It does depend on your definition, I would class most as intermediate but with the note that they all have something that is dearly lacking from anything I have heard posted here or on C&S and that is lift and phrasing, that natural understanding and grace they got from the way they learned and from being around good players. The elder players of the group, Brid’s advanced students, would have the same proficiency Brid has herself, minus maybe what comes with years of experience and life. I do remember one occasion nine or so years ago where I played with Brid and her eldest daughter, then six or seven, sat in with us. I particularly remember playing Humours of Lissadell and The Reel of Mullinavat which she had to the note as her mother had it.
Bingo. (Unless you had so-so musicians visiting from Ireland – it’s not like living over there automatically makes you an expert.)
Look. In 2000 I would have told you that of course I could play slides, they were easy and fun. My favorite was “Denis Murphy’s Slide”.
For years I believed I could play slides. The only hint I ever had to the contrary was once when a batch of dancers asked me to play a slide and then told me that what I played didn’t sound anything like a slide. In my arrogance I assumed they didn’t know what they were talking about – after all, I knew for sure that the tune I was playing was a slide, it said so right in the book I learned it from. And everyone I knew played slides just like I was playing this one. Maybe my tempo was wrong?
Then this spring, Steph was playing this really old Paddy Cronin recording she’d gotten her hands on. And this tune came on that sounded really familiar, but I couldn’t make heads or tails out of it – I couldn’t even figure out what sort of tune it was.
And then on the third time through, I placed it. It was good old “Denis Murphy’s Slide”. Only it was being played in authentic slide style. And damn, it didn’t sound anything like it did when I played it.
That was a huge eye-opening experience for me…
(BTW, I’m not trying to say that non-Irish cannot learn the music. If I thought so, I’d give up on it myself.)
Actually, on further consideration, it seems to me that part of the problem here is that there are two different areas of achievement here which are usually combined to much confusion. Hmmm… three areas, even.
- Proficiency with the whistle.
- Musicality in the ITM sense.
- Knowledge of tunes.
It’s quite possible to be good at one or two of these areas and be abysmal at the rest.
In these terms, what I’m trying to say is there are a lot of players around here that achieve areas 1 & 3 without ever getting past first base on area 2. Whereas the kids Peter is talking about probably have a nearly instinctive understanding of area 2 from growing up with the real music all around them.
Thank you all for making me feel better or at least not alone in this endeavor. I’ve been at it, to varying degrees, for years and although fun it so difficult to learn this music. I started late in life and was not around the music and the players to soak it up. I have an excellent sense of rhythm (more attuned probably to what I grew up with - soul R&B, rock), but in trying to get what Peter refers to as the phrasing and the lift, there are times I feel hopeless. At times I think I’m really cooking and teacher’s stare belies “what was that staccato crap”? Part of the trick here I believe is to get my natural sense of rhythm harnessed to what is needed here. Usually fun and endlessly challenging, but once in awhile a tad disheartening.
Philo
It should have been an ear-opening experience. Your story is an illustration of the fact that the Music cannot be learned from a book. If you had learned Dennis Murphy’s slide by ear 7 years ago, you would have been able to play it then. It’s not harder to play the right way than it is to play the wrong way. People would not find it the music difficult to learn if they didn’t think that as beginners they understand how the music should or can be learned. If all the good ITM players say “learn by ear” there’s probably a reason for it. (This is a general point, and not addressed to you Sol.)
And it’s never too late. Es irrt der Mensch solang er strebt. Start listening and learning by ear today. Embrace intermediacy. Get in touch with your inner Denis Murphy.
PS. I agree there is a distinction between learning the Music (can only be done by ear, takes time & dedication) and learning a tune (may be fairly quick and straightforward, once you have the Music).
there’s really 3 or 4 different threads and topics going on here…
One can have proficiency on an instrument.
One can have proficiency in a style of music.
One can be technically good in either.
One can honestly play music.
All of these can be exclusive, or you could be lucky (talented?) and have them all.
I don’t play ITM on the whistle, I use the whistle in whatever I feel it sounds good with. I also don’t play “traditional” (whatever the heck that means) music on the mountain dulcimer or hammered dulcimer, I play whatever I feel sounds good on them. I took 8 years of piano lessons growing up.
I can do the technical aspects correctly on the instruments. I can do what is termed “advanced” techniques on the mountain dulcimer. Whistle is my “weakest” instrument, but I still get what I’m looking for out of it.
But I had to train my ear to HEAR things such as harmonies, dynamics, phrasing, etc. and figure out the ways to apply that to my playing. Seeing them in print just doesn’t work for me (and, as I said, I had 8 years of piano - I know how to read music and scores).
I very rarely take workshops anymore. Unless it’s teaching some technique (and not just tunes) I don’t want to do it. We also don’t teach repetoire - we teach technique (although, of course, we will use tunes to get the technique across).
So - what would I rank my playing as? I don’t know - it’s just ME.
I don’t fully agree with this, here’s why:
Plenty of folks learn tunes by ear, from recordings, and don’t sound a bit like the recording. That is to say, they can pick up the notes, but not the nuance. And, if one doesn’t already “know” how to play with proper lift and rhythm, then it often isn’t learned by listening to and learning tunes from good recordings. There’s plenty of evidence to this effect on clips and snips and whistle this (which is not meant as a slight to anyone)
I believe the reason for this phenomenon has to do with the way the brain processes information. If one looks, for example, at what happens when people with no art training attempt to learn to draw, the vast majority simply are unable to make realistic drawings, eventhough everything needed to do so is right before their eyes. It is not that they lack the physical skill sets, it is that they simply are unable to perceive things as they truly are - studies on the brain and perception have proven this out. Place a real person as a model in front of most (untrained) would be artists, and ask them to draw an eye, what you will typically get is a drawing of the symbol of eye, from memory, rather than a realistic drawing. In the end, it is only by being led through a series of exercises, that students seem able to learn the the ability to “See” what is right in fron of them. (For some very intersting reading on the subject, and information on where to find indepth research info, find the latest edition of “Drawing on the right side of the brain” by Betty Edwards)
Likewise, I believe most people who do not grow up around a ITM, or Blues, or whatever, will rarely be able to grasp and reproduce all the nuance of these musics based on listening to recordings and learning tunes by ear alone. The brain isn’t going to hear what it isn’t listening for, if you see what I mean - that is to say, it’s only going to perceive what it is used to hearing, and not much more. So, some guidance from from an instructor or acquaintance who really does have the music down, is going to be necessary, in addition to listening and learning tunes by ear, because the learner will need someone to say “No, that does not sound right. I understand that the way you are playing it sounds the same to you but it is not the same. You need to put the rhythmic emphasis here not there, you need to take a breath after one, not after 4, of the previous bar, listen, here’s what you are doing… now listen again to the way it should be played… can you hear the difference?” etc
Loren
I thought c&sn is dominated by people learning from sheet music. Perhaps not. But I do think that if you learn by ear consistently and for a while exclusively it’s impossible to bungle things in a really painful way.
I believe the reason for phenomenon has to do with the way the brain processes information. If one looks, for example, at what happens when people with no art training attempt to learn to draw, the vast majority simply are unable to make realistic drawings, even though every thing needed to do so is right before there eyes. It is not that they lack the physical skill sets, it is that they simply are unable to perceive things as they truly are - studies on the brain and perception have proven this out. Place a real person as a model in front of most (untrained) would be artists, and ask them to draw an eye, what you will typically get is a drawing of the symbol of eye, rather than a realistic drawing. In the end, it is only by being led through a series of exercises, that students seem able to learn the the ability to “See” what is right in fron of them. (For some very intersting reading on the subject, and information on where to find indepth research info, find the latest edition of “Drawing on the right side of the brain” by Betty Edwards)
I don’t think the visual-arts example transfers to music, but perhaps it’s just that I am not talking about random population samples but a self-selected group of at least rudimentary musicality.
Likewise, I believe most people who do not grow up around a ITM, or Blues, or whatever, will rarely be able to grasp and reproduce all the nuance of these musics based on listening to recordings and learning tunes by ear alone. The brain isn’t going to hear what it isn’t listening for, if you see what I mean - that is to say, it’s only going to perceive what it is used to hearing, and not much more. So, some guidance from from an instructor or acquaintance who really does have the music down, is going to be necessary, in addition to listening and learning tunes by ear, because the learner will need someone to say “No, that does not sound right. I understand that the way you are playing it sounds the same to
you > but it is not the same. You need to put the rhythmic emphasis > here > not > there> , you need to take a breath after one, not after 4, of the previous bar, listen, here’s what you are doing… now listen again to the way it should be played… can you hear the difference?” etc
Loren
I agree that it’s immensely helpful to hear someone say “wow, that was just amazing!” when you heard nothing in the music, or cringe when you thought it sounded just fine. Taste is formed that way. I also agree that there somethings that you won’t get without having grown up where the music lives, just like there are something second-language speakers can’t get. But that “something” is the dusting of powdered sugar on the cherry on the frosting on the cake. You can get ther 98% of the way through listening and practicing and listening and immersing yourself and practicing and listening. Lots of perfectly beautiful musicians coming from outside Ireland (or the parts of Ireland where the music is still a part of life). Most of them won’t be Paddy Canny, but then most Irish-born musicians aren’t Paddy Canny either.
From your description of what you play, this question wouldn’t make much sense. It sounds like you know what you want to do and are doing it.
If you’re aiming to play a traditional music, or jazz or classical, there are clear norms of good performance and ways of telling how close you are to achieving them. I don’t know what you would count as traditional; I’d have to know a bit more about where your family came from. But I can tell genuine old-timey mountain music when I hear it and I can tell the watered-down, smoothed out, modern ersatz mountain music when I hear it. I can tell genuine blues from something superfically bluesy and genuine jazz from easy-listening, Kenny Gee-style, pseudo jazz. Likewise, I’m getting much better at telling ITM from Irish tunes played inauthentically. Obviously, with each of these distinctions, the genuine trails off gradually into the less genuine. I don’t think there is anything evil about people wanting to play music I call watered down; my choice of phrase reflects my own values heavily. I do think it is futile to insist you are playing one thing when you are aiming at playing another. So, to use an example that I face, do I play Irish tunes bush-band style or Irish style or (much harder) whichever way suits the occasion? It just seems obvious that I should know what I’m aiming for and how close I am to achieving it. (When I’m playing rock or pop, this question of authenticity doesn’t arise of course.)
I dunno, Colomon. I think it’s kind of weird that you would assume that because those chaps from Ireland didn’t sound phenomenally better than my local session that either 1) I was too inexperienced to know better or 2) those chaps from Ireland sucked. Especially without having ever heard that session. Especially when folks like Turlach Boylan and EJ Jones played pretty regularly at that session (EJ’s band Clandestine is one of the few bands from the USA invited to play at the Festival Interceltique de Lorient).
That assumption is exactly what I mean about over-hyping those chaps from Ireland.
I’ve been at this whistling thing 11 years now. I went through a phase where my playing was pretty poor, and I’ve improved it. I had that same great shock of finding out what I’d learned and the the difference from the way people really played it when I first started going to session.
I still don’t buy that 90% of North American players are raw beginners compared to the average Irish Joe, and that there’s some sublime nature to the music that’s nearly impossible to attain even after years of study just to get out of beginner status. That sounds like a bunch of hype to me. It sounds like the kind of thing I knew some guys would do with martial arts back when I trained nearly daily: romanticize it to the point of mythical status. I just don’t think it’s like that in real life.
I also don’t listen to Clips and Snips or WhistleThis and think “gee, most of North American players must suck based on this.” I think those sites probably don’t represent most of NA players. I also think those sites probably aren’t representative of a player’s actual ability. I know that when I record, my playing always sucks due to nerves..even after all this time. (By the same token, I was totally thumb-fingered when I met Ava a few weeks ago, for the same reason).
Some of the guys I’ve met here in Dallas have also been pretty great players. I certainly wouldn’t put them in the “rank beginner” category.
Bloomfield,
There’s no reason the visual arts examples shouldn’t apply, as it’s a matter of brain function - the brain filtering and altering info being fed from the senses, and there’s lot’s of research out there to prove this.
With regards to plenty of folks outside of Ireland learning to play the music well: Yes, of course, those who are able to do so, are able because they had access to one or more people who knew the music. Show me 6 folks who play ITM really beautifully who haven’t had access to one or more really lovely players.
Loren
I understand what you’re saying Wombat, but then I would think you are answering the question (what level you are) by saying what level of playing a particular type of music, NOT by saying what level you are at playing a particular instrument.
That’s what I was trying to say - that I see several different, but related, questions going on in this thread.
I think you’re missing the point a bit here. If I had learned by ear from this particular recording I would have been a lot better off. But at that point in time, my collection of recordings had few, if any, properly done recordings of slides, and all but perhaps one person I knew played them incorrectly. And I had no way of knowing which players and recordings were right and which were wrong. When I played slides wrongly, it fit in perfectly with all the players I played with every week.
And Loren is right as well. If all you had to do was learn by ear, I’d be golden now, as that has been my primary mechanism for learning tunes for years. But the problem is, if you don’t know what to listen for, you cannot be at all assured you can hear it. I’m highly suspicious, for instance, that there are subtleties in jigs which I do not properly play yet, even in the jigs I have learned by ear from great traditional players.
I think you’re right on both counts.
I don’t think we’ve lost focus though, even if there are different questions in play here. I think the original question does run together these different issues and in ways that can lead to pointless debate and needless hostility. I actually think we’ve gone a long way towards separating out the different issues involved and getting clear on how to answer them. So I think this is one of the more helpful threads we’ve had lately.
One more wee thing. Even if you can hear correctly all the nuances, that’s just a beginning, because you’ve still got to apply what you’ve heard. When my teacher plays the tunes I am trying to work on, I can hear the differences and I know where they occur, but it takes a bit of time to be able to properly do what he’s doing. Especially when he directs me not to worry about that but to focus on the lovely feel of the tune. 
Philo
I also don’t listen to Clips and Snips or WhistleThis and think “gee, most of North American players must suck based on this.” I think those sites probably don’t represent most of NA players. I also think those sites probably aren’t representative of a player’s actual ability. I know that when I record, my playing always sucks due to nerves..even after all this time.
I think you can listen to the recordings people post on sites like that and draw some conclusions as to what level of detail is present in the playing and from that draw conclusions regarding the understanding the player has of the music he or she is playing. I have heard for example Wanderer’s jig playing (most recently Calliope House on WhistleThis) and recording jitters aside I think there’s room to draw some conclusions as to what level of musical thinking we’re hearing in that recording and that ofcourse holds true for a lot of the submitted clips.
I also think there are conclusions to be draw from the differences I spot between the young teenagers I teach locally and the non natives that I’ve taught at the Willie Clancy week.
It’s safe to say you’re in for a hard job when learning not in the presence of people who really have this music. Also know from experience that when learning away from the epicentre of music you don’t really have a yardstick to measure the depth of what it is living traditional musicians have.
Having never been to Ireland, I have no idea how the average Joe there plays, and I don’t really care. I’m not trying to learn from the average Joe; I’m trying to learn from the best players there that interest me.
I have, on the other hand, gotten to lots of different sessions on this side of the Atlantic. I’m talking everything from sessions where everyone played from sheet music to high-powered sessions with multiple top professionals. I know that I am easily in the upper half of the players I’ve seen here. And when it comes to playing with a proper traditional style, I know I’m not nearly there yet.
So yeah, I feel very safe in saying a majority of North American players simply do not yet get it. (Doesn’t mean there are not phenomenal players around, of course.)
For my part…
I personally believe that swing, lift, yaya, groove or whatever you want to call it, isn’t something that can be learned. You either got it or you haven’t and no amount of listening is going to change that.
Someone without natural groove ability is not going to sound like someone with natural groove ability no matter how much they try, it will always sound put-on.
I know musicians, some of which class themselves as advance players, and technical wise their playing is certainly up there. But when they play they are soul-less automatons who f**k the beat with their egos rather than make love to the rhythm with their hearts. That i believe is the difference between an advanced player and an intermediate one. The advance player can seriously swing the music, firstly because they have a mastery of technique with the instrument with which to do so physically, a deep knowledge of the genre with which to understand the forms, and a powerful and natural sense of rhythm that combines it.
I personally believe that swing, lift, yaya, groove or whatever you want to call it, isn’t something that can be learned. You either got it or you haven’t and no amount of listening is going to change that.
I firmly believe this is directly related to how you learn your music. The children I referred to earlier, Brid’s pupils ALL have that lift she manages to transfer to them.