This subject has come up a few times, and I thought it deserved its own thread. My first teacher (whistle/flute) back in the 70’s was of the opinion that “it’s better to learn 20 ways of playing a tune, than to learn 20 tunes.” And that’s how I was taught. He would teach me a tune and then would twist it and explore it. Since then, my 30 years of listening to Irish players has convinced me that the methods I was taught was how many (if not most) Irish players approach the music.
To take the simplest of examples, the jig Sean Bui: it begins, as many play it:
/DDD AF#A / BGB AF#A /
where the DDD stands for a cran or cran-like figure on bottom D, which for the time being I won’t deal with.
The simplest thing to do, which doesn’t rise to the level of “variation”, is to use cuts:
/ DDD (cut)AF#A / (cut)BGB (cut) AF#A/ to make a stronger beat, or to use cuts to create a syncopated feel:
/ DDD A(cut)F#A / B(cut)GB A(cut)F#A /
Now if I conceive of the bits AF#A and BGB as being “roll-equivalent”, I can bring into play a large number of equivalent phrases such as the simple:
/DDD AGA / BAB AGA / or better yet use actual rolls:
/ DDD AAA /BBB AAA / where the AAA and BBB stand for long rolls on A and B, using whatever cuts and pats you choose.
Then, we may choose to use short rolls instead of long rolls:
/ DDD AAF# / BBG AAF# / where the AA and BB stand for short rolls, either the true short roll (cut)A(pat)A which is done in a snappy manner, or the more fluid short-roll equivalent A(cut)A.
Next, we can shift the short roll to after the beat, giving:
/ DDD AF#F# / BGG AF#F# / where the F#F# and GG can be true short rolls or simply two notes seperated by a pat.
Now, instead of going down to F# and G we can instead go down to bottom D giving:
/ DDD ADD / BDD ADD / with cuts seperating the bottom D’s, or go back to the short rolls on A and B:
/DDD AAD / BBD AAD /
Now what about repeating that initial cran:
/DDD AF#A / DDD BGB / ? Of course the AF#A and BGB bits can be played in any of the ways given above.
And what about introducing some syncopation:
/ DDD AF#A / F#BF# AF#A /
or drumming down to the F# every time:
/ DDD AF#F# / BF#F# AF#F# /?
Now in any “long roll situation” you can postpone the roll by putting a note below in front. In this tune it would look like:
/DDD GAA / ABB GAA / where once again the AA and BB can be true short rolls or simply seperated by cuts or pats. This pre-roll note could be dropped to bottom D giving:
/DDD DAA / DBB DAA /. Also, a roll can be postponed by a note above:
/DDD BAA / CBB BAA / which is particulary nice.
Also Irish musicians sometimes purposely ignore the chord changes and repeat or chant on a note or group of notes which could look like:
/ DDD AF#A / AF#A AF#A / which is very effective if strongly cut.
Now, all of these variations have been done without altering the note values, in other words, both bars still have six eighth-notes. On the uilleann pipes however it’s common to throw in staccato triplets, in this case the rising F#GA triplet, giving in this tune:
/ DDD AF#GA / BF#GB AF#GA / with the central triplet having B instead of A being its final note. Then there’s the piping thing known as “backstitching” which in this spot would be:
/ DDD AGF#A / BGF#B AGF#A /
Then there’s a bag of variants you end up with if you introduce taking a breath into the phrase:
/DDD AF#A / B(breath)B AF#A / where the breath takes the place of one of the eighth-notes.
Then the note-values could be lengthened, in effect removing cuts/pats to get the “long note” type of variation:
/DDD A2D / B2d A2D / etc etc.
Note that none of these variations are melodic variations in the jazz sense, those based on scales and arpeggios, which I would rarely or ever use. Scale-based would be:
/DDD AGF# / BAG AGF# / and arpeggio-based:
/ DDD AF#D / BGD AF#D / or /DDD ADF# / BDG ADF# / etc.
The interchangeable nature of ITM is revealed when you see that any of the second bars given above can be used as the first bar for the second part of Kid On The Mountain for example.
Superb and painstaking exposition, Pan - very helpful!
I haven’t tried all your suggested changes, but I do have to add my appreciation for an obviously time-intensive and thoughtful post. Wow.
Very nice.
Susan
I’ve used many of these strategies myself but have learned a few more. THANKS!
Wow, nice! This has given me a lot of good ideas. Thaks! 
VERY helpful! Thanks for taking the time to write this out.
First off, awesome.
Secondly, is there any possibility of an audio example, where we can perhaps here the variations and possibly get a better understanding? I’ve really been thinking about this concept since i saw you talk about it in the “depth versus breath” thread, and have been trying to do variations of the songs i know, but coming from a non ITM background and having onlybeen playing a little while i am not sure i totally understand.
Thanks for the positive input. It’s just how I was taught, and I thought one day, “what if there are people out there who weren’t taught this way?” So it’s passing on the stuff I got from my mentor. (He would actually curse at me if I played something the same way twice, if in a bad mood.)
About doing a video, I would like to do that, but I have no digital camcorder. I’m going to look into getting one. A lot of these things don’t make nearly as much sense on the page as they do when actually played.
Since posting this morning I’ve come up with a couple more variants.
If you play DAD instead of the initial cran, you could get the nice syncopated:
/ DAD ADA / BDB ADA / or even / DAD ADA / DBD ADA /
or the cran could be played twice in a row:
/ DDD DDD / BDD ADD / for a nice pipe-style thing.
Now one thing I didn’t mention is that in most tunes (if not all), there are certain phrases that Irish players like to vary, while other phrases are left pretty much alone. Listen to ten or twenty players playing the same tune, and this becomes clear. This phrase in Sean Bui is the one that seems to call out for variation.
Another thing, there are numerous ways of playing various crans and cran-like figures on the initial beat of Sean Bui and these would bring a number of other possible ways of playing the first two bars into action. All told, it would be possible to play nothing but the first two bars for hours without having to exactly repeat yourself. Also, a phrase situation like AAA (or AF#A) occurs in many tunes and pretty much any variant given above will work in any tune where this occurs as long as the harmonic implication is D major. If the tune had an A minor feel, you would go down to E rather than D or F# in most cases.
Seriously, if you put together a video on this it would be an amazing lesson for us all! But your write up, even if I barely understand ABC, is helpful in its own right.
Hi
But there’s nothing wrong with doing an MP3 while you wait to get the video stuff figured out…
Regards,
Owen Morgan
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I concur. If this board has a resource section or FAQlike document, I move that the OP be archived there.
Very nice…it’s good to see a topic covered that I haven’t seen anywhere else, especially since I’m just starting to get interested in doing variations in my tunes.
I do variations all of the time… just not on purpose. LOL
I would recommend putting the ABC notation in an ABC editor and printing out the notes. It may be easier to see some of these ideas a bit better. Of course, a recording would also be nice.
…john
P.S. Pan, I ran into Pat (of the Baksheesh Boys) Sunday. He was very complimentary of you and was grateful for his start with the kaval(s). He was playing both Macedonian and Bulgarian kavals at the Macedonian church picnic in Whittier.
Been thinking a bit more about this stuff…
Take the first bar of the 2nd part of Banish Misfortune, which I usually hear played as follows:
/f#f#d dC#d/ where the initial f#f# represents a short roll on f#:
(cut)f#(pat)f#
Now, thinking of this phrase as merely:
/f#f#f# ddd/ in other words, a long roll on f# and a long roll on middle d, you could bring into play all of the types of variations I talked about above. But wait: f# is a special case on whistle, flute, and pipes due to the fact that f is, with c, the most commonly “inflected” notes. Infection is the term used by Brendan Breathnach for the tendency of certain notes to fluctuate between two pitches. On Irish wind instruments in D, the notes usually inflected are f and c, which often alternate between natural and sharp. To apply inflection to this bar, you might end up with the postponed roll, but the lower note being an f natural:
/ff#f# dC#d/ with the initial ff#f# being f(cut)f#(pat)f#. The middle d could, and often is, treated similarly, giving:
/ff#f# C#dd/ .
Another factor is that traditionally middle d was not rolled on pipes, flute, or whistle. Where a fiddle would play a long roll on d, the wind players would normally play dC#d or oftentimes insert a “triplet” making it dBC#d. Nowadays however it’s common to do roll-equivalent figures on middle d on all the Irish wind instruments.
The uilleann pipe chanter has a tone-hole for E flat/D sharp, so you will often hear pipers “inflect” e in like manner to f and C. An example would be the first four bars of the 2nd part of Banish Misfortune:
/ff#f# dC#d/ ff#f# agf#/ d#ee CBC/d#ee gf#e/ etc. I often borrow these “pipe-isms” when playing whistle, half-holeing the d#.
This post confirms what I was thinking after your first (it wasn’t 100% clear them because I don’t know that tune) – our instincts for variation run along somewhat different lines. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!)
I’d consider the basic form that bar to be /f#2d dc#d/, without the short roll, and my default instinctive variation would be to bend up to the f# starting on the eighth note before the bar with a cut to mark the downbeat. I can see treating the bar as a logical f# long roll followed by a d long roll, but that would be pretty low on my list of things to do. If I wanted to delay the d like that, I’d probably just take a breath after the f#2 (so /f#2- dc#d/).
Thinking about it a bit further, I don’t know how likely I’d be to do these in practice, but nice variations that occur to me are shifting the d ahead by making it /f#dd dc#d/, borrowing the first beat of the first part to make it /f#ed dc#d/, or even maybe /f#ed c#de/.
Making the second beat c#dd would not occur to me in a thousand years…
Making that initial f# a quarter-note falls under the sorts of “long note” variation (variations created by leaving out rolls) I talked about in the initial post. In the main, the “rule” in jigs and reels is that the tunes progress by an unbroken series of eighth-notes except when taking breaths. Any note longer that an eighth-note has to have SOMETHING done to it: bending, some breath emphasis, anything. Can be quite subtle, often too subtle to appear in a transcription. It’s the hallmark of a non-native player, in the main, to leave solid plain quarter-notes hanging in the air.
Your scalewise variations are of the sort that I mention towards the bottom of the initial post: variations based on scales and arpeggios.
I say again, great stuff, Pan - mostly obvious if you think about it, but most of us don’t - so having it laid out systematically is very useful, if only as a prompt to think about it!
I cannot off the cuff back this up with examples, but I suspect Pan’s eschewing of scale/arpeggio type variation is a little unusual. I think the way different (people’s/region’s) versions of the same tunes often have their variance in just that kind of detail is suggestive that there is nothing “wrong” or “untraditional” about varying one’s interpretations in that manner. Hornpipes most especially lend themselves to that kind of thing. I’m sure one could quite quickly find recordings of respected, thoroughly traditional figures who use melodic variation of that kind, not just ornament type variation - though sometimes the dividing line between what is an ornament and what is the “plain” melody can be hard to say, especially given the integral nature of ornamention-as-articulation in ITM.
I certainly use bits of both “ways” and I think they are equally valid, in so far as I think it is relevant to make a distinction. I also sometimes do bits of harmony variation - parallel thirds or whatever - in a session or band context, obviously - not much point solo! Tut, tut!
If you listen to older ITM players, quarter notes in jigs and reels are very common. It’s true that they’re usually strong notes, so they get a bit of emphasis, but that just makes their quarter-note nature stand out more in the tune.
As an example with this tune, look and listen to Willie Clancy’s Banish Misfortune. The transcription is full of quarter notes. A few of them sound like they should have been transcribed as short rolls, but most of them are either quarter notes bent within an inch of their lives, or just plain quarter notes.
I guess you can argue in circles forever about which is the “real” version of the tune and which is the variation. But it sure sounds to me like Clancy thought of this tune as having a lot of quarter note - eighth note patterns, many of which he then did something to vary.
If anybody is really interested, I can provide a number of examples of Peter Horan doing exactly that sort of thing. IMO, it is much more prominent in his playing than most of the sort of variations Pan has spent most of his time talking about so far. (One of my favorite examples – the second time through the B part of one tune, Horan routinely changes the two bar phrase /dcdB AFFF/AFBF AFFF/ for /dcdB ADFB/ADFB ADFA/.)
Edited to add – on the other hand, I don’t think these are usually off-the-cuff variations for Horan, for what’s that worth. They are things he’s played for decades.