I also like the idea of a notion. My beginner brain has been thinking of tunes as composed of Motif and Transition… where the Motifs are the parts that define the tune and the transitions are the bits between the motifs that make everything flow nice. To my ear, everyone plays the motifs very similar (otherwise the tune isn’t recognizable), and the transitions vary more wildly.
I think you’re really on to something there. What you’re describing is exactly how I learn tunes when I pick them up by ear.
The first thing my ear latches onto is the places the tune “parks” or rests, these usually being “long rolls”. In jigs the long roll occupies an entire beat, so that my first impression of the first four bars of a certain jig might be:
6/8 | ? / A roll | ? / G roll | ? / A roll | ? / rising scalar triplet |
Then I’ll realise that the first ? is some sort of jumping around in a D chord, the second ? is jumping around in an E minor chord, and the third ? is the same as the first.
This “jumping around” is some sort of inversion of an arpeggio… after the rest of the people at the session play through the tune a time or two I’ll realise that the first is
AdF# and the second is GBE giving the first part of the jig Sport:
6/8 | AdF# / A roll | GBE / G roll | AdF# / A roll | GEE / c#de |
In a reel, a long roll either occupies the first three notes or the last three of a group of four. Oftentimes the LAST thing I pick up in a certain reel is what that last note is.
In order or perception, I usually first hear rolls, then arpeggios, then scalar runs, these all being the main bits or motifs that define the tune. Last to be perceived by me are the little filler or transitional bits, which might well vary from player to player anyhow.
Might as well learn Sean Bui!
By ear, from my video… Watching fingers and listening, no sheet music, the good ol’ way. Just watch and listen and doodle along.
The guy I learned Irish music from, over 30 years ago, said “it’s better to learn 20 ways to play one tune than to learn 20 tunes” and that’s exactly how I was taught.
From the get-go there was no sheet music (this guy couldn’t read a note) and no concept of there being any one “right” way to play a tune… rather dozens of “right” ways. (Oh, and a vast number of “wrong” ways too! For which I was scolded.)
Maybe my experience can be of help. I started out 25 yrs ago in this music backing and singing traditional Ballads. In this format there is no room to miss out notes, because that note is part of the story. So to be able to sing songs like the Rocky road, Lannigans ball, Johny jump up etc and other tongue twisters, breath control is essential. I later transferred this control over to whistle, not that I play the whistle really, just a few tunes. So the art here is to accomplish your aim with the minimum of breath. exactly how much you need to release to attain the note.
So phrasing is of the utmost importance, take the tune you are working on, and lilt it. In a way each tune tells a story and that story has a natural flow to it. You will find places where you feel that something has finished and something else is to start, this is where you breath.
Breathing in needs to be fast and take in a lot of air. So training yourself to breath like this can help. Then this breathe needs to be released slowly, at just the right rate. So I suggest taking a deep, deep breath and playing one long note, time yourself on this note as you get better at controlling out breath you will find this long note will get longer and longer!
Now there will be times where the phrase goes on, but the breath is lacking, so to avoid abrupt and musically destructive pauses train your self to also take small , very small, fast sips, just enough air to reach the end of your phrase and get to a natural resting point.
I liken this to punctuation in a sentence, which im not so good at! A full stop is a full breath and a comma a small sip. Exclamation mark is a big resolution befor starting the next phrase afresh.
Perhaps this is why my sentences seem to go on for ever and ever without commas or punctuation marks! 
yes, I like that because I am naturally biased this way.
and
I have enjoyed and been encouraged by your other posts too.
thanks.
Yes, thanks pancelticpiper! You really know how to describe these things in a way that makes sense to me. I’m learning a lot.
Thank you PanCelcticPiper. That is a very helpful way to think about dance music. I hope you don’t mind that I have saved the text for future reference. I think that next winter I will spend some time learning and practising dance music and the exercises that support it (a la Larsen). From what I have seen so far he gives practice routines that correspond| to the motifs you describe.
There seems to be a coherence between your analysis of a tune and the learning style give by Larsen, that practises the rolls, arpeggios, and scalar runs at different pitches and in different contexts, more than he suggests practising tunes. It seems analogous to the fact that true students of a language learn the vocabulary and syntax - in ITM this would be the motifs and their placement. Tourists tend to learn sentences from phrase books - in this analogy that would be entire tunes. The latter get quicker, shallower, less flexible results, the former get a deeper, more flexible understanding more slowly. Perhaps everyone already knew that, and I have only just caught on?
Would there be any correlation between the fillers and suitable breathing spots?
For sure one of the strengths of the whistle/flute as a session instrument, where you’re picking up new tunes on the fly, is that you can’t play continuously anyhow. This “problem” becomes an advantage as you can take breaths in all the places you’re not sure of. (So the first couple attempts might be more silence than music.)
This is in contrast to the fiddle. I’ve sat many times in sessions beside fiddlers who, when others are playing a tune new to them, immediately begin sawing chords on their fiddle, finding the chord changes. So from the get-go they have the rhythmic and harmonic part down. Then they start finding the melody notes within those chords, and what started out as chordal droning slowly, magically, transforms into the tune. One woman was particularly quick at this, and on a reel she had never neard before would be producing the melody quite respectably by the time the others had got into the first repeat of the tune.
Could I rephrase my question to make sure I understand your answer?
People often give suggestions (rules seems overly prescriptive) for when a breath might best be taken in a tune. Do these suggested places occur mostly within or between the motifs? The personal variation that you suggest occurs between motifs might indicate that the spaces between the motifs might be the best places for a breath. Silence is, after all, just another embellishment on a tune (perhaps not used as often as it should be 
).
Or would the breathing places fall inside some of the motifs? If so, then motifs could be learnt with and without breaths.
Very true Richard , I find it easy to pick up tunes at sessions on the fiddle, exactly as you describe, but banjo ! I dont tend to try because Its very tricky, such a loud percussive sound is just not conducive to this process. Mandolin again is easy for this type of thing.
IMO the best place to breath is at phrase ends/beginnings and build up your stamina for long breaths. This is what I do . I also use long notes,say a dotted crotchet; so I will play a crisp quaver and breathe in that space provided if necessary. Again these are just the options I use.
Pancelticpiper, where might I find your video of sean bui? thank you for the suggustion. I think I need to reread this thread when i’m less fuzzy-headed from exhaustion, as a lot of the recomendations aren’t making sense to me. (and maybe learn basics of at least how rolls work if not how to play them etc, as that might help me understnad.) thank you all for your advice and discussion on this.
it was this post on the page prior: https://forums.chiffandfipple.com/t/nice-new-home/63/1
the link being: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hyj5LMH6aOI
oh, ha, fuzzy brainedness. I didn’t realize that you did that video thanks, I’ll take another look at it when my brain is functioning properly again, and give it a try. the comment of learning a lot of versions of a single tune makes sense now…
Just whistling (sans whistle, I mean, while watching kids swim) through one of my current tunes to determine good breathing spots, I’m thinking the hardest thing about breathing isn’t merely hitting those tune-enhancing breaks, but disciplining myself to breathe deeply enough in those tiny little pauses. Coordinating those two issues takes a lot of concentration for a newbie.
To me, Irish reels and jigs are cobbled together like a child placing wooden blocks in a row. There’s only so many blocks, but they can be placed in an almost infinite number of sequences.
These individual blocks don’t exist in isolation, but exist as members of families. A family consists of all the blocks which fulfill the same need/function, say one beat of jig time with a G Major tonal centre, viz:
GGG
GF#G
GDG
GAG (with a spoon!)
GBG
GdG
F#GG
DGG
AGG
BGG
and with a breath:
G’G
G2’
and so forth. So as you’re playing whatever jig as you come up to a beat which has need of this familiy, you just put in any one of the many family members. Doesn’t really matter which one, unless you happen to need to take a breath and then you’ll have to choose one of the members which has taking a breath as part of it.
No one member of the family is any more “the real tune” than any other member.
So for yuks try the Kesh Jig and stick in a different one of the things I’ve listed each time you come round to the first beat of bars 1 and 5. You can play the tune ten times in a row and it’s different every time.
Pancelticpiper: You are spot on about the idea of families of little bits that can be stuck together to make tunes. Unfortunately, knowing that theoretically and doing something about it are two different things. Your little exposition here gives a little corner of the families. Would you like to expand a bit on the concept and provide some other examples? Perhaps the common families for reels or more on jigs or whatever. I’m sure many of us would find that useful.
Thankyou PanCelticPiper,
I find these ideas very informative. I have learnt few dance tunes, and done so as a tourist learning phrases. As a result I have not found much to interest me, and lacked motivation. Thinking of families of interchangeable blocks shows me how I might introduce variation, and adds a more interesting dimension.
Looking at the blocks you suggested as interchangeable for GGG I wonder if there is a ‘rule’ for creating them, that could then be applied to FFF, EEE etc.
Please expound more, I like this lots.
Hmmm … Sorry to rock the boat here, but I don’t agree with this notion of tunes being made of interchangeable building blocks. Sure, certain half bars - or sometimes individual notes - here and there can be replaced. But, firstly thereks a limit to what you cn replace things with depending on the tune, secondly you have to know which bits of any particular tune can be replaced, and thirdly, most importantly, just about any decent tune will contain certain patterns which are distinctive to the tune, and shouldn’t be replaced. IMO, the building block idea is responsible for a lot of bland playing and the tunes “all sounding the same”
This “building block” thing isn’t something I made up myself. It’s well known to musicologists, for example it’s the way traditional Balkan singers “compose” their songs.
It’s how traditional Irish musicians create so many of the variations that pop into their playing as they go along. They’re not composing on the fly, creating something entirely new, rather just choosing an alternate motif, one of many that will fill the bill.
For sure in any reel or jig there are certain spots in the tune where the variations tend to occur and other spots that are more stable/fixed. You can hear 20 people play the same reel and they’ll tend to agree on where the variations will mostly occur.
Back to The Kesh Jig, note that the first beat of bars 1 and 5 require a member of that very large and versatile motif-family which parks/rests on G for a full beat of jig time, and that the first beat of bars 2 and 6 require a member of the family that parks/rests on A for a full beat of jig time. However the second beats of bars 1, 2, 5, and 6 are more fixed, being a rising scalar thing. Switching that to something else might render the tune unrecognisable.
So The Kesh Jig might be diagrammed:
(G jig motif) + GAB + (A jig motif) + ABd etc.
Need to take a breath? You don’t have to plan out or think about it in advance, rather you just pick the motif that has a breathing spot in it.
In any case, playing along with people who are doing all this stuff so that it becomes internalised is far better than talking about it. Just doodle along with that Sean Bui video and it will all start to come naturally, I think.
What PCP describes is such a fundamental concept within trad that it bears stressing, This approach opens up a wealth of opportunity for personal interpretation. This G block can of course also be a long roll, or a G short roll, or G then triplet etc
so the first bar of 'The hag at the spinning wheel 'could be
GFG B2G
GDG BGB
Groll B roll
G3 B3
G 3 slide up to B
F#slide G2BcA
GFG BcA
etc
This is what we term deconstruction, breaking tunes down into there simplest components and statements then ‘building’ back up.
Learning tunes as a set string of notes, worse still IMO with set ornaments in set places is just copying, admirable though it might be to copy a work of art, its not art itself which requires personality, originality, spontaneity.
Of course there are certain distinctive aspects of tunes that are very individual but if you listen to a master such as Bobby Casey you can here this in action.