How many of you are aware that you purposely play a tune differently every time you play it? (might not even be purposely, it’s natural to you, you don’t even think of it, it just comes out differently)
If you do vary your tunes consciously or unconsciously, how soon after you began playing did you notice your ability to do so?
How did you learn to vary? Was it by listening to loads of recordings, or by playing in loads of sessions with various musicians? Was it a conscious effort? Did you ask someone to teach you variations? Are you copying someone else?
Variation is part and parcel of Irish music. It’s part of the language. If you don’t use it you don’t play the music properly, you’re just rolling off yards of notes. And here comes the whole ear-eye discussion again. :roll:
By listening to what is going on, why it’s there, how certain effect are achieved and then adding more layers to your own playing as time goes on. Playing with the tune, finding new corners in it.
It’s a process that grows, you start adding the basic ornamentation, then you start changing ornamentation as a means of simple variation, by and by larger sweeps of melodic and other variation set in. Hopefully. But ideally you do it on the fly, I think expression is lost immensely if you roll of a pre-learned set of variations each time. It’s learning the language, in time you learn new turns of phrase, hoping you’ll write poetry one day.
How long did it take you to get to a level of variation and ornamentation that you would consider is acceptable for playing with people you play with regularly? People who would tire of your playing if you never changed it because they play with you all the time?
When you play with other people other things set in. You need interaction, being able to respond to other peoples’ variation, respond to what is going on, interaction, conversation, communication by playing with the tunes.
I remember sitting down with Caoimhin O Raghallaigh two years ago, two sets of pipes and trying to come up with more and more outrageous stuff while playing. That’s very good fun every now and again.
Not necessarily, I started out playing and learning in isolation. I made a point of using variation, because it’s part of the whole thing and to relieve boredom. It’s the best part of playing music, being able to play around, do stuff, give it life.
Playing with others, other things come ito play, your interaction aside there’s playing tight, being able to adapt to different settings and rhythmic approaches. You need t okeep you variations fitting in with the overall sound. Groups so big things get lost or making you unable to hear yourself or the others rapidly become no fun at all to me. Three or four others max do me to be honest.
Very well said Peter, those are things I felt but would never been able to write down, even in french
To me, variations are like discussions. When someone is telling you the same story week after week, you get tired of that story. You know exactly what the person is going to tell you, time after time. Playing variations bring life to your playing, it makes it more interesting to the listener because he/she won’t be able to guess exactly what you’re going to do, thus making it a little more exciting if I can say so.
You’ve got those who use varations, but those learned from CDs or recording. Something like “oh, this is what Kevin Burke is doing on track #9”. I think doing so lacks personality, you have the feeling you’re listening to a recording and not the person itself. I’ve heard very good players mastering their instrument perfectly, but lacking personality, as if they were reading a text on TV.
I’m not saying I’m the master of variations, but I usually never play a tune the exact same way twice. I’ll make some notes longer, will breath at different spots, will roll or cut at different places, and I’m slowly learning to actually play different notes but that’s hit and miss at the moment, I’m never sure how it’s gonna end up I think it takes years of practice, being able to play your instrument without even thinking about technique or the notes, you need to be able to let go of the instrument and focus entirely on the melody. There’s no magic solution, I think it comes to you with time, especially by listening a lot to different players, so that you can get different ideas and mix it all and make your own stuff.
PS: I practiced adding varations by practicing by myself at home, and listening to session recordings.
I do it without thinking about it most of the time. A lot depends on who I’m playing with or even who starts a tune up. I know I change if accompanying a singer. For instance, my mate Pat, my brother-in-law, and my son all like to sing Peggy Gordon from time to time. Each of them sing it differently and I find my playing automatically adjusts to match them.
Sometimes at our local session, if we’re playing some ‘old chestnut’ then I will occasionally conciously try something different. If it works it gets used again and eventually I have enough variations to use one each time through (sometimes being disappointed if the tune stops before I’ve used them all).
As for learning variations from others I prefer to do it from musicians I’m actually playing with, especially if they are also variational players. I avoid learning tunes from recordings unless I have several different versions of it or unless it’s a recording of a top notch player showing good variation in the one piece. This is simply because, for me, hearing just one unchanging version makes it harder for me to vary it later. It gets sort of hard wired somehow.
Finally, my usual caveat (especially on a thread where Peter’s posting). I do not consider that I play ITM. I play a lot of Irish tunes but not in an exclusively Irish manner so if it’s ITM you’re after, where our advice differs, choose Peter’s over mine every time.
Another good way to start learning how to approach variations is to listen closely to recordings of good musicians playing tunes you already know and play. Their variations will jump out at you.
A few other thoughts:
One way to come up with simple variations is to alter your phrasing each time you play the tune. On the whistle and flute, since you usually have to miss a note whenever you take a break, altering your phrasing will automatically lead to small variations.
There’s a wide range of possibilities in variations. Varying your phrasing is one of the simplest; you can also vary your ornamentation each time through, and you can do variations on the melody. Good players usually do all three. Melodic variation is not as free-form as in jazz; the tune should still be recognizeable (unless you’re Sean Maguire or Brian Duke ) but there’s a lot of room for creativity. Peter mentioned Caoimhin O’Raghallaigh above – one of his favorite things to do is to take a hackneyed tune like the Kerry Polka or St. Anne’s Reel and explore its possibilities. When he plays them they’re gorgeous and fresh, nothing like the standard settings and yet not so far from the melody as to be unrecognizeable. Julia Clifford’s version of Going to the Well for Water is another good example.
By listening closely to good players you can get a feel for what the possibilities are for variations while remaining within the constraints of traditional Irish music. It just takes time for it to soak in.
Another thought occured to me. I’m not sure who will agree or disagree, it doesn’t matter.
But I need to feel connected to the people I play with. In my opinion, if I don’t feel that connection, it doesn’t matter how they play, I won’t want to play with them. But if I enjoy their company, I still don’t care how they play, I will enjoy playing with them.
I may think of someone I’d like to play with, but I won’t jump in with them if I don’t know them first. There’s a lot to be said about that.
I think this is a good discussion to have. I have my thoughts on my own progress (and the phrase “BE PATIENT WITH MYSELF” is very important in this) and I know what I’d like to add to my whistle playing. I don’t know how to add it, or how long it will take me. (I hope others will be patient as well and will pipe in with positive and constructive feedback when I need it!)
One more thought…Peter touched on this as well, but I think it’s worth saying more explicitly:
Many people (outside of Ireland, anyway) learn tunes with the goal of being able to play them in sessions. That usually means they learn a “standard” way of playing a tune and when they go to a session everyone plays it pretty much the same way. People learn tunes as fast as they can so they can build up a big repertoire and be able to play in sessions. But that’s just one way of approaching Irish music and to me it’s the least rewarding. I have a very small repertoire for someone who’s been playing Irish music for 30 years. But I’ve spent a lot of time working on the tunes I’ve learned. I don’t want to just get them down good enough for session playing and then move on; to me that’s like half-learning them.
At this point variation comes quite naturally to me. My method is an inherently natural one. Here’s the concept…”if the tune starts to sound boring and repetitive, play it differently.”
This can be as simple as changing from sluring everything to adding a fair amount of tonguing, or from playing smoothly to adding a huffing and puffing rhythm or other breathing techniques to add or delete notes or slightly change rhythm. Another method of variation I use is rolls, crans, trills etc. in place of a single note or series of notes. Obviously you’d need to learn these techniques before employing them (I learned through books and lessons). If I learn a tune with constant rolls, I may get bored of listening to all the rolls so I may vary the tune by omitting some of the rolls and play three distinct notes or visa versa. These variations are easy to employ and explain, more difficult is adding tones outside of the tune frame. On occasion I do this although I never make an active decision to so.
I think I have experienced something like you are talking about. I have learned tunes and played them exactly the same each time. Then when I play along with a CD though I tend to add ornamentation that I didn’t learn with the tune. It just feels right to do it at that point in the tune. I also find that after I play a tune for awhile and get to know it well I begin to vary somewhat just to make it sound a little different but still the same tune.
Peter I find your comments most helpful. I loved the comment on the shrill B thread about shading the note. I had never heard of that and certainly wouldn’t have thought of it on my own. It is not that easy to do though. Keep such helpful insight coming
You know, a lot of my initial question has to do with trying to please others.
I think I need to spend more time trying to please myself first, and gaining my own confidence and sense of comfort with my own playing.
And I know I have a long way to go as far as pleasing others goes, but I also know that I’m not exactly pleasing myself either, even though I picked up the whistle quite quickly and have learned loads of tunes in a short time.
I have work to do, and some of it will involve playing with others. Hopefully not everyone will get bored of hearing me place the same ornaments in the same place every time, at least until I make my own changes!!
If you go to a tionol, summer school etc., the greatest waste of an opportunity is to aim to learn as many tunes as possible. Much better to ask the teacher to concentrate on one tune and see how many different things he/she can think of doing with it. So if the teacher asks the class what they would like, speak out boldly in favour of developing a tune - ideally one that all the class already know.
This is one instance in which it can be particularly useful to have the black dots, ideally on a page with plenty of space between the staves, so that you can note all the possibilities for playing each passage and then play around with them afterwards, and try applying the same approach to other tunes. I once took part in a mixed-ability class given by Pat Mitchell in Paris, and he took Garret Barry’s jig as the specimen tune. The class itself was an object lesson in how to teach trad music, but there was so much in what he suggested that even I am not sure that I remembered all the possibilities afterwards.
I think it takes years of practice, being able to play your instrument without even thinking about technique or the notes, you need to be able to let go of the instrument and focus entirely on the melody. There’s no magic solution, I think it comes to you with time, especially by listening a lot to different players, so that you can get different ideas and mix it all and make your own stuff.
) but there’s a lot of room for creativity. Peter mentioned Caoimhin O’Raghallaigh above – one of his favorite things to do is to take a hackneyed tune like the Kerry Polka or St. Anne’s Reel and explore its possibilities. When he plays them they’re gorgeous and fresh, nothing like the standard settings and yet not so far from the melody as to be unrecognizeable. Julia Clifford’s version of Going to the Well for Water is another good example.