Being a noob and a “MUST HAVE IT NOW” type of person. I am curious as to when some of you started trying to add ornamitation to your tunes? I can play airs by listening to them and I chose to leave off the ornimitation on them to practice fingering, breath control, etc.
Hi FF,
Listen to lots of Irish music and you’ll learn it subconsciously. Then it’ll seem natural in cerain places.
The one obvious spot is when two identical notes follow each other. Rather then tongue to distinguish the notes you can use a cut or tap.
MR
I pretty much ornamented from the beginning without thinking about it (just simple cuts and the occasional trill at first), because I didn’t learn from a book originally, and so just copied what I was hearing on my records. I’m also a singer, so I’ve always had kind of a “feel” for where an ornament might work in a tune. Best advice is to listen to a lot of Irish music, to get that “feel,” and then add ornaments when you start to feel a need for them.
Redwolf
Learn the different types of ornaments/articulations as separate exercises, working on getting them to sound right before you begin to try incorporating them into tunes. Otherwise, you’ll have some difficult habits to break later.
You’re probably better off learning the tunes unornamented before you work on sticking them in. They’ll throw off your rhythm if you haven’t developed that to some degree. Listen to a lot of music to get the idea of how they are supposed to work. Ornamentation shouldn’t disrupt the rhythm; rather, it should emphasize it.
Tony
Tony is right. Additionally, something that has helped me lately is to practice out the bad habit of raising your fingers too high above the whistle. Your fingers are much more likely to hit their targets from a height of 1 cm that from a height of 6 or 7 cm.
Omigosh, now Tony is bleeding from the head – the stitches must not have held!
This is a HUGE huge, not easily answered.
Apart from listening to lots and lots of Irish music, I think that the best way to learn ornamentation without a teacher is by using a good book. Bill Ochs’ or LE Mc Cullough’s tutors are excellent. Grey Larsen’s new, huge tome is superb, but perhaps not for a beginner. Follow the lessons and tunes in the tutors, and you will get a feel for the ornaments, how they are played, and when to add them.
If we’re talking about Irish trad music here, I think the very idea of “ornamentation” as something you “add” is unhelpful.
On the whistle, some devices that are commonly referred to as ornaments - “cuts” and “taps” for example - are, to my mind, simply part and parcel of the way you make Irish dance music sound good on your instrument.
Obviously as you progress there is more complex stuff that you start to add (until you reach a point where you start taking it out again 
). So you could make a case for saying that these things are, to some extent, merely ornaments or decorations.
But not cuts and taps - these at least are part of the basic vocabulary of the language. So I think they should be learned almost as soon as you pick up the whistle, and incorporated as you learn tunes from a good source.
Hey Steve, you forgot about the most important ornament in irish music: tonguing!
Stevie, I agree. I don’t like calling even taps and cuts “ornaments”. This stuff came into (or with) the music because of the types of instruments used. Sometimes it’s difficult to get a clean hit on a note, especially second octave on uilleann pipes, but you have similar problems on poorly made whistles too. So the answer is to pop it a bit. And of course you can’t play GHP without some grace notes. Again, it’s a limitation of the instrument. Also, when playing by ear you sometimes hit a wrong note before the correct one (a tap or cut) and sometimes you flub it twice (a roll). Some of my best-sounding rolls came out this way. I’d say to any newbee, just play the tune. We’re not talking about an art form here, IMHO. As one of our session players said the other night, “it’s FOLK music dammit”. (Her new years resolution had not kicked in at that time).
I think it’s pure rubbish and an underestimation of the abilities of players to call ebellishments [if you prefer that term] the fruit of faulty playing.
‘We’re not talking about an artform here’ you say. Speak for your own playing and not for those in whose hands this music is an art form and a pretty intricate one at that.
Mongoose, do I understand you to mean that ornamentation (specifically, cuts and taps) came about as the result of mistakes? I learned cuts and taps as specific movements added to the basic tune - and at this point find I put them in without thinking about it. I wouldn’t think they were simply flubs that have now become an accepted part of the sound of the music.
Susan
(oops - Peter and I must have been typing at the same time)
My impression was that Mongoose wasn’t saying that ornamentation came about BECAUSE of mistakes, but rather that often a mistake can be turned into an ornament with no one the wiser. I know I’ve used that trick a time or two!
I agree, however, that there is definitely an art to this kind of music. Yes, it’s “folk” music, but I don’t see how that excludes it from being an art form. I’ve been a folk musician for a lot of years, and I’ve heard both the good and the bad…and the best folk musicians are, in my opinion, artists of the first order.
Redwolf
I hope we won’t take Mongoose’s
comment in a grimly serious way in
which it probably wasn’t meant.
About ornaments–I think it’s good
to be careful. Often less is more, and it’s
good to let the tune speak for itself,
using ornaments sparingly.
Often ornaments are helpful
playing a tune a second or third
time through, to vary it and make it
interesting. Ornaments are actually
pretty powerful, and a little can
go a long way.
Also when one is learning, it’s easy
to use ornaments when one hasn’t the
fingering down quite yet. I’ve found that
in many places where I was ornamenting
‘subconsciously,’ if I didn’t ornament I
couldn’t play the tune, which is why
I was ornamenting. I try not to ornament
on ‘autopilot.’
I do think it’s good to actually think about
whether to ornament at a particular place,
which to use, and why one is using it.
Grey has a helpful theory here, though
I expect there are exceptions to it.
I’ve found it helpful, anyhow
I suppose in the broadest sense ITM is art. It’s art in the way that cooking is art. But it’s not art in the way that sculpting granite is art.
There are some great musicians here on C&F and Peter is one of them, and I respect his opinion. I just happen not to agree. I think it’s the nature of the artisan to view his work as art, especially when he gets to be very very good at it.
Putting a few chirpy bits into a tune is wonderful, but (as they say) IS IT ART?
(For the record, I’ve been playing for 2 years and I suck at it.)
I’d say the playing of Willie Clancy, Tommy Peoples, or Seamus Ennis is art in the way that the playing of Paganini, Glenn Gould, or Pablo Casals is art. If you listen to the masters of Irish traditional music you’ll find depth of expression, creativity, and technical mastery, just as you would in classical music (or sculpting, writing, choroegraphy). There are differences between traditional music and classical music, of course; but one being art and the other not being art is not one of the differences.
I won’t go on, because if for you it’s about “putting chirpy bits into a tune”, you haven’t lived.
Well, you do mean it, so I’ll express my
opinion which is that ITM is an artform,
pure and simple,
and ornamenting is an art.
But I don’t see ITM as
self-consciously an artform,
(Vladimir Horowitz and
the New York Philharmonic
in tuxedos),
it isn’t ‘high brow’ art, but
largely of the people.
No accident, however, that
some of the most beautiful
melodies in classical music
come from folk music. Best
I recently saw a DVD of Glenn Gould performing
the Goldberg Variations, by the way,
shortly before he died. It was so beautiful
that it was demonic, and Gould
was plainly playing from some
distant holy place. What a species! Best
Well, I have to say that Bloom has a point. Some of the great masters of ITM could quality as artists. Yes.
It’s like one of those issues where there’s a black area, a white area, and a huge gray area in between. Where some of us differ is on the shades.
And I’ll agree that some short and simple folk tunes are artwork in themselves.
Yes, chirpy bits. But, like the crinkly bits that Slarty Bartfast put around Norway, they add a lot.
enjoyed the comment jim stone! made good sense in toning things down abit! p.s. one thing i learned pretty early on is that, at times grace notes should be used sparingly. if not, sometimes the "tunes"can get lost in there!