There’s this really nice reel(hornpipe?): The Last Pint.
over at thesession there are a few words about its origins.
Anyway here’s the prob;
If I want to play it at some session, people instantly figure that I’m playing the Lunasa version of the reel, which they slowered down and added some strange variation at the end. Once ppl around me realize I’m not playing the reel like it was played by Lunasa, I get to be the bad guy
I don’t have time to sit and explain to everyone that it doesn’t have to be a slow/emotional reel and can be a fast dancy reel, for example as Anam recorded it in '97.
can I claim that Lunasa has officially somehow ruined it for me?
Am I doomed to not play this reel ever in a session? I also have my own interpreation of it to spice things up even more.
Well, though originally a DADGAD guitar concert piece (Pierre Bensusan), in structure and feel it does seem more like a straight hornpipe than a reel. So the tempo of the Lúnasa setting doesn’t seem far off the mark anyway. If you want to play it as a fast reel, why not. But that’s as much an alteration as slowing it down. If your session mates like your fast setting, then acceptance should take care of itself. Especially if you can get an accompanist (guitar, zouk) to go along with you and work out a nice backup.
If you have the Anam recording, try playing that for your session mates to give them the idea and change their “Gestalt” of the tune. You can also try calling it by it’s original name, “La dinière pinte”, to distinguish it from Lúnasa, and to emphasize its origin as a French guitar piece, not an Irish slow reel. Good luck!
I’d say this is more a matter of session etiquette. If you started the tune at a particular speed, that’s the speed it should have been played at, [ or not - if I think a tune’s neing played too fast or too slow, I just don’t join in ]. In my opinion, it was bad manners of the other players to change the tempo of a tune you started. On that particular occasion, it was the other players who “ruined it”, not “Lunasa”, but perhaps you need to explain before you start to play that particular tune that you are playing it a bit faster than might be expected.
Certainly this sort of thing happens a lot at my local session any time there are tunes with more than one version out there. My personal bugaboos are reels that the “old guys” played AAB which a lot of modern players have normalized to AABB, like “Tom Ward’s Downfall” and “The Liffey Banks”. I learned from the old recordings and strongly prefer the AAB versions, but trying to play them that way at our session will lead to a train wreck every time. Even if the other players sit out the first time through the tune while I play it AAB, they seem to internalize that unrepeated B part as a mistake on my part rather than the way I’d like to play the tune. Similar problems crop up with tunes that have both two part versions and multi-part versions…
I agree with Kenny that it’s a matter of session etiquette, but unfortunately you’ve got to play with the people you’ve got. I’m lucky to get to play with a bunch of people who are quite a bit better than I am, so I count my blessings and try to go with the herd when I’m with them.
Yeah I like to play with people who actually listen and adapt. When you start a tune like “Stone in the Field” for example, chances are people who don’t wait a bit and listen will start “Congress Reel”.
I agree that the person who starts the tune sets his own rules. If he/she wants to play AAAB or AABB or ABBB or whatever, it’s his/her choice. You can then discuss this afterward, sometimes they’ve got their version from O’Neill’s and in real life, in sessions, this isnt how it’s played and you can tell them.
Finally, I think you can blame people who learn most of their stuff from Lunasa and Dervish… there’s other stuff out there, if only they’d take the time to explore a bit…
It sounds like just a communication problem to me. If you want to play a tune a certain way, why not just come out and say so before you all start playing? That way there are no surprises, and no one is caught off guard, or tempted to play the tune in a different way.
The other night at my local session I had a similar experience. I started Tam Lin on the banjo. An accomplished fiddle player joined in. I was estatic as I soon discovered that we played the same version- something that has never really happen before when I have tried to play this tune. By the second time through I realized that the tune was beginning to speed up drastically and I tried to keep to my original tempo but felt like I was fighting, unsuccessfully throughout the remainder of the tune. When I asked the fiddle player about it, she replied that she likes to play some tunes really fast, and this happened to be one of them. The experience certainly ruined it for me. I feel that it is only common sense to adapt one’s own playing to the pace and inflections of the player who started the tune/set.
i wish that I would be considered a bad guy for changing a lunasa arrangement in my local session. For them lunasa is pretty much the devil that’s ruining ITM. I can get away with their more traditional stuff but the Last pint would earn me no end of slagging.
I usually have the problem of playing hornpipes with a dotted rhythm while others play them straight. I’m not sure what to do about that, or which is right and which is wrong.
I’ve also had a problem with learning tunes from recordings. Often it’s not in the same key as the way people at the session know it.
I’m never sure whether to defer to the others or insist on my way.
Well, this is one where (a), I have never heard the Lunasa version, and (b) I play (kind of!) the Pierre Bensusan original on guitar. I definitely play it as a reel, and Pierre’s recording sounds like a reel. He plays it near straight and very fast.
