I started recording myself during flute practice as a way to get unbiased feedback of my sound. One of the things that came out of this was that my reel’s simply didn’t sound right. I couldn’t really put a finger on it until I started reading about offbeat emphasis. I started trying to emphasize the offbeat and while not perfect, it definitely sounds more “reelish”. However, even while I can consciously try to emphasize the offbeat, it’s seems incredibly difficult to do. It’s like I naturally want to stomp my foot down and dominate the rhythm.
So I guess my question is - is this normal? and at some point the reel rhythm will just ‘click’ to include the offbeat? Or is it possible that I had been playing a tune wrong (specifically the Banshee) long enough that offbeat just now doesn’t sound correct versus had I learned it correct the from the beginning?
Curious if anyone else can remember struggling with this.
Normally it’s the on-beat that’s stressed and the off-beat that’s swung (assuming we’re using the same terminology!)
Mostly reels are played rubato, so you linger on the first eighth note and compensate by making the second eighth a tiny bit shorter.
Maybe practise really emphasising that first eighth? You might overdo it to start with, but it doesn’t matter – once you’ve heard how the heavy beat works with the rhythm, you should be able to judge the timing better.
It is not clear from your description what the problem really is. Are you comfortable with putting up a clip in order to get a diagnosis and perhaps some suggestions as to what you could improve on?
Depends on what you count as the on-beat and what you count as the off-beat. Yes, the in-between eighth notes are always de-stressed and played short. But sometimes the second beat of the measure, assuming we’re in 2/4 time (which is actually the third eighth note in each group of four), is stressed more than the first beat. Many flute and fiddle players seem to play reels like this.
So in each group of four eighth notes you have:
STRONG| soft/short | VERY STRONG | soft/short
It gives reels a “duba-DUba-duba-DUba” sort of feel. I think this might be what OP is referring to.
If I’m interpreting what you mean by “emphasizing the off-beat” correctly (see above), then I wouldn’t say this is some kind of absolutely fundamental thing you have to do to make a reel sound right. Not everyone emphasizes the off-beat that much. In my (somewhat limited) experience, it’s fairly common to do this on flute, but not universal. Also, remember that pipes and whistles can’t really play this way, because they (essentially) lack the ability to vary volume without varying pitch. So this seems to be a flute/fiddle-specific technique, and not a universal one.
What’s far more important is getting the “light swing” feel down, which is something ALL Irish trad instruments need to do. Reels have to be swung, but not too heavily (or too lightly). From experimenting on a DAW, I’ve found that the ratio of the backswing to the downswing in Irish reels is significantly less than 2:1. It’s somewhere around 3:2, which can be rather counterintuitive. Getting it exactly right takes a lot of practice. But if this is what isn’t clicking for you - which is understandable, because it usually takes some time - yes, it will simply “click” eventually. I still remember the day I was at a session and I suddenly realized I wasn’t struggling to play with the same groove/lilt as the other players. It just took some time.
TL;DR: If your reels don’t sound right, that could be because your swing isn’t quite right. It’s unlikely that the problem is your lack off-beat emphasis (though some flute players do emphasize the off-beat). But you can always post a recording here if you want more precise feedback.
You understood my question exactly. I’ll plan on posting a clip next week playing the banshee to get more precise feedback (I’ve been recording monthly progress videos).
Regarding the “light swing” comment, that is very interesting. How would you define the “downswing” and “backswing”? I’ve been thinking of the terms “downbeat” and “upbeat” corresponding to how most people tap their foot while playing reels.
Yes do. But take it easy don’t rush the playing, rhythm and phrasing before speed.
You may want to watch Kevin Burke unpick the basics of the tune, which should be useful getting a handle on the basic
rhythm, which you should be able to put on the flute.
Backswing refers to what you do on every odd-numbered eighth note, and downswing refers to what you do on every even-numbered eighth note. Swinging means that every even-numbered eighth note is just a little bit shorter than every odd-numbered eighth note. So with each group of four eighth notes, you play:
LONG | short | LONG | short
But it’s not a heavy/exaggerated swing, like you often hear in jazz. It’s a light swing, and it’s actually hard to hear people doing it when they’re playing fast. But if you slow down professional trad music and listen to it carefully, you’ll find that it’s almost always swung slightly.
Thank you for clarifying that. The ratios now make a bit more sense. Per your definitions, my onbeat/offbeat definition would map to:
Onbeat| short| Offbeat| short
The swing comment you make is very helpful and I’ll start listening more for that. It’s always vague when people say “emphasize the onbeat and offbeat in reels”. Emphasizing should include both volume and duration.
The swing comment you make is very helpful and I’ll start listening more for that. It’s always vague when people say “emphasize the onbeat and offbeat in reels”. Emphasizing should include both volume and duration.
Yeah, for swing, it’s all about duration, not volume as much. It’s about making every odd-numbered eighth note a little bit longer than every even-numbered eighth note. Remember, some instruments (such as pipes) can’t really vary their volume from note to note, and they can still get the swing rhythm down exactly; because it’s about duration mainly, not volume.
But for the offbeat emphasis thing I was discussing earlier, that’s more about volume. But that’s a more optional thing that only certain violin and flute players seem to do.
And as others have said, please do post a recording if you’d like more specific feedback!
Maybe the trouble is that not everyone was taught this themselves, so they don’t have ready-made descriptors. They might come up with words for it, but the meaning aren’t necessarily concrete enough.
I’m an intuitive learner who would really struggle to work out emphasis and swing from a written description, but I hear it in music and replicate it (or play around with it) without even being conscious of what I’m doing.
But some people’s brains work the other way; they’re skilled at understanding things from a theoretical point of view but are less comfortable with picking them up intuitively.
Both methods result in people who play music well, but it doesn’t always work well when one sort of brain tries to teach the other!
Undoubtedly true, Mr. Gumby. Though I must point out that the musicians in both videos you provided use significant swing, which you can clearly hear if you slow down both videos. This reinforces my claim (which I’m not sure you’d disagree with) that nearly all masterfully-played ITM reels have at least a bit of swing.
It’s actually quite difficult to find examples of ITM reels with literally no swing at all. Most of the examples I can find are amateurs who haven’t learned to play the music properly and classical orchestras playing trad melodies without attempting to demonstrate any fidelity to its proper style. On the rare occasion that you find recordings of ITM reels with little to no swing that fall into neither of the aforementioned categories, you’ll find (I think) that it sounds a bit atypical and would be rather out of place (though not unheard of) at your average ITM session.
I suppose what I am saying is, any amount of overthinking and theorising about ratios and what have you, there are a lot of ways to approach reel playing that are valid. Approaches where emphasis can be different.
As I said before, there was a moment when the session lilt simply clicked for me. No amount of overanalyzing it or practicing with the metronome got me there. I had to feel the music in my bones, which I could only do by going to a large number of sessions. And even then, I suppose I only discovered one particular way to play reels that was common at the sessions I went to. The more I play, the more varieties of swing and emphasis I run into, and I always need to adapt.
If you find the reels lack the rhythm you are looking for, try practicing them slowly and play as if they were like hornpipes. A percussionist told me that he thinks of words or phrases in his head to help get the desired rhythm. For example, something like the word watermelon might help, i.e. WAT-er-MEL-on, WAT-er-MEL-on, WAT-er-MEL-on, WAT-er-MEL-on, etc.
The idea is to first get a sense of rhythm, without playing, just by the repetition. The next step try lilting or humming the tune, intrinsically to that rhythm, and trying to find the natural phrasing of the tune. Once it is in head, with a sense of rhythm and phrasing, then it can be expressed onto the flute. Just some more sucky advice from me…
…just to add some more of my useless dribble, often times I will be laying down, relaxing, and a tune is going through my head. I can figure out the phrasing of the melody very organically, and gain a sense where I might want to be taking a breathe, what kind of ornamentation I could use etc.. all this while just laying down, with eyes shut, enjoying the melody in my head, without even playing. And listening to fluteplayers, especially those whose sense of timing I enjoy, also gives rise to that creative sense. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes with flute playing…
