I’ve been tootling on whistles for about the last hour, trying to get my mind calmed enough to sleep for a couple of hours before I work tonight.
Then, out of nowhere, I start playing a tune, that I don’t think I’ve heard before, and yet, it sounds so complete that I’m not sure I just pulled it out of thin air.
It’s happened to me a couple of times before, when I came up with the tune for The Journey and Midnight Meditations, both original songs (with lyrics) that I’ve “written”, although “The Journey” is the only one I’ve actually placed on paper.
I aim to work on getting them recorded on my computer, since that’s the best way I can share them the way I hear and play, and this out-of-the blue tune will join them.
I’m just wondering if this experiance is something others have stumbled into: creating tunes out of nowhere at all… or, which is more likely, only THINK a new tune has been created, but turns out it’s already been done.
As soon as I get these tunes share-able, I suppose the truth will be known. But I do know one thing: I’ll be humming this tune all night long now. Whether out loud, or just in my head, I’m not sure which. But it’ll be there.
I’ve made a couple tunes that way - had to get to a recording program quick to get them down or I’d lose them.
I’ve also ‘made’ tunes that turned out to be real ones.
The cruellest though, is making up tunes that you’re sure are new, but you find out most of it has been lifted from another tune. There are differences but the original tune can be spotted. I hate those. Done that too, unfortunately…
What I like to do is get the tune recorded and then run it past half a dozen experienced people to see if anyone recognises it. Most of the time if no one does, you’re good to go.
Now that’s got me thinking, it shouldn’t be a big project to write software that compares ABC files, together with possible transpositions, to find similar tunes or tune fragments. I think the challenge would be getting a large enough archive of tunes together to make it worthwhile. With a big enough library, you might find your tune was inspired by/stolen from a fifties rock and roll number, even though you’ve rewritten it as a jig.
With all the people who are half computer nerd, half musician, like me, I imagine someone’s already done this, I just don’t know who.
The first tune I ever made up (back when I thought improvisation was something I would never be able to do) seemed to come to me fully-formed one night while I was just playing around. I’d had some “herbal medicine,” as we sometimes call it in California, and it sounded great to me!
It wasn’t until later that I realized I was just doing basically a sort of syncopated run up & down the scale with a couple of little extras. However, I play it for people and they like it. After all, Ode to Joy is kind of just a scale and it’s very popular!
There’s already a huge database of tunes at http://www.sessioneer.org/ but the only code I can do is HTML, so I don’t know what it would take to run a comparison.
It happens all the time. I’ve come up with dozens and dozens of original melodies (and lyrics). It is the essence of songwriting. Sometimes the melody that comes is in fact an existing melody either an old one of mine, or copied from someone else. The unhappy truth is that all great melodies have been done, especially in major keys. As have all chord progressions for guitar players out there.
However, many a time, a beautiful, absolutely transcendant melody comes to me, and no one that I play it for has ever heard it before. When I perform solo for an audience and can sense the audience straining to hear every note, it is magic. There is nothing like that experience.
Unfortunately there is no quick or easy way to determine if you have come up with an original melody or have copied someone else’s. Best advice I have heard is to play it for others that know a lot of tunes and they’ll usually identify it if it is a popular tune.
This is just how Shane MacGowan writes. He thinks he is writing original songs, but most turn out to be new lyrics to obscure (and some not so obscure) trad tunes.
Yes, this happened to me the other day. I’m fairly new to whistling, and have only one tune that I play-the first I learned-Inis Oirr. I’m just not a tune monger, more of a tone monger. I play to hear the tone of the whistle, guitar, etc. So, I regularly improvise, to just have the fun of playing. Some would say undisciplined. I would too. I do like playing along with a recording, to see if I can keep up and find the notes.
I don’t know if the tune I have been playing is made up, or traditional, but it sure sounds like it is known. I was just comparing whistles and started playing it on each whistle.
I have to say, though that there are so many beautiful slow airs in Celtic music, that I will be learning some favorites. When you play alone, there’s no drive to learn so you can play with the band. But I know that’s the only way to play with others; common ground. Or get a recorder and play all the parts yourself. At least you will know the tune!
I read somewhere that Jerry Holland heard Liz Carroll play Pat and Al’s, a jig of her own composition, at a festival. A few days later, his brain regurgitated the melody and he thought he had composed it. The truth came out when he published it in one of this tune books.
Every time I write an original melody I continue on and start working on a “B” part, then I end up changing the “A” part which causes me to work on a “C” part and then I stop to get a drink and I forget the “A” part and end up playing Lilting Banshee or something.
Back when I first joined C&F, I put up a tune at http://www.coastalfog.net/whistles/mysterytune.html that I’d been playing on guitar, in hopes that someone would recognize it, but no one could make a positive ID, so now I claim that I wrote it.
Yeah, that happens to me a lot. I like to think that I’m just pulling tunes out of the air, but since I can never remember them to play again (or maybe I do, and I play the same thing every time ) I don’t know.
) I don’t know.