Which Books are Best for Learning Session Tunes?

I dunno Col. I would rather see a dotted quarter in those places. After you have had the roll sound reinforced in your ears by various versions on cds etc., a basic jig triplet sounds wrong to my ears in key places on some of the popular jigs. Like the first two in Morrison for example. A difference in exposure…maybe you have heard more than me…

My first two bars of Morrison’s is almost completely different than LE’s, anyway. I almost always start with an E roll, followed by BEB, then EGB and finally back to the standard AFD. I think this is because I learned this distinctive version very early, and hardly ever play the tune anymore, as it is terribly overplayed and very unfashionable in these parts. These days my playing tends to use a lot more variation, and in jigs, I switch back and forth between three eighths, a roll, and other note combinations very interchangably.

On further reflection, I think using three eighths instead of rolls in a book aimed at beginners makes great sense. In practice, when I used this book regularly to learn tunes, I almost always substituted in rolls – but my ability to roll wasn’t really quite up to the demands I was placing on it, and my playing probably would have been quite noticably better had I played the tunes as written.

(Mind you, some bits in the book are just plain wrong, and many of the tune names seem non-standard – but that’s true of every traditional tune collection I’ve ever seen. 121 FIST is probably the most accurate one I’ve run into. And it’s a great collection of tunes – every time I get around to peeking in it again, I see a couple of tunes that I have recently learned were in there all along…)

I have L.E.'s book (121 FIST) and I only see 2 versions of each tune on the CDs, not 3. The two versions aren’t very different from one another in terms of speed, but the first version has Mr. McCullough announcing the title. This opens up another educational opportunity: play the CDs on your stereo in “randomize” mode, and learn to guess the tune names. Half the time you’ll be given a hint.

What I don’t like about the book is that all the recordings are very sedate, not just because of the slow speed but the style of play, accompaniment etc.

In the end, I agree that your best bet is to go to a local session and get a list of popular tunes there.

Caj

Noodling around on some jigs, I just thought of another thing in favor of writing out the eighths rather than indicating a roll. Sometimes the the middle note “should” be a step down (beginning of Kesh, for instance), and sometimes it should be two steps down (eg beginning of Lark in the Morning). If you write a roll there, you lose the information of which note to go down (or up) to.

Hiya I’m in the same position, so I have found a good session, and from session to session ask what tunes they are playing, go to the internet and either download or search abc or midi files then hopefully in future sessions I can join in, which I was able to do so this week. Keep to one session as the liklihood of the tunes appearing frequently will give you more confidence.

:roll:

I think the main problem with McCullough’s approach to rolls (in 121 FIST) isn’t even the way he notates them, though I disapprove of his notation. The problem is the way he plays “rolls” in the slow version of the tunes. He really plays eight-note+triplet. That can really ruin your playing stylistically, I think. On the fast version, he plays rolls as delayed rolls rather than straight rolls: daaaaahblabla instead of DaahBlahBlah. That is a stylistic choice I can respect, even though I prefer straight rolls (especially for beginners & intermediates). I’ve pretty much stopped using the 121 FIST, but if I do use it, I only use the “fast” versions. They’re still plenty slow to learn from.

Don’t forget the Virtual Session! Some great tunes, you can see the score, and you can play along. It’s at

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/r2music/folk/sessions/

As for learning by ear, I am always really simply amazed to hear it advocated in place of (contrast that with “along with”) sheet music.

Maybe the people I have known are peculiar; I don’t know. I do know that even among accomplished musicians for every one I have known who could pick a tune out of the ether just by listening, there have been ten who could not, but were still fine musicians–sometimes extremely accomplished–in their own right.

I am developing the ability to learn a tune in real time, but it’s an ongoing process, and there are some days I’m better at it than others. And you know what has helped me learn to do it more than anything else? Sightreading. That’s right: sheet music. I love to take something like O’Niells 1800 and sit down and just open it anywhere and start playing through the tunes.

You know why this works? Almost all trad tunes seem to be made out of the same common “building blocks.” Just as an example, how many reels can you think of off the top of your head, for instance, where an e-g-d alternation (pedal) is a cornerstone of the tune? The New Policeman, the Traveller, Trim the Velvet, Touch Me if You Dare, the Four Hand Reel, Glen Allen…and that’s just a few off the top of my head. There are many more.

My point to this unexpected rant of mine? Expecting a beginner or even an advanced intermediate player to be able to record the tunes at a fast session and then just go learn them seems really pretty out there to me. I think it’s a recipe for frustration, although I’ll grant you it’s probably an effective way to weed out all but the pathologically dedicated players.

What do I advocate?

It’s already been said, here in this thread, and in other places also: listen to the tunes while following on the sheet music. Listening is vital, because there is so much style and rhythm that just can’t be notated in this music. You can’t learn it without spending some quality time listening very attentively to it.

What the sheet music can help with is getting the notes down in the right order–and, later on when you’re past the beginning stages, looking at the sheet music can often show you the basic structure of the tune.

I think using the dots, along with your ears, makes the most sense and gets the tune under your fingers the fastest.

Sorry about the rant, folks…I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming…

–James

I started off with Irish music very much in the way you describe James, in my case hearing tunes on record and then looking for them in collections to try to get me started on the right note at least. So I very well appreciate that using dots can appear to speed up the process of acquiring tunes in the early stages.

But I still think that it makes very good sense to advocate learning by ear in place of sheet music. Why?

a) it will very soon liberate you from the need to find a written source before you can learn a tune

b) it will develop your ear in a way that using sheet music never can, making it easier for you to begin to “own” the tunes.

c) but to me the real clincher is not an argument but an observation. It comes from many years of teaching fiddle and whistle and following the progress of loads of people whom I haven’t taught starting out in Irish music.

I’ve not met a single player who continued to rely on sheet music who developed into a halfway decent player of Irish trad. Not one.

To put it another way, I’ve never met anyone I would call a good all-round player who didn’t learn mainly by ear. OTOH I have met many people who had never freed themselves of sheet music and remained mediocre to put it kindly. My experience may not amout to conclusive scientific proof but I don’t think this is a coincidence.

Let anyone use books if they think it helps them, but if they really want to develop in ITM, they’ll have to kick them sooner or later. Better sooner than later.

(Note, as I have also said before, sheet music becomes useful again once you know what you’re doing.)

From my own learning curve, I agree totally with what Steve said. I could have learned tunes forever just listening to recordings and playing off sheet music, and I would have sucked forever because of it. My rhythm, feel, ornaments, all that other good stuff would have never been established. I would have sucked forever, fooreevveerr, ffooorreeevvveeerrr… Since I’ve quit sheet music everything is beginning to come around and I’m getting the impression that maybe in 3 or so years I might become a pretty decent player.

So I guess I’m saying it’s better and easier to play what you hear, then it is to listen, read, and try to match the two all at the same time to try to learn how to properly play the tune.

So I think the Jedi’s have it right on this one. “Feel, don’t think.” Hear the music, be the music, play the music, don’t think about the music and don’t read about the music. Let the music flow through you and don’t rush the endings.

And about the 110 Ireland’s Best Session tunes, that book is garbage and the versions they put in there are certianly not used in Ireland. I know, I learned some tunes from there and wasn’t able to use em in Ireland. So if you want my advice, don’t get it and use your ear.

I’ve had the fortune to sit in on a number of sessions from Baltimore, to Houston, to Iowa, and points between. One thing I’ve come to appreciate, is that most of the sessions I’ve attended all seem to have preferred settings of tunes. AND usually half of them are different that what I’ve heard elsewhere.

So I’d suggest, learn the bones of the tune and then learn 2 or 3 settings of it. When you go to a session, you will already be able to handle them playing it differently and be able to adjust, even if its a setting you’ve never heard before. Morrison’s Jig is a good example, I have several recordings and have heard it in most of the sessions that I’ve attended. I’d estimate that I’ve heard a good dozen different ways to play the tune, that still are true to the bones and identifiable as Morrisons. If your there to be right, well then you’ve missed the point. If you’re there to connect with a bunch of folks, you need to be flexible in accepting a number of setting or variations of the common tunes.

Some one mentioned Norbert’s ABC database, If you pick a widely known tune and search for it often you’ll get 20 transcriptions. If you go through them, some will be the same, but usually you identify several setting. Becoming familiar with each, will help you connect with folks that are playing their favorite setting. You may also find a setting that seems to just click with you, a setting that you seem more connected with, a version that just seems to flow through your fingers. Then you say “aaahhh”, and understand that you found your own favorite setting. One you can lead and the other’s can follow. Then the second, “aahh”, occurs, when you realize you what it means to you in a session to have others follow and connect with your setting, instead of pushing their own.

Just my suggestion on how I’ve come to enjoy the variety of how you …

If you are trying to learn the Noel Hill style of playing I think I would agree with this approach, well, not disagree anyway. Let’s face it, most concertina students probably are trying to learn the Noel Hill style. What is essential to that style is the mastery of smooth, fluent but expressive, single note melody lines. Double stops are thrown in something like the way a piper might make sparing use of the regulators. For someone with a good ear and who knows a bit a of theory, picking this up by ear and figuring out what is possible should not be too hard. I’m not so sure about this approach to teaching if you want to play in, say, the Mary MacNamara style. She uses punchy, regular, rhythmic chords to drive a tune along and I regard mastering the multiple stop work as essential to mastering this style of playing. So I’d like to see any tutor devoted to this style notating the double and triple stops.

You are quite right in the view you attribute to me, Peter. Yeah, the colour coding is confusing isn’t it? The Red book is the first book in what appears to be an ongoing series. It was compliled by Matt Cranitch, not Brid, and all the tunes in it are played by Matt on one or the other of the two CDs I mentioned. I hope that clears up any confusion. I rather like the Red book because it has a richer selection of commonly played slides and polkas than one usually gets in tune books and because I like Matt’s fiddling on the demonstration CDs.

The later books I mentioned were by Brid Cranitch, to add to the confusion.

I add to this:

Noel Hill has some more touches than the regulator imitations he does in party pieces like the Bucks of Oranmore and the Silver Spear. The reason I mentioned him was I was listening to him last week play with the students towards the end of the class and I noticed how he built up the chords towards the end of the tunes and how some of the students tried to pick up on that.
He’s a very good teacher, which is a good reason for going to him. You don’t need to stick to his style though. If you look at Yvonne Griffin, she will readily admit he opened up the rows for her but she didn’t stay in that style, she used it to the full advantage in her own music. And well she did it too.

I suppose when you look at players of older styles [lets call them so for the sake of discussion] like Mary Mac, influenced by John Naughton as she is, old John Kelly . Mrs Crotty and the example I know best, Kitty Hayes [or lesser known maybe the recorded playing of Mary Haren, Micho Doyle, Pappy Looney, all gone now, and all those playing or hanging on to the styles of the German concertina] who all extensively use playing in octaves and use of chords and two part harmonies, things get more complex fairly quickly when written down. Writing out these styles extensively will not work for a beginner, it’s fine as an example to study for advanced players who want to analyse the style but like the regulator playing of a piper, it’s something that’s thrown in as the fancy takes you not something set in stone and I am not sure I would think of full written versions as such a good idea. Can’t beat sitting down with someone for picking up these things and develop a style from there on. But by now we drifted so far OT that I better stop.

To those who have the accompanying CDs or cassettes: which would you recommend (or recommend against) for learning by ear? Not only for tune acquistition, but for learning to learn by ear? I’m considering getting some of these CDs without the book(s) they belong to.

Sonja

Rereading this post, I thought of a book which some of you might find helpful but which I wouldn’t usually recommend on this forum. There is a clear difference I think, between a book that will help you play accurately in an Irish style and one that will simply help you to learn the basic melodies of commonly encountered tunes.

There is an Australian book called Begged, Borrowed or Stolen which contains over a 100 session tunes, mainly Irish, and has the tunes played slowly and then a little faster, on I think 3 accompanying CDs. I think I have never heard the tunes played so clearly, so if you want to pick up a basic repertoire of session tunes, and you find learning by ear preferable but very difficult, this might be the place to get started.

The down side is that the style of playing is not, to my ears, very Irish. Australian bush music is mainly Scottish and Irish of course, but played with an Australian accent. The playing on these CDs is somewhere between Australian bush versions of the tunes and and a more clearly Irish style. But if what you are looking for is something which will enable you first to get the meolodies down, leaving until later issues of expression and interpretation, this just might be the teaching resource you want. You can order online from Celtic Southern Cross:
http://www.celt.com.au/

I posted to this thread the comment - why would any windplayer in their right mind be buying Melbays Irish Fiddle book for tunes when O Niells 1001 Tunes is A bigger B cheaper and C set for Wind .

All I know is that someone mentioned a couple of books I forgot I had!

Thanks,
JP