The Woodshed and Session

Whistle
1

In another topic I posted something I’d picked up from a workshop:


… to learn IRTrad you need time playing in the woodshed and time playing in session. Different folks need different amounts of each as they grow in the tradition; but, both are neccessary.

As it’s own topic, I want to ask for comments and feed back from the other folks as to how these two activities work together for them.

woodshed Time spent alone practicing; working on tunes and developing individual skills.

session Time spent playing with others, sharing tunes, blending into new settings of tunes. Developing membership skills, how to blend in.

If, together, we identify what goes into each of these, woodshed and session, and the rewards we get out of them; then, we can gain new possibilities and perpectives. It can also help some of us find a balance for our individual growth in the music. I’m ask ing folks to share what they put into each and the rewards they get out. I suspect I get things out of both that I don’t recognize. Hearing what other get out of their time spent in the woodshed and in sessions will help. I also hope that it will help me discover things I may be missing in both areas. How I can get them both to work together better?

I assume we all have different abilities, ways of learning, and we are all in different stages of our growth. While some may be really reaping benifits from the woodshed other may be getting most of their growth from sessions.

So I’m asking:
What goes into your woodshed and what you get out?
What goes into your session and what you get out?
How do these to interact for you?

Thanks in advance for sharing how woodshed and session help you …

2

Lee,

Brilliant idea for a topic!!! I can’t wait to see the replies, this has the potential to be a seriously meaty and useful thread. (I also think “Woodshed and Session” would make a great CD title :wink: ) I’d like to kick the thread off myself, but I’m too busy Woodshedding at the moment :laughing: Seriously, my Olwell is lying across my lap as I type this and the headjoint is rapidly cooling, so it’s back to the 'Shed for me, but I’ll try to contribute later.

This really could be the best thread we’ve had in a VERY long time.

Loren

3

I just yammered on aimlessly on this subject in another post, but that shouldn’t stop me.
On the contrary…
I have to satisfy an addiction to practicing. I head upstairs and sit down on the edge of the bed in the evening after all the details are looked after and play a few slow things to warm up, then a few jigs slowly, just to groove on the tone and get inspired. (My current favorite is the jig, Apples in Winter) I always feel wobbly and rough starting out and take my time. One tune reminds me of another and I wander from one to the next after at least 6 or 7 repetitions. If a tune still feels rough by then, but I’m getting tired of playing it, I come back to it later. I keep mental categories of tunes- fairly new ones that need a lot of work (they get high priority and a lot of time), but also old ones I’ve played a long time. Some tunes take way more practice than others to make progress on, like Monaghan Jig (5 parts, I think), Tarbolton Reel. If I start feeling my oats, I have a few tunes I like to fly on: Dublin Reel, Bucks of Oranmore, Jolly Tinker. After a good hour or more, some gate in my brain opens and I get more control at high speed. Otherwise, I don’t bother forcing it. I play tunes many times over at different speeds, sometimes slowing way down and exploring different phrasing/ornamentation. If I’m sloppy, I slow down, too. Some days are very frustrating, my timing is off and I feel like I’m fighting my fingers for control. Other times, especially if I had a long practice the day before, things smooth out quickly, and it feels comfortable and relaxed. I’m a big proponent of long practice sessions. (I know some people disagree w/ this.) I find things coming together after an hour or more that don’t happen prior to that. Practicing every day works a lot better than skipping a day, too. I usually focus on a group of tunes for a couple of weeks, but try to revisit other stuff as well so it doesn’t get difficult. I also keep a few sheets or bookmarked pages handy of things I don’t have memorized completely or plan to get busy with soon. It’s like there’s this gigantic trove of free treasure available, but you have to dig it out by time and practice. Last week, I was so focused on Kid on the Mtn that my wife walked in, sat next to me and stared at me for a couple of minutes until I noticed she was there. Scared the crap out of me. Good laugh for her. I almost popped her with an expensive whistle. That would have been bad (if I had cracked the whistle).

Sessions: I’m satisfied going once every 2 wks. I just hate driving places and I don’t like bars/pubs/whatever you want to call them. I don’t expect a quiet audience, but I can’t stand people howling at the bar as they get drunker through the evening. I enjoy the comradeship of the other players and I find it much easier to play steadily with someone else keeping time. It also frees me up to experiment w/ phrasing. Maybe it’s my imagination (or the alcohol) that I’m playing smoother. We don’t have any elite players at our gathering and I won’t drive over to San Francisco on a Monday night to hear them. My loss, I know. (If I didn’t have to get up on a Tues for work, I’d be there.) Anyway, no one is pushing me to advance, I’m on my own self-directed trajectory. I break out some slow airs at the session. They’re a real novelty there as hardly anyone else bothers with them. Our session encourages solos between group playing, so it’s a chance to take a risk and put some pressure on yourself. I’ve made mince-meat of a tune from time to time, but hey, live fast and die young.

In summary, my main focus is the satisfaction and meditative quality of intense concentration at home, realizing gradual improvement over days or weeks. I hear a tune and think it’s the greatest thing I’ve ever heard, gotta learn it. And, there’s always more of them!
Tony

4

I “woodshed” almost all the time. But that’s because there aren’t any sessions that I can go to that are in the area… But I’m starting a band, so that could qualify as “sessioning”…

When I practice, I just play. Anything and everything I feel like playing or working on. I play my fav’s a lot, but if I really like a tune I’m learning, I’ll play it until it’s stuck in my head and I can’t get it out. Plus there’s the times when I’ll hear a tune over and over and over until I get out my whistle and learn it. Then “hearing it” goes away.

That’s pretty much all I do, besides playing with my CD’s and the occaisonal musician I meet and end up jamming with…

5

Hmmm, guess this isn’t going to turn into a hot topic after all, I wonder why…

Hey Lee, no fair asking the questions without posting your own answers :laughing:

Loren

6

Woodshedding comes first. But there are borders that cannot be crossed for any player without going out and playing with other people. I woodshedded on my uilleann pipes for 5 long (well, for the pipes this is quite short) years before I decided to start playing with others. I’m not that great but my timing and phrasing has definitely improved since. Playing with and listening to other musicians is elemental for getting inspiration and motivation. But you have to keep practising, otherwise you stop learning. I usually play with others once a week and practice between 2 to 3 times a week, mostly on weekends. I consider this to be far too little time practising.

Christian

7

Loren,
I actually am trying to work out some of the answers for myself, so they really are in the formative state. But here is some of what I’ve been going over.

Woodshed:

Practicing, starts with going through the tunes I’ve learned to polish them further. With some tunes it’s just remembering which notes come next, with other tunes its getting the rythmn right. Other tunes, I might be working on ornamentation of some type, or experimenting with replacing an ornament that is sunk into finger memory but isn’t what I want to hear when I play it. For example replacing 2 cuts with a role. This is kind of like wondering around the music I have so far.

Usually while wandering I run into a tune I need to play. So that tune becomes a start for a number of tunes that touch something inside me that needs to get out, needs a little breath, needs a little finger massage. May be its the "air"ing of a dissappointment, maybe its claiming a victory march, maybe its a jig to celebrate the event of the day, or a lament to morn a drama of the day. I guess in a sense, I’m practicing playing from the heart, but it not really practice as much as just giving in to heart song. Heart song that exercises and uses the music to process the day, reflect on it, let it settle in my soul and resonate, or to be threshed and wash away as chaff. Sometimes this stage eats up the available time I have to practice. This happens whenever its been a couple of days since my last practice. When I get daily practices in this second stage of catharsis playing is followed by a play with the new toys phase.

The play with new toys phase varies. It may be playing a tune on 3 or 4 different whistles to see how they come across, how the style and tone change with key and character. The new toys might not be new whistles (or flute); they might be a new tunes. I may work my way through trying to learn a new tune that I picked up somewhere. When I first started playing this usually meant some type of sight reading. Lately, I’ve begun to try to pick a couple of tunes from ear, either listening to a recording or remembering the tune from hearing it at a session. The new toy might also be a new technique, like learning a new ornament, or playing around with scales or arpeggios.
After playing with the toys, I can occasionally spend a little time trying to bridge the mental recording of a tune translating to a series of breath-finger moves to hearing the tune. It kind of like learning to type. I’m trying to quit typing each letter, and move on to words and phrases. I’m trying to find a way to make the music flow without having to constantly thinking about the mechanics of playing. I didn’t have to think about what my vocal chords are doing, or my tongue, or diaphram, when I used to sing. I just thought the song and it came out. That’s the ultimate goal of my learning whistle and flute. So I can run the tune through my head and it flows out the fingers and breath without additional thought.

Thats what I put into my woodshed and a little about what I get out. However, what I get out varies for a number of reasons.

The Musical Climate:
First, my woodshed has a leaky roof and to often it gets rained out. 2 teenage (19&20) daughters , a wife, and mother law that lives 2 miles away, tend to cultivate a social climate of scatterred thunderstorms, brief showers, mixed with the number of sunny days, and the occasional hurricane. Going to the leaky shed when there’s a pending storm, just isn’t appealing. Especially when my dearly beloved(s) have attached a lightning rod from the shed roof grounded through the floor of the shed. Having had to quickly side step a bolt from the female, non-irish music loving part of the family, tend to not only end the woodshed sessions, but usually results in a period of time where I have to wait for the static charge to dissapate.

Not only does the roof leek but the walls and doors too. In other words, none of the rooms that are comfortable for practicing are sound proof. So with 4 working adults, scheduling times that don’t interfer with someone trying to sleep, is always an issue. The musical preferences are different for each person at home (1 punk rocker in a band, one hip hop, rap, classical player with a beautiful voice, one country listener that can’t carry a tune and then myself). This further complicates scheduling.

Note: shape of the shed is changing by the end of summer, new shed (house with a music room), and empty nest should improve the musical climate appreciably

Into the Shed
So what goes into the shed, is a lot of non-musical costs and scheduling conflicts, my time and resources, and the need to excise my own demons and/or exhort my own angels. I take in a little talent and some great advice from C&F, folks I meet at sessions, and sites I find over the net.

Out of the Shed
What I get out of the shed, is a very slowly growing list of tunes I can play, with a very short list of tunes I can play well. I also get the imediate catharsis the rejuvinates and fortifies me to face the daily life task of home, family, and job. As the lists grow so does the depth and strength of the catharsis. I also get a little pride in meeting a new challenge, learning something new, although since this only occurs in the 3rd phase of each trip to the woodshed, it doesn’t happen with regularity or consistancy yet.

Shed to Session
As the list of tunes that I can play well grows, it gives me the satisfaction that I have something to offer my friends the next time we sit down to play together. Something more than just improvised rythmn accompaniment on my guitar.

Shed Break:
Well lunch is approaching, I think I may wander over to the mall (DC speak for the park that runs from capital to the Lincoln memorial) and sneak in a little practice. 95+ degrees and humidiy should limit the time to a half hour or so. Every little bit helps and my verbosity above has made me mindfull of the need. I’ll address the ins and outs of sessions in my next post.

In the mean time …

Enjoy Your Music,

Lee Marsh

[ This Message was edited by: LeeMarsh on 2002-07-03 12:29 ]

8

I was talking about this very thing with Loren recently. I wish you could just buy experience…order it online from amazon.com or something. No dice.

I learned from years of teaching myself on the French Horn that with wind instruments like this, yeah you gotta learn fingerings and yeah, you gotta learn some music theory and yeah, you gotta learn style, but what REALLY separates the amoebas from the Tyrranasouruses is breathing and articulation.

If you wanna get that “professional” sound, then if after a year of practicing you dont have a rock hard abdomen from diaphramatic compression and your lung capacity hasnt markedly increased from when you started (even for you smokers), then you probaby arent practicing hard enough.

The ability to have beautful, controlled, flowing airflow through the instrument is SO vital to havng a good sound, and, unfortunately, the only way to do this is to do your time in the woodshed with the instrument. Doesnt matter what you play. You dont even have to be playing trad tunes…just long sustained notes till you think you’re gonna go postal. Long sustained notes, listening to the tonal qualities as you send the airflow through the instrument and as your body becomes progressivley starved for oxygen.

Ive been recently more attuned to this because I’ve now become a de facto music instructor to some of the local ultranewbies, and their improvement has been astounding once I’ve worked with them on these concepts. And strange but true, the more delighted they become with their progress, the more time they spend in the woodshed…one told me last night that she used to dread practicing, and now she loves it.

So unfortunately, I find that the Woodshed/Session ration is at least 4/1, but that usually is also dictated by the availabliilty of sessions and others to play with. I would prefer a 2/1 ratio, but I cant scrape together enough local interest to fulfil that ration, so I live with my 4/1.

Uh sorry for the long post. I guess I could have simply said: You gotta do the time…nothing comes for free in this game.

Kev/DAZED

9

Good questions, Lee.

  1. I practice a lot of jigs and hornpipes initially. I feel that hornpipes are somewhat neglected by other players and I think they have a lot to offer to musicians, especially pipers, who have to use more ornamentation because we can’t use our tongues like whistlers. I also practice reels, but I do them slowly initially and increase the tempo later on. I work on maintaining smooth cross-fingerings on my pipe chanter and playing accidentals with smoothness and precision on both whistle and pipes. I try to maintain sharpness in a number of common tunes here in Chicago and play other tunes in a variety of keys. Lately, I’ve been exploring working hard on playing moderately with a lift instead of blinding speed-my favorite pipers and whistlers tend to do this.

  2. Mostly what I get from sessions is enjoyment, hanging out with a few friends, a free beer, occasionally a few bucks, encouragement, and feedback about my playing. I really can’t learn tunes at a session; the tunes just go by too quickly, the crowds are often noisy, and I’m a slow ear learner at best. I get the names of tunes that strike my fancy, and then try to get recordings or ABCs. Session recordings are usually not helpful to me; I prefer informal solo recordings in a reasonably quiet room, professional recordings of solo performers, or professional recordings of very small, very traditional groups (minimal accompaniment)for learning tunes.

How do these interact? Well, it’s hard to enjoy yourself at a session if you don’t know a lot of material or can’t play steadily or cleanly, so the woodshed pays off in that aspect. The enjoyment, encouragement, and occasional inspiration from a session keeps me going in the woodshed when I’d rather put the pipes down and read a book.



[ This Message was edited by: Pat Cannady on 2002-07-03 12:25 ]

10

Oh goodie..a post where I can talk all about me :slight_smile: Just teasing…but fair warning, it’s wordy.

The Woodshed
I’ve spent a lot of time in the woodshed. No kidding. I try to practice every day, and have since I first picked up the whistle (barring a few months hiatus immediately after my son’s birth). In the early days, my woodshedding was spent poring of tutorial books, and practicing simple tunes. In those days, I looked for tunes that employed fingering sequences that I hadn’t encountered before. I mostly was focusing on getting control of my breath, and control of the instrument, and trying to not feel clumsy while playing it. I laboriously kept track of every tune I learned, at every practice session, I’d play each tune twice. If I made a gross mistake, I’d repeat the tune until I could play it once through with no mistakes. I remember being proud when I’d finally learned enough tunes that I could play a tune that started on any given note on the lower octave.
During this time, I developed very little style and very little ornamentation. I spent a couple years here, easy.

I then started focusing my woodshedding on learning ornamentation. Cuts, rolls, strikes and slides were my primary focus..they were easier than rolls. Rolls just intimidated me. I stopped tonguing every note. I started developing my own style. I started playing my “master list” about once a week, rather than every day, and spent my daily focus on new tunes or old tunes I still found difficult. A lot of this time was still spent on an “island” though…with only the sheet music as my guide to most of the tunes I wanted to learn. I spent a couple years here, too…and this was probably when I would have benefitted from a session the most. I’d reached the point where I was comfortable with the instument, and I really wasn’t progressing. My playing really stagnated, I wasn’t really developing much more of a traditional Irish style, and I just wasn’t playing as much as I used to. Getting recognized as the ‘Wandering Whistler’ in Atlanta kinda revitalized my interest in whistling and in my website. I started hanging out on C&F right around then.

My son was born just after I discovered my local session. I was able to spend few weeks in the audience ‘anonymously’ before he was born, and learned that my style needed a lot of work. I played hornpipes with no swing, for instance, because I’d never really heard one, and most of the time it’s not notated.

These days, I still woodshed every day, but mostly woodshed to get down new tunes..i refine them at the session.

The Session
First off, these are the things I consider “the session” part of this equation:

  • Band Practice...everyone in the band (barring me) has been going to sessions for years...they've learned the way the session plays the tunes we play. Band practice is pretty much a "mini session", with a different mix of tunes and with more songs.
  • Session: There are 2 public Houston sessions a week. I make about 6 of them a month. Wednesday's session is a 'performance' environment..up on a stage. There are 'stage politics', and I played for months before I was invitied up there. A lot of the session folks hate it..but it is good grooming for public performance. The Sunday session is relaxed, in the back of a pub, where you're freer to talk and experiment.
  • Online resources like the BBC Virtual Session--Though it's not live, I make it a point these days to try to play along with (rather than just listen to) session recordings, professional musicians and the like.

    • I get a lot of things out of the session: They really do teach you how to play with others. When I first started going, any little mistake (mine or someone elses) would throw me and I’d have to sit out the rest of the set. I really had to learn how to listen to the whole group, while still focusing on my playing, to keep up with any shifts in timing and the like..this is espeically true when someone’s starting something they may be a little wobbly on. I also leanred how to play for other musicians and not be shy…I can play for Joe Public all day…but I tended to shy away from the scrutiny of other musicians. Probably because I was aware that they’d know when I screwed up!

    Another thing the session did for me was begin to refine my style. When I first started going, I was still ‘recorder-like’ in my execution of anything but airs. I couldn’t convincingly play many jigs or reels. Some of our session musicians are really cutthroat and competitive…and I always try to rise to a challenge. Houston sessions are great for people who can thrive in a “trial by fire” kind of environment. Otherwise, they’re not so great. Between that, and hearing some of the great players here, I was inspired to really work on my style and more complex ornamentation. About six months into my sessioning, I destroyed my original ‘master list’ and started a new list that only contained tunes I felt could be played in a decent style at session.

    I think the last couple of years of “sessioning” has improved my playing tremendously.

    Greg

    11

    You know I never really thought to differentiate the two experiences as both provide “practice time” for me. But having mulled it over a bit I’ve found that in the woodshed I tend to practice technique (breathing, tongueing, etc.) more than working on learning tunes. I also find that when I do sit and adamantly practice a piece that I will stop playing when I feel that I’ve screwed up. On the flip side in a session if I screw up I play through it and have more often than not found a new sound, harmony, or ornamentation that fits well and flows with the piece rather nicely. Something I never would have done practicing in the woodshed. Overall I would tend to say that time spent in the woodshed is productive only in that one finds a sense of base from which to work the true inspirational sort of music that is created when playing live where you’re always faced with the knowledge that anything is musically possible, whereas playing with a recording is well a record. I truly believe that “music” comes from a meeting of the minds or rather temperaments of individuals.
    Perhaps I address a different issue than the original idea queried, yet I find that if you don’t enjoy playing and CREATING music then why bother practicing? Just a thought.

    12

    WOODSHEDDING: Boy, do I have it easy!!!
    I am a 3rd person in a band with a married
    couple. They pick or write the tune or song,
    and they get it all worked out and then they tell me to write a part that goes with it.
    They don’t want it high or ornamated so
    I don’t “step” on their vocals; which is 3/4 of all the music.
    So all I have to do is play along with their tape of the song/tune and play a pleasant little part that blends in well.
    The c.d.'s are Harp c.d.'s with me just putting in a little solo here and there, etc.
    But, I still play other songs and on other Whistles too for my own enjoyment, but I don’t kill myself having to learn all the traditional stuff. 2 or 3 hours a day is the usual; but finding the place to practice is a problem for me too.
    SESSIONS:
    I have gone to 5 sessions in another state
    visiting relatives only. I got “the nod”
    from the first chair fiddle player so I guess I kept up o.k., ha ha
    Playing gigs is a ton of fun and selling c.d.'s is a big thrill.
    I guess I am being too easy on myself, not learning to play traditionally, but gee, I was 54 years old when I saw my first whistle
    3 years ago, and its hard to teach an old
    “dog” new tricks, ha ha
    Lolly

    13

    Without going into detail about how I practice (which is all over the map, anyway) I just want to say that for me the session is the goal and the woodshed is the route to the session. I enjoy the route, of course, but need the destination to keep me moving.