Training or not, what fiddle players have is four notes that they can have little excuse for not being in tune. And if one of them goes out they have a chance correcting it by reference to the other three.
Maybe fiddle players tend to be more conscious about playing in tune because the fiddle is an unfretted instrument, and therefore it is universally accepted from the outset that it is up to the player to play each note in tune. Even though they have the capability to adjust the tuning of each string, there is still the need for the player to select their finger placement in order to play all the other notes in tune. So nobody is under the illusion that playing in tune is the responsibility of the instrument (or instrument maker).
Flute players, on the other hand, often seem to blame the instrument (or maker) for tuning problems. We might view a tuning slide as the solution to tuning problems, but a tuning slide affects all notes, and to differing degrees, so it can’t bring an out of tune note into tune without pushing a previously in tune note out. The solution, of course, is that it really is up to the player to blow each note into tune. So in practice, the flute is really much more like an unfretted instrument than a fretted one. Unfortunately, this observation doesn’t seem to be universally accepted by flute players, especially beginners.
If we we flute players were trained from the outset to take responsibility for blowing all notes in tune, rather than rely on the flute (perhaps with appropriate slide placement) to manage the tuning for us, maybe we would have an easier time playing in tune in sessions?
Just a thought. I’m certainly not claiming to play in perfect tune myself all the time!
Well, yes, and no. I spent my youth playing in ensembles playing silver flute with one to five other fluters. At the very best, just as with a ‘good’ session, a tolerable consensus tuning emerges and can be very gratifying. And just as with some session mates, there are people who haven’t a clue. . .and mar the group experience. The rough and tumble of a session leaves the impression that everyone is trying to be heard, and tuning can come in a poor second. At the very best though, you can achieve the sort of sympathetic blending of voices found with close harmony singing.
Beginning violin players have an advantage not available to flute players … For many of the fingered notes, they can tell when they have the note in tune by listening for sympathetic vibrations in the other strings.
It’s more traditional if it’s out of tune…
Very interesting discussion - I might add more - seriously - later, in light of recent events at the Willie Clancy week.
I play along with modern recordings of fiddles on a regular bases and find that I don’t have to much trouble playing in tune, but I have tried to play along with Bobby Casey’s recordings, ~ now I’m pretty sure that a lot of the notes were off. Was he out of tune, was the recording off, or was he playing “just temperament”. Or was he using quarter tones intentionally?
I play along with modern recordings of fiddles on a regular bases and find that I don’t have to much trouble playing in tune, but I have tried to play along with Bobby Casey’s recordings, ~ now I’m pretty sure that a lot of the notes were off. Was he out of tune, was the recording off, or was he playing “just temperament”. Or was he using quarter tones intentionally?
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I would say Bobby Casey had very deliberate intonations for some notes that some people would think of as ‘out of tune’. Since he had the stroke there were also the occasional patches where he failed later in life. On the other hand, if you heard him, or listen to recordings of him, play with Tommy McCarthy on the concertina, his intonation matched the concertina’s pretty much spot on. Playing on his own he could utilise ‘the notes in between’ to great effect.
Also, I heard him play with both Jackie Daly and Tommy McCarthy during his final visit to Clare, only weeks before he died, no major intonation problems then either,.
“I would say Bobby Casey had very deliberate intonations for some notes that some people would think of as ‘out of tune’. … Playing on his own he could utilise ‘the notes in between’ to great effect.”
He is one of my favorite fiddlers, and I’m sure this has something to do with it. I didn’t realize it until I tried playing along.
He’s interesting in the way he flattens and sharpens certain notes depending on which way he approaches them in the tune. You did need to get your head around what he was doing when trying to play with him. On the other hand, in a session he could go on ‘automatic’, just disappearing into the overall sound without anything too extraordinary going on. If he noticed you were listening to him specifically he’d give a wink and turn things on full throttle.
Listening to him play in his prime, stuff from the fifties and sixties, he was brimming with musical ideas, mischief an fun, tremendous music. Especially when he went off on those long sets of five six tunes in a row. Brilliant.
Which is not to say everything was always perfect, I remember one occasion when the usual fiddle crowd was going: Joe Ryan, Breandan McGlinchey, the Kellys, Peter Mackey etc. When Csey put down the fiddle to go to the Jacks everybody looked at McGlinchey, who was sitting next to him, and he got Casey’s fiddle like a shot and tuned it to the rest of them.
If you compare his playing to the other West Clare players influenced by Scully Casey (Junior Crehan, Paddy Galvin when playing when they were younger) you can hear what they have in common, what is deliberate and part of the style.
I suppose a lot of people would say similar things about Paddy Canny’s fiddle playing. Like your man on the session.org, the fiddle bore. who on several occasions said things along the lines of I have heard it all before, I can’t listen to that. Yet if you really listen to Canny or put him with Peter O’Loughlin on the flute, you have something that flies, lovely music. Music with nuance, style and with a heart. I have one tape, which was recorded in the folkclub in Newmarket on Fergus or Clarecastle where Canny and O’Loughlin played all night, only to be joined at the end by Paddy Carty. It needed a wriggle before it all fell into place and fitted but once it did, they were flying.
I agree with every single word of that. I was taught a tune by John Kelly (old John Kelly) a long time ago - Lord McDonnell it was - and those early bars with Cs in, I was playing the Cs “in tune”, that is, according to ET. John told me to “sweeten that note”. When I worked out what he meant, it was to play those Cs slightly sharp, but to a very precise extent. It’s really hard to do, but makes the tune really zing once you manage to do it.
The old boys knew how to use tuning to make the music extra special - to give it heart, as you say, Mr G. A fair few people these days don’t really understand the music, but think they do, and think those wonderful, expressive notes are out of tune.
Exactly Ben. The better old players were very well aware of what they were doing and why they were doing things the way they did. A lot of people who have stumbled into this in recent years fail to grasp the amount of thought and consideration, not to mention love and humanity, some people put into their music.
While we are here and on the subject of older musicians, perhaps it is time to mention the wonderful CD of Peter O’Loughlin’s music that Ronan Browne has put together. Ronan presented the first copy to Peter, who is now very frail, during the Willie week and it is exactly what it says: a record of a rich musical life of one of the finest musicians of his generation, flute player, piper, fiddler. The CD covers him playing three all instruments from the 1950s to the present decade, solo as well as with a rake of other musicians including Willie Clancy, Michael Falsey, Lizzie Crotty, Paddy Murphy, Paddy Canny, Seán Reid, PJ Hayes, Paddy O’Brien, Geraldine Cotter, Seán McKernan and others.
Maybe some of it also has to with the fact that flute players, unlike fiddle players, are playing an older version of an instrument that is much harder to keep in tune than the modern version. And many of the techniques (keywork etc.) that were used to keep the older versions in tune are not really possible in the Irish music context.
“Is it me?” The question can depend on the size of the session. If you’re in a large group here’s a trick I’ve tried. Play barely audible whisper tones for a tune or two, just enough air to appear to be playing (rather than sitting out with your flute on your lap) and zen out on the sound of the blend. If the out of tuneness still persists, you know it wasn’t you, or at least not only you. And if it helps to save face for the other guy who is I will pretend to adjust my slide if I’m sure I’m spot on. This trick doesn’t work if you are one flute playing with a guitar and a fiddle LOL but can let you assess the room if it is a large one. As for someone telling you your cork needs to be a 19mm… They are adjustable for a reason. 19 is where you start off, the minute details of 19.whatever depends on you and your relationship to the instrument. I have one headjoint that really likes to be at 20. But if someone who I barely know wants to educate me on that I would just smile and nod unless I really like them in which case I would state the above… Sometimes a fluter will come to the session I have been playing in for 20 some odd years and we will just not blend on the high octave. If I think they are just passing through I’ll just drop those notes rather than make those unlovely wave tones that drive us mad. For me, there’s always next week.
Which makes me ask the question, where does the phrase “don’t make waves” really come from? I never thought of that until now.
A couple of Google searches suggested that the phrase originates with an old joke. In one form of hellish punishment, the damned are condemned to swim (or wade) in a lake of excrement. The swimmers call to each new entrant, “Don’t make waves!”
Yes, I remember the joke. The condemned fellow is standing outside the door to Hell and, to his surprise, hear’s only a gentle murmuring behind it. Then he opens it and…
