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Your comment about proof reading and errors not sounding right reminds me of the "proper/best" way to learn Morse code for ham radio. Most everyone is familiar

Your comment about proof reading and errors not sounding right reminds me of the "proper/best" way to learn Morse code for ham radio. Most everyone is familiar with the charts that show A=.- B=-... etc. Lots of beginners try to actually interpret the sounds in their ears and convert that to a letter and then convert a bunch of those to a word. Obviously, that is very processor intensive and has a high failure rate. The best way is to treat each audio pattern as a letter in a new language and skip the conversion process. Eventually, you recognize entire words just from the sounds.

michaelmior 7y ago
Any tips on how to start then? I used to know all the letters in Morse code but it was basically just learning the chart as you mentioned. I've since forgotten most of the alphabet.
- verall 7y ago
  It's just like a language. If you want to read morse code look at that chart, but if you want to hear it quickly you'll need to do audio flashcards. I n Anki it's pretty easy to add cards that have no text but sound which should be all you need.
- vidanay 7y ago
  It's called Koch's method. http://www.justlearnmorsecode.com/koch.html http://www.justlearnmorsecode.com/koch.html https://www.qsl.net/n1irz/finley.morse.html https://www.qsl.net/n1irz/finley.morse.html
  - michaelmior 7y ago
    I'll have to try that. I've tried some acoustical training before, but not starting at full speed like Koch's method.
- Tempest1981 7y ago
  Once you learn all the letters, as you walk around, pick various items you encounter, and say their name in Morse code. A car: "dah-dit-dah-dit. Dit-dah. Dit-darrrr-dit." For fun, pronounce "R" like a pirate would.
  - michaelmior 7y ago
    Thanks for this one. I haven't heard this suggestion before. I'll keep that in mind if I ever try to pick it up again :)
- jfalcon 7y ago
  If you talk to old school CW operators, they will all tell you that you need to go beyond the letters and into the words and sentences like you skim over a paragraph. In fact, if you operate morse too slow, many of these old schoolers don't want to talk to you as you break the "flow". Which is the exact thing you're wanting to achieve in morse fluency.
27182818284 7y ago
Similar experience for when I taught myself the Dvorak layout years ago. My fingers learned the common motion for whole words first. Actually, I'm not sure I could draw the layout of the qwerty keyboard I'm typing on right now from memory either.
- richardw 7y ago
  Just for a laugh, try changing your phone keyboard to Dvorak. It seemed like a good idea but felt alien to see the keys I naturally use. Swiping was just ridiculous. Obviously it’s just practice but I don’t mind using qwerty on my phone. It keeps it vaguely present in my memory.
  - peterlk 7y ago
    I did this many years ago, and am now terribly slow at typing on a phone with a qwerty keyboard, and still cannot use a Dvorak keyboard on my computer...
  - PureParadigm 7y ago
    I've been typing Dvorak on my computer since middle school and so I thought it'd naturally be a good idea to switch my phone... turns out not so much. While having all the common letters on the home row is good for regular typing, it is not good for phone typing which is heavily dependent on autocorrect. If I miss a letter by one key it's still likely for it to be a valid word because common letters are clustered and autocorrect misinterprets. For example, I might type "i" and then "t", "n", and "s" are all adjacent meaning if I meant to type "is" and I miss by one key and type "in" then it is not corrected. Other annoying ones are "by" and "my" because the b and m are next to each other. Sadly, I'm in a bit too deep to go back to Qwerty on my phone (I'd be very slow for awhile). I do still enjoy Dvorak on the computer and while I don't think I'm a faster typist than I would be with Qwerty, I rarely (pretty much never) experience finger strain when typing for long periods.
    - chillacy 7y ago
      Supposedly the entire reason Qwerty was designed was to prevent typewriters from jamming by making the keys as disambiguous as possible, which is now ironically ideal on tiny screens.
kendallpark 7y ago
A while back I worked for a team that had wired up Jenkins to a speaker in the office. Each type of event would trigger a different Zelda sound effect. Victory music for successful deployments, game over music for breaking the build, etc. Notably, dev server exceptions were connected to sword clashing sounds. It led to debugging situations like this: "Okay, so that's two clanks when we click on this button, but if we do it on this other page it's only one clank. Hm." Turns out, there are some bugs that are easier to detect this way. Looking at timestamps doesn't really give a "sense" of whether two events are in a tight causal link. With sound, you can immediately "hear" that two adverse events are occuring at identical intervals every time. What's great is that the sound information doesn't take up any additional attention. It just fades into the background if you don't need it. When there is a pattern, it stands out.
- egd 7y ago
  At a previous gig, we had a lot of systems named after animals, and I'd joked about wiring our alerting system up to emit the animal sound for the system that was paging, but I think I'm actually going to do that at my next gig. Outside the land of software, engineers debug systems using sound all the time - I think we're underutilizing our senses and our pattern recognition.
  - lb1lf 7y ago
    -At a former employer, I had coded some embedded devices to spit out their bus address and current error code in morse code using the buzzer in the keypad. Saved me lots of time during initial debugging of new installations, then I'd just disable the buzzer before heading for home. (At least) on one occasion I forgot; years later a puzzled chief engineer calls me and says that his first officer had told him that E209 had a pending IGBT failure while they were discussing issues with the equipment we'd delivered over the din of the buzzers. Would that hypothesis have any possible merit?
  - WalterBright 7y ago
    I always wonder at the madness of elevator design. Most of them "ping" as they pass a floor for accessibility. But that means the blind rider must first know the floor he is on, then count the pings to the right floor. It should simply announce each floor as it passes. I know from experience that you can make quite comprehensible voice sounds by connecting a 5V I/O pin to a speaker, so there is no excuse. (All you do is digitize the speech, then turn the pin on and off as the wave crosses 0.) Ditto for every device that comes with a chart saying which LED blink pattern means what status. Like the "fast blink" and "slow blink". The LED is blinking, is that "fast" or "slow"?
edwinyzh 7y ago
You reminds me about learning a foreign language you need to think in the foreign language without the translating part.
feminintendo 7y ago
I wonder if the same thing is possible with sight reading music.

michaelmior 7y ago

Any tips on how to start then? I used to know all the letters in Morse code but it was basically just learning the chart as you mentioned. I've since forgotten most of the alphabet.

verall 7y ago
It's just like a language. If you want to read morse code look at that chart, but if you want to hear it quickly you'll need to do audio flashcards. I n Anki it's pretty easy to add cards that have no text but sound which should be all you need.
vidanay 7y ago
It's called Koch's method. http://www.justlearnmorsecode.com/koch.html http://www.justlearnmorsecode.com/koch.html https://www.qsl.net/n1irz/finley.morse.html https://www.qsl.net/n1irz/finley.morse.html
- michaelmior 7y ago
  I'll have to try that. I've tried some acoustical training before, but not starting at full speed like Koch's method.
Tempest1981 7y ago
Once you learn all the letters, as you walk around, pick various items you encounter, and say their name in Morse code. A car: "dah-dit-dah-dit. Dit-dah. Dit-darrrr-dit." For fun, pronounce "R" like a pirate would.
- michaelmior 7y ago
  Thanks for this one. I haven't heard this suggestion before. I'll keep that in mind if I ever try to pick it up again :)
jfalcon 7y ago
If you talk to old school CW operators, they will all tell you that you need to go beyond the letters and into the words and sentences like you skim over a paragraph. In fact, if you operate morse too slow, many of these old schoolers don't want to talk to you as you break the "flow". Which is the exact thing you're wanting to achieve in morse fluency.

27182818284 7y ago

Similar experience for when I taught myself the Dvorak layout years ago. My fingers learned the common motion for whole words first. Actually, I'm not sure I could draw the layout of the qwerty keyboard I'm typing on right now from memory either.

richardw 7y ago
Just for a laugh, try changing your phone keyboard to Dvorak. It seemed like a good idea but felt alien to see the keys I naturally use. Swiping was just ridiculous. Obviously it’s just practice but I don’t mind using qwerty on my phone. It keeps it vaguely present in my memory.
- peterlk 7y ago
  I did this many years ago, and am now terribly slow at typing on a phone with a qwerty keyboard, and still cannot use a Dvorak keyboard on my computer...
- PureParadigm 7y ago
  I've been typing Dvorak on my computer since middle school and so I thought it'd naturally be a good idea to switch my phone... turns out not so much. While having all the common letters on the home row is good for regular typing, it is not good for phone typing which is heavily dependent on autocorrect. If I miss a letter by one key it's still likely for it to be a valid word because common letters are clustered and autocorrect misinterprets. For example, I might type "i" and then "t", "n", and "s" are all adjacent meaning if I meant to type "is" and I miss by one key and type "in" then it is not corrected. Other annoying ones are "by" and "my" because the b and m are next to each other. Sadly, I'm in a bit too deep to go back to Qwerty on my phone (I'd be very slow for awhile). I do still enjoy Dvorak on the computer and while I don't think I'm a faster typist than I would be with Qwerty, I rarely (pretty much never) experience finger strain when typing for long periods.
  - chillacy 7y ago
    Supposedly the entire reason Qwerty was designed was to prevent typewriters from jamming by making the keys as disambiguous as possible, which is now ironically ideal on tiny screens.

kendallpark 7y ago

A while back I worked for a team that had wired up Jenkins to a speaker in the office. Each type of event would trigger a different Zelda sound effect. Victory music for successful deployments, game over music for breaking the build, etc. Notably, dev server exceptions were connected to sword clashing sounds. It led to debugging situations like this: "Okay, so that's two clanks when we click on this button, but if we do it on this other page it's only one clank. Hm." Turns out, there are some bugs that are easier to detect this way. Looking at timestamps doesn't really give a "sense" of whether two events are in a tight causal link. With sound, you can immediately "hear" that two adverse events are occuring at identical intervals every time. What's great is that the sound information doesn't take up any additional attention. It just fades into the background if you don't need it. When there is a pattern, it stands out.

egd 7y ago
At a previous gig, we had a lot of systems named after animals, and I'd joked about wiring our alerting system up to emit the animal sound for the system that was paging, but I think I'm actually going to do that at my next gig. Outside the land of software, engineers debug systems using sound all the time - I think we're underutilizing our senses and our pattern recognition.
- lb1lf 7y ago
  -At a former employer, I had coded some embedded devices to spit out their bus address and current error code in morse code using the buzzer in the keypad. Saved me lots of time during initial debugging of new installations, then I'd just disable the buzzer before heading for home. (At least) on one occasion I forgot; years later a puzzled chief engineer calls me and says that his first officer had told him that E209 had a pending IGBT failure while they were discussing issues with the equipment we'd delivered over the din of the buzzers. Would that hypothesis have any possible merit?
- WalterBright 7y ago
  I always wonder at the madness of elevator design. Most of them "ping" as they pass a floor for accessibility. But that means the blind rider must first know the floor he is on, then count the pings to the right floor. It should simply announce each floor as it passes. I know from experience that you can make quite comprehensible voice sounds by connecting a 5V I/O pin to a speaker, so there is no excuse. (All you do is digitize the speech, then turn the pin on and off as the wave crosses 0.) Ditto for every device that comes with a chart saying which LED blink pattern means what status. Like the "fast blink" and "slow blink". The LED is blinking, is that "fast" or "slow"?

edwinyzh 7y ago

You reminds me about learning a foreign language you need to think in the foreign language without the translating part.

feminintendo 7y ago

I wonder if the same thing is possible with sight reading music.