Mastery [was, ~Learning By Ear~]

[Robb Bingham <robbingham@xxxxxxxxx>]

<But I do play by ear and mistakes are what I
<learn from more than anything else when it 
<comes to "mapping" the melody in my head. 
<Mistakes are instructive

This is, no doubt, true, but I think what Mr.
Fairweather was asking was more about clarifying goals
for ~playing by ear~. On piano, for instance, I can
pick out a new melody without making too many
mistakes. I guess this is true on harp now, but the
bent or overblown notes are often ~guesses~. I was
wondering also; for shortharp players; do you find
your way around on the harp as easy as, say, a good
piano player does, for melody, on piano? Or, better
said, do any of you have kinetic or sense memory [or
instinctive, or whatever] sense of when you need, say,
your #2, second draw bend. In the same way that
someone might always have a sense of where the root
note is, for instance? For me, because of the missing
notes, and the three octaves [the highest octave
having a different arrangement than the first two], I
find that, no matter how ~good~ I get [30+ years of
playing], there is an element of always ~winging it~,
when it comes to picking out a new melody or riff or
arrangement. very unlike what I do on keyboard. No
drill or practice, for instance, seems to help
ingrain, for each keys/harps, ~where~ the ~extra~
notes are [bends].

On the one hand this is the nature of the beast and I
like it. But on the other hand I can't deny that I've
been shooting for a kind of ~Mastery~, and it has
always eluded me. I'd be curious how others feel- if
you follow what I mean. Thanks in any case,
Robb

PS: I hope this doesn't get confused by comparing
chromatic and diatonic. Chromatic is much more like
piano and not in the scope of my question.


		
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