Session versions, party pieces, and personal versions

Trad Irish Music
1

This has been floating around in my head for a bit.

There are “session” versions of many tunes (in the US often the way the Chieftains or the Bothies played it 25 years ago). And then there are the elaborate party pieces that you sometimes hear people break out, when they take a deep breath and are obviously bracing themselves for a bit of a solo performance.

But it seems to me that there is also a middle ground. Unusual versions gleaned from unusual artists. Interesting variations, unexpected twists and those things that deviate from the received session setting. One reason why I am thinking about this is that Peter Laban but little a disclaimer on some of his transcriptions here, that would say “lovely setting but probably not what you should learn if you are just wanting to pick up the tune”.

I am curious about the relation of these different settings and approaches. I know that there are musicians that don’t play or didn’t play sessions (like Tommy Potts and Kieran Collins); maybe because they are not interested in the standard settings? Peter’s remark implies that one should get the received version down first and then a different, personal, special setting. Also you hear “it’s not the tune, it’s what you do with it that matters”. That makes the non-session settings sound not just different but better or more interesting.

So, help me out: What’s the relative merit and important of these different settings, the different approaches to playing a tune.

2

I can’t remember in what context I said that but in some of the tunes I transcribed at length a set of variations and there isn’t much point in learning those by heart. They are useful though to see and hear what means are at a good musicians disposal to make a tune more interesting, expressive or whatever you like.
Variation is the life blood of the music, a set version without variation lacks the spark. In session you will have to conform to fit in with the group but that doesn’t by any means imply there isn’t any variation going on, there is, or should be. Playing solo you can pull out the stops and a competent musician wil vary a tune at will and bring life to it.
Overall, variation and all that gives the music expression, the constant variation employed by a good musician is a pure joy. Not employing variation means you’re just rolling off the tune, the same eight bars repeted each time. And there’s not much point in that really.

3

The sources of tunes mentioned above basically set the limits for what you might call session settings. Groups don’t go in for much subtle melodic or ornamented variation. I don’t listen to groups these days so I can’t really comment, but a virtuoso solo performer does what Peter has described, in making the tune different each time through, and probably every time they play the tune. Compare Tommy Kearney’s two versions of The Floggin Reel or the two settings of the Spike island lasses on Tommy Peoples’ new CD. There are a few years between playings on both these CDs but they serve to illustrate the continuing changes that take place in a good player’s approach to a tune.

If you only ever play sessions I think you should still have a number of variations in the tune just so you can fit in better. Transcriptions and recordings of solo performance give you a range of routes to take from A to B and this can give your ear a helping hand in getting a tighter setting in sessions. You can’t play the same tunes for twenty odd years if you don’t get something new out them now and again.

I’m not suggesting that your typical session is going to go down the road of Tommy Potts settings but certainly some of the subtler twists that Keiran Collins put in say the Copperplate or the Boyne Hunt crop up in good sessions quite regularly. Party pieces don’t have to be littered with variations either, a good solo performance is an expression of how somebody sees the tune at a given time not how many variations they can trot out.

I think Bloomfield is right to say the starting point is the bare bones setting but you must take it further or the tune will quickly get dull and predictable.

Ken

4

I think we should remember that Tommy Potts’ music was a deliberate construction if you like, he developed a number of tunes applying a set of variations to them that was, certainly at the time, well beyond the scope of traditional music. He wrote down the variations he improvised and developed them further over the years. It was a process very close to both improvisation in jazz composition in the classical sense, inserting little bits from songs and classical pieces into the jigs and the reels. Potts’ music was a highly individual expression of a unique personality. Some of what he did has been incorporated in the playing of the generation of players that came after him and in that sense he can be seen as an innovator. His approach though is not representative of what we usually think of when talking about variation in traditional music.
As I said above, I think variation is the life blood of the music, it expresses as Ken put it how the player looks at the tune at that point in time it brings out different moods and colours in the music that should otherwise remain hidden. That said, a lot of the variation in Irish music is quite microscopic, often merely little shifts in rhythm, changes in ornamentation etc although variation on a broader scale like that you’d associate with the playing of Johnny Doran or Michael Coleman does occur too.

There is a wild variety of gatherings that go by the name of ‘session’. To me for instance a ‘session’ is a place where different musicians blend their own individual approaches into something new, something growing out of the interaction. I think seeing the session as the ultimate goal brings with it a danger of conformity, uniform setting and all subtlety that make the music so enjoying getting lost in the wall of sound. Needless to say that while I immensely enjoy playing with other musicians I don’t care much for big sessions in noisy pubs. And like Ken above I have gone out of listening to group music altogether.

I like Tommy Potts’ concept of the ‘Hidden Note’ describing how he felt there is a cycle to the music [and I think anybody who has been playing this music for a good while will recognise this] where first you hear and like a tune. Then you learn it and play it for a while and maybe become bored with it. Then you may hear the tune being played by someone who totally transforms the tune by changing only a note or two. That is what Potts called the ‘Hidden Note’ so obvious and only waiting to be discovered . This is a lovely way of describing the process of incorporating a tune, the new horizons opened up by hearing a tune played by an individual player who brings something to it. How you incorporate that into your playing and how the tune continues to live and gain new meanings over the years.

5

I am of course very much in agreement with the contributions of my learned friends and much of what I say repeats what they have written. But just to hark back to your final question, Bloo, it all depends on your personal tastes and predilections, I think.

There are some people who only ever want to sit in a session and play with everyone else. Then there are others who are basically not very interested in playing with others and who seem to think of themselves as soloists. The latter often seem to take pride in playing only tunes or settings that practically nobody else does. There is a point at which this becomes competitive, or antisocial, or just boring.

[Edited to add: of course those who are just content to play “session versions” without thinking much about what they are doing can be equally boring.]

Most people though will fall somewhere in between. It’s definitely nice to have a few party pieces up your sleeve in case you get put on the spot at a session, or called up on stage and you want to give a good account of yourself. Then at least people may say, hmm, interesting version you’ve got there, even if they think your playing is pretty ho-hum!

But then, after you’ve been around a bit longer, as Ken said, you might be happy to give a good account of yourself by playing as a solo, I dunno, something that many intermediate players would regard as clichéd and therefore taboo, say The Boys of Bluehill.

You could make a nice job of that tune without doing anything particularly surprising, or you might have made it into “your own version” over the years, with bits and bobs gleaned from other people’s playing of it, other people’s playing of other tunes, or just things that jump out at you out of nowhere as you explore it in a relaxed mood at home - after playing it x000 times over x0 years, something new can often suddenly appear.

(That’s definitely the tack I would take when put on the spot - play something that is well within your abilities, something you can make a nice job of. An ordinary little jig or an ordinary little reel maybe with a few nice touches here and there. Goes over better with those who know than some pretentious new-fangled tune.)

As far as learning variations is concerned, certainly in the early stages of your development it’s a good idea to study and listen to different settings by different players and either consciously work out things they do or sort of unconsciously let what they do rub off on you. All the time bearing in mind that you might want to be able to play a bog-standard version whenever the occasion calls for it.

Having said all that, I wouldn’t worry much about it, Bloo. There’s so much to learn on this path, just learn as much as you can all the time. There’s no particular order to learn things in, no right sequence of steps to reach the goal. And isn’t the easiest way to learn to go for what interests you most?

So I think you should trust your feelings to some extent and take whatever approach suits you. Learn fancy stuff, or learn standard stuff. If you learn it from a good player, you can’t go wrong - no effort will be wasted.

6

Thank you all for your great posts. Thinking it over, I feel that the reason why this is on my mind is that I am slowly coming to the point in my playing where I can start learning about variations and little changes in tunes.

Used to be, if I learned D | GFG AGA | B… it would throw me off trying to play D | ~G3 AGA | B… . Now that is easy. There are a couple of tunes that I play in different settings (like Rights of Man, Morrison’s Jig, or Scatter the Mud) and that is exciting. Also, I am beginning (with Peter’s help) to think about the building blocks of a tune and how they relate to each other and the tune. I think that is the critical step because much of the (minute) variations that I hear good players make between the different repeats of tune occur in the “glue” between those building blocks. But then again not always…

If I really search my soul, I think I am trying to find out what makes a tune a tune.

Steve: thanks for great advice on learning. I do try to go for what interests me the most, but that also seems to be the stuff that is just out of my reach. :slight_smile: Peter once said that the best way to learn was by serendipity. I love that.