learn it anyway you can. I doubt that anybody wants you to ornament everywhere you possibly can,
but they do want you to ornament a good deal more than you can at the moment. So learn it as you can.
Frankly nobody’s going to care much how you play, outside of lessons anyhow.
Jeff, after reading your last post I think that what you are calling ornamentations are indeed how one articulates the notes. I like to think of ITM as a language. If you are learning French for example and your native language is English, you’ll sound like an English speaker trying to speak French. Not until you learn to articulate the words like the Frenchman will you sound like a Frenchman. The “accent” if you will. The same thing goes for ITM.
If you are learning tunes with the dots and only the dots, it’s my feeling you’ll never sound like a ITM player. Learning the tunes by ear enables one to begin to pick up the feel of the music. You learn when to use cuts, taps, glottal stops, breathing, and rolls with the right rhythm, in the context of learning the tunes.
There are many good tutorials out:
June McCormack’s
Shannon Heaton’s
John Skelton’s
Fintan Vallely’s
Grey Larson’s
To quote Tintin again “Cuts, taps, glottal stops, breathing, even rolls, are all tools to articulate the tune and create phrasing and rhythmic emphasis. Viewed through that lens, I don’t see them as ornaments–they’re part of your rendition of the tune, not imposed on the tune.”
The “Accent”
That’s true. You could also play blues without ever bending a note or flattening a third but y’know…
Doesn’t sound like a very helpful lesson, mandoboy!
The antidote is Jack and Charlie Coen’s beautifully simple/simply beautiful album The Branch Line.
Here’s how I see it: you have to breathe, so work on placing your breaths well, to create good phrasing. This is foundational. Lots of listening is key–there are many places you can put a breath, but there are also some definite no-nos.
Glottal stops aren’t too hard to learn (remember to relax your throat between ‘coughs’–your tone will thank you), and they’re a good articulation tool.
Learn cuts and taps, and work on using them to articulate/emphasize notes in tunes.
Once (and only once) your cuts and taps are solid, start learning rolls. I think they do more harm than good if you put them in tunes before you have full control. Practice them separately until such time, and don’t worry if it takes a while!
I don’t play with a lot of ornamentation and nobody complains at the session where I go.
Last night the other flute player started a tune that nobody knew (seemed to be a night for it.) I don’t remember there being a lot of ornamentation. Certainly much less than most of the tunes you’ll hear in the posting clips topic. The guitarist sitting next to me leaned over and said to me, “Listen to that. The reason he’s so good is he’s got the pulse. If you’ve got the pulse you can play all alone and sound complete and full. It’s all about the pulse.” He’s right, of course.
That being said, there are some tunes that pretty much require ornamentation, and a lot of it. I learned The Ballivanich Reel a couple months ago and this tune seems to be nearly all ornamentation. I can’t even imagine it would sound remotely like the same tune without all the cuts, taps, and rolls. For some tunes, an inability to add sufficient ornamentation may mean they are beyond your current playing ability.
Here’s a clip of one of the “great ones” playing the Ballivanich Reel. Far beyond my ability yet, but I’m working on it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8ghzmWte9c
As long as you recognize that it’s not an either/or proposition. Drive (lift, nyaa) is good, and primary. Drive + expressive articulation (ornamentation) is better.
I think that for me on flute finger ornamentation beyond that required to seperate repeated notes can hide poor breath control in the same way that tonguing on a whistle can hide sloppy fingering. Its a temptation to put a cut in to cover the fact that I can’t get a note to speak promptly when with practice I can usually do a lot better.
Thanks everyone for the well thought out answers. It seems that opinions are all over the place.
Just to clarify, I am not talking about the cuts or taps or glottal stops used to separate like notes, or the rolls used to add interest to dotted quarters. I already use those, and I think that I think of those more as a necessity than an ornament. I am talking about using them as ornaments, 2 or more per bar in every bar of the tune.
Jeff
All things being equal, listen to your teachers. Part of their job is sometimes
to challenge you.
I think this link tells us little about ornamentation. It’s like ITM rock–Irish flute meets Hendrix. I appreciate it’s virtuosity; it’s a sound tapestry. But musically, not sure–too much reverb/echo, too much too much. Surely nowhere near what we usually do as Irish flute players.
The other Seamus link is more on the mark, methinks (certainly more to my liking; it’s amazing). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu26Y0DXyT8
Now I’m intrigued and a bit confused by this. Not sure what you mean by “ornamentation” as opposed to “articulation”. Using ornaments 2 or more a bar every bar seems extreme, don’t you think? Some of the great players do tons of ornaments, e.g. Molloy, Wynne, but is that really a sane goal for the rest of us or even necessary?
I found this transcription of Harry Bradley and was surprised at how much he uses strikes/taps, and he does seem to have nearly 2 ornaments per bar. http://www.flutefocus.com/23-ornamentation-irish-flute-harry-bradley.html. In Grey Larsen’s book, he has transcriptions of playing that is heavily ornamented, but again, how many of us can do what they do?
Funny, you have me feeling now that I don’t have enough ornaments, that my playing is plain, dull with its mere sprinkling of rolls, cuts, strikes–how elementary and child-like.
jason
Exactly the feeling that I was getting and why I asked the question! I felt I was doing ok before all of this. I think I will keep working on adding more, but I won’t be upset with the way I am playing until then.
Jeff
My question to you both would be how do you learn your tunes? Do you use the dots or are you learning them by ear?
A mixture of both ear and dots. I’m too impatient and don’t have the time/space to learn just by ear.
I also learn from both.
I have played mandolin for many years so I tend to learn a lot of tunes by just playing tunes that I already know by ear. When I do this I use what I need for articulation and add a few rolls, but I am not ornamenting a huge amount.
Mostly when I learn from the dots, I already know the tune by ear and use the dots as and easy way to learn, but I also don’t usually follow them closely but follow what I remember from hearing the tune at a session or recording.
Jeff
I guess my point would be that if for example, you were playing along with a John Wynne recording, you would hear and try and follow what he’s doing, picking up by example the way he plays. The way an ITM player plays a tune and the dots for the tune are most often quite different. My guess is, and it’s just a guess, that most of the great players don’t think about ornamentation, they just play the way they grew up hearing the music.
Tj,
Funny that you mention John Wynne. I love his playing, particularly on “With Every Breath”. I play many tunes from that album, many of them similar to how he plays them, putting in the ornaments I can, playing with some variation akin to JW’s playing. But I bet only a few players can actually do all he can technically; he is truly a virtuoso of the Irish flute style. Listening closely, one can hear such an incredible degree of variation in his playing, such rich use of all kinds of ornamentation. I think I’d be less of a player if I tried to play exactly as he does, being so bogged down in trying to ornament as richly as he does. Hence, I do think that over-ornamenting tunes is more of hinderance for most than a sane ideal. What’s more important, as has been said, is to get the groove right, the feel. Ornaments can be helpful and integral to that end, but not the be-all end-all.
Again, when you go to teachers, two of them, and they both tell you to play a tune a certain
way, it’s a good idea to listen to them. And of course we CAN do it, usually,
if not right away then by practicing. Nothing to take personally…
If, after playing it their way, you prefer another way, fine,
but one might as well play it their way first and see.
If you have to develop more chops to do it, fine! Occasionally somebody
moves the goal posts back. Good for you. Doing you a favor,
often enough. Sometimes a lot more is possible than we realize.
Spent a lot of time teaching an academic discipline where I occasionally
challenged people to do things they hadn’t done before.
Lots of people rose to the challenge, a number felt
they were being wronged or I was unreasonable or…
Your call.
When I listen to Kevin Crawford’s variations, which include some very clever use of ornaments, I’m pretty sure he’s thinking about them, although perhaps not necessarily at the individual cut or tap level.