I’ll let the experts answer. 
Well, I guess they already did really. I’ll have to think about what my confusion is. 
depends how you interpret ‘traditionally’. Sessions as discussed here are a relatively new thing (from the past 50 years) so, traditinally, music would be played for dance or entertainment by solo players or small groups of players (for extra volume).
Tradional singing is a solo unacompanied affair by definition with an emphasis on what the song has to communicate, the story.
Thank you. I think perhaps that idea of telling a story is what I did not quite get. Just as a story teller who is not singing would tell the story alone, so too with this kind of singing.
I will ask this question here, although perhaps another place would be better. I have a problem with playing slow airs.
In my books (if the learning by sheet music question could be ignored here) there are slow airs. They are very beautiful. There are no words (which I am assuming all slow airs would have) with them. The title may be given in English or in Irish (what is the proper term for the Irish language; what is the proper term for the Scottish language?). I have, as an example, been able to find a translation for one of the titles but as of yet no words. The air does not exactly make sense to me musically—I believe it is because I do not know what it is about, except that it may involve a girl with red hair, so it might be a love song, but I am not sure.
How can you play a slow air if you do not know the words that originally went with it? For me an English translation would be all that I could understand, and that could still be a problem but it might at least tell me the general direction of the story. I am now sort of halted in my progress feeling that I should just not try them. I know listening to other players would help, but I would still not know what I was doing. When good players play a slow air, do they know the words and what they mean in the Irish language ?
Often, tough not always, there are singable translations to Eniglish to be found or English songs sung to the same air. These provide a good guide to the phrasing of an air. An Bonnan Bui is a good example of a song available in both languages, Seamus Ennis’ translation of Bean Dubh and Gleanna or A Stror mo Chroi which has English words. You can have a go at copying an air from a player but I would always feel you end up playing second hand music or interesting sounding but meaningless sounds or do a completely botched job on the air. Personally I leave most airs alone or attempt them at home. There are players without Irish who make a good go at playing airs but you need to be well versed in the song tradition to pull it off.
Hi Cynth,
To be honest, I really think that, to give a slow air its best, you need to have heard it sung, preferably by different singers. Most slow airs are based on sean-nos singing. I have heard more airs MURDERED by people who’d obviously never heard the song they go with (don’t get me started on An Ghaoth Aneas!).
If you start collecting CDs, you’ll be amazed at how many of those airs from your books are out there in song form. Many of them are in Irish (the “proper” English name for the Irish language; the name of the language IN Irish is “Gaeilge”), but you can still get a feel for how the tune should feel sound by listening to a good, native singer sing it. And if you really love airs, you can always do what I’ve done and start learning Irish!
BTW, as much as I love sean-nos singing, I’m with Weekenders…I love a good sing-a-long too, and if it’s not always “just as we did it in our old sessions in Co. Wherever,” so be it.
Redwolf
Thanks very much you guys. I now feel that I am not crazy and that the meaning of the poem or story originally told in the slow air is critical to playing it in a way that makes sense of the music. If I can find English words that sing along nicely with the tune and are considered a good translation or are a traditional version of it, I will take a crack at it and try to listen to how others play it and, especially, sing it. I can play them for my own pleasure, but I will keep in mind that it is something that I can’t really do properly because I will never know the meaning of the original word that falls on a certain note—which to me would determine how you would play that note. I’m not sure I can learn Irish just now.
Unfortunately, for a beginner like me, slow airs are enticing because they do sound like music when played slowly (unlike a jig which doesn’t sound much like music when played at my very slow speed)----but then one does encounter this problem of not understanding what is going on in them which means you really aren’t making music. But there are other songs which I can play, so I will stick to those. I think I have arrived at a much better understanding of things.
Okay, the tempest in my poor head has abated. Whew! Thanks again for the help, I was really sort of flailing away there.
Hi Cynth
I second what Peter said re A Stror mo Chroi, it is a lovely tune and even lovlier song. Also you could try the Sally Gardens (the song not the reel).
One of my favorite slow airs is Rosslyn Castle (the tune to Burn’s song The Slave’s Lament), but this is a very challenging tune to play on a non keyed instrument like the whistle.
Please note that in Scotland it virtually axiomatic that the best way to judge how good a player is, is through playing slow airs - fast playing can disguise a multitude of sins.
David
This](http://www.gael-linn.ie/musicstore/musicproductdetail.aspx?Lang=EN&PRODUCTID=CEFCD184&CATNAME=CD%22%3EThis) double CD of 1950s gael Linn 78 rpms is a wonderful collection of singing in Irish and English peppered with instrumental music by some of the best instrumentalists of the day. It will give you a handle on at least some songs, and a lot more. Wonderful stuff.
Hi BigDavy—It just happens that I am working on The Sally Gardens right now. I found some words to it by W.B. Yeats and the website had an MP3 of it being sung. It says that the original tune is Maids of the Mourne Shore, so that got me all in a dither, but I decided to just go with what I found in order to get on with things. It did take me a bit of sorting out what with the reel or reels by the same name and all. One interesting thing I came across said that the word “sally” or “salley” means willows and that these gardens were a place where willows were grown to be harvested for making things.
I will definitely check into the songs with good translations that Peter mentioned—I just yesterday came across a website that talked about Seamus Ennis about whom I was uneducated.
So far I have no choice but to play slowly. I have also been doing finger exercises very slowly—I know that is probably not traditional—and I am hoping this will help me in the long run. When I play a tune I do not seem to hear the individual errors that add up to sloppy playing as well as when I am totally concentrating on each change as I do in the finger exercises. Luckily I do not mind doing them. Breath control seems to be a big problem as well—not having your A wander all over the place—which would perhaps not be as noticeable in faster playing.
I am still loving the Haughs of Cromdale and I don’t understand why it doesn’t seem to be mentioned in any tune collections which include Scottish tunes. What sort of category would that song be in? It doesn’t seem like it would be called a slow air somehow. Are all airs considered “slow airs”?
I believe “Haughs of Cromdale” is a march.
J.
Looks like a great cd, Peter…I have bookmarked that one for future purchase. Just out of curiosity, how do you pronounce that singer’s name, “Sadhbh?” I keep seeing the name in a book I’m reading about medieval Irish nuns.
Justine
Just ordered it. Thank you for the tip.
I think I was thinking that anything that had words would be called an air, thinking that “air” just meant song. But maybe “air” is a certain type of song, and there are other songs which have words set to a march, for example, and one would call that song a march. That makes sense. Perhaps an air is a tune that was written expressly for a particular poem. Then there are other songs the words of which have been added to pre-existing tunes such as is the case for Haughs of Cromdale–and those songs we refer to by the type of tune the music is. Okay, sorry, thank you. I am getting a little carried away here.
Good point, Weeks. This raises a lot of issues for me that have nothing to do with sessions. I think when you listen to an Irish tune you’d like to sing you can do one of two things.
First, you can assimilate it into some tradition that is yours and tear the song from its context. This often makes sense and can result in good music: like the ‘soul’ version of a country song, say Candy Staton’s ‘Stand By Your Man.’
The other thing you can do is to try to emulate what you hear. This means trying to reproduce the vocal inflections, phrasing, decorations and so on. I’m all for this latter approach, even though it has evident dangers.
Australian traditional song is largely Australian words to Irish, Scottish and English melodies. How should these songs be sung? Most often people sing them in flat-vowel, uninflected, exaggeratedly ‘Aussie’ voices or in chipper uninflected exaggeratedly ‘Aussie’ voices. This seems to me to be a serious mistake except when it is done well, when the flatness actually is used expressively to give a sort of punk effect. (In America, old-timey and bluegrass musicans don’t make this mistake.) Dave de Hugard singing ‘Morton Bay’ is a brilliant example. No doubt this came out of the desire for Australian music to ‘sound Australian,’ rather like the ludicrous ‘bush bands’ whose music passes for traditional Australian dance music in some quarters. (Imagine traditional Irish and Scottish dance tunes played by massed guitars, washtub bass, and, if you’re lucky, whistle or harmonica. No fiddle, concertina or banjo which would be traditional. It’s a clunky, clangy dog’s breakfast which is quite frankly embarrassing.) Those songs would not have been originally sung with Aussie accents at all. They would have been sung, in the 19th century, as often aas not, with Irish or Scottish accents. Surely the singers would have used the phrasing and decorations they brought with them.
Hi Wombat—Your remarks are interesting and I have given up trying to respond to them. Don’t write something explaining them, that’s not the problem. It’s just too complicated or something. But I thought you should know that I found them thought provoking.
Just to keep it simple, it’s safe to say that an air --or “slow air”-- is the song’s tune itself played without the words, whether there’s a discernible meter or not. There are slow airs composed without words, too. I believe the first known slow air to be composed without words to it was the “Lament for Staker Wallace”.
Yes, I think you’re right… an air is the melody of a song, so any melody of any song is an
air… but people, myself included, persist in using ‘air’ as shorthand for ‘slow air’, which is a
certain style of air. I keep hearing that the style is derived from Sean Nos singing, but I’m not
particularly familiar with Sean Nos.
Checking dictionary.com, we get this rather unhelpful bit:
- A melody or tune, especially in the soprano or tenor range.
- A solo with or without accompaniment.
That could be argued into encompassing all music, but ‘tending’ towards
music with a high-pitched melody as the important part… hmmm…
Well, if there are airs written without words then I am…, well, I am undone. I wonder then if any tune which is not a dance tune or march or other defined thing and is sort of slow would be an air whether words or no.
Well, yes, that is how it is starting to seem!
Here’s a question-----Okay, we know what sean-nos singing is (well sort of anyway) and those songs whether sung with words or played on an instrument are known as “Slow Airs” and also anything slow without words is called a “Slow Air”----unless it is obviously something else although I don’t know what that would be. What about sprightly little ditties like, well, I found some words to The Star of County Down which is a march (in this case). So what would we call this song? It doesn’t seem like the same type of song as a slow air.
If you sing it, it’s a song. If it’s a tune that you can sing, but you play it, its a song air.
A song air? Oh. Okay. So I would say “I will now play the song air The Star of County Down.” It doesn’t seem like I hear this phrase “song air” very often. Or if I just said “air” maybe people would know it was the melody of a song. “I will now play the air The Star of County Down.”