As there is nothing around the place where I live for people liking ITM, I am considering to try and set up something like a session.
The intention for now is to meet likeminded people and play together, no matter what level, just to get something started for now no matter how small.
I’d like to ask for your experiences there.
What should I keep in mind, what should I advertise, any rules I should follow? Suggestions of all kinds welcome.
I myself play flute for three years now and still in the learning stages, but having some fun now and then with others would be nice
If there aren’t a lot of people around that play, consider starting a slow session to teach tunes first. You should end up with a core group of people who can play tunes from memory and you can also start working in ornaments at the same time.
The alternative would be to print out sets of music for people to play from. I would guess that it will be difficult to progress beyond being more than a music-reading society if you start this way.
If you don’t mind playing in front of people, you could find a guitarist and do some tunes around town as a duo to publicize your new venture. Otherwise, pick someplace to hold the first one- a park shelterhouse, room at a library or school, etc, and pick a couple dates for the first ones. You can often get free listings in newspapers, and you can post flyers hither and yon, including music stores.
Several of the attendees didn’t like the idea of being recorded while learning a tune, so instead they post each tune we learn on a website. You can further change the speed of the examples using something like slow me down: http://ronimusic.com/winamp.htm
What I recommend is to find at least one other musician who plays the music if you can, so you can have a strong base for the session. Then find a location that would like music once a week. There are a lot of places who like the extra people a session would bring once a week. For example, we started a session at a coffee shop.
Then, you need to advertise. Put posters up in the location of the session. Tell your friends and family.
If you get a lot of newbies to the session, using printed music definitely helps for some. But, don’t get stuck reading music for every session, because that can get really tiresome. Let the newbies start tunes, but you may have to continue sets that they start.
Oh, and remember to advertise it as an “Open Session” and “Open to Anyone Who Wants to Play.” And, don’t forget to list it on thesession.org. Just expect to get a few people who will try to play other types of music with Irish. Sometimes it’s really hard to take, but those people don’t seem to come back a second time.
http://www.eltjot.dds.nl/concert.htm You might find some players close to you here. Or a session not far away. If you can round up two or three other players, that’s a good start.
Have you looked at thesession.org? There are a few sessions listed there as well. People know people, too. You never know if somebody knows somebody who lives in your area and plays ITM.
You might also want to call it a “Traditional Irish Session”. It might limit the number of people who show up with their guitar, wanting to play that Skynrd song they learned…unless you want that kind of thing. A couple of out-of-genre songs are o.k., but it can get out of hand.
I suggest making up an informational list of the Session Etiquette tips that you want to eventually have be known by the group. Instilling such things later on is ever so very difficult.
Get a cluster who like to sing some Irish songs and lead them with your flute. This will attract instrumentalists who may enjoy supporting the singers. By guiding the vocals nicely the sensibility of the sessions will be automatically established. After some time, you will have a cluster of instrumentalists, sufficiently warmed to the type of music, who may now want to sever from the singers occasionally to practise dance tunes and the like and the singers, not wanting to be left out, may go off to learn dancing jigs, reels and so on.
There is a symbiosis with singing and instruments and instruments and dancing. My experience is that, if an instrumentalist can accompany singing sensitively, that carries over to any other music they apply themselves to.
thank you all for your kind advice and tips.
it has been very helpful and give me some clues what to aim for.
now let’s see if I can actually get it to work in this little place in south east netherlands
You should be able to find some traverso players in the Netherlands, I would think. Gambas work very well in ITM, and you may find some players, even if most people haven’t seen them in a session for a couple hundred years.
I’ve been to beginners sessions where a clique plays their own tunes at their own speed and divil take the hindmost.
At my present session, after a set (three tunes usually) we take turns of playing a tune and always call on any newcomer to give us a tune in their own time.
But if you want them to keep calling the set, and not just play one tune, tell them first; I know from my own experience us n00bs don’t always realize that
(yeah long story short we ended up playing the Silver Spear… four times…)
But if you want them to keep calling the set, and not just play one tune, tell them first; I know from my own experience us n00bs don’t always realize that
(yeah long story short we ended up playing the Silver Spear… four times…)
But if you want them to keep calling the set, and not just play one tune, tell them first; I know from my own experience us n00bs don’t always realize that
(yeah long story short we ended up playing the Silver Spear… four times…)
