This is my tune learning method from a recording...

• get familiar with tune, hearing it lots in whatever setting
• use an audio program to work phrase by phrase, listening and trying and listening and refining and listening again
• possibly use audio programs to slow it to hear where the ornaments are / any really tricky bits
• possibly transcribe it - very useful for setting fingering (I often transcribe tunes I've been taught by ear for this reason)
  
• if I have slowed it down at any point, listen to track at full speed again and get the groove at that pace (rhythmic emphasis changes at different tempo)

They're pretty similar methods really, just with different sources. I always prefer learning from a real person because they will spot problems with your technique, you'll get a better sense of the style (all those tiny variations...) and they'll pick up anything that you've misinterpreted. It's just nicer too!