Hi all,
I was talking to my husband last night and he says he thinks I’m doing really good on whistle. However, he says I need to work on getting some ‘feeling’ into my music. That I’m too mechanical.
Its true, I admit it. I played in band for years, and learned to only play whats on the page.
What are some things I can do to help make my music more like music?
Listen to good players. Then play the music as you hear it. Use the force!
Feadoggie
I’ve been having my own issues on this subject.
I’m focusing learning by ear, listening constantly to masters with an emphasis on rhythm and phrasing.
Putting down the dots is really hard for me, but I’m making the commitment.
http://www.slowplayers.org/SCTLS/learn.html
Try whistling or humming the tune as you “hear it in your head” … then try to play it like that. Don’t worry about playing the odd few wrong notes initially, you can use the written music for reference later, get the “feel” of the tune into your fingers, a phrase at a time, the correct notes will come soon after … at least that’s how it works for me 
Good luck!
As someone who grew up with sheet music and doesn’t have a problem with it, though I’m also learning to play by ear too, here’s my big comment:
Sheet music may have notes but on the whole, sheet music just does not have everything written down that a musician needs. Even sheet music that has the Italian words and the phrasing mapped out still doesn’t have everything a musician needs address every aspect of a piece of music. Does the sheet music tell you how quickly to move your fingers off a whistle hole, how to strum a guitar, how to angle your harmonica? At best, unless you have a thoroughly orchestrated piece of sheet music and a conductor who is going to interpret that sheet music, sheet music is considered by me to be a suggestion. I am amazed at how differently different musicians can play the same piece of music even when they’re trying to play the sheet music “as written”. Also, do you get demerit points or something if you don’t follow sheet music exactly? I like to experiment. When I play any piece of music, I like to play it like I’m expressing happiness, saddness, cowboy-itis, even if the song doesn’t call for any of those just to see who the song sounds with different feelings.
Now to address the ITM folks. Some of you all think things should be played a specific way. If that’s you’re thing, good for you.
No, not unless you’re looking to play within the confines of a specific style or tradition.
Back to the OT: I suggest not even trying to play a tune until you can hum or whistle it. Break it down into short phrases, and learn them one at a time. Only refer to dots when you can’t remember what it sounded like, and them put them down. You’ll be very glad for making the effort.
Edited: I guess that’s exactly what Kypfer said! So, ditto.
In my opinion, playing music and learning music are two different things. Choose your method of learning, but then, leave it at the door when you play for “real”. I think good musicians attach feelings to the music they express. I would suggest that if you attach your own feelings to what you are playing and not pretend to have someone else’s feelings, that it will be heard in the outcome.
My second suggestion is that you move when you play. This is not always obvious, but, I think, important. I have watched accomplished musicians while learning (or teaching actually too) sit stoically while working through the phrases, but when they play for “real” they move ! It may take some practice to learn basic physical moving about, but it should be well worth the effort.
…john
Entirely so. Until I can run thru a tune with all assurance there’s little room for expression because, as you say, I’m still learning it.
To use the word “play” (in the sense of what you do past the learning-it stage) is to imply “perform”, really. Even when I’m alone, if I’m playing a tune I’m performing it, in a sense. Might be good, might be awful, but that’s what I’m doing.
More thoughts: I know a fellow, a really good accordion player, who can sight read like a champ AND play - as in perform - a tune with great expression while doing it. The question of learning becomes a bit muddled in a case like that, because he still has to take the time to memorise any tune he wants to play on stage without sheet music. So I think that at a certain point we need to clarify with more precise terms like “memorise” as opposed to “learn”, and “perform” as opposed to “play”, depending on what we really mean. I would like a better word than “perform” because it’s so strongly associated with playing to audiences, but for now I don’t have one. In the strictest sense of the word, it does do the job, anyway.
I’m really tired of those who separate ITM from other kinds of music by declaring it must be played and learned by ear while (apparently) other kinds of music drudge along with notation. Poppycock! (boy, I dated myself with that word!) If you want to play ANY kind of music, traditional, renaissance, baroque, classical, jazz, pop or any other kind you need to understand the stylistic traits and the cliches of that kind of music. Good playing of any kind of music is always a constant comparison of what you are doing with some sort of aural image you have in your head. That is why folks quite rightly suggest you listen lots and acquire the tune in your head. I suspect you don’t really have to acquire the tune that way after you know something about a tradition. You’ll begin then to automagically play it “right” even from the dots. I know that is true from my own playing of baroque music (re^%$#rder), renaissance music, and to a much lesser degree various kinds of traditional music.
There’s nothing wrong with free-form. I love Jackson Pollock, Sun Ra and Rahsaan Roland Kirk, for example. But I’ve not discovered any free-form art of value that’s not built on a solid foundation. In my experience, it’s just noodling. Of course, noodling’s fine, too, if it comes without pretense.
Cboody, I agree with you. Accomplished traditional musicians are in a decent position to pick up tunes from the page. But that’s not the situation we’re discussing here.
One other point — it usually takes months or years to really “own” a tune. At that point feeling and expression will creep in of their own accord. You’ll find yourself playing a tune as if you’re telling a story, and the mechanical stuff will start to fade away.
There’s something a fellow once said in inimitable Irish fashion on the matter: “The oftener you play a tune, the better the tune gets to know you. And the more the tune knows you, the more charm there is in it.” A reassuring declaration, indeed. But I would add that you have to pursue expression - or charm, as the case may be - if you’re ever to have it at your beck and call.
There’s nothing wrong (and maybe quite a bit right) with learning just a few tunes and playing them repeatedly until you’ve really got inside them. I think there’s often some pressure, especially when approaching a new genre, to learn lots of pieces, but that isn’t necessarily the most fruitful approach. Going slow with adding new pieces to your repertoire, listening to lots of other people’s versions of ones you already play, and playing a lot - well, that’s my approach anyway.
This may be particularly true with Irish music with its cuts, strikes, slides and so on, which to a more classically trained musician like myself are all new territory, and integrating the new techniques with the tunes is something that takes time.
After all, even if you only learn, say, twenty new tunes a year, after ten years you’ll have a considerable repertoire. It’s good to take the long view. In fact we should probably take the long view more frequently in life in general…
I find for dance tunes that listening to lots of versions of a tune that I am working on is essential. For the first few tunes I didn’t do that and I think they somehow got ‘hard coded’ in a inflexible way. Those tunes still give me trouble a couple of years later.
However, for slow tunes I took advice from a post on a web forum to closely follow a recorded version that I liked and not to try do anything of ‘my own’ with it until I felt I was capturing some of the feel of that recording. I find that if the ‘source’ recording is a different instrument (usually fiddle) my having to do something different on whistle or flute prevents it becoming an exercise in replicating technique and inevitably means I have to find my own way in places.
I agree there are two issues here, “learning” and “playing/performing.” Here’s how I think of those dimensions.
Learning (input): I believe if our aim is to play and enjoy the “Irish” in ITM, then we have to learn not only the notes, but how they are typically played by Irish musicians. Not how a single note is played, but how groups of notes are often played, as phrases.
A couple new students of the music have recently joined our local seisiún, and they ask similar questions. So I think it must be a universal thing-which-must-be-understood. When in their position I too asked “but what is the ‘right’ way?” And was told there wasn’t a ‘right’ way, but I was quite sure were wrong ways, having discovered not a small number of them myself.
To the dismay of the learner, there is not one “style” that defines “Irish.” There are regional differences, and player differences, but somehow they all sound “Irish.” Coincident with the learning of a tune is the learning of the Irish musical accent. It can be complicated, but thankfully our brains can handle it, pretty much on their own. Some people more quickly than others, but to all but a few who wouldn’t be trying it in the first place it will come. How?
We must listen. Listen a lot, so we can listen deeply. The more we listen, the more our ears will hear, or rather our brain will be able to discern, and then we will hear things in the music that were not there previously.
Here’s how I explain it today - if we in America pick up an Irish newspaper, (or I guess go to http://www.irishtimes.com these days) and read the news aloud, it probably doesn’t sound “Irish.” But if an Irish man or women reads it, the news “sounds Irish.” Yes?
If we wanted to “perform” said news as an Irishman would, we would have to listen to lots and lots of spoken Irish to pick up the accent. We already know how to “read” - it’s the performing of the news where the “Irishness” gets put in. True, the writer’s choice of wording might be a clue, and likewise there are patterns in the tunes that suggest the country of origin, but they can be “read” in American, Brittish, Indian or Irish accents.
So here’s what worked for me: go to http://clare.fm/music/ClareFM%20trad%20archive at least once a week and download the programs you don’t have. Listen to them all the time. (In my case I spend hours and hours in the shop making whistles, so it’s a natural thing to do. Plus the news regarding America is interesting.) You will find your “playing” starts sounding more like what you are hearing. As a bonus you’ll also pick up some Irish phrases like “an evening not to be missed” (meaning the concert promises to be really good) that will start creeping into your conversation.
Performing (output): Here’s my way of thinking about performing anything, music, theater, whatever. The bottom line is the performer must show the audience (even if it is only themselves) part of their spirit. And the more of “their” spirit that comes through, the more powerful or enjoyable will be the performance.
The more masterful our technique the more options we will have to let your spirit be seen, but even in our first clumsy tunes we can tell when we have given a good “performance” and when we have not, even if we played all the right notes.
Some people expose their spirit naturally, but others have to gain confidence and learn to let go, to become child-like when they play. Count me as one of that latter number. Being more Spock-like than anything I tried to simulate or maybe emulate spirited performances I had heard. It was OK, but that was all.
By playing in front of people a lot I eventually became comfortable with letting them see my spirit, my humanity perhaps. It’s OK to make a mistake, just keep the performance rolling. Keep them engaged. Don’t break the spell. This we learn by doing.
There’s a mental or physical brain training hurdle to playing in front of others. When playing by our self our mind can concentrate on our play. When others are around we will typically find ourselves paying some amount of attention to them and their reactions, and our play will suffer. Especially at first. I think a big part of getting over performance anxiety is learning to suspend this attention on others while we play, or in more advanced performers developing the ability to play AND pay attention to other things. This is a separate “muscle” in your brain that also takes time to develop. So play for others as often as you can. A seisiún is a great place for this because everyone understands what you are going thru and will support you.
Apart from the physical or mental skill of blowing and wiggling your fingers while we ignore or pay some amount attention to our audience, there is the bashful reaction most of us have to baring our spirit to others. I think it must be similar to exposing our bodies. Some people wear the most revealing things in public, and others won’t walk naked past the mirror in their own bathroom. I’m not saying there’s a connection between willingness to dress for exposure and play for exposure - in fact I think they are completely disconnected - but I think some people, if not most people, will have to learn to be comfortable showing of themselves in a performance.
I think this showing of ones spirit in a performance is where many people want to get to when they say they want to “learn to play the (fill in the blank).” They want to let out their creativeness thru music and believe (hope?) that learning the skill of playing will achieve it. At some point I realized the instrument is not the music - we are the music. The instrument is merely the sound. And getting over this bashfulness is a big part of being happy with our performances.
I tell people their instrument is not the music any more than the tap is the beer. The instrument and the tap merely let out what has been brewing. Yes, the technique of “playing” an instrument facilitates letting it out, but it is the player who has to make the music, and be willing to show it - as it is, warts and all - to others.
In the learning, you assimilate the tunes and Irishness, and in the performing you let your spirit out through the whistle/tune/Irish accent vehicles. You could just as well apply the above to bluegrass or jazz or classical music or poetry slams.
I hope that made sense. (Writing a post is a little bit of a performance too, isn’t it lurkers?)
I think what some of you are trying to say is that you can’t put feeling into the music until you feel the music
…and that may sometimes take years with a particular tune
…unless you’ve developed some emotional connection to it
Personally, I find it easier to make that connection to songs that have lyrics that I can sing in my head while I’m playing. Just off the top of my head, some that work well for me are Go Lassie Go, Bonnie Portmore, Mo Ghile Mear, and Sally Gardens. If I’m singing them in my head with feeling, that feeling gets transferred to the whistle.
Cleaned up and edited because yours truly behaved like a dick. My sincere apologies, and carry on. - Mod
If I’m singing them in my head with feeling, that feeling gets transferred to the whistle.
… “She Moves Through The Fair” does that for me everytime
In addition to all the other good advice already given, let me suggest that you go to some sessions. The spirit of the music will sort of creep into you by osmosis. You can mostly just listen, or hum along quietly unless you know a particular tune pretty well. Doesn’t matter. Being around live music really helps you feel it.