I was wondering how much ornamentation should be used in a session. Many of the players in the session I attend do not play in a highly ornamented style, so if, say, most people are playing the tune straight where a roll could be added, what’s the appropriateness of one or two people playing a roll where the majority is not doing so? Or, put another way, how homogeneous should a session sound?
Micah
Micah,
I think most people would expect to use the appropriate ormanentation for their instrument in a session. I don’t think I can play without ornamentation. Some of the more radical melodic variation you might get away with in solo playing don’t fit in a session.
Ceili bands sometimes trim the ornamentation but they usually make up for it in pace and bounce.
Start a trend and use all the ornamentation you can.
Ken
On 2003-01-14 18:24, kenr wrote:
…Start a trend and use all the ornamentation you can.
Ken
Or better yet, start a trend and use all the ornamentation that benefits the tune.
I think this is a particular problem in jigs played in session. In a reel, the session can still sound tight when different things are going on.
Say, in the B-part of Green Groves of Erin,
The whistle might be going e~a3 e~a3 …
The flute might play ea{b}ag ea{b}ag …
The fiddle might go ea(3aaa ea(3aaa …
and it would still sound good if they are all steady and on the beat.
With jigs now you can really muddy up a tune and a there is a big difference between
f | ~g3 edB | BAB d… and
f | gfe edB | BAB d
I would feel that you lose something by putting in that roll (the tune is Contentment is Wealth, btw) and I wouldn’t like it so much if the player next to me kept putting in that roll where I was trying to emphasise the line of the melody.
And at least for the sesions that I go to: most players are not so good that they are above getting a bit shaking when their playing becomes too ornamented.
Good point about the jigs…I was actually particularly wondering about them, since a roll takes up half a bar, and I tend to pack in the rolls when I can…hmmm, maybe time to go through the tunes I know without ornamentation, in order to find out what really fits. There are lots of places one can roll, but that doesn’t mean one should.
[ This Message was edited by: Micah on 2003-01-14 21:55 ]
I think the answer to your question depends on whether you see a session as an opportunity to play with other people or an opportunity to play at them. Or, thirdly, whether you view a session merely as a place to practice the tunes you know in the way you know how to play them.
Each session seems to have its own culture in this regard. I’ve been to some sessions of very experienced players where someone will start up a tune and everyone else will just listen the first time through before joining in, attempting to play the tune in the same style as the person who started it. Other sessions feel more like a contest, with people trying to play louder than their neighbor or throwing in fancy variations to attract attention. And still other sessions feel like everyone’s off in their own little corner playing to themselves.
There isn’t any right or wrong answer; it depends on your temperament and your reasons for going to a session rather than playing at home. Personally, though, I think it’s good practice and great for your technique to strive to adjust your playing style to others, even if they’re playing more simply than you are, with less ornamentation.
For years I played with a heavily ornamented style. Then I spent a week learning from Jack Coen, whose style is very sparsely ornamented (he doesn’t use rolls, for example). That week completely changed the way I play Irish music – I don’t play anything like Jack, but my playing is definitely more melodic now and I don’t use ornamentation as a crutch to avoid tricky passages in the tune itself. It’s a lot of work to learn how to play simply after you’ve gotten used to using a lot of ornamentation, and I found it made me a much better player.
One of the things that folks over on this side of the pond seem to have a hard time understanding is that the “ornamentation” is not just some frivelous, fancy addition to the tune, but actually an essential part of the tune, and crucial to playing many, many tunes, especially at speed. Often ornamentation makes playing a tune easier, rather than harder. Imagine, for instance, playing Sean Reid’s without rolls? Not so easy, eh? It would also be hella boring. Proper ornamentation accentuates the rhythm, enhances the flow of the tune and makes it easier to play.
Best,
Chris
I can largely agree with Chris there BUT I do know a lot of players from a previous generation that do not use any rolls at all at all and still play mighty music without ever getting even slightly boring.
I agree with Chris that ornaments are an important part of the music and I should point out before I start that I use rolls, crans and beyond very freely for all dance music except polkas and slides. But…, I also go fully with Peter and maybe a bit further in that if a player can’t manage a tune convincingly without ornamentation then perhaps it should be a source of concern. I’m thinking particularly of the more elaborate ornaments because I certainly wouldn’t like to do without cuts and taps for contribution to rhythm. Absolutely no offence intended to you Chris, but I do think that it’s just wrong to claim that ornamentation can be crucial for playing at speed and I think that it isn’t at all necessary to stop a tune from being boring! While it livens up playing, I wouldn’t like to see an emphasis on ornamentation distracting from the essentials. I’d actually prefer to teach people for the first few years without ornamentation and work on rhythm and precision but it’s very difficult to make the lessons seem useful for all that time without teaching ornamentation. It keeps people’s interest and provides a measure of progress.
[ This Message was edited by: jgrant-skerries on 2003-01-16 10:08 ]
[ This Message was edited by: jgrant-skerries on 2003-01-17 06:00 ]
What Brad said about different sessions having different charcteristics set me thinking how big is Micah’s local session. These days I like my sessions small and tight (that’s tight musically not drunk) - say 3 or 4 tune players where each is listening to the other and adapting settings to fit as the tunes go round.
Looking back over the years, when I first started, more players would have been the norm and the chance to get so tight would not have been feasible -even if I had had the skills to do it back then. So what I’m trying to say is that the size of the group as well as the experience of the musicians in it will dictate to some degree how much ornamentation is expected or desirable.
I have seen but rarely felt inclined to join sessions of 12 or 15 players hammering through sets with no chance of getting a really tight sound because of the sheer volume and diversity of those involved. In these circumstances I guess all you would do is play the basic setting, simply ornamented and hope to keep in time with the loudest/ fastest or whoever is driving the thing.
I’m not knocking these big gatherings, if you’re fairly new it’s a good chance to learn without being too obvious when you fluff or dip out, it’s just I look for something else out a few tunes these days.
Ken
In Irish Trad, do people in sessions, trade off? Like in jazz, people will trade off sets of bars and can each express the music in his own way, This way, one person could play it straight and you could add ornamentation. You can trade fours or eights etc.
Good posts Peter and JGrant… I actually agree with you completely. Thanks for your insight.
Best,
Chris
I am very intrigued by this thread and have about 20 different questions that have come up in my mind but I will start with one, a supposition (based on observation) then the question.
Though the thread topic is sessions, I ask in a larger context the following: is the juxtasposition of a fiddler and a whistler (or other melody instruments) doing slightly different things not a part of the charm of the style anyway?
I ask because the very first thing I noticed when I started listening to Irtrad in earnest was that on the historical recordings or older players etc. there was a noticeable imprecision in rhythm etc. I am thinking of the Tin Whistles duo record (Moloney and Potts?).
I wondered whether it was just that they were both accomplished in their own right and were just having fun or whether stylistically, it was just not a prerogative to play exactly together all the time.
There is a kind of meandering style of tin whistle accompaniment that is always in my mind as authentic, which is often overshadowed by my own desire to play, practice and eventually master tunes. The latter leads to very careful scrutiny of the melody but it seems like a development away from the style as I first heard it or envision it in its best form.
In my heart of hearts, I think of the whistle not so much as a solo instrument but as an ally of the fiddle, strengthening melody here, veering a bit away there but making the overall melody fuller by those practices.
Any thoughts?
On 2003-01-16 17:55, The Weekenders wrote:
is the juxtasposition of a fiddler and a whistler (or other melody instruments) doing slightly different things not a part of the charm of the style anyway?
Absolutely! It is fairly rare to find two traditional Irish musicians who play a tune exactly the same way, or even one musician who plays it exactly the same way twice. In fact two people playing consistently note-for-note can sound too rehearsed, too polished – one complaint I’ve heard about the Mike McGoldrick and John McSherry flute/pipes album, for example, is that they played too tightly, even playing the same variations together.
Note-for-note tightness sometimes happens with people who’ve been playing together a long time (like McGoldrick and McSherry) or even people who’ve never met before but have drunk from the same well of music. But I wouldn’t say it’s something to strive for in a session.
As I mentioned above, most good players who listen to the people they’re playing with will adjust their style a little to meet each other halfway, in order to get a more musical blend. But they don’t try to imitate the other player and get all the notes the same. That’s not what this music is about.
One of the greatest evils perpetrated by the Comhaltas competition culture surely has to be the pipes/fiddle duo, where the ultimate objective seems to be to achieve a result where you can’t distinguish the separate sound of the two instruments. That is the total antithesis of the spirit of the music in which spontaneity, and especially the spontaneous variation of ornamentation and even melody is its distinguishing feature.
I agree with Roger about hypertight performances. Sounds nice, but obviously rehearsed; one of the nicest renditions of Johnny Cope I ever heard was by Cran: U-pipes as primary, whistle bubbling around in the background (with 'zouk) in a way that, although not tightly in unison, sold me on the tune like no other rendition I had heard before. Textural, tasty, and tight in a mutually contributive -rather than joined at the hip- way.
Great stuff. That being said, I’ve performed with people where we couldn’t play the same instruments together because our styles just
clashed no matter what, but as we played other instruments as well, it worked out.
N, gotta go
On 2003-01-22 07:08, Roger O’Keeffe wrote:
One of the greatest evils perpetrated by the Comhaltas competition culture surely has to be the pipes/fiddle duo, where the ultimate objective seems to be to achieve a result where you can’t distinguish the separate sound of the two instruments. That is the total antithesis of the spirit of the music in which spontaneity, and especially the spontaneous variation of ornamentation and even melody is its distinguishing feature.
Why would you want to ruin a perfectly good piping recital by including some bowscraper? 
[ This Message was edited by: Pat Cannady on 2003-01-23 13:34 ]
While what you all say is fair enough may I throw in a comment with regard to dance music - i.e., everything but slow airs.
All dance music is about timing and graceful movement (different cultures and different individuals may view graceful movement in myriad ways). If I try to play or I listen to a hornpipe for example a solo dancer is my mental image. The playing should reflect her timing, movement and grace. A good dancer will ornament a tune with her steps so the player should not over ornament (same with modern dance music) as this is an impertenance. However, a musican is free to add the dancer’s ornamentation if the music is simply played for listening - or even to suggest ornamentation to a dancer. It’s then simply a matter of taste.
Thanks, DerryMan. I always want to be aware of what I’m doing given the context of the moment. Great input!
N, shocked that it’s not all about ME