Can someone enlighten me a bit about this concept of ‘versions’ of tunes. I’ve been asked on several occassions now what version of a tune I just played. I find myself not really being able to answer other than to say for example that I heard it from Seamus Ennis, but I also read some dots and now I add my own variations here and there.
I realise also that ‘version’ could mean, say, the difference between the Liam O’Flynn/Ennis four part Kid on the Mountain vs the usual 5 part tune, but, just because a couple of musicians happen to record a tune that way at one point in time, or that on thesession.org there may be submitted multiple instances of a particular tune, each one different in a number of ways, is that then meant to become a ‘version’, hereafter set in stone and therefore we have to be able to quote explicitly what version we prefer to play?
Unless I’m mistaken it is my understanding that a tune as played in Irish traditional music is meant to not be played the same each time, that the piper or whoever is meant to add their own flavour to it, that when for instance Pat Mitchell noted down the dots to Willie Clancy playing whatever tune, that that was one particular instance of that tune at one point in time and that whenever Willie Clancy played that tune subsequently, it was most likely not the same as in the ‘dots’.
A tune is, for me, the sum of the possible ways of playing it, that folks in the tradition generally would still recognise as ‘the tune’.
But I think there may be a different problem here if you are being asked on several occasions what version of the tune you are playing. If you were asked that in Ireland, people would be, in effect, saying that you were playing it wrong. I think there may be a number of ways of playing a tune right, but probably many more of playing it wrong.
And I think there’s a clue there in your comment that you “read […] dots and […] add [your] own variations here and there.” If you’re learning tunes from the dots, particularly if they’re well known tunes, then, in my experience, you’re likely to be playing them wrong*. Also, I’m not sure how experienced you are and where you are in your playing, but adding your own variations is fraught with danger unless you really know what you’re doing - maybe you’re varying a little much; straying too far from the tune itself. It’s often better, in my opinion, to copy little bits of variations from known, accepted players in the tradition. That has the double benefit of helping your own playing and provoking in other players some knowing, and generally satisfying, nods of the head, rather than questions of provenance.
Another approach, especially if you have experienced players in your session (I have been, all along, assuming that you are referring to playing in sessions) is to learn the way others in your session play the tunes. Learn the tunes they play, and learn how they play them.
… and it really is difficult to define “wrong”. It’s better thought of as “whatever isn’t right”.
What I mean is, I’ve been playing pipes for over 20 years, and many of my tunes I learnt from listening to other pipers - Rowsome, Clancy etc. I rarely rely on dots as the be all and end all.
By varying a tune, I mean no more than Clancy does (how could I do more, he is a master after all), in that I change the way I play a succession of notes, or change from a low D in one time through to a back D the next time through stuff like that. See my vid here for how I like to add variations within my tune:
Yes, in sessions, but not exclusively. Other times by individuals in non-session contexts. Usually in the context of, for example, ‘do you play the (Clancy) version, or the (Doran) version?’. I usually answer I heard it from (Clancy), but that doesn’t mean Clancy always played it like that so I’m no limiting myself to that one instance of an example.
I was asked what version of Morning Thrush I was playing. I don’t know. I heard Ennis play it, I read some dots, when we play it in a session, the way I play it is not in anyway at major variance to the way others play it, but still another person wanted to know what verison I was playing.
In addition, when I played a new tune at a session, others wanted to learn it too and I was asked again, what version is it. All I could say was I heard it from such an such a piper.
I think of it like this: Version is the scaffolding. Style is the detail. Compare the common setting of The Frieze Britches (e.g., that recorded by Planxty) with those recorded by Pat Mitchell. These are all versions. How you play a tune would be the style. You could play a Donegal version of a tune in a west Clare style, but it is still the Donegal version (try Donegal and Clare versions of The Yellow Tinker played back-to-back). A setting is somewhere in between, I suppose.
I listened to your Morning Thrush, which was mostly lovely - just one little slip in rhythm, but we all do that from time to time. Your playing of The West Wind is a bit shakier, and also different from any other playing of it that I’ve heard. And that leads me to ask the question: where did you get it? It sounds odd in one or two places. Is that what’s happening when people ask?
No time to listen to more now, but nice sound overall.
As for The West Wind, I heard it from Willie Clancy, track 19 on ‘The Gold Ring’. Needless to say I’m not trying to copy him note-for-note, and I play it A,B,C / A, B,C , whereas he plays only 2 parts the first two times round then on the third time round he plays all three parts - A,B/A,B/A,B,C. I guess that his version of it.
hahaha…yes a few curly bits there. I recorded it unrehearsed and a first take, hence the shaky bits. I’ve had people ask even when I haven’t yet played the tune. For example,
"Do you play the … jig?
“Yes”
“What version?”
“I don’t know. It goes like this”…
I don’t think there was anything strange in the West Wind, except for some obvious variation on the common version of it.
Possibly interesting to note that most people play it as a straight forward three part reel. Clancy only introduced the third part after playing the first two parts twice. Doing so he closely followed two fiddle players who were recorded playing in Doolin by a local man, Joe Vaughan, during the early sixties. A lot of the Miltown musicians had copies of Vaughan’s tapes and lifted tunes from them. I also have a (n early) recording of (if I remember correctly) Paddy Fahey treating the tune very closely to those two fiddle players and introducing the third part later on in the playing.
That sounds like the sort of thing that happens when there are radically different “versions” of tunes, with the same title - eg Toss the Feathers. Then they’re checking which one everyone’s going to play. Makes a kind of sense. Normally, I just play, if I’m leading off a set, and let people work it out. Or, there’s the snippets technique - which is more helpful than just names where there are effectively different tunes called by the same name.
More seriously, does anyone seriously play a tune note for note, variation for variation, exactly as - insert name of famous player here - on one recording? I hope not.
I would go as far as saying. “I learned from X” (that is if I remember where I learned it, which might not be the case if it’s one I’ve been playing for a long time). Is it X’s version? Who knows?
My experience is like Ben’s. When someone has said, “That’s an interesting version of The Flax in Bloom. Where did you learn that?” it is often a backhanded of way saying, “You’re playing it wrong.”
Or Seamus Ennis - I have at least two different versions of this tune by him. His are much closer to the dots in O’Neill’s than the others, by coincidence or otherwise.
my op fwiw, is that: it becomes a “version” (as much as anything CAN be in an aurally transmitted body of work where improvisation & regional variation is expected) when a top flyte piper’s rendition is widely imitated.
otoh, Critique of rank & file pipers who develop their own arrangements can range from nodding acceptance, to complete rejection.
To further complicate authentication of “pure” versions, things that were transcribed (prior to recordings) were often unidiomatic for the uilleann pipe (written for flute, fiddle or some such thing), so early recordings by pipers are generally accepted as being as good as manuscripts for sourcing, even if the case may be that they were making it up as they went along.
This whole idea of recording folksongs before they die out has been around for …oh, almost 100 years. Musicologically, once a tune from one village is learned and sung in the next village, its authenticity is negated. & to quote Peter Barnes in his English country dance book, “the greater the distance between participants in an activity and that activity’s country of origin, the less innovation in that activity they will stand for.”
So imho youre completely covered in saying you picked it up from a record & added your own flair to it. (As long as youre not dipping into reggae, dubstep, metal or something jk)
Authenticity of tune source, for me, is more important in terms of scholastic research & cataloging than it is in contemporary performance practice. It’s poetic and charming to tell an audience (unless its a roomfull of pipers or trad musicians), "I got this tune from so & so, who got it from so & so, in county here or there, on a fine summers day.. etc.. ", so long as the genre (which has been circumspectly defined by scholastic research) is competently represented.
I 'll be ducking for cover now
You just can’t win. We’re supposed to ultimately make the tune our own and continue the tradition of making our own variations - make it a “playground”, as one person put it - but people are often so imprinted with the settings they learned that it’s hard for them not to think of the ones they play as being definitively canonical, and so make comment. Of course, there’s comment, and then there’s comment. Once at a session I was playing something I had just learned off of somebody - Michael Cooney, I think it was - and the fluter next to me gave a sidelong glance and said, “Well. That’s a very idiosyncratic version.” You don’t soon forget a remark like that, but what did I know? It was exactly the tune as I had just learned it, and had never heard other versions before.
Like the tune, I don’t recall my response either now, but I like to think I would have answered, “Maybe you should call Cooney and tell him; he might want to know he’s pushing it.”
Just to clarify further. Mine have generally been positive queries, of the sort where I am asked about what version it was and then interest shown in how I played my B part for example with an aim to learn it themselves. But still it comes down to not really knowing the answer (is it the Donegal version played in the Willie Clancy style version??) other than it’s from a (Rowsome) recording. So I guess the answer it 'it’s the (Leo Rowsome version).
Not sure I’m familiar with the ‘snippets technique’.
Yeah, I guess so long as you’re in a solo situation, you are free to play a tune however you like, and if you have enough chutzpah, even try doing things completely unexpected. You’ve created your own version and you’ll get one of a number of reactions - rejection or imitation or something in between, the imitation bit depending on your prior credentials I guess as a bona fide piper in the eyes of others.
So in reality, to attempt to answer my own question now, it seems this notion of ‘versions’ is really quite fluid. For every ‘accepted’ version, there are probably dozens and dozens of individual musicians’ versions that others might deem ‘wrong’, but in the end, as others have noted, what exactly is ‘wrong’? except that one particular way (I’ll not say version here) of playing a tune is not the ‘way’ it is played in a particular session context, but possibly quite acceptable in another.
At the same time, each one of these ways of playing a tune is also not meant to be set in stone as individual variation within the tune is a major component of the art of Irish music, isn’t it?
I think therefore that some people may be in error when they hear a few bars of variation by an individual and think it is therefore a different version of the tune, not undertanding that that individual may never play it like that again, but next time introduce a different variation and so on and so forth.
Maybe some discussion in cultural or regional differences to be had. I can’t recall coming across anyone genuinely interested in where I learned “my” version of a tune or giving a toss whether it was from Clancy or McGoldrick or the dodgy session down the road. As I said, when I have been asked about an idiosyncratic version I have played, it is a polite way of saying, “You really should have another listen to that, dude.” Though such criticism can be deflected with the caveat, “I dunno… I just make them up,” which translates to, “Yeah, I probably did learn this/play this wrong but can I really be bothered to do anything about it?” Or once can simply say, “It’s a variation. Get lost (while having a listen to John Carty).” Seriously, you’re surely supposed to play variations that at least appear semi-spontaneous and, hopefully, clever and well considered, are you not? Is that not the point of achieving a certain level of competency with this music? In which case, they will be your variations. Not Clancy’s or Ennis’ or McGoldrick’s or your session mate’s.
The ‘snippet’ technique is where you play a snippet of a tune at a session in order to see if someone else knows it or to announce, “Lets play – – and then – <snippet.>” My reference was to a classic session.org thread from about three years ago, which I still think is comic gold.
The Frieze Breeches is included as No 1051 in O’Neill’s Music of Ireland (the “1850”) and as No 260 in The Dance Music of Ireland, 1001 Gems. It’s identical in the two collections. As far as I know O’Neill didn’t include it elsewhere, in any other published collection.
Ahh…which is what I’m getting at…An Draighean says he has ‘two different versions’ by Ennis but (both?) are close to the O’Neill dots - of which there is only one entry - ie, one version. So in actual fact, they aren’t different ‘versions’ but rather the same ‘verison’ but recorded by Ennis on two separate occassions in which he added different variations. And if he were to record that same version again 3, 4 or 5 or so on times, the variations within that version would be different - which is to be expected because that is the fluid nature of Irish music? So it could be that when I’m asked about my ‘version’ people should really be asking about my variations?
jk)
