How do you approach variation in tunes?

Irish Flute
1

Hey everyone, I’m continuing on in my listening journey and am becoming more aware of the importance of variation when playing tunes. When learning tunes via recording, I’ve noticed that I’ve got a tendency to latch onto the exact play style for a part pass. However, this can become boring if the part is always played with the same phrasing, melody, ornamentation, etc. So I’ve started intentionally varying how I play a tune part such that I don’t repeat it exactly…

But it’s got me curious - how is variation viewed by more experienced players? Is it an intentional effort to introduce variations and settle on a standard version that they then always play? Or does does variation become subconscious such that they never play a tune the same way twice?

2

You’ll hear different approaches to variations.

The thing I hear the most is players who seem to pick out certain phrases in a tune (or even a single phrase) as lending themselves to variations, and let other phrases stay more or less the same.

I’ve heard Liam O Flynn (to name just one) do a thing where he lays out the tune, say two times through, with little in the way of variation, to let “the tune” sink in. Then on the third time through he’ll put in a variation, not subtle, but served up on a platter for the listener. (In “classical” music it’s been said that great music balances the familiar with the unexpected.)

Then there are players who throw in variations constantly, everywhere through the tune equally. To my ear this prevents the listener from getting a gestalt of what “the tune” is. (Is a variation a variation if there’s no “tune” to vary from?)

Flute is a special case because so much of it is dictated by where you choose to put breathing-spots.

There are flute-players who tend to take breaths in the same spot every time the phrase comes around, so the breathing-spot becomes part of their setting of the tune, one could say.

Then there are fluters who vary where they breathe spontaneously, so in the three times of playing through a tune a fluter might take breaths at different spots every time.

Creating idiomatic-sounding breath-spots can require a bit of restructuring of the tune, therefore creating melodic variations. So for a fluter melodic variation is a necessary byproduct of taking breaths, unless you breathe at the same spot every time.

There are variations which are melodic in nature, and others that mainly involve changing ornamentation, though this often also impacts the melody a bit.

When I first learn a tune I’m generally getting a single version under my fingers. The first thing that happens, if the source isn’t a fluter, is that the un-flute-like bits, phrases that don’t fall under a fluter’s fingers, get changed to phrases that do.

Then I’ll start exploring breathing-spots. It’s good to have a quiver full of alternate breathing-spots. As the tune “becomes your own” you’ll be able to spontaneously breathe whenever you need to without giving it any thought.

4 Likes
3

Thanks Richard! You bring up a lot of perspectives I hadn’t thought about. Also, I stumbled across your video which was also really insightful! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6fmINqse5Y

4

It is a common approach in performance. There is the description of Patsy Touhey doing this, starting simply but ending in ‘a great shower of fingers’ . I feel you have to mind using this all the time as it can become formulaic and predictable in itself. I remember one particular piper who adopted this approach for a while and you could pinpoint where in the last pass an outburst of regulator playing would come in. It’s a good starting point in performance though.

But you have to be mindful of who you are playing for too, playing for people deeply familiar with the music may require a different approach. Context is important.

And there’s the choice of different types of variation, changes in ornamentation, rhyhmic variation, melodic variation and all sub types of those.

Overall though, variation is what keeps this music from getting boring and keeps it alive. It is important. There’s the quote from old John Kelly that sums it up nicely : 'When I listen to a man playing a tune, I don’t listen to the tune. I listen to what he does with it’.

1 Like
5

That’s a super quote!

Or to quote my original teacher

“Better to play one tune 20 ways than to play 20 tunes one way.”

I was taught variations from the get-go, as essential to playing a tune.

And I would hear about it if I fell short of his expectations!

The trad band I was playing in back in the 1980s did a set on a local radio station.

Next time I bumped into my old mentor he chided me

“Heard you on the radio. I expected you to do more.”

I took it to heart. And yes predictable, but I tried to always let loose on the 3rd playing, trying to channel him (or perhaps Paddy Moloney).

6

Pat Mitchell looked at some modes of variation in the second part of his article Rhythm and structure in Irish traditional music - part two. Notations and sound files are in the Associated files

This may be of help.

7

Thanks for sharing that Pat Mitchell article. I’m finding these formal analyzes to be very interesting reads and they’re making me become more aware in my listening.

8

If you can get a hold of Conal Ó Gráda’s flute book he has a section at the end where he goes over what various (excellent) players are doing with tunes. It’s really interesting to see the different approaches to variations, breathing, ornamentation, etc.

1 Like