Well, I know I’m still struggling along at this point in time, but a recent posting made me think. It was about not copying other folk’s style of playing but developing your own. (Thanks, Harry)
So now I’m wondering. What, and how.
I guess it is just a small frustration. I play by myself along with CD’s ~ and I have a bunch that I really like. I especially like playing along with fiddling CD’s since I like the sound of flute and fiddle better than anything…But I guess at this point I am still going along trying to learn tunes, play them “correctly” and get a little bit up to speed.
I am making slow but steady progress, I think.
But as far as “style”, what is it and how would you say you develop it? Have you developed it? Are you conscious of it? Don’t worry about it? Don’t care?
Or is this a totally crazy question for a Sunday morning?
nebulous thoughts…kinda like personality, ain’t it? Ya got one or ya don’t!
vague attempt at seriousness
I think that it is a function of developing your chops (the 1st time). Once you get good enough to mimic a few others playing you will either develop your own style or not.
I’ve tangled with a mess of instruments in my life, and still play a bunch. (I’m relatively new to flute). The only one I can really say I have developed “my own sound” on is fingerstyle country blues/ragtime guitar, and that was over decades of playing, listening and living with the instrument.
My feeling is that it’s pretty hard to deliberately conceive of “your own sound” and proceed to master it. It happens over time and through experience, much of it on the subconscious level. Just like “you are what you eat”, you eventually become the product of all that you have taken in. And when it really has had a chance to simmer and settle, your sound emerges as a byproduct of your personality and experience. At least that’s how I have always viewed it… Listen and play, listen and play. Wax on, wax off…
I agree with crookedtune; I think you get your own style (and your own sound) by living with the instrument and the tunes day by day for years and years. Over time, you develop your own ways of doing things which can be subtly different from other musicians…and that begins to become your own style.
Just my $.02. Since I live in Arkansas, not Ireland, I woudn’t recommend you put too much faith into my opinions on such things.
Mary, i think that if you learn tunes of CD, but then just play them alone (not with the CD playing)…
over time you will give the tune your own take, which will keep changing over time.
once i learn a tune of a CD, i very rarely go back to playing it with the CD, and i know we change the tunes, many times we play them slower or faster with different energy all together.
i don’t know if it qualifies for style or just making it your own? but we do have style
One’s own style often comes after a thorough background study of the
music. You play things the same way as a recording for a long time,
and eventually, you start saying things like, “I don’t like the tonguing in
this section, I’ll try cuts instead,” or, “I wonder what this sounds like if
you swing it more.” The trick is to occasionally play without the recording
and see what comes out. Often, whatever combination of styles you’ve
listened to and practiced with will combine in your brain to form a new
style without you even knowing it. On that note, try not to play along
with only one version of a tune. Get 2, or 3, or several and play with
them all. That’s how you figure out what you like about each version
and incorporate those things into your version.
I have a pretty high level of ability, and certainly my own style playing the bones, and I think what you say is pretty true. The conscious brain isn’t subtle and “organic” enough to work out the details of musical style. To a large degree, you have to have enough facility with your instrument to get out of your own way. For example, sometimes you’ll develop new techniqes, and shoehorn them into your playing (because it’s fun, or to show off), but eventually those techniques will find their place to serve the music, if you let them.
But you can develop further if sometimes you ask yourself, “what would I hear here if I could imagine the tune being played exactly as I’d like it to sound?” And maybe you can’t do that right away, but you can take baby steps towards it, and the fruits of those efforts show up in your playing in general. And of course, it’s a moving target. That’s how you can end up in uncharted territory…and that’s fun!
You sure do, Jeff! I love watching the solos on your website… the
rhythm is so on, that I can almost hear the tune coming from the bones.
Speaking of the website, are you planning on adding anything to that?
I think it helps to record oneself occasionally.
You can hear what sounds good and what doesn’t.
Eliminate the latter, naturally.
Ornamentation is sort of idiosyncratic, personal,
and a lot of it becomes automatic. Often, recording
myself, I hear that I’m ornamenting too much,
diminishing the force of the music, cluttering
musical lines. Often I’m not aware I’m ornamenting
when I’m playing.
This is, I suppose, a dimension in which you
can make some detailed decisions about
how you wish to sound.
It’s generally harder in the US to have your own style. I think this is because you are not surrounded by a regional style that you key into early on and from which you individuate as you become more accomplished. When you are firmly rooted in the tradition you don’t make a decision to sound as if you are within that tradtion. The point is that you don’t have a choice.
Harry has his own style and that emerges from the context of northern music. You can hear Sligo (and New York by extension) in the fiddling of Brian Conway. Au fond Tommy plays like a Donegal fiddler. East Clare is in the music of Martin Hayes.
Although you’d recognise any of these musicians as soon as you heard them, I doubt that any of them thought about developing his own style.
My advice is that to develop your own style you immerse yourself not just in Irish music, but in the musical dialect of one particular region.
To which I add, sadly, that even in Ireland the music is becoming homogenized.
But that’s just my take on it all.
Remember that having your own sound doesn’t mean that you don’t have any elements from any other players. I love Chris Norman, Dee Havlin, Jack Coen, Catherine McEvoy, and Harry Bradley (among others). I try to incorporate bits of their playing in my own. They have vastly different styles, so I may sound either very creative, like a mishmash of different styles, or like crap.
I like digging up tunes from old books – Playford, Neal, Joyce – and I don’t have recordings of people playing most of them. So while I play my own clones of people playing tunes, I’m largely on my own to create my own style.
Thanks! Yes, I’m planning on (finally) adding some stuff very soon. And I’m in the beginning planning stages of making a DVD, about half performance (with different groups) and half instructional.
Thinking back, another good way to develop a unique style is to play with friends who know nothing about how your instrument works. They’ll ask one day, “hey, can you do something like this?”, and you’ll say, “no, that’s impossible on the xxx.” But you’ll start thinking…and maybe something will come to you…
There is, interestingly, a regional style here in the USA, although
it’s a pretty wide region. Namely, country, bluegrass, old timey
music, Appalachian music, fiddle music, banjo music. For some
reason flutes and whistles weren’t used much
but they work fine, IMO. A lot of this stuff is Irish
that got transformed into something American–it’s
probably less complex and interesting than ITM,
especially as we don’t have a great tradition of
flutes and whistle playing in it. Still it’s worth developing,
I think. I play with these people when I can.
I don’t buy this. If it were true, every flutist from one area in Ireland would sound like every other flutist from the same area, and that’s obviously not the case, even to my American ears.
Jim, interesting you should hit on that. I’m primarily an old-time fiddle/banjo/mandolin player, and have been messing around with whistle, flute and ITM on the side. I’ve found it very interesting that in the U.S., fife and flute really died out in folk music, except for a few small pockets, (e.g. black fifes in the south, some contradance flute-playing, and of course, the rebirth of fife as a military instrument).
Anyway, the bulk of my flute and whistle playing is American fiddle tunes that I’m familiar with. (Soldier’s Joy, Girl I Left Behind Me, Colored Aristocracy, Sugar Hill, Fly Around…). And you’re right, the flute, fife and whistle work exceedingly well in that genre. But you won’t find much acceptance in a jam, which is why I keep my stringed doodads handy.
I don’t buy this. If it were true, every flutist from one area in Ireland would sound like every other flutist from the same area, and that’s obviously not the case.
But it is the case. Sligo fiddlers sound like Sligo fiddlers and Donegal fiddlers sound like Donegal fiddlers. Flute-players from within a certain tradition do sound like other flute-players from within that same tradition. Otherwise there would be no tradition. And I don’t think you’re saying that.
They won’t be each be indentical and some will be more accomplished than others. But northern (e.g., Belfast) flute-players play harder, with more emphasis on rhythm. Clare players play more legato, with more ornamentation. I am suprised you’d disagree. It seems obvious that people who play together a lot would tend to share melody, phrasing and ornamentation.
Yes, there is an American tradition of music. It’s wonderful, but it’s not Irish. In the south the fiddling tradition developed mostly from the Scots rather than the Irish. In the Northeast it comes from Canada and seems more Irish- but it has its own stylistic devices which move it away from Irish Traditional.
True, in neither the south or the north is there a tradition of (timber) flutes or whistles, except for the fife, which has a tradition of its own. I never thought of the timber flute or the whistle as being ideally suited to American old-time… though it might be fun to try to play along with Bruce Molsky. People like Pete Grant or Henry Saposnik do play Irish tunes on the dobro or the five-string banjo. And I’m sure there are some people pulling a plow with a Rav4.
Old-timers in Doolin used to say that long ago you could tell the difference between players from one side of town, from players from the other side of town. Regional differences started fading with the introduction of modern recording and Matt Molloy wanna-bes. But although the differences have faded they have not altogether vanished.
It’s the part about lack of choice, and the implied lack of individuality, that bugs me.
I agree that there is certainly a regional tradition, and that players who come up in a particular region carry that region’s stamp on their playing…but they are still individuals, and they still put their own stamp on their music as well, and the longer they play and the more experienced they are, the more this is true.
Again, just my $.02. Not seeking to argue; only to clarify what I meant.
Well, whistle is being used in country these days, anyhow.
The Dixie Chicks use a whistler occasionally.
I do Soldier’s Joy, girl I left behind me…but not the other
tunes you mentioned–Thanks! Also Going Down To Cairo.
Blackberry Blossom, Cherokee Shuffle. 8th of January.
Arkansas Traveller.
waddaya thinkin!
