Learning from Bill—By Ear!

Red Henry

Casey’s description of learning a tune by ear reminded me of my own experience. When I was a brand-new mandolin player, just starting out, I acquired Bill Monroe’s LP “Bluegrass Instrumentals”. Now, you might think that that was pretty far advanced for a beginner (and it was) but I knew the kind of  music I wanted to learn, and that was it.

Bill played a lot of great tunes on that album, and quite a few of them were both fast and complicated. So, how does a newbie learn something like that? Well, I had the means right at hand: Bill’s album, and a record player that slowed down to half speed, 16 2/3 rpm.

“What use was a piece of old junk like that”, you may ask, “something my grandparents threw away in 1973?” Well, in this case, the ‘old junk’ slowed Bill Monroe down to exactly half-speed—just slow enough for me to hear his notes—while staying in tune with my mandolin. (Okay, the music was down an octave—it sounded pretty low—but that was no problem.)

I started learning all the tunes I could off that album. Bill’s showpiece number “Rawhide” still comes to mind. I listened and listened, learning all three of his breaks the best I could, and played them for a while. Naturally I, as a beginner, didn’t hear and play all of Bill’s notes, but I’d made a good beginning, and anyway I was playing the SOUND. Weeks later, I went back to the record and learned the tune better. Later still, I went back and got my version even closer to his. Eventually, within the first couple of years, I knew what Bill had played and could play it myself. Since I’d learned it from the recording I had both the NOTES and the SOUND, and it was RIGHT.

The equipment available now (computer programs for low-speed playback) is more versatile in letting you listen to what you want to learn. You don’t have to listen with the music an octave down any more. But the principle is the same—as Murphy says, “Listen, listen, listen, and play, play, play.”

That’s what you do when you learn by ear—you learn what you can, get that into your brain and fingers, then go back later and find that you can learn still more. And more. Yes, it takes time and effort. But did you think that something this great—playing bluegrass music—was going to be easy?

Red