Ben, Hans and Steve: what do I do if I am learning a tune from a recording of an instrument that does ornaments that sound different to how they sound on my instrument and where, for that reason, a player of my instrument would often do something different that may not be an ornament at all ?
And if I am disatisfied with the internal timing and emphasis of my rolls or uncertain of my ability to exactly match the timing of another player, is it OK to skip the roll (play a long note, just a cut, take a breath in part of that time) rather than spoils things if I think my alternative ‘fits better’ ?
Crossing with Ben’s “The tune is the tune, with all that goes into it.” But what goes with it varies from player to player and region to region.
I was going to just quote the last sentence of your post there, David. But I reckon the answer to that is the same as the answer to the rest: do what Steve says, and listen to lots and lots and lots of Irish music. Try and play what you hear. Even if it is on a different instrument. (Although, to be honest, the general advice would have to be to listen to lots of stuff played on the instrument of your choice, ie, if you play fiddle, listen to fiddlers, if you play flute, listen to fluters etc.) And it will just come. There’s no set of rules to provide some sort of shortcut to this. And, on the other hand, it’s just trad - it’s not that hard. All you need to do is listen.
Thanks Ben. Just off out and made a quick response and accidentally deleted it. Even briefer response - thats what I try to do, but the result is the that I end up picking a recording to learn from and aim to play along with fairly simply, without even thinking about ornamanents unless I get stuck for how to do something that fits, then trying to play with other recordings because ‘challenging’ any habits picked up from one version seems to help. What happens is fairly close to starting off with a basic version and letting the ornaments take care of themselves. Which is why I started a long and resentful post in response to the ‘always include the ornaments from the start’ argument, but then deleted it (deliberatley in that case). I actually prefer to learn from fiddle or pipes recordings because I don’t then feel I have to match the ornaments on whistle or flute but I do want to aim for the same ‘effect’
Sounds like you’re doing it just right, in that case, David. (Although, clearly, real live musicians are better.) And, that’s just what I would have expected.
I guess I used the incorrect term “song” and I should have known better. Still learning. I guess what I meant was this. Some folks play an Irish tune one way in Galway, and another way in another town. One famous player may play a song different from another when it comes to intricacies. So is learning one way learning the actual tune, or is learning the other way? If the tune is the tune.
I went back and read fithtry’s original post. Fithtry I hope we didn’t scare you off as I see you haven’t posted since your first post. What are you getting out of all of this?
I recomend learning tunes from other instruments(as well as your own) to train the ear to pick up the tune, the bare bones , without ornamentation. Simply because a fiddler cant physically copy what a piper does, a small percentage perhaps, roughly, but such a small percentage !!
If you attempt to copy note for note, Paddy Canny say, on the fiddle, without actually being able to play as well as him( or in the same area), you are doomed to failure. Its that simple. Pick up the tune, then pick up on some of his ornaments and little touches., Make it your own. as the years pass you will be able to identify what is happening more, and incorperate that within your playing.
Every authority who has ever published, approaches the music in this way. For plenty good reasons.
The tunes can be played by kids. They can be played by itinerant workers, farmers, with rough intonation and little ornamentation. This is the funamental level, and its is quite possible to ramain at a basic level and still fulfill a social function in providing dance music. This is absolutely fundamental and surprisingly missed by many.
Yes as a high art we ornament and vary the music, within our capabilities! the stages of growth are clearly marked out within the traditional community; start simple and develop as time, aptitude and skill avail.
The trouble is, you’re using a book. Even if I agreed with the approach you describe that this book recommends (I profoundly disagree with it as it happens), you have to remember that a book can only deal with things in a linear way. One step at a time, one chapter at a time, one aspect at a time. Learning to play diddley tunes is not linear. It is, when done properly, an holistic process. I hate to tell you this, but the book will slow you down horribly. But you’ll soon realise that and ditch it, after which you’ll learn by listening, and you’ll have much more fun.
As a guitar player, I learn by figuring out a chord structure first, then the melody, then I try to figure out riffs and such. But that’s just me.
Forget chord structures. Irish music is all about melody. I said before that ornamentation and variation are integral, not bolt-ons. Chord structures are just the opposite - they are entirely optional bolt-ons which add very little most of the time, and which actually detract from the music badly a lot of the time in the hands of clumsy guitar accompanists (which the vast majority of them seem to be).
I agree that you must listen to the music you aspire to in order to learn it properly. But there must be a foundation laid first. If I take a particular ITM song in all it’s glory “ornamentation” and all, and try to learn it just as it is written, or as it is played by a particular person (which is another thing altogether, all of the “masters” don’t exactly play the same song the same way) then I have learned that particular persons version of a song.
There is a danger of this if you’re listening to recordings, but the thing is you should not just be listening to the notes of the tune skeleton. On a good recording the melody players will be using ornamentation which will vary on each run-through of the tune and there will be melodic variation on top of that (recordings that are not like this are worthless). That’s what you should be tuning your ear to. And you should always try to listen to several different recordings so as not to get too fixed a notion of the tunes. There isn’t much harm in “learning one person’s version of the tune” as it happens as long as you’ve learned it from real playing and you don’t avoid hearing other versions. You can get awfully loyal to the first version you ever heard if you’re not careful.
I just don’t think you have to learn a particular song a particular way with a particular set of ornamentation to be able to learn and play the song.
The way you’ve put this I agree with you, but it is essential to be thinking about ornamentation as an integral part of the tune-learning process and not as a separate exercise.
Thanks for the reply Steve Shaw. I would be interested in hearing those of you who actually teach whistle how they approach this process with a new student. If I were a new student, and my teacher sat me down and played this complicated piece and said…this is what we’re gonna learn, we need to learn each note, cut, tap, etc. as I play it…I think I’d be mortified. I guess to each his own. If each of us has the freedom to add or subtract ornamentation subtleties (I may like one persons version of a song and you may like another) then there seems to be some freedom anyway. I would think (and I’m no expert by any stretch) that this type of music was extremely specific to the area where you heard it. Regional. Seems that back then there wouldn’t have been much communication among communities that were far apart. So one region may play a song one way and another a different way. Basically the same but with differences.
I really like this discussion. It’s been one of the most rewarding one’s I’ve read.
As a side note…the more I play with my whistles and get to know them, the more I can listen to something and recognize what’s being done. And the more I am learning to play by ear.
Interesting. I teach - a bit, and every now and then, but fiddle, not whistle - and I’ve been to classes and had lessons from some great players on fiddle, whistle and flute. They’ve all done the same thing, and it’s what I’ve done too. They’ve taught the whole thing, so-called ‘ornaments’, variations, cuts, taps, rolls, crans, warts and all. Even when I’ve been in a beginner class. What I have found even more interesting, whilst being in those classes, is that, whilst the kids all get it, the adults just act as if the teacher is not teaching the ornaments, even though they are, and they just play what they think is the basic tune. It’s as if they’re blind to what the music is about. And the thing is, with that attitude, they’re doomed always to be blind.
Teachers often dole out written versions of tunes. I think these, as you might say, ‘music-blind’ adults, who maybe have come from a different discipline and don’t understand that this music is all about how it sounds, not its structure or some notion that there may be some ‘basic’ version out there somewhere - I think these people think that the written out version is the basic version of the tune.
As a (perhaps inarticulate) newbie, how would one recognize or, indeed, make one?
(Sorry for tardy response here - was in work all night and asleep all day… but it seemed essential to me to tie this back in… lest the discussion become too basic and inexpressive without some tasteful ornamentation…)
On the “How do you teach” issue, I do a little flute & whistle teaching from time to time, and whilst I do select simpler tunes for beginners and ones that will introduce technicalities progressively, I do usually teach (though maybe not totally consistently - I tailor my teaching to the student/group) with at least the essential articulative “ornaments” from the off, and I fairly soon add in or at least talk about variation and “optional extras” (the ducks, the ducks!!!) as well as including some teaching of the techniques involved in isolation from the tunes - but that only after encountering them in (a) context and being in a position to consider how they may be used elsewhere.
As for my own learning of tunes, I about equally learn from sessions, recordings and dots. I have my own technical repertory and habits which I usually quite quickly and mostly without much conscious thought apply to a tune regardless of which way I acquire it. I occasionally hit a metaphorical speed-bump and have to consider how to tackle a musical context or technique, a particular challenge I haven’t encountered before, and then I do consciously think about how to apply or adapt something from my existing vocabulary or decide to learn/practice a new-to-me technique…
Thanks for the reply Ben. I guess I’m just too far out of the loop of ITM to understand it then. There are people who can listen to a song and figure it out and learn it by ear. And there are people who can’t. I may never be able to do it…who knows. I can say that I’ve watched a ton of youtube videos of some amazing folks playing whistle, and there’s no way I can tell by watching Tony Hinnigan or Brian Finnegan play a fast tune exactly what they’re doing. His fingers are just moving too fast for my eyes. I’m too new to hear someone play something at 120 beats per minute and get it down. Someone has to slow things down, way down, and teach me note by note what’s going on. Guess that’s just me.
In my limited mind (easy now) I would think I should learn a songs basic structure, learn different techniques of “ornamentation” using scales and exercises (and this can be done at the same time) then I can start “ornamenting” the songs I’m learning. I guess if you consider the exact “ornamentation” used as a part of the basic song structure then all of that is mute and you must learn it as you heard it. I can tell you that I don’t understand this kind of music in the way you seem to mean, I’m not studied in ITM. But that’s part of the learning process. But I still feel that if my music teacher sat me down and played this… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2otyyk6KXww&feature=related then I’d be a little unsettled to say the least.
Just a thought - I don’t think anyone has suggested that any learner (of whatever standard - you’re a learner when tackling a new-to-you piece) should necessarily try to play at “full speed” from the beginning - and I’d say definitely one should not - slow practice (in any genre) is essential ('tother sense of the word this time), and is exactly how you set about picking up an integrated setting. It might not be the wisest tactic as a newbie to set out to exactly copy a virtuoso rendition of a difficult tune, but by slowing it down, finding out exactly what is going on and then practicing that, it should be do-able if one wished. And whilst watching players whether live or on video is certainly a useful auxiliary way of finding out what they are doing (as is a verbal, technical explanation), it should come second to the ear, and you decide if you have understood and mastered the technique in question primarily by listening as well as by watching and feeling your own body in performing it.
Exactly Shatfield. I’ve said it before on C&F. ( and got slated for it and probably will again) ‘Some’ of the more experienced players here forget exactly how difficult it is (if you like, as an adult) to start from scratch and even to get the right fingers down in the right places to get some kind of tune to sound like anything worth being proud of, and to sound anything like the tune, with or without ornaments.
I have seen on youtube, people playing tunes so totally unrecognisable. They are so proud of their widdly widdly stuff but their timing is total rubbish, oh! but they have learned the ornamentations. Who the heck did they learn that from? And what tune was it?
IMO Once you are happy that you have the ‘real basics’ down, one finger down is such and such a note. Two fingers down is … -then try to include the widdly widdly stuff, but don’t get hung up on it. There’s a lot of fun to be had just playing the basic tune untill you are able to improve on it, and at least then you can play along with and enjoy more of the music.
I remember Jem, (as a great help, which most people here are) (thanks again Jem ) kindly put down Sally Gardens for me on You tube( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MfX-KG9RMY ) even though he played it real slow for me and I could watch it, it was far too fast for me to pick up the ornam… (widdly bits) but now I have put my own in and love it to bits. I play it straight’ish’ the first time and then add in the widdly bits on the second time around. In my opinion I think it makes it more interesting.
I agree with you totally. But as I said before, everyone learns their own way. Would that I could pick it up quickly by ear, that would be nice:)
Y’re dead right, Jem. Slow is the way. But not incomplete.
As for hearing something like the Brian Finnegan set first off, why would anybody be able to do that? I’d have to listen to it at least half a dozen times or so straight through to start to get an idea of the tunes.
In any case, there’s a couple of things wrong there: firstly, Brian finnegan is a genius. I think it’s wrong to aspire to be able to play like him. I don’t think it would be possible. After all, I’ve never heard anybody else play like him. I’ve heard some - a very few - who are as good, but not the same. Secondly, partly presumably because he is a genius, I don’t think Brian is the right model to listen to/learn from, well, not from his recordings anyway. Great for a workshop, and I will get to one of his one day, great to listen to for pure pleasure, but so individual that it’s close to being outside the norms for the tradition, IMO. BTW, are those Brian’s own tunes? They sound like it, but maybe not …
Now, if you did want to be able to play those tunes, try one of a couple of techniques: get your music teacher to play them for you, in person, slowly, a phrase at a time; or, listen to that video over and over and over again until you can sing all the tunes to yourself and then, and only then, try to play them.
I don’t even want to hear a virtuoso rendition of a difficult tune (what’s a “difficult tune” anyway?) If you hear anyone pretending to be a virtuoso in diddley music, my advice is to avoid 'em like the plague. Wide berth.
feck its 2010 not 1960