Not to hijack another thread, I would like to split off some thoughts.
My interest is primarily the fife, so ITM is something that I am an outsider to (and I am not much of a fifer, but love the music).
So here is the thing. Many tunes crossover, I have seen tunes played by the fife played in ITM, and some in country. I have even heard “Turkey in the Straw” as major part of a rap song.
So I guess I don’t see doing a tune justice in the sense of adhering to a style. I think some tunes have even changed their rhythm to go from one dance to another, from reel to hornpipe. The playing was partly due to it’s function, and so a fife player would play a tune so that It could be marched to.
Ornamentation is another thing that seems to be another thing that varies with style, and while there are crossovers, each style seems to have their dos and do nots. A fifer playing the same tune as an ITM player or classical player will sound different regardless of instrument. The nature of each leads to certain style differences.
For some reason this comes back to what my English teacher said about e.e. cummings. He new the rules of capitalization and punctuation, and so he knew what he was doing when he broke those rules.
I started playing the flute and ITM. I’ve realized that every recording I listen to and learn from is different as far as style is concerned. Some players taps and rolls are light and airy like a butterfly flitting about in a field (Matt Molloy). Others attack the notes like a bull in a china shop and have a hard edged barky-chirpy sound. I don’t know if one style is more trad than the other because I’m too new at this to even pretend I know what that would mean.
All I know is that the whole topic is a big open can of worms and I enjoy reading these threads and trying to sort it all out. I never stop learning around here.
I have a difficult time recognizing regional styles. I can sometimes tell who the player is or who the group is from the individual styles of the players, but even with those example web sites of the different regional styles I can scarcely tell the difference. And does it even matter? I’m an American and I’m either going to play alone to my CDs or else maybe if I’m lucky I’ll get to play with some other Americans who probably are not adhering to any particular regional styles either. Heck, I can’t even tell the difference in regional styles of American music.
I can seriously tell the difference and until I read the link above I had no idea what made that difference. It all makes sense to me now. Listen to Matt Molloy and note how his style is more of a constant flow of notes with a lot of ornamentation but not so many peaks and valleys regarding volume and attack (pulse).
Then listen to anything on Michael Clarkson’s PodBean site: http://irishflute.podbean.com/
Clarkson’s style has very noticeable pulse, a lot of sharp hard attacks and lots of “riding the edge” between upper and lower octave notes. I call it the barky-chirpy sound but I’d prolly get my arse handed to me if I said that in a pub across the pond.
This is just a hobby for me so it probably isn’t that critical but at this early stage of my development I would like to land in one direction or the other and try to stay consistent.
I have always thought it would be neat to have a canon of 10 tunes that would be played in various styles. I think that the differences between the playing styles of ITM, Fife, old time, and other styles would be interesting. For example, I think I have heard the “Rakes of Mallow” and “Brighton Camp” played in all three styles, but the resulting sounds were different.
Interesting, I was going by how they were categorized on that web site. The author had three main styles from Ireland listed and he put Matt Molloy in the third style that he came up with himself called piping style. The other two were Sligo and East Galway. He had Michael and Harry Bradley listed as Sligo style under the sub category “Letrim and the North” for Northern Ireland so I guess that would fit for Belfast.
I couldn’t agree more though that Matt and Michael have very different styles, no matter what name you label them with.
I am looking at labels like ITM, bluegrass, old time, etc. then it seems to break down to region for each. If a person is within one of those circles they can be within a style, but still play in their own way.
