Hi Kenny, don’t be too sorry! Check out the Errant Elbow website for Harry playing the pipes - lovely playing!
http://errantelbows.podbean.com/
- J
Thanks Kirk. Being new to the Irish flute I can’t think of a better forum to discover great players and get links to their music. Back to lurking…
You’re welcome Gary. There’s lots of good stuff on that the Piper’s Source site.
Bookmarked 
Yes, I lived once in a place where the standard session was blazing fast, so I went to the Slow Session.
There people were playing quite slowly and reading sheet music.
I asked them: ‘How long have you been
playing these tunes here?’
They answered: ‘Eight years.’
I said: ‘Then perhaps it’s time to put away
the sheet music and start upping the tempo…’ They looked at me in horror and amazement. They
were offended.
‘This is the Slow Session!’ they said.
The idea was that playing slowly and from sheet music wasn’t a transition to regular session playing,
but an end in itself.
Once I was chewed out by the leader of a session for not being able to read music and wanting to
learn by ear. I stopped going.
It’s too bad there’s so little middle ground. Either too fast, sometimes it seems for the exercise,
or too slow. Of the two I prefer the former, as I need the challenge. I’ve given up on the idea that
I’m going to play fast by playing slow. Of course I will learn the tunes by playing slow, but I believe
I will best learn to play them fast by playing them with people who play them faster than I do/can.
The other thing I note about Irish sessions, especially good ones, is that, while I play all sorts of music
with all sorts of people, i’ve not seen so much nastiness, backstabbing
and ill temper elsewhere in the musical world. Not in every session, of course.
I think a lot of that has to do with Irish trad being paired with a strong sense of the canonical, and in part I think that that is because unlike Scotland, Ireland nearly lost its tradition altogether, being rescued from the brink in good measure by its exile in America. Something so nearly lost is bound to have proponents who insist it be handled with loving and culturally referential care at such a still-recent point in its revival.
Which doesn’t excuse bad behavior, but it may shed some light on it.
I know I’ve said this before, but… from the accounts one reads here versus my personal experience in Britain and to a small extent in Ireland and Europe - one just does not tend to find the kind of snobbery/politicking described above this side of the pond. America may have been a safe haven for ITM from the later C19th to the mid C20th, but that kind of exclusive behaviour seems to be a particularly, if not peculiarly US thing…
So I’ve heard. I’ve also heard you can find it in The Ould Sod too, though. Personally, I’m not in a position to make a claim one way or the other about that. I have gotten stick from a couple of Irish folk in the States, but otherwise I haven’t found it a common tendency.
…you would probably never know if you are an accomplished enough player and nobody gives you a report that such things happened to someone. Unless you’re the one responsable of course.
I was once yelled at by an Irishman for being too jazzy with my backup playing. I honestly thought I was being conservative. 
And now I have a Scotsman telling me I’ve got a tendency to be too conservative. You just can’t win. 
The clip Kirk posted sounded rather rushed to me, not much flow to it. As if he had five minutes to get the recording down because there was a taxi to the airport waiting.
I’m willing to believe he doesn’t always sound like that, but I didn’t find it very expressive or enjoyable and it didn’t get my foot tapping.
Funny how different people hear things differently. I think that clip is fantastic. Really powerful, rhythmic, driving flute playing. Harry rattling along in good old Harry mode.
For me, Harry Bradley is the best flute player playing in the Irish tradition that there is. By quite some way. Lovely fella too.
I’ve given up on the idea that I’m going to play fast by playing slow. Of course I will learn the tunes by playing slow, but I believe I will best learn to play them fast by playing them with people who play them faster than I do/can.
Jim: I am no Harry Bradley (there is only one), but I have been playing for decades. Simply put, if you (I) can’t play the tune slowly then chances are that you (I) won’t be able to play it up to tempo. Some speedy players find it hard to play a tune slowly. But this is not the same thing as a person stretched out of his comfort zone and trying to hang in with the hot-shots. Seamus Creagh told me forty years ago that there is no such thing as practicing a tune too slowly.
You will not learn to play tunes fast by by playing them with people who play them faster … . Either you will be able to play up to their tempo – in which case the issue is moot – or you won’t be able to. In the latter case you will be adding clutter and background noise to the session. Either you can play it, or you can’t. If you can, then do. If you can’t, then you should not be playing with that group. You will be fecking them up. This is Harry’s point and the start of all of this.
I’ve been traveling in China and haven’t been keeping up here (I’ll tell you about the Beijing seisiun soon). But thought I would clarify about my “playing too slowly..” comment. The seisiun I was referring to plays many reels at 70 bpm or less while reading the music. Sometimes they start something and it is so slow I don’t even recognize it till I start “learning” it by ear and half-way through realize I know it. I agree that speed alone a tune does not make, but there really is an envelope…and too many seisiun try to push the upper end of that envelope.
Clark
You will not learn to play tunes fast by by playing them with people who play them faster
I disagree. There is a session in Galway where some great musicians play really fast (but it doesn’t sound rushed). I had some troubles keeping up with their tempo a few months ago, but now I’m a regular at that session and I can keep up with no troubles. Fingers need to be trained to go fast and still be comfortable, it doesn’t just happen.
I give up.
Ok not completely.
I don’t know what’s your experience with Irish music (well, not heaving heard of Harry says something…), but sometimes your ears need to be trained to appreciate something you’re not so familiar with.
There are plenty more videos of Harry on that site anyway.
I think talking about slow vs. fast is already missing the point. Feel and musicality are necessary for music to sound good, whether played slow or fast. If a tune feels as if it is too slow, particularly if the players are reading music simultaneously, it will sound dreadful. My experience, though, often has sessions ruining tunes by racing through them when a) they are not up to that skill level, either on the tune(s) itself, or always, or b) accompanied by others of varying skill who are not quite up to the speed. Either way, the result is a lack of feel and musicality. These sessions, as said before, are mostly social occasions, and not learning places. I’ve picked up tunes I didn’t know at sessions, but only really mastered said tunes when I’d taken them home and learned them again.
Something like this is my experience, too. I benefit from the challenge; I am able to play faster in the long term because
of it. It’s sort of like training to run races. You have to do some speed work.
Speed isn’t musicality, and I wouldn’t mind if these people played more slowly, but playing up-tempo is obviously
going to be part of playing in good sessions. Julia’s point is well taken that one doesn’t want to feck up the session
by playing too slowly, but we’re kind of a weird, rowdy session and nobody seems to care. I often just fall silent in
the midst of a tune.
As a consequence my general speed is increasing.
Part of the ‘trick’, by the way, seems to be to relax more the faster I go.
I certainly agree with the point that i’m more likely to find the musicality of the tune by playing alone
at a more relaxed tempo. But I do want to get faster if I can.
Seamus Creagh.
Depends on the session. I’ve been to some sessions where it was the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard, capturing the quintessential spirit of the music as a communal expression. These sessions are comprised by top players who play together a lot. I’ve also participated in every session in between and still do, slow, medium and fast. I find the spirit of equality and acceptance here is much more prevalent than competition and exclusion (as opposed to classical and jazz music which seem all about attrition and competition, especially classical).
