Flow, play, feel and creativity: some of the potential outcomes of playing by ear from a recording

Abstract

Playing by ear from a recording is, in the history of human music-making, a relatively new activity, stemming as it does from only the last one hundred years or so, since the invention of audio recording and play-back technologies. It can be done within or outside a range of formal, non-formal and informal contexts, and with or without the presence of a teacher, other instructor or other music-makers. It can be a purely aural activity, as when the recording is an audio-only one, or it can be mixed with visual learning, as when the recording is an audio-visual one. How does this activity foster musicianship and the ability of children to be musical people? Playing by ear from a recording is not to be confused or conflated with playing by ear along with other live musicians, a live teacher or indeed any human being or group of human beings who are simultaneously participating in the activity. Rather, in the position usually occupied by a human co-musician or teacher, here we have the recording itself as the ultimate authority as well as the model. The recording may, to be sure, involve a video of a person teaching and may be specially designed for that purpose. But that is not the same thing as a live teacher. For one thing, the recording – whether it is purely audio or audio-visual – is under the control of the learner, who can turn it off, wind it back or forwards, and with the increasing sophistication of technology, change the tempo, manipulate individual voices and so on. For another thing, and somewhat conversely, when being used as a model to be copied, the recording exists at one level as an independent object, and thus, a much more inflexible teacher than any human being.