In reviewing the body of literature addressing both aural- and notation-based musicianship, limitations must be noted, as the pace with which technological changes have affected musicians in the 21st century has proven difficult to document and address. Accordingly, absent from earlier publications including Green’s (2001, 2008) are references to online resources including video platforms now integral to all forms of musicianship, but particularly relevant to those who learn and share ideas by ear. At a base level, the Internet or World Wide Web now provides free access to guitar tablature, chord charts and lead sheets, which can radically enhance the speed of learning and the distinction between aural and visual learning mediums. YouTube has increased access to teaching material featuring live demonstration, amplifying strategies previously occurring only through face to face interaction or through copying audio recordings alone (Webb, 2010). Social media platforms have also radically changed the way music is shared from one social context to another (Ruthmann, 2007), redefining the nature of musical communities as moving between online and offline situations (Waldron, 2012).
These realities naturally have potential implications for classroom practitioners (Haugsbakken & Langseth, 2014), but their reach is new, and will depend upon the resources made available to students in schools and again, the learning cultures fostered within them. Many research studies documenting ear playing or aural-based learning in Western contexts pre-date this era, and hence do not mention the use of such resources. Notwithstanding their limitations in present day application, this ‘pre- web’ era literature needs to be discussed, because it contains valuable information concerning the knowledge and skills acquired by ear players. The summary that follows contextualises these findings against studies discussing musicianship developed with the assistance of Western staff notation. Recent studies examining ear-playing pedagogies designed for the one-on-one formal instrumental lesson have been omitted, as their intended focus is mainly for teachers and students already accustomed to learning with staff notation (see Baker, 2013; Baker & Green, 2013; Green, 2012; Varvarigou, 2014; Woody & Lehmann, 2010).
‘Playing by Ear’: Popular Musicians’ Aural-Based Learning
Against the numerous studies examining learning assisted by staff notation,8 studies documenting learning without it have only more recently become the focus of music education research. Many studies discussing popular musicians cite ear playing as a marker of authenticity to ‘informal learning’ (Allsup, 2003; Cope, 2002; Green, 2001; Jaffurs, 2004; Karlsen, 2010). Yet herein, detailed discussion of the skills and processes involved in playing by ear are often embedded within or subsumed by research context, or may be oversimplified in an intended comparison with notation- based learning practices. Studies with an ethnographic orientation addressing popular musicians are not primarily pedagogic in focus, but can still provide useful information in teasing out the relationship between vernacular music-making and the literate learning traditions of 20th century Western classical music. As these studies
are numerous, an overview is provided before examining in detail the typical learning processes involved in ear playing, along with the memorisation skills developed in association with these strategies.
To begin, Patricia Sheehan-Campbell’s (1995) ethnography of learning by garage- band musicians provides one of the earliest cited within the music education literature. The study was undertaken in Seattle in the early 1990s. Two groups of young, white, male rock musicians aged between 14 and 16 years constituted her nine research participants. Campbell’s study foregrounds the sociality of the garage-band setting. The members chose to meet frequently to listen to heavy-metal and grunge music, and through copying recordings acquired skills as a consequence of interacting with “their music” (p. 15). Their learning is self-defined as “getting-songs” including—but not easily differentiated from—writing songs (or composing) without the use of staff notation (ibid). Corresponding with Green’s (2001) study, Campbell correlates song-getting with skill building, with imitation from recordings and peer modelling the primary learning strategies. Like Green’s study, seven of Campbell’s nine participants reported having received classical instrumental instruction earlier in their musical development, but later abandoned these studies in preference for self- initiated learning on rock band instruments. In both studies, the relationship between
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For a sample of studies examining music cognition in conjunction with the use and acquisition of music notation skills see Sloboda (2005), Gudmundsdottir (2010), and Hodges (1992).
the development of ear playing skills and those acquired as a consequence of earlier formal training do not feature in discussion, which raises questions as to whether one set of skills had or had not benefited the development of the other.
Holism is a feature of learning in these ethnographies, with creative and re-creative practices difficult to distinguish. A study by Davis (2005) confirms these connections. Among high school aged rock musicians, Davis reports a seamless integration of copying, playing, improvisation and composition skills. She describes how new songs were generated through ‘fiddling’ (playful experimentation with known riffs or progressions) and layering strategies used to adapt these patterns into cyclic grooves. Similar processes are reported by Cohen (1991), who undertook research with rock musicians in the Liverpool area. Cohen’s account describes how original songs would germinate from existing guitar riffs, over which various chords, rhythmic ideas and lyrics would be trialled experimentally and collaboratively (p. 136).
Each of these studies situates learning to play as of equal importance to the generation of a desired sound or tone. The generation of this sound or tone requires rock musicians develop an in-depth knowledge of technical equipment (effects pedals, amplifiers, microphones etc), and a discerning ear in order to adapt these tools to meet the sonic aesthetic of the band. This aesthetic is coined by Bennett (1980a) as “recording consciousness” (p. 126). Davis (2005) also accounts for this in detail:
The members of Our Delay were aware of the nuances defining these individual sounds and worked to achieve these exact representations through their own music. This required a disciplined and sensitive ear and repeated listening opportunities. Sound effects and timbre were very important to this group, and to Jack in particular. They regarded timbre as part of melody. They considered melody to be more than just contour, but rather a fusion of contour and sound effects partnered with the texture of the song to generate a harmonic structure as well as depict the mood they were trying to establish (Guideposts, Timbre and Technology section, paragraph 1).
Findings by Gullberg and Brandstrom (2004) support Davis’ observations concerning the importance of generating a desired sound aesthetic. The Swedish study was comparative. Two rock bands, one consisting of college age music students, the other, a group unaffiliated with the music school were independently asked to write and record a rock song based on minimal input: an unfamiliar audio recording provided by the researcher containing a single vocal melody with lyrics. Both groups used
collaboration, and vernacular rather than technical language to organise the material, however the non-college affiliated group spent as much if not more time setting up equipment and mixing the song as composing the actual material.
Naturally the recontextualisation of these practices within music classrooms presents problems and some level of compromise. Schools may not be equipped with the requisite technical equipment to facilitate such a nuanced approach to sound, nor be prepared to allow music to be heard at the desired volume. Furthermore, a creative process that integrates new with old material collaboratively stands against established norms for WAM where as stated, performance and composition are typically regarded as distinct activities, usually undertaken by different people and at different times. Without staff notation to script performance, music-making works to meet immediate and personal goals, the roles musicians play working in flexible alliance. Another skill set requiring flexibility and adaptation, are those required to copy existing recordings. Literature defining these skills is addressed next, accompanied by studies outlining the strategies used to memorise copied or adapted material.
Copying strategies from recordings
Green’s (2001) ethnography cites ‘aural copying from recordings’ as a relatively recent phenomenon, emerging only since the invention and mass production of audio recordings over the past century. Green calls the practice “purposive” listening, or listening with the intention of replication on a live instrument (p. 61). Purposive listening attends to nuances of style and feel along with pitch and rhythm content, musical structures (verse/chorus forms etc), at both foreground and background levels of the recording. Green notes that ear players, who work without the assistance of notation, frequently develop skills in transposition in order to adapt what is learned to meet their specific needs, and develop technical facility to play the music they choose to learn. Green notes most ear players do not learn to read staff notation, with only a small number of professional session players acquiring this skill (p. 38-9).
While Green’s study is situated with individual musicians, Bennett (1980b) provides an earlier and more situated account of aural-based learning in the rock band rehearsal
context. Bennett notes that trial and error and high levels of repetition are required to learn new songs. He makes insightful connections concerning the tools employed to do this learning (audio recordings/instruments etc), and the music learned, with technical facility acquired only as needed and rhythmic awareness preceding pitch accuracy. He writes: “that it is possible to learn to play this way attests to the simplicity of The Music [sic], but it also is indicative of the result of a private human- machine [audio player] interaction where the human is in precise control of the stimulation that the machine gives” (p. 225).
As a consequence of this level of control, Bennett attests to the use of learning sequences in the copying process where the performers select single lines from the recording and break these down for replication, often on their own first, then with the rest of the band. Once learned, the whole performance is reconstructed layer-by-layer to form larger structures or sections of music, and in time, entire songs. This discussion contrasts with Green’s (2001) characterisation of informal learning as ‘non-sequential’ (p. 60). Clearly learning sequences exist, but they may serve less explicit objectives, involve longer periods of time, or be subsumed by other activities occurring over the same time period.
A consistency however between each of the studies mentioned thus far concerns the role of staff notation. Although available as marketed sheet music for chart hits (Bennett, 1980b), and now ever more so due to access to online resources, visual aids are rarely used in performance and remain secondary to the ultimate authority of the recording (ibid). Further, Bennett notes rock musicians view theoretical knowledge and verbal communication as secondary in importance to musical and physical gestures, with players inventing terminology or vocables (nonsense syllables imitating drum riffs etc) as needed to communicate during rehearsals—an observation equally noted decades later by Davis (2005). Bennett summarises these observations, along with the democratic nature of rehearsal and group learning:
What is determining these musicians’ music, however, is not a body of knowledge—a theory of music—but the aural experience of the recording. The conflict about who was right—that is, whose interpretation of the recorded sound was to be considered legitimate—did not admit a consideration that varying interpretations can be derived from various ways of listening (1980b, p. 226).
Bennett here attests here to “varying interpretations” resulting not only from the process of collaboration, but equally, from natural variations in listening perception ungoverned by a body of music theory, scoring, or teaching. Drawing from Ong’s (1982) distinctions between ‘orality and literacy’, Lilliestam (1996), concurs, emphasising the changeability of music passed on by ear. He states:
In oral culture there is no original and there can be no original. A song a poem or a story exists only in performance. There is no tool apart from the human memory and its limitations to preserve it. An orally transmitted folk song does not have an ‘Urtext’, it cannot be a physical object, a musical work that is owned and copyrighted (p. 198).
Lilliestam’s observations refer to live aural learning or music transmission practices. With the invention of sound recordings, the vast majority of music learned in this way now has such a “tool” or “physical object”: the recording. Lilliestam’s comparison of early American bluesmen with later British blues performers bares testimony to this oversight in his publication. Lilliestam writes: “the patterns used by black as well as white blues musicians of today—regular twelve-bar choruses with even phrasing, distinct chord changes and so on—do not occur as frequently in the work of the older bluesmen, who often employ irregular choruses and diffuse chord changes” (ibid). Lilliestam attributes these contrasts due to differences in the oral and literate learning cultures of the older bluesmen compared to the later educated urban blues players. However, the latter musicians had learned the blues from the recording as a model rather than first hand, and hence, were limited to a more standardised and marketed version of the blues potentially more palatable to a white audience and paying customers.
Irrespective of these cultural and transmissional differences, some level of change to the music learned by ear is inevitable and in some cases even intentional. Bennett (1980b) describes this process of change as the natural outworking of copying strategies. Johansson (2004), support’s Bennett’s observations, but attests that these changes may be deliberate, especially when the material is relatively straightforward, or the players “feel safe” to embellish a song (p. 99). Lilliestam (1996) describes the practice as creating a version, citing this as common to musicians who play popular music by ear (p. 204). He writes: “Suppose that we, for some reason, want to do a version of ‘Hound Dog’. All of us who are playing are familiar with the Elvis Presley version of the song, but we want to do our own version, not just copy Elvis” (p. 204).
So, when ear-playing skills become more advanced, copying skills may work in conjunction with deliberate interpretative and arrangement choices (note ‘copying’ is expressed as “just copying” above), for the purpose of making a performance one’s own, and, potentially enhancing known material.9
Hence, varying levels of change, whether intentional or not, can be expected when music is learned by ear. The chief factor determining the level of variation in performance is the use of recordings (now including video recordings) in learning, which may serve to standardise vernacular traditions such as the blues. More importantly, performing without the assistance of visual aids, the learning process involves sophisticated patterns of memorisation, which require specific address.
Mnemonic aids and formulae
Lilliestam (1996) explores in detail the crucial importance of memorisation skills in music learned without staff notation. Cognitively, he cites five interrelated thinking skills required involving auditory, visual, kinaesthetic, verbal, and abstract forms of memory. Lilliestam’s, ‘auditory memory’ involves processes of audiation (hearing music in one’s head); ‘visual memory’, which associates auditory memory with the visual layout of instruments or forms of tablature; ‘kinaesthetic memory’, which ties auditory and visual thinking to patterns of physical touch (finger patterns etc); ‘verbal memory’, which associates these skills with new or learned terminology, and lastly; abstract memory, which allows a synthesis of all previous types into internalised structural ‘maps’ in readiness for performance. The combination of these five memorisation skills develops in time a plethora of musical formulae in keeping with a music style or genre of performance. These include melodic riffs, chord sequences, rhythmic formulae or grooves, structural and lyrical devices and so on, constituting a toolkit for ensemble playing and improvisation (p. 203-204). Once combined these
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Although the terms ‘arrangement’ and ‘version’ are at times used interchangeably throughout this thesis some initial clarity is required in order to explain distinctions between the two. An arrangement usually involves the practice of re-organising music from one notated medium to another to meet the needs of a new live performance situation or to adapt the music for a different kind of ensemble frequently larger in size. The term version is more often associated with vernacular performance traditions, where a new performance is created from a pre-existing recorded song, changing not only the featured artist, but also, possibly adapting the musical material to meet the new performers’ specific needs or tastes. This practice is distinct again from ‘mixing’ or ‘remixing’, where existing recorded music is manipulated directly via digital sampling or studio production processes to generate a new recording, often combining new with previously unrecorded material.
formulae constitute the basis of a musical vocabulary, resulting in consistencies between groups of musicians working within a particular genre, and possibly further, in ways of distinguishing individual performer traits within these. Lilliestam writes:
Every musician is thus a carrier of a repertoire of songs and formulas that is more or less unique and dependent on the style(s) the musician is working within. If you change a musician in a band you change not only their playing style, sound and personality but their personal repertoire of formulas as well. And a switch of a musician will affect the sound and style of the whole ensemble too (p. 204).
Johansson’s (2004) research reveals further insights concerning this ‘repertoire’ of mnemonic aids and formulas. Six participants accustomed to playing standard rhythm section instruments by ear were each asked to learn three songs from recordings, each of which increased in complexity and unfamiliarity. Johansson then interviewed the participants to discuss the strategies they had employed. Like Lilliestam (1996), Johansson found that musicians learned to play by ear by acquiring clichés, harmonic formulas and other style traits intrinsic to specific genres. When working to learn music less familiar, a number of trial and error strategies came into play. These involved listening for familiar sonic cues (the sound of open strings, or the timbre of a particular chord voicing), processes of deduction from the melodic or bass line (guessing the chord by listening from the top voice down or the bottom up), to “faking it”, where uncertainty is masked through strategies used to cover up mistakes during live performance. In all cases the strategies employed were different for the guitarists, keyboardists and bassists involved in the study. Each of these strategies generated knowledge of a specific kind that was implicit to the learner or was tacit, defying explanation. Tacit knowledge is a feature of many forms of music learning, but is a salient feature of music learned by ear. When informal and popular musicianship skills are recontextualised in classrooms, tacit knowledge accompanies these skills, and hence, research defining tacit knowledge needs to be examined.
Tacit Knowledge
Tacit or implicit knowledge accompanies most forms of music learning but