I just got Harry Bradley’s “As I Carelessly Did Stray” and Paul McGrattan’s “Keelwest” last week, and have listened to each several times.
I love these guys. (You know – platonically. . .)
This is what I aspire to, to be able to play with such lyricism and melodic clarity while still being able to drive a tune with a pulsing rhythm, and to use shifts in tone color to good effect. Amazing what these guys can do with a stick with holes drilled in it.
I’m especially fond of Bradley’s stuff, which is both lovely and, how do I put this – witty? Playful? There’s a sense of fun and humor and intelligence in his new album that I really like, and I think is more prominent here than in the other album I have from him (Bad Turns and Horshoe Bends, I think it’s called). I like both albums – and his use of instruments other than the D flute is refreshing in both – but prefer this latest one.
A couple of personal asides:
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I am glad to hear the use of tonguing, and triple-tonguing, in these recordings, because coming from brass instruments (I was trained on orchestral brass – horn, trombone, tuba), I find myself tonguing, and triple tonguing, more often than some other players might; I keep thinking to myself “glottal stops! glottal stops!”, and I’m better about using them, and like them, but I revert to tonguing sometimes. In the right context, tonguing is a useful tool, and having spent hours and years on the technique, I’m glad I don’t have to throw them away completely.
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I’m also glad to hear tunes not overburdened with ornamentation. I’ve been practicing rolls so much that I think I started putting them in almost anywhere I could fit them, and as a result I think I lost sight of some of the melodic structure and lyricism that the tunes had before I fancied them up. I’ve been taking out a lot of rolls, and using cuts and taps judiciously, and hearing players like Paul and Harry who use less pyrotechnic ornamentation than some others I’ve been listening to is refreshing and, to an extent, vindicating (at least as far as my personal taste goes).
I like what Nanohedron posted in another thread (perhaps on the whistle board) about using ornamentation more often when in a group setting and ading some variation to the tunes when others are also playing the melody, but backing off on the stuff when playing alone and letting the melody back into the light.
[And despite all the nice things I have to say about Paul and Harry above, I do have to say this: as inspiring as it is to hear this stuff, it’s also a little despairing, because it’s very clear to me that I’ll not get to that level of mastery. It’s something to shoot for, though, and great fun to listen to.]
–Aaron