Our tradition is to learn all tunes by ear, no sheet music. We are learning many tunes very quickly (we have 140 so far in the course). Learning by ear is cognitively very different from reading sheet music. When I first began nyckelharpa and folk music (9 years ago) I found it challenging. But with practice it got easier. I also had some advice from Toby Weinberg, when I was complaining that I quickly forgot tunes I had just learned. He said that the forgetting is part of the learning process. You sleep and forget and then learn the tune again, and that this repetition is important. It helped me feel as though I wasn’t uniquely unsuited to do this, and was very reassuring. I think you are convincing your long term memory to keep this information stored. I learned from Olov Johansson that he heard from Bjorn Ståbi that, “you need to forget a tune three times before you really know it!”

The key to this approach is audio recordings of the tunes. I have developed some technology strategies that work for me, after several false starts.

(Disclaimers: This post is a bit mundane, but could be helpful to some readers. These are just my opinions. I have no commercial interest in any of the products mentioned here, nor any connection.)

Voice memo on the iPhone: This can sound a bit muddy, but is always handy. You have the opportunity to name the tune right after recording. However, our teachers often record a series of tunes in a row, moving on the next rather quickly, without enough time to type a name on an iPhone screen before the next recording needs to start. Or the teacher will write up the tune names later, so you don’t know how to spell it until later. I also had trouble getting voice memos to import into the Amazing Slow Downer. One student used a workaround, emailing them to herself and then putting into iTunes, and then in the Amazing Slow Downer, but I had trouble with this.

I also tried an app called Voice Recorder HD for Audio Recording eFUSION Co, Ltd from iTunes.  It can support different recording quality levels and makes .wav files. I did like the feature that you can easily edit the tune. This was useful because we sometimes start recording and then have to wait for someone, or the teacher decides to tune or talk some more before beginning the tune. These tunes were also easy to import into the Slow Downer. However, overall I hated it. It gives each tune a long name including the date and series of numbers and dashes. You can rename them, but what a pain.

What I continue to use and like best is an Olympus digital recording device; these are intended for voice recording. Calling them voice recorders may be like a disclaimer, so you don’t expect high fidelity musical quality. There are many similar devices, some are bigger and nicer. I have a VN-702PC which is small and portable. I got a microphone on a cord to plug into the Mic outlet, and I think this adds to the quality of the recording. I later attach it to my computer via USB port and drag and drop the files into a folder. They come in with filenames using sequential numbers such as 702_0433.mp3, and I add the tune names I wrote down in class just after the number, and double click to bring into iTunes with the names. These are pretty good quality, and import well into the Amazing Slow Downer.

Our class has a shared Dropbox and we upload and download to share tunes with classmates who have no recording capability, or are out of class that day.

The Amazing Slow Downer is a really valuable tool. It is software available online, or an app for the iPhone or iPad. You can import a recorded tune, and slow it down while keeping the pitch constant. It also has the ability to replay a small segment of the tune that you set, which is helpful for going over and over a hard part, or just the A part, or whatever. You can slow it down to an extreme degree and really hear the ornaments in a tune.

We have made tune transcriptions as part of our theory and arrangement education, and I have done it before as well. Sometimes I use pencil on music paper, but also I have been using Finale Print Music software. It is clunky but I am becoming more capable with it. I like being able to adjust the fit of the bars on the staffs, add parts, transpose, and hear the parts play back on the computer when I am making accompaniments and second voices. I have been making some additional transcriptions on tunes that I want to make sure to keep. If nothing else, transcribing to sheet music places the elements of the tune together with its name in a findable format, which I find useful. I have also used it for tricky or nonstandard bowing patterns that were some trouble to learn, so I can capture them, or to help my brain process them better. I use ForScore software to have pdfs of sheet music in a library or setlist on my iPad, so they can be captured there or just in a folder of files. I find this preferable to printing them out; I don’t want to import heavy paper into the United States when I go home.

Our class is recording a teacher playing a tune.

This is my Olympus recorder, with microphone and USB cable.