Royce is right about playing in time and tune,and its a nonsense to suggest otherwise and shews a basic lack of understanding Irish Traditional Music.Even slow airs,where ye can have a lot of licence on expression and timing,still has phrasing.
There’s a difference between playing out of tune or out of time because you’re a bad player, and out of tune or out of time because a) the nature of the instrument and b)uncontrolable forces such as the weather - in terms of tuning, and whether you play on, before or after the beat - in terms of timing. You can also play out of time when counting one,two,three; two, two three etc etc but still be IN time when counting solely according to the ONE beat, ie, looking for the ONE a-la Jazz-speak.
Listen to Liam O’Flynn, Ennis and many others - they are often out of time when you refer to individual beats in a phrase but generally spot on when referring to the ONE beat, ie, the first beat of the phrase. At first impression is -he’s playing out of time…if not that, then often playing slightly ahead of the beat in contrast to many fiddle players who tend to play behind the beat - my problem as mentioned previously. Or else Ennis and O’Flynn are trying not to sound robotic.
David..ye have to remember that all levels of pipers read this forum and that my reference to on/ off the beat may not be recognised by some if I merely wrote syncopation…
That being said IMO and Irish Dancers in general,Irish Dance Music and by definition Traditional Irish Music, is not syncopated music but is played on the On beat with the stress on the 3rd beat.eg 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 (double beat)[/b]hop 2 3 anda 1 2 3(double beat)
Notwithstanding the above ye can play around with the internal rythm(as séan nos singers indeed do) as long as the fundamental rythm is maintained.I think that is what ye were refering to ,and on re reading your post I think that to be the case.Not as I first thought ,an endorsement for bad timing and an out of tune instrument.So as we are not a million miles apart ,as I first thought,I apologise.(I’m gonna blame Royce anyways)
Back to Leo and his regulators,the reason his mastery blew your friend away was his ability to syncopate(by now everyone should know what I am talking about) at will, into a musical tradition not designed for such,without losing the melody.That was the genius of his playing.
After all if ye played Mozart outwith of his notation it wouldna be Mozart!Leo shewed that ye can play ITM with panache but still within the fundamental rythm of the tune…
I have also realised whilst writing this that the reason I find On the beat regulator playing easier than Off the beat playing is because it is the natural way of things,so no need for the doctor yet
Out of interest to the regulator players out there, which do ye find easier on ?off ? both/couldna care less?
Slan Go Foill
Uilliam
Personally I enjoy them both Some of the time. I find the constant Chuffing all the way through every reel, Jig etc. a bit grating on my ear.
Hardest thing is to play on every beat on and off. Finbar Fury does this on a lot of reels, and other tunes. I like it well enough and appreciate the skill but find it lacks some subtlety.
Leo’s reg playing to me is a little too constant for my ear, but I can live with it easy enough.
Perhaps it is more of a piping style from bygone days?
But what do I know?
Thanks Ben,
let me clarify.I didnt mean the constant chugging ye refer to,that would drive anyone nuts but…say for eg
on(thebeat )on(thebeat) on(thebeat)o…n
following the natural beat o the bar and then varying them with rests or longer beats,but ,and heres the rub,with me anyway, all the notes start, or are, or end on the beat..as opposed to off the beat.Now I find I can do that easily enough.But if I change to off the beat ,my brain has real problems adjusting So the question is which do ye prefer, as I have noticed quite a few pipers tend to play the regs off the beat rather than on the beat…not that it matters a fiddlers fig,just curious,as to what ye are happiest with.
Slan Go Foill
Uilliam
Liam og Flynn’s reg playing does it for me, as does Paddy Keenan but in a different style.
The OFF beat (Ska) thing on regs is great but I find it less difficult then the ON beat . Seems to more natural.
Leo Rickards version of Job Of Journeywork as an example of OFF beat reg playing. Lovely
Even that “Lay Lady Lay” period?" Wow, that’s fan dedication.
Probably think Jimi Hendrix was a brilliant guitarist as well.
Nevertheless, everything you describe is in fact still just playing “in time” and “in tune.” All those so-called “blue notes” still follow basic mathematical principles and do in fact resolve at one point or another, particularly in blues, which is the whole point of bending notes, the resolution. Playing before, on, ahead, swing, all around the beat simply recognizes a beat exactly as metronomically as if you were playing on it all the time. You simply know the rules and then mess with them, but never so far as to lose track of them.
Zimmerman’s kid Jacob has his old man beat all to hell anyway. Just missed out on that leftist, revolutionary cache by a generation.
Yeah even then, although my favorite period was before that - Check out the documentary Don’t Look Back when he torpedos Donovan.
And as far as Hendrix was concerned, I wasn’t much of an electric guitar fan myself although I used to love to hear Stevie Ray Vaughn do Hendrix when I lived and played music in Austin in their early 80’s.
As for my comments about in tune and in time: Give me a Charlie Patton or Sun House any day over today’s Top 40 musician. I don’t think you’ll find Charlie Patton’s vocal notes on any electronic tuner and I defy you to find the beat in Sun House’s slide playing. But, then again, they only invented the thing. I’ll leave it to the “musicians” to pretty it up for the masses.
Of course when playing with others one needs to stick to a recognizable rhythm, be in relative tune to each other and proceed along predictable chord changes so that all can play together. But these are the rules of ensemble playing and have nothing in my mind to do with musicianship.
My favorite musicians are those that play alone, on the edge: who play from the heart. If it means their rhythm is a meter of their own mind and notes fall between the piano keys, so much the better. As long as I can feel the soul behind sound, I’m enraptured.
(said -"Hrmm… what you’re describing doesn’t sound like playing out of time. You seem to be talking about swing/lilt?)
Yes and no…I have heard out-of-time-ness but still on the 1 beat due to things such as triplets, staccato and legatto, played too fast and hence the timing being thrown out of whack but then the piper makes up for it in order to bring the timing back in sync with the 1 beat of the phrase. So there is a sense of being out of time, but the tune, or the phrase, as a unit in actually IN time.
Uilliam -
(said “So as we are not a million miles apart ,as I first thought,I apologise”)
No worries
And I acknowledge the fact that there are all levels of piper on this forum. I didn’t intend to sound smug when I used the word syncopation. That it came across as that prompts to likewise appologise, also for the fact that I perhaps was a little unclear in my intentions when talking about being out of time.
Anyway, the whole out of time business what actually not the central focus of my initial posting. It was in relation to Dicky Deegan’s advice to me concerning what to listen for when listening to a piper, ie, don;t let out-of-time-ness worry you unnecessarily. A topic for a separate post perhaps.
What you say about the internal rythm and the fundamental rhythm is true and I think is what my friend was referring to when talking about the Brazilian rythms and laying 6/8 rythms over a fundamental 4/4 timing. I’m not necessarily saying that that is what Rowsome is doing here, or that he even thinks about it that way - it was just an illustration given to me by an Irish musician with experience in other genres..
Okay…I think that’s all I have to say at this point. Bell’s gone any way, so back to class I go. (To teach that is).
Alan don’t worry Leo Rowesome told me in a dream last night that he hated playing regs too!!He was just having a larf…to give us something to do
Slan Go Foill
Uilliam
Zimmerman’s kid Jacob has his old man beat all to hell anyway. Just missed out on that leftist, revolutionary cache by a generation.
Bunk. While we’re talking about playing on and around the beat, Bob Dylan has the greatest command of phrasing and timing in popular music since Frank Sinatra.
Any musician–not just vocalists–could learn a lot from Dylan by studying where and how he lays down the stress in a line. No one has greater command.
Agree!! As for his voice, listen closely, but you don’t need to listen too closely to know that he has an excellent sense of pitch and other vocal technique. I saw him in Brisbane earlier this year and his ability to jump into falsetto singing was superb, good vibrato and timely phrasing made for a grand performance.
