Ira,
Sounds like He has answered that. He is convinced that he cannot hear melody at all. A little strange to me; it almost sounds like an auditory hearing iproblem....Jack

Some folks are tone-deaf. There’s a fella at our jams that can’t sing on pitch. If I ask him to hum a note that I hum first he can’t get it,, after about 3 tries with my coaching he finally hits it right. I’d advise anyone in that situation to avail themselves of the many ear training videos on YouTube.

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Originally posted by RB-1

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Originally posted by JMalmsteen

Leave the tab alone. Sing the melody. Find the notes on the banjo. Add roles to your melody.

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I'm afraid this is an over simplification.

No way you can progress by not learning note for note  from others' arrangements.

Be it from figuring out by ear, reading tab (preferably a combination of both), it doesn't matter, but just 'adding rolls to a melody' doesn't equal playing Bluegrass Banjo.

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It's only an oversimplification if you consider it an endpoint, rather than a stage in the process of developing an arrangement. Indeed, every guide to creating banjo solos tells you that the first steps are to determine the chords, hunt down the melody, and shape rolls incorporating both. Then you move on to adding licks, ornamentation, and other techniques. It's a process, a layering of elements starting with the basics (melody, harmony (chords), rhythm (rolls)), and adding in more (or less) complexity according to your ability and taste.  

Your alternative -- learning note for note from others' arrangements -- eliminates that entire process and, with it, a better  understanding of how arrangements are formed. Learning others' arrangements teaches you others' arrangements. Does it teach you chord progressions? Finding the melody? Accentuating the melody with slurs and quarter notes? Where to drop in fill-in licks? Playing the same song in other parts of the neck? In other keys? In other ways?

Maybe -- if a teacher guides you on how to analyze the details of those arrangements and the thinking behind each phrase. But merely copying them? I doubt it. 

Yes, that is the obvious way Chuck but there is another name for that and It's called Temporal Intergration...

Temporal Intergration

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Originally posted by chuckv97

Some folks are tone-deaf. There’s a fella at our jams that can’t sing on pitch. If I ask him to hum a note that I hum first he can’t get it,, after about 3 tries with my coaching he finally hits it right. I’d advise anyone in that situation to avail themselves of the many ear training videos on YouTube.

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Yes, but that is the obvious way to do it if the person has what I will attach below...J Here is what you are talking about...But there are people who sufer from Auditory Processing Delay.....

Auditory Processing Delay.... After repetion of note...

Tone Deaf

 

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Originally posted by chuckv97

Some folks are tone-deaf. There’s a fella at our jams that can’t sing on pitch. If I ask him to hum a note that I hum first he can’t get it,, after about 3 tries with my coaching he finally hits it right. I’d advise anyone in that situation to avail themselves of the many ear training videos on YouTube.

 

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Jack, I shouldn’t have used the term “tone-deaf”. I’m more in the camp of “untrained”.

Sure, but there are people who cannot hear one tone from another...and the slang is "tone deaf" I guess....J

Ira, Jack..I can hear it I just cant isolate it from everything else and cant tell when the melody note has been implied..not tone deaf or anything just had a head injury from a motorcycle accident a few years back. Part of the reason for learning to play banjo and guitar is to help keep my brain from turning to pudding

It's not entirely your fault that melody notes are difficult to hear. Some banjo players do a better job of emphasizing the melody. The nature of banjo rolls tends to "hide" the melody.

You asked the good question. As you can see, lots of interest in the topic.

Patrick,
This may have been mentioned or may be obvious, but.... Often when hammer-on's, slides, or pull offs are used, they are used with the purpose of sliding into, hammering onto, or pulling off into a melody note. You hear the note from them, but they don't sound as distinct or look as distinct in a tab as a stand alone quarter note or a single plucked note. So maybe you need to try to see where some of those hammers, pulls, or slides are leading you. they may have the melody in them. But, they are not all used for that purpose. Sometimes they are there just for an embellishment, but they do kind of hide a lot of melody notes. some players use them for that more than others.
ken

Cool! Thanks Ken!

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Originally posted by From Greylock to Bean Blossom

Patrick,
This may have been mentioned or may be obvious, but.... Often when hammer-on's, slides, or pull offs are used, they are used with the purpose of sliding into, hammering onto, or pulling off into a melody note. You hear the note from them, but they don't sound as distinct or look as distinct in a tab as a stand alone quarter note or a single plucked note. So maybe you need to try to see where some of those hammers, pulls, or slides are leading you. they may have the melody in them. But, they are not all used for that purpose. Sometimes they are there just for an embellishment, but they do kind of hide a lot of melody notes. some players use them for that more than others.
ken

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For example, the typical 2-3 slide on the third string, followed by the open 2nd string--The important note is that open B, and the slide is just a cool-sounding way to scoop into it. If you do that with a TITM roll, the final two picked notes are simply what Moondi Klein calls "banjo noise"--filler that's not part of the essential musical point. So that lick--TITM on 3251, with the 3rd-string slide--is just a bluegrass banjo way of saying "B" for one beat.

Ira..very helpful as that is seen quite often. I have 3 songs Ive memorized and trying to find the melody notes. I looked up the actual musical notation but it isn't always as straightforward or obvious as Id imagined...especially when it comes to melody notes that are implied or absent. Don't suppose there's a simple way to know is there?

I don't know of any "simple way"--a formula that can be applied in all or most situations. You probably need to listen a lot, identify the important melody notes, and get used to hearing melodies in their basic contours, rather than every little wiggle and turn.

Here’s another one,, a demo performance with TAB & explanation. Melody notes are circled in red.  Hope this helps. 

Nice Chuck! That will be helpful for my studies. Ive been on this site for a few years now...BG people are the best!! Always willing to help a brother out.

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Originally posted by Patrick1962

Ira, Jack..I can hear it I just cant isolate it from everything else and cant tell when the melody note has been implied.

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If you can hear melody, that says you can tell one note from another. And it strongly suggests you should be able to pick out a linear, literal, unadorned melody on the banjo. You just need to make sure you're doing it in the same key as the tab you're trying to play. Having picked out, by ear, what you believe to be the melody, next is to go through the tab in sequence and try to see if your conception of the melody lines up with any notes in the tab. If your melody and the tab are any good, they should. Or you'll discover where a note has been displaced a bit forward or back. Or where it's been omitted.

But let's take a few steps back to ask and answer some questions about the tab.

Do the tabs you're working with purport to be transcriptions of specific banjo players' specific recordings of songs? If the answer to this is yes, then you should listen to the recording while reading through the tab, following closely measure-by-measure to see where the melody notes you hear are happening. If you can slow down the playback, so much the better.

If the answer to the above is no, and these are just some tab-writers' arrangements of songs, are they at least TablEdit files that you can play and listen to and hopefully hear the melody? If yes, try increasing the syncopation in the Midi Options menu/dialog box. The default setting is 0. Try setting it at 1. This tries to mimic human playing by changing the playback from mechanically precise to something approximating bounce. I find this works for some songs. The effect is hit or miss to my ear. A setting of 2 is nearly unlistenable for me.

If the answer to the TablEdit question is no, then you're at the mercy of the tab-writer, whose ability you simply do not know. You have no idea whether the tab is any good, let alone how the tab-writer perceived the melody. With this situation, you're back to what I described at the outset. You have to work through the tab measure-by measure listening for what sounds like the melody while you hear your version of the melody in your head.

The absolute best tabs to use are those for which recorded references are available or that are themselves playable, so you know what they're supposed to sound like.

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A final thought: It seems most discussions having anything to do with tab get sidetracked into debate (this time, thankfully, not at all heated) about the virtues or evils of tab. Either it's the greatest boon to aspiring banjo players or it's the greatest evil that will stunt your progress and keep you from learning anything. And everywhere in between.

These debates are all well and good. Fun to have it out every once in a while. But this debate had absolutely nothing to do with your question, which wasn't whether you should use tab to learn a song or how could you bring melody into your own arrangements (which some people described) but how to find the melody in a tab you're already using to learn a song, which means telling you to put away the tab and work up your own version of the song is not a helpful answer. 

Ken, its a tab from a website that also has a short instruction video and audio recordings..slow, med, fast. So, as I mentioned briefly before I had a head injury from a motorcycle accident a few years back and I can recognize the song itself but I have a difficult time separating and isolating the melody notes out of everything else just by listening....it seems that discriminating part of my brain doesn't work so well....don't know how to explain it ..I can memorize an entire song relatively quickly but unless I know exactly where the melody notes are it doesn't sound like the song....its really not my intention to sound like a whiner making excuses just trying to find ways to make this work..sometimes being old, stupid and stubborn works in my favor..

Patrick, why don't you let people know the tab and where it is from? If some have experience with it, they could be more specific and accurate in their replies?

If you start with singing by ear I believe you'll find instrument melody notes much more easily.
I was very lucky to go to a good musical church and practiced singing to the piano and hearing the congregation harmonize every Sunday for 20 years.
A wonderful example of "Immersion" in the music.
A musical baptism.

Was the person that came up with: "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear."  full of "it"?   .... or just misinformed?    ... or ??

Ira's "I don't know of <snip> a formula that can be applied in all or most situations. You probably need to listen a lot, identify the important melody notes, and get used to hearing melodies in their basic contours, rather than every little wiggle and turn." gets my vote, even though "identify melody notes" sounds like a manifestation of the supernatural to me and I very likely don't kow what the "basic contours" of a melody means.  The universe is unfolding as it should [i.e. I'm not looking for referrals to take my playing (?) to the "next level" ... whatever that means.  ]

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Originally posted by Owen

I very likely don't kow what the "basic contours" of a melody means.  

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Nothing especially exotic. Just where does the melody go up, where does it go down, and how far up or down? Oh--and never mind about those little words in the lyric. Just focus on the big, held-out notes.

;^)

Owen, remember you were savvy enough to advise me to put that extra melody note at the beginning of “Dark Hollow”? Methinks yooz iz playing rope-a-dope sometimes.

Up / down / how far .... "ay, there's the rub."   When I try it out on "Happy Birthday" they're all the same until I come to where the person's name is inserted.   That doesn't match any TAB I've found and the ones I've found don't match the word [or syllable] with the note so getting started is a non-starter.

I dunno Chuck, hearing an empty hole is some ways from being able to "figure out"* what to fill it with.   +/-7 years >> 3,2,4,1/3,2,4,1/3,2,4,1/ 3,2,4,1/3,2,4,1 = savvy??    [From my standpoint, I've got nothing to gain thru rope-a-dope.]    Fwiw, I've found that I've been able to learn some music [not much, but some] .... IF  I have the right in-person instructor. 

* trial and error >>> exasperation [and then some]. 

Anyhoo ^^ just my c'est la vie drivel.

When you can easily play the chord progression you'll discover the melody within the notes of the chords.
Playing the timing correctly helps a lot.