Interesting Comment

Whistle
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One of my favorite whistle players is John Sheahan of The Dubliners, although he is more widely recognized for his fiddle playing.
I was reading an article about him recently, and I thought this excerpt was worth sharing with the forum.

John is the only member of the group to have had a formal musical education. He was rather proud of this status until quite recently when an old man in a rural district of Ireland came up to him, following a concert, and said, “Tell me, young fellow, do you read music or are you gifted?”

I’m not trying to rekindle the debate about learning by ear vs. learning from sheet music by posting this, I just think it is a very interesting comment… it has definitely made me think.

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Nice anecdote!

In his autobiography Packie Manus Byrne tells a story of his father’s reaction to the notion of reading music. He (P’s father) had wanted to go to the opening of a new school - this was back in the 1920s or 30s - for which occasion a piano player had been brought in from faraway Derry.

In the end Packie’s father couldn’t go, but a neighbour told him all about it. According to the neighbour, the woman “could play none” (had no idea). “She had to read the music out of a book!”

Packie’s father couldn’t believe his ears, and said that if that was the only way she could play, he was glad not to have gone to hear her.

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On 2002-07-31 12:52, raindog1970 wrote:
I’m not trying to rekindle the debate about learning by ear vs. learning from sheet music by posting this, I just think it is a very interesting comment… it has definitely made me think.

The old guys have a way of commenting and saying something quite different from what they mean. It takes a listener with some experience sometimes to really get what they say.

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Funny, because it seems like all older country people have that talent, Peter.

At family gatherings, I sit at the dinner table with my Dad and his first cousin and listen. Its a kind of banter but just like you say, the wisdom of combined years and experience permeates the actual words, which are quite well-chosen and deliberate. These guys have spent most of their life in our wilderness of NW Calif, chasing cattle, hunting bears and just living rough. I always learn something new from them, usually the subtleties of viewpoints rather than facts.

And their favorite topic? Other old timers from their neck of the woods!! they talk about my GGGpa as though they knew him, though he died in 1911, because he left quite a swath.

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two very interesting anecdotes there!Very timely of Steve to bring up Packie Byrne,from my perspective,as i,ve just recieved packie’s album ‘Donegal and back’.Although the album mainly comprises of unaccompanied songs,there are five noteworthy whistle tracks.Packie sounds quite different to any other whistler that i have ever heard.In a recent thread about Micho Russell,it was mentioned that Micho’s style was very much based on the concertina playing that he heard in his youth in his native county Clare.On strictly aural evidence,and the little i know of Trad. music of Donegal,i would suggest that Packie’s playing is probably informed by fiddle music(probably totally wrong here!).On the lovely slow air ‘Slieve Na Mban’ he makes liberal use of ‘trills’ as ornamentation.He is pictured on the frontcover playing a generation red top,and on the back he is playing a low whistle-it’s a small pic,but looks to me to be an Overton.As the album tracks were recorded between 1964-76,i,m wondering whether Packie had one of the first of Bernard Overton’s whistles? Packie is clearly playing a low ‘G’ whistle on two tracks,which leads me to this assumption.Anyway,his voice is in fine fettle as well,an enjoyable album,and a worthwhile addition to my collection.The sleeve notes mention his biography ‘compiled and edited by stephen Jones’- perhaps bro’ Steve can give us more info. on Packie’s style(possibly on the Itrad forum now!)and verify the i.d. of Packie’s 1970’s low whistle.

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This thread deserves a bump. I love the two stories, by Raindog and by StevieJ.

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Thanks for the bump, Blackhawk. I’d missed this one.

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Pretty good.

I once went to a high school band concert. They did a “blues” number. There seemed to be something inherently wrong with reading music to play the blues.

Hey. Wait. Maybe that’s what I’ve been missing from my Irish Trad.
I don’t feel it like I do blues. Hmmmm. This may be a new start.

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Thanks for the bump, Blackhawk.

Sorry folks to keep harping on about my recent fiddle workshop, but again I see parallels with this theme..

As a warm up to the main event, I played a trio with my father & aunt, my father playing his accustomed viola and my aunt & I on violins. We were all playing from sheetmusic, and I think we did OK, it sounded quite nice after a few runthroughs.

In the workshop, my aunt & I learnt four short & simple tunes in the three basic level classes. At the end of each class the sheetmusic of the tune was handed out, but in the class we were learning by ear.

After the classes we came back to the cottage to try to play them for my family. Without the sheetmusic my poor aunt didn’t have a clue, no idea even where to start to put her fingers. I was able after a bit of la-la-ing, to get my fingers moving and play the tunes, if not flowing quite as well as they should be. Even with me playing alongside her, my aunt still couldn’t get started without the sheetmusic to look at.

I don’t mean by this to illustrate how marvellous I am at catching a tune, or to demean my aunt in any way, but to illustrate the different approaches to music.

The classic way my aunt has been taught, sightreading through a piece and playing it as read vs the more aural approach that I have started to develop, hearing a tune and getting it in my head, and then using the instrument as a tool to play the tune.

Golly, I really sound like I’m blowing my own trumpet, but the point was supposed to be that if you can hear a tune & get it into your head, it’s then far easier to then sing, hum, lip-whistle, or whistle it then if you worry about the dots on the page.

Or in short, effort put into looking at a tune is effort lost in hearing it.

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Now you’re suckin’ diesel!

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Ya thanks Blackhawk I had missed this one also.
I got to thinking about this on another thread yesterday and was trying to anilize my feelings about sheet music and ear.
I have never read music. Im sure I could learn but Ive never been interested in it unless I hear something I just cant figure out. Then for a moment Im ticked off at myself for my lazyness. Back in the sixties when I was a performing singer/guitar player I only learned songs that I loved. Songs that put my thoughts and emotions more planely then I could. On the guitar I taught myself what we called back then the Travis pick, where the thumb plays the bass part and the fingers play the melody and axcents or what ever. I had at any one time maybe 50 or 60 songs in my head and could easly play and sing none stop for hours. I never played any tune the same way twice I dont think but played in my mood. Well that was then and this is now. I still have to have the song in my head before it comes out of my whistle, and it wont stay in my head unless it touches me in some way. I dont yet know how many I will be able to store in the old memory bank. I find that the rythm and I dont know timber I suppose are what grab me now oh and how fun a tune is to play. Those slower tunes that I play and some others I know the words to I play because of the words and the feelings they convay. I love to sing through my whistle. Yesterday I was out riding Molly and playing one of my favorite whistles, a Gen Eb, when I saw a little kinda grotto through the trees. It was a pond surrounded by trees and tall grass. So we rode in. The accustics were incredable and the Eb was singing in its more assertive voice. Hank had made a great spot in the grass so I joined him and just played. I learned something about attack and some more ways to ornament and Molly just filled her belly. Further down the road as we rode off she took offence to a couple of cows that jumped out beside us and decided to flat take off. I had to slam the whistle in my back pocket and find the reins and ya man hear we go. I love it when she goes into full speed and usualy let her run herself out. However when she decided that enough distance had been put between her and the offending beasts she slowed to a walk and I dropped the reins and reached for the whistle.
Yep, gone. A quick aboutface but it was nowhere to be found. Only one car went by while we were in flight so someone has a beautifully tweeked Gen. I guess the point is that music for me is a flighty mistress. But it is a living one. I just can`t bring myself into the math of it. No logic hear, move along… :roll:

Tom

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Thanks for bumping this thread, I missed it the first time around.

Raindog, where did you read that story? I ask because it’s a perfect anecdote for the informal music learning/Irish trad study I’m doing this summer. Great stuff.

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Ouch.

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Unfortunately that website seems to be gone now.
I really wish I had saved copies of the great caricatures of the band members from the main page, but I never considered the possibility that the website might not always be there… I’ll know better next time! :wink:

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and on the back he is playing a low whistle-it’s a small pic,but looks to me to be an Overton.As the album tracks were recorded between 1964-76,i,m wondering whether Packie had one of the first of Bernard Overton’s whistles?

Can confirm that on the cover is an Overton. I have seen it last year, he still has it and it is a G whistle made by Bernard. That was a really nice surprise when we found out that Packie played Overtons.

Brigitte

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Can confirm that on the cover is an Overton. I have seen it last year, he still has it and it is a G whistle made by Bernard. That was a really nice surprise when we found out that Packie played Overtons.

Brigitte

As I was not around when Brigitte replied I need to correct her memory :slight_smile:
Packie still has a Bernard made alto G but the one on the cover is one of the first that Bernard made when he was using the smaller tube. The one he still has is like the later ones which are bigger bore. He has had quite a few whistles from Bernard in the past but Packie has given a lot of his whistles away so most are gone. I now have an old Carmac whistle in B with the giant red top on which he played in the film “Black Jack” by Ken Loach :smiley: . It uses virtually no air and is very quiet. A good late evening whistle.

If anyone has a copy of Black Jack I would love to see it. It still maybe shown on TV but I did not find it being available on video or DVD.

Colin

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A friend of mine doesn’t know the strings on his guitar,
the open notes, that is, though he’s played for decades.
To justify this he says that he once played with an
old Irish fella who was playing whistle, great
whistler, a professional he said. When my friend asked what key
the tune was in the fellow responded: ‘Sure, I don’t
know nothing about keys. Just play, you know.’

I don’t know what’s more remarkable, that
the fellow said that or that my friend believed him.

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Hi Brigitte and Colin,
Nice to hear from you on the board again. :slight_smile:
Since writing my original comment,I have bought my very own Bernard made Overton ‘G’-in fact I submitted a very inexpert rendition of the jig ‘Forgetting the lesson’,(which appears on the ‘From Donegal and back’ album,)to ‘clips and snips’ in order to ‘christen’ it! :laughing:

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I think the similarities between language and music will sum up my views on this subject. I’ll start with language.

Language started as an aural thing. Humans have ears, and larynxes and combined the uses of the two to communicate. Some time later somebody figured out that the human brain could use symbols to represent their communication noises, and thus written language came into being. (Okay so it wasn’t that simplistic. This is just an analogy…) Fast forward to the present, and we have people who are skilled at taking what’s written in symbolic language and interpreting it with great emotion (think actors). Ask any two of them to read the same line and it will not sound the same. Same words, yes, but different expressions. If the script called for a Korean (I’m half Korean) accent, the actors who have heard a Korean accent before and have spent time trying to emulate it will be far more convincing.

Keeping with the language analogy, imagine an actor who can only learn lines that he’s heard someone else say before. This actor might do well in his career despite this disability, but will still be at a great disadvantage compared to the actor who has studied accents AND can read the lines for himself and express them with his own interpretation.

Also, imagine a wannabe actor who believes the way to make it in acting is to copy exactly what he’s heard successful actors do - timing, inflection, accent, mannerisms - aping everything. He might make a success of himself doing imitations of other actors (think Rich Little), but he probably wouldn’t get too far.

Now let’s look at music. I’ll skip the history and go straight to the juicy parts. Yes, it is VERY important for musicians to be able to play by ear, after all music is about the sound. However, musicians who short change themselves by not learning how to read music are doing themselves a disservice. All of the bunk about not being able to play (insert traditional music of your choice here) from written music does a disservice to young musicians who heed this obviously wrong opinion. I think it would be better to warn that the black notes don’t give you the accent (relating back to the language analogy). The proper accent (ornaments, etc.) comes from listening and emulating, (as opposed to aping). Once a musician is fluid in a style, the ‘proper’ interpretation of any given written music will be evident, and no amount of reading the black notes is going to hinder this. More importantly, the reader will have greater access to more tunes, because he is not limited to having to hear a tune before being able to play it. He can read the wealth of tunes that are notated AND play them with a proper ‘accent.’ Even more importantly, he will also not be stuck with just somebody else’s interpretation of the tune.

It’s cute to ask, “Do you read notes, or are you gifted,” but it demonstrates a lack of understanding of musicianship by inferring that the two are mutually exclusive. They are not. The truly blessed musician is the one who does both well.



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Bravo! Bravo!