For you learn a new tune? From playing the first few notes to playing it all the way through confidently every time? I generally practice for about an hour a day. I spend 10 to 15 minutes working on the tune I'm trying to learn before wandering off to mangle something else. So how long does it take you? Minutes? Hours? Days? Weeks? Months? 

Usually months. New tunes evolve over time. Now once in a while tunes that I've struggled trying to catch from another player, I purposely sit down and finally learn it. However, it usually keeps evolving after that. Some tunes keep evolving for years.

It takes as long as it takes.  Simple versions of simple tunes can be learned in days or a week.  I have tunes I have been working on perfecting for decades.  I am going to get them like I want them one day too.

Depends on the tune. There are two aspects to it IMO. One is how it goes, just in my head, the sound image, that I could diddle/hum/sing the tune. The other is figuring out how to create that sound on the fiddle (notes and bowing). The how it goes, there just some tunes that from the first, sound like I've heard them 1000 times (pop tunes often try to achieve that). Others are much more twisty.

As far as the working it out, sometimes minutes. As above if it's in my head, if it's a tune I have heard often, just never actually played it before, and it has enough familiar note and bowing aspects from other tunes it easily falls into place. Some tunes that get played at jams, though I never heard before, have enough familiar aspects that just almost seem intuitive, can get it after a few times through. Others take more work. Mostly in terms of just a few hours put in. There is the aspect though I often get a pretty reasonable and confident way of playing a tune, but keep on refining it to achieve more, often an ongoing process. Then there are some tunes (or just one part/phrase) I still struggle with to do confidently, with the full control, groove and the tempo I want.

Keep in mind this comes from years of listening and playing experience (almost all by ear); with experience the process usually gets quicker.

in general I can learn any tune in a day. However converting that into something that sounds like it should could take up to two weeks. ha ha! Being able to read the dots helps alot. If I had to learn something purely by ear? Months!

For me,  basic skeleton a couple of passes through unless it just doesn't click then a day or two to fix it in my music brain. To flesh it out and develop my version - how much time ya got? - can be a lifetime.

Play Nice
Dan
www.Clawdan.com

Like what Dan said - basic tune skeleton in a very short period of time - a few times through the tune. To "gussy it up" -- a lot longer.  In fact, I am still working on the first tune I ever learned - Soldier's Joy!

Also, I would caution you against comparing your "learning" speed to anyone else's. We all learn at different rates. In addition, those of us with more experience will probably learn tunes quicker than newer fiddlers. Such comparisons only lead to frustrations.

I see this same thing with students in my classes. I saw it in myself as an undergrad back in the olden days. Some catch on very quickly while others struggle. They wonder, like I did, what's wrong with me? Why can they get it and not me?

So, the important thing is persistence. Don't give up. Keep at it. Eventually it will happen. And when it does, it will be a quantum leap. It will be sudden and complete.

I agree with fiddledan. I read music, so it does'nt take too long to get a bare bones version up and running. I'll have to get back to you when I have what I would call a finished product. They seem to grow by a few notes every time I play them!

It's been taking LONGER and LONGER....

It takes even longer if I learn it from sheet music.

It can also take a long time to get to where I can start it without some reminder.

I pulled together a version of Old Blind Sow for the Virtual Fiddle Festival and recorded it,

but I can't just start it now!

When I was studying languages, I learned the distinction between passive memory and active memory.

If you have a word in passive memory, you can recognize it, if it's in active memory, you can use it in conversation.

Something similar happens with tunes, IMO.

A long time for me, if ever. I've been working at Windy & Warm on guitar for almost 40 years, on and off.

Sooo... the answer is .... the rest of your life. You may learn it in a day or a week or a month. But you will always #$%^ with it. Add a doublestop or slur or pulloff and keep "learning" it as you go. Enjoy the process it's the journey not the destination........ R/

One thing mentioned, a process many folks use, is getting a simpler bare bones/skeleton version first, then refining and developing it. I think a struggle many folks have, being unfamiliar with the style and the tune, is in trying to learn all of the detail, often someone's fully worked out version (often a master player's version, which include things more difficult to master). Many (esp with a formal music idea) don't quite get the concept that the tune can be simplified, or know how t do that (esp if reading notation).

I think that's where doing lots of listening can help. Besides listening to that same tune over and over, listen to different players take, and lots of tunes in one style. I think humming/singing/diddling along with it helps, due to it being an active process.

As well, many take an approach that is trying to learn/memorize it as a sequence of notes, like a list of instruction, somewhat the equivalent to memorizing the first hundred digits to pi; IMO a more difficult way.

Learning how to get the bare bones, simplify to just most essential elements is sort of a separate skill that can take time to learn.

Edited by - alaskafiddler on 08/17/2012 12:48:23

How Long is a Chinese man's name. Too many variables, have fun and forget it.

The amount of time depends on the difficulty of the tune and the ability of the fiddler.

I agree with "Alaskafiddler". Using a barebones version at first, reduces the number of problems a fiddler must deal with. Memorize the basic melody, and get the bowing straightened out. Don't work on anything else.

After you have memorized the tune and can play the basic version, start working on the other changes. Again, work on one problem/change at a time.

if i like the tune and heard it over and over, it's almost automatically in my brain and can play it slowly. If i just heard it, i pick a bit or bow it and fake a few notes. Learning a tune and playing it at speed takes me forever.

Thank you for your replies. I am encouraged by what youve said, I was begining to feel like everybody just picked up a tune in the odd half hour with no trouble and here I am weeks later still banging away. There may be hope for me yet!

I had a lady request the song, "She'll be Coming Around the Mountain..." and I had never tried to play it but am very familar with the melody. Given this situation, I just played it . Other tunes, as others have said, will take longer. What I noticed years ago as a flat pick guitarist was that you develop muscle memory over time becoming familar with musical forms so that you can tell what key a melody is being played by how it sounds. I think this transfers to the fiddle as well. We get familar without even knowing it with how to construct the notes and our fingers know where to go.

Getting most of the right notes in mostly the right order while sight-reading usually goes very quickly.  The same is true for learning by ear, although the processes are so different from one another that it's not really meaningful to compare them.  The long-term issue is phrasing and ornamentation.  That can be a real marathon event with sheet music since I have to do everything wrong before I can do anything right.  Less so with learning by ear because I have a model to follow.    A few weeks ago I started "Woodchopper's Reel" in D ("Reel de Soupe aux Pois") from sheet music and actually had the nerve to trot it out at a jam recently.  I never tried to learn "Little Liza Jane" before, but I was beating it to death at the same jam by ear when somebody else called it.  Pretty simple tune with room for endless fiddly variations.

I just like to have a few project tunes that I keep on the back burner until my playing improves enough to encompass them.  I've been working on a moderately fancy version of "President Garfield's Hornpipe" in Bb for several years now, and just the other day my playing resembled a tune for the first time, sans sheet music.  I have yet to listen to somebody else's playing of it.  It usually helps a lot (that's A LOT!!) to listen to successful versions of a tune rather than my Quixotic and/or chaotic sight-read only process.  Lately, I've been putting tunes on an mp3 player that I listen to or ignore while mowing the lawn or running a chainsaw or other cacophonous pursuits calling for hearing protection ear muffs.  I don't even try to play them on fiddle, I just let them percolate for a while.  I figured out "Wild Rose of the Mountain" as played by J.P. Fraley that way in about 3 weeks.  The process included transcribing the tune onto staff paper, although I don't need the sheet music to play the tune, it just helped make sense of some things.  Now it's in my head, and I'm working out the mechanicals.  It'll probably be a jam buster, though, for some time.  For now, it's just a cool tune to play for myself.

When I started getting serious about playing a dozen or so years ago, I was dismayed by how just getting the right notes in the right order wasn't very musical.  Fact is, I had to sound "off" for a long time.  I don't know where I found the patience.  Every so often, though, you'll find yourself exceeding your known skills, and it keeps you going until the next time it happens, and it starts to happen for longer spans of time and more often.  Eventually, it'll happen for the entire length of a tune!  Yay!  I vaguely recall some yoda-like remark of the sort at the time, from my one-and-only fiddle teacher.  Something about musical prodigies being scarce, so most of us have to make do with a more workman-like approach.  So it's back to the woodshed for us both!

I've got a 'bullpen' of about 10 tunes that I am always advancing along on. Realistically, it's over the course of a year that a rock solid independent version emerges. Until then, I polish them up a little on my own, I listen obsessively, and I call them in jams and work on them with others.

Terri

No matter how much I practice a tune in the beginning, it improves the most after I leave it alone for a week or two. It must be a brain thing.

How long will it take?        Hmm....How long you got?

Generally an hour, either by ear or from sheet music. With sheet music I can play exactly what I see the first or second go, but that is not the same as having it in my head.

Generally an hour, either by ear or from sheet music. With sheet music I can play exactly what I see the first or second go, but that is not the same as having it in my head.

How long it takes is different for everybody....depending on skill, technique, beginner or advanced, etc. Nobody is the same. It can take a long time to really play a tune well. So just relax and enjoy the process. And keep at it!

I thank you all for your responses. I sometimes get frustrated and discouraged with my playing, but even then I have to keep going because I love making music. There is never a question of not making music because I dont think I can stop. If you took all the instruments away from me, I think I'd be out in the street banging rocks together or something! Making music especially fiddling is an addiction!
Hi, My names Rosin and I'm a fiddlin junkie!

Your doomed, I say...doomed!