I have a question about ITM in general, not whistles. In another life, I play the harp you see here on the left side of the post. I’m pretty good in picking up tunes and songs, and my right (melody) hand usually learns quickly what I want it to do. I’m rather bad at hearing the harmonies used in the accompaniment. though, and not really able to come up with my own version, and while my feeling for tunes and rhythm seems to have evolved over time, my left hand still basically plays simple drones (if anything at all). The Lady being a wire-strung harp, it still sounds ok, but it gets boring. I hate to play pre-arranged stuff, so I really would like to learn this.
I’m looking for good resources on how to accompany irish music. Websites would be fine, dots or letter-notation preferred over tablature (though I can translate tablature back into dots, it’s tedious when you don’t play the instrument). I don’t assume there’s anything for harp, so general advice or anything for any backup instruments is welcome as well. And books, of course.
I know I could post this over at the ITM forum, but I assume it gets more attention here where the party is.
I’m just going to put in my bit from the “hash it out” camp. In taking up cittern, what I did was to laboriously go about finding chords that went with the basics on recordings, preferably tunes that were based on D-based diatonic modalities that we tend to find in sessions. Frustrating at times, and at first a bit intimidating, but I came to hear the keys and patterns that are often played. If it worked, I was onto something; if it didn’t, then try again. There are, of course, those complex exceptions that require a lot of forethought, but fortunately those kinds of tunes are few.
For instance, I suspect you already know that D-F#-A, whether played together or as an arpeggio, will back up the tonic (in this case, D of course) every time in the basic sense; I see it as a matter of finding the simple beginnings and expanding from there. I’m of the opinion that this approach (lacking a teacher for this) ought to give you a more solid yet flexible grasp of your instrument as a backup weapon than relying on someone else’s preset arrangements. That being said, if the notation is out there, I agree that it could be a good springboard. This is NOT about the issues of ear-vs.-notation: it’s about “Why wait?”
I started playing guitar and cittern for Irish music having only the most rudimentary idea of what to do. I did know what chords were often implied by certain sequences of notes and just went from there by ear. However, I wish I had known more about modes and modal theory when I started. It would have saved some time. It’s not really difficult and there’s lots of stuff on the web. For instance Chris Smith has some material at a site called coyotebanjo. http://www.geocities.com/coyotebanjo/instruction/ Look at the sections called modes and buildcho.
You can find some material at David James site http://www.tiompanalley.com/ If you do a search for modal theory you will come up with more. Chris Smith also has a book called Celtic Backup for All Instruments or something like that. It’s published by Mel Bay and could be very useful but he doesn start from scratch and presumes some theoretical knowledge. Anyway, try looking at some of this stuff and maybe you’ll get some help.
I should have been more precise - having had some thorough classical training, the theoretical side of chords and scales and modes is not my problem. To illustrate what I mean: given a chord progression or just a bass line, I can improvise a melody on it with little problems, maybe not too elegant or elaborate, but at least nice. Give me a melody and ask me to improvise a bass line, and I’m just scared and stare at you, and humbly play the tonica wherever it fits in (I hear that much). There must be a way to learn this.
At the Chris Smith site, have a look at the article called imcontr.txt. It has to do with improvising countermelodies. It’s aimed mainly at bouzouki and cittern players but I don’t think that’s too important.
Just one point to add to the good advice so far. In a lot of places, it is best to avoid playing thirds in order to give an ambiguous feel to the backing. Thirdless chords are often (perhaps misleadingly) called modal chords, although they do figure prominently in backing modal melodies. You could play tonic-dominant-tonic arpeggios on harp in these places. Sometimes it is good to start there and just add thirds where you are fully confident that they will fit. Some accordion players omit thirds entirely from the left hand array of chords.
Another thing you could try is to improvise little bass runs for variation. You’re playing diatonic melodies. By sticking to the scale you can often move in an interesting way from one chord to another by improvising a run from root note to root note.
