I am still trying to learn a hornpipe. I gave up with harvest home as I had great difficulty with the jumps to/from the pedal points (I kept winding up an octave too high on the pedal).
I have switched to a different, well worn tune. It is played at the local session, so I am hoping to get away with playing it in public. I would appreciate any feedback folks here can give me. Please do not worry about softening your criticism - I can take mine straight - actually I prefer it blunt.
Being blunt - play it slower, King of the Fairies takes being played slowly very well, it lets the swing of the tune shine through. It also means that you can put in the ornamentation without it screwing up your tempo.
Phill, I think that’s great on the whole. I don’t agree with Big Davy on the speed (for once). I thought that was a nice tempo you took it at, and I’d carry on doing just that. There’s a tiny detail in the A part which I play differently, but I don’t know what the consensus is. You’ve got a c# in there, and I always play all the cs natural in the A part.
Watch the B part, and go back and relearn it. You’ve got it wrong there, Phill, and you’re missing half a bar towards the end. There are one or two other ‘oddities’ in your playing of it which will make it hard to fit in with other people.
The ornaments were, I think, coming on pretty well. There’s some flubs here and there, but I would say you know what you’re aiming at, and persistence will get you there. I’d suggest taking it apart and playing the ornaments in the context of the tune - play 'em over and over, perhaps with a little bit of the tune either side of where they fit in the tune, until you’re really comforatble with them.
I’m always amazed at your progress Phill. I know you think it’s painfully slow progress but, trust me, your playing is way more musical than loads of people who actually think they can play and have been doing so (thinking they can play, that is) for years.
I would agree with most of what you said, but, as an experiment, try taking the tune to slow airish territory and slide into the notes. Then, at a similar tempo, play it in a highly pointed style, with appropriate use of Scotch snaps - I think you might enjoy the results.
Just tried it, on a low D whistle. Yep, heard it like that a fair bit. It’s fine like that. I prefer it a bit sparkier, but also, I’m trying to encourage Phill to move out of his ‘safe zone’ of slow airs and the like, and into dance tunes. So, for Phill, I’d say take it at a reasonable tempo, and the one he chose was fine.
Just one added point of detail for Phill - the way I play it, it needs one note in the B part to be ‘folded’ up an octave. There’s a low B in there, that falls off the bottom of the whistle range. But all you need to do is play that one note up an octave, and it’s fine.
Thanks to you both for taking the time to liste, and to comment. I find this a very useful exercise.
Some specifics:
Tempo: I listen mostly to a version by The Dubliners (actually just the fiddle player). It is on youTube. Ben is just right that I am (or should be) trying to get out of my comfort zone of slow tunes… The sessions hereabouts actually start off at a faster tempo than I recorded and then accelerate. Personally I see little of merit in playing it so fast, but that could just be me being grumpy because I cant match their speed.
Missing Chunks etc: Yes, spent too much time practising without a reference. I think that the low B fell in my blind spot and got elided. Back too practising against that fiddler, whose skill keeps tempting me to try ornamentation that I can’t quite manage.
Cnat/C#: I got the dots from thesession.org, and assumed them correct. I seem to remember that I had to school myself out of playing some Cnats, but I cannot remember where I was putting them. I would like to know more about this aspect…
And thank you Ben for your encouragement. It does seem to be taking me a long time to get to a level of competence that I am happy with. Never mind, I can play better than last year, next year I might be better yet, and I am enjoying the learning.
I hope you never get to a level you’re happy with, Phill. That, by the way, would count, I think, as a sort of blessing to a player of Irish trad: “May you never get to a level of competence you’re happy with”. I’m sure you get what I mean.
Anyway, you’ll notice in that YouTube clip of - it’s John Sheahan, yes? - that fiddler, anyway, that he plays c nats in the first part. As far as I’m aware, just about everybody does. After you reach that long note middle d, come down from it by going d cnat B. Don’t do what Sheahan does, mind and play those 'orrible D#s, particularly the 'orrible low D#s. The Cs in the second part are normally played all sharp. Generally John Sheahan’s second part is all right, except I don’t much like the c nat he puts in early on in the second part, at least the first time through, but there you go, it’s probably just a matter of taste. (Or he just played it wrong.)
Does that help in terms of notes, or do you need a bit more from me? I’m stuck on the settee - it could be a break from CSI …
It probably will, but my wife is home, and she probably needs time off from hearing ‘TKOTF’ a few more times… so I will work on it tomorrow.
Did I make a poor choice of ‘reference track’? I find it more inspiring to play with recordings than MIDI, and actually prefer accompanying fiddle to whistle (is that odd for a whistler?).
I had not heard the tune before. Great tune and high on my ‘next to learn’ list.
Listening to your recording this is what comes to mind:
I understand from your post that you listened to one execution of the tune. If you live in the UK and download Spotify you can listen to 20 hours of music a month for free. I did a search for this tune and found about 50 versions of it. That will give you a lot of ideas about speed etc. I find it very useful when practicing, and a lot of fun playing along to. http://www.spotify.com
I am learning to play it at about the same speed but also have a ceili band recording that rattles along much faster and keeps me from getting too airy fairy with it.
Aw Ben, you mean I don’t get to use my Eb key in that one then ? (mind you its the sort of thing that some may say can be overemphasised…)
You got me trawling YouTube listening to King of the Faeries and what surprised me how much variation of style and tempo there could be and I still enjoyed the tune.
I thought those low Bs were in the A music of King of the Fairies…, apart from the one in the B music where part of the A music is reprised at the end.
You’re probably thinking of one of the versions we used to play Jem, as opposed to what’s generally played now. The B part is quite different from the A part in the now commonly played variant and, whilst there are low Bs in the A part, all of them can, IMO, be substituted with Ds or DE (3FED or some other substitution, whereas the one in the B part can’t. It has to be a B which, since it goes off the bottom of the whistle’s range, you have to put up an octave.
No, I had a look on The Session at the stock version before posting. It’s a fairly decent transcription for once and there’s some useful stuff in the Discussion too. It has 2 low Bs in the A music and 1 in the B music. All sound best low if feasible but can be flipped up the octave quite satisfactorily, which is what I do unless I have my flute with B foot out. But you’re right that I’ve never actually learned the B music of the stock version and normally play the long setting one of those variants we had of old.
Sounds pretty good to me. Maybe a couple of spots where you slipped the tempo a little but nothing major I could hear wrong with it other then what’s been said. I’ve heard this played faster and slower so I guess you can do anything you are comfortable with speed wise.
I agree that you could try some more slides into some of the longer notes to make it a little more haunting I guess would be the right word. The only other thing I would say to try it to get some of the notes to pop a bit more to break up the measures more where necessary but other then that I think you just have some fine tuning and you are there.
Yes, I know there are low Bs in the A part as well. My point, which you missed, is that they’re different from that one low B in the B part. The ones in the A part can be substituted by other notes, but the one in the B part has to be a B. There’s no ‘recapitulation’ in the B part - it’s different. You probably need to hear it.
Just had another look - kinda see what you mean about that one in the B music - though I think I’d play flipped Bs in the A music rather than Ds myself… but yes, the Ds sound OK in the A music but playing one in place of the low B in the B music just doesn’t feel right. Yeah, OK, it’s not a true reprise there, more of a partial reference phrase.
