Have you all been watching the television series 'Faking it'. Do you think it would be possible for a good intermediate (say classical or rock) player to Fake it as a seasoned traditional player with only 4-6 weeks intensive training?
"Fake it 'til you make it", is that what you mean bouzyboy? I'm not sure if you really can fool the masses that way, but I am finding that confidence, intensive practice (like you mentioned) and sheer love of the music will get you very far. Also, my treacher says, if you make it look like you are a happening fiddler, make it look right, then it will sound right. Other than that I feel there is no substitute for years of learning, listening, and practicing.
Why would you want to 'fake it'? I haven't seen the TV program so may not understand. The sheer pleasure of pursuing the sound, the feel, etc. is what it's about. You only cheat yourself if you pretend. You don't cheat anybody else.
My husband just explains to me what the program is about. Do you get this program in other parts of the world? I don't know. Here in the UK apparently people not experienced in a particular specialism, are trained up to do something out of their sphere. E.g. a classical musician is given experience in ITM. AM I right bouzyboy?
Doc. D - yeah you can, to an extent, which is what I've done on the box. I just keep wheeling out the same ones in my repertoire, which is gradually getting bigger, some day soon I hope it won't be faking it any more.
I'd agree that a love of the style of music would help in "faking it". My son petty much proved that point. We were family camping and I was practicing for a music festival some three days away. He'd been listening to me play a hammered dulcimer for years but that day he started pestering me to go along. "You'd be bored stupid" I said. "Teach me some chords on the guitar" was his answer. Paul was 13 years old and a quick study so I taught him the five or six chords he'd need and he spent the next couple of days strumming them. We drove to the festival where he sat in the back and practiced until we got to Evart. I unpacked, grabbed my HD and sat in with the first large jam session I could find. Paul grabbed the guitar and followed weaving his way into a bunch of guitar players. We sat there for three hours while all of us played everything we could remember. I got a lot of comments about how fast Paul learned those fiddle tunes. When they'd ask him if he really knew all those tunes he'd simply smile and say with a straight face, "Thanks, yes I do." Lying? Not really. He'd follow the other player's chords. In a melody instrument it might be harder however if the tune goes for more than four or five verses you can pretty much pick up the melody line. Actually I love it when a classical or other style of player jams with us. We quickly pick up style differences and if they work we add them in.
I've seen only one of the "Faking it!" series, and this is my recollection.
The 27-year old lead singer of a punk rock band was to be trained up to conduct the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London as an entrant in a competition for young conductors. The judges and orchestra were not to be in on the secret. He was coached intensively by a couple of professional conductors, and it was one hell of a struggle for a month. To start with, he didn't know and hadn't even heard, any classical music, so several days were spent in playing him cds until he found something he liked - Rossini's "Thieving Magpie" Overture, if I remember correctly, was his choice.
The next problem was that he couldn't read a note of music - no problem whatsoever in non-classical music, but a big, big one if you're supposed to be conducting a pro orchestra from the score! The solution was for him to memorise the music from the cd and follow the score at the same time so that he could have an idea of how the sound tied up with the dots on the page.
Then he had to be taught the layout of the orchestra and what the instruments looked and sounded like. This was followed by instruction in the physical technique of conducting, which is by no means as simple or as obvious as it looks. Another struggle until he accidentally turned up at his tutor's studio without his baton. It was then that it was discovered that he conducted far better without a stick in his hand.
They gave him some practice conducting a professional orchestra in rehearsal somewhere in Europe, where he discovered all the mistakes he was making and the elephant traps lying in wait, and was given good advice by that orchestra's conductor.
As the great day approached he was given a physical makeover, being transformed from a be-jeaned punk rocker with a colourful and flamboyant hair style into the sort of 27-year old who wouldn't look out of place in a penguin suit conducting an orchestra. A major part of the transformation involved shaving his head and providing him with a wig.
On the day he was very nervous beforehand (who wouldn't be) and proceeded to the rostrum. Once on the rostrum he was transformed. He took complete and authoritative command of the orchestra, standing erect, full eye contact with a player or section before their entries (not when or even after the player comes in, as many amateur conductors do), fluid and precise hand movements without a baton, and conducting from memory - none of the audience realising he damn well had to! He made one minor mistake, when he forgot a change in the time signature, but he recovered almost instantaneously and I doubt whether most people in the audience noticed. Afterwards he bowed and smiled most professionally to the audience, and applauded the orchestra. He was easily the most impressive of the entrants on the rostrum - the others of course were young classical professionals hoping to make it as conductors.
He didn't win, but got very high marks, including 10/10 from one judge who, when he was afterwards told the truth about the young man said he felt "very confused" by the whole affair (code for "p*ssed off", I reckon). I suspect that individuals in the orchestra, hard-bitten pros that they are, may have latched onto the game, but played along with it.
What was in our punk-rocker's favour was that, as a lead singer, he was well used to performing in front of an audience and interacting with them - and all good conductors are performers - and he had a very good sense of rhythm and timing. But there was no way in which he could have done other aspects of a conductor's job, such as taking an orchestra through rehearsals and knowing the music better than anyone in the orchestra, without first having had many years training as a classical musician.
The programme showed that people can be coached to perform a task at a professional level, even if one-off as on this occasion, much as an actor may have to be coached in a particular skill for a film, but in this case the pressure was far more intense because it was live and for real.
Trevor, Yeah, that was a good one. Another was a classical musician who 'Faked it' as a house DJ in a london club. The reason I pose the question is because while I think I could be taught to be a blues guitar player I reckon the judges would spot me. I really dont have any blues in me (no feel for it) and that would be the give away. The sub-text to the post is - how much of a traditional root has to be in you to start with? Could a good classical fiddler (sorry violinist!) learn a few tunes and fake it at a session? Would the judges spot them?
Danny, I was looking forward to faking it at your session this week. Hopefully sometime soon.
The other type of "faking" is to be found in orchestras and choirs, and elsewhere no doubt, where a player, finding a particular passage technically too difficult - a problem in some modern orchestral music - either pretends to play or simplifies the music slightly. As long as the player keeps to the beat and appears to be playing in sync with everyone else, and as long as there are enough players who aren't faking then there's no problem. Such fakers are often experienced string players who know what they're doing; faking is pretty obvious in the case of woodwind, brass and percussion, so it's rare with them.
Rest assured, seasoned musicians do try it on with any conductor, fake or otherwise, and will try to trip them up just for devilment.
As far as the "fake" session player, you will also be tripped up when someone asks what the second tune was called, can you play up a tone or when you are playing along with the aforementioned seasoned musician and he suspects you and moves up a tone himself.
Although, the classically trained who is a quick listener can certainly play along with the session. I have played along with someone who enquired "How do you know that tune, I only wrote it this week?", although I don't consider that faking it - just playing along -
whats the difference?
The difference is that in the first instance the wool was attempting to be pulled over someone's eyes. In the second instance you were simply playing along.
Yes, possibly playing along, but after we stopped playing, I could have played the tune back or written it down (as long as we did it immediately after stopping).
What it might boil down to is style - play a quick learner a tune and they might be able to play it back note perfect in the same style as you. Once they learn your style, they can learn new tunes and play them in the same style as you.
We are back to the old comparison of two classically trained players, one who plays exactly what is written and the other who plays exactly what is written in the style of the person sat next to them.
"You will also be tripped up when someone asks what the second tune was called..."
"All you'd have to do is look around to the the other players and say, "Er... oh geez, what was the name of that one again?""
You just shrug and you can use -- "the one that comes after the one before?" "I dunno, never heard the title" or "Dang, I never can remember the names of tunes."
I faked it big time one night at a club in Glasgow. A friend who has a band (him and his pal and some tapes!) needed a 'stooge' for the evening as the club rules state that a 'band' should have at least 3 members. So for a 3 hour set I had to stand on stage and look as if I was playing. Funniest thing was the barmaid thought I was better than the guy (stooge) they had last time! )))
On certain occasions it's almost a self-proclaimed accolade not to remember a tune name, the implication being, you know so many tunes, that it's hard to keep up with minor details such as what they're called.
I think I get most of the titles of the tunes I play correct, but with some gaping exceptions.
I recently informed Steve Mulhern, in all sincerity, that the slow Paddy Fahy reel he had just performed with startling precision (the Martin Hayes/Denis Cahill one), was actually called The Lylebrack Ramblers, when it is of course, as everyone on this site knows instinctively, called The Blacksmith's Anvil.
Also the Honeybee hornpipe (the Charlie Lennon one) I inadvertently rechristened The Bumblebee(!!??!!??) - of which "The Flight of.." is about the speed Steve plays it at!
That's the problem with the whole name issue. The wonderful player sitting next to you will lean over and say, in all sincerity, "that was 'The Mincing Accountant', which I learned from Paddy Fahy himself back in 1923..." Later, you find out it was actually Cooley's reel or something equally well-known. (Or worse yet, the reel version of the theme from side 2 of Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick", but that's another story.)
And just to wrap up on the Faking It theme -- there's a story that one of the early Northumbrian Pipers (Billy Pigg?) got called to play and be interviewed on the BBC in the '20s, and when asked later where he'd got his music from, he confided that most of his tunes were Irish and Scottish tunes that he'd adapted to the pipes and given more "appropriate" Northumbrian names to. I don't know how big a grain of salt to take this with, but if true, that's faking it on the large scale.
No way man! The joke is on you if you're faking it! Music is about bringing out, no "luring" and "tempting" whats inside you to come out and its only when that comes to pass that real music is played and experienced. there is no room in trad for fakers. Bring 'em on! Put them beside Irelands best. I think that show would more aptly be named "Jackass"! Good conversation topic though!
Judas H. Are you guys for real? You may fake out a tourist or an extreme drunk but I wouldn't try that caper in Ireland if I were you. You would probably end up requiring a rectum specialist with an extremely long surgical glove.
I've played in loads of sessions in Ireland, all over, for years, and never required any proctological procedures to be performed.
Is it possible that you have needed such services rendered?
Are you putting it up to me while faking it brother? Or do you just not buy into the northern dry humour?
I've heard the very best and worst of sessions in my time in Ireland and abroad. Do you really think we don't know the difference between background Irish musak and the real McCoy. Get into it proper is my advice and forget about ego.
Now, I'm pretty new to this Irish traditional music, but I expect that faking this traditional music is very similar to faking the jazz I DO have a lot of experience with. In my opinion (please do correct me if I'm wrong), what you're calling faking is actually an integral part of the music.
Of course it's obvious when someone is just trying to keep up (in speed, style... whatever), but the greatest players I have ever heard were the ones who could play anything after a chorus or two. When a guy can sit down with your group and fool you into thinking they've always known the song, respect them. This is not cheating. This is the essence of music!
Faking it!
Faking it!
Have you all been watching the television series 'Faking it'. Do you think it would be possible for a good intermediate (say classical or rock) player to Fake it as a seasoned traditional player with only 4-6 weeks intensive training?
Is it in your hands or in your heart?
# Posted on March 1st 2003 by bouzyboy
Re: Faking it!
"Fake it 'til you make it", is that what you mean bouzyboy? I'm not sure if you really can fool the masses that way, but I am finding that confidence, intensive practice (like you mentioned) and sheer love of the music will get you very far. Also, my treacher says, if you make it look like you are a happening fiddler, make it look right, then it will sound right. Other than that I feel there is no substitute for years of learning, listening, and practicing.
# Posted on March 1st 2003 by Andee
Re: Faking it!
Why would you want to 'fake it'? I haven't seen the TV program so may not understand. The sheer pleasure of pursuing the sound, the feel, etc. is what it's about. You only cheat yourself if you pretend. You don't cheat anybody else.
My husband just explains to me what the program is about. Do you get this program in other parts of the world? I don't know. Here in the UK apparently people not experienced in a particular specialism, are trained up to do something out of their sphere. E.g. a classical musician is given experience in ITM. AM I right bouzyboy?
# Posted on March 2nd 2003 by Susie-Lee
Re: Faking it!
Doc. D - yeah you can, to an extent, which is what I've done on the box. I just keep wheeling out the same ones in my repertoire, which is gradually getting bigger, some day soon I hope it won't be faking it any more.
# Posted on March 2nd 2003 by Rudall the time
Re: Faking it!
I'd agree that a love of the style of music would help in "faking it". My son petty much proved that point. We were family camping and I was practicing for a music festival some three days away. He'd been listening to me play a hammered dulcimer for years but that day he started pestering me to go along. "You'd be bored stupid" I said. "Teach me some chords on the guitar" was his answer. Paul was 13 years old and a quick study so I taught him the five or six chords he'd need and he spent the next couple of days strumming them. We drove to the festival where he sat in the back and practiced until we got to Evart. I unpacked, grabbed my HD and sat in with the first large jam session I could find. Paul grabbed the guitar and followed weaving his way into a bunch of guitar players. We sat there for three hours while all of us played everything we could remember. I got a lot of comments about how fast Paul learned those fiddle tunes. When they'd ask him if he really knew all those tunes he'd simply smile and say with a straight face, "Thanks, yes I do." Lying? Not really. He'd follow the other player's chords. In a melody instrument it might be harder however if the tune goes for more than four or five verses you can pretty much pick up the melody line. Actually I love it when a classical or other style of player jams with us. We quickly pick up style differences and if they work we add them in.
# Posted on March 2nd 2003 by jrathbun
Re: Faking it!
I've seen only one of the "Faking it!" series, and this is my recollection.
The 27-year old lead singer of a punk rock band was to be trained up to conduct the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London as an entrant in a competition for young conductors. The judges and orchestra were not to be in on the secret. He was coached intensively by a couple of professional conductors, and it was one hell of a struggle for a month. To start with, he didn't know and hadn't even heard, any classical music, so several days were spent in playing him cds until he found something he liked - Rossini's "Thieving Magpie" Overture, if I remember correctly, was his choice.
The next problem was that he couldn't read a note of music - no problem whatsoever in non-classical music, but a big, big one if you're supposed to be conducting a pro orchestra from the score! The solution was for him to memorise the music from the cd and follow the score at the same time so that he could have an idea of how the sound tied up with the dots on the page.
Then he had to be taught the layout of the orchestra and what the instruments looked and sounded like. This was followed by instruction in the physical technique of conducting, which is by no means as simple or as obvious as it looks. Another struggle until he accidentally turned up at his tutor's studio without his baton. It was then that it was discovered that he conducted far better without a stick in his hand.
They gave him some practice conducting a professional orchestra in rehearsal somewhere in Europe, where he discovered all the mistakes he was making and the elephant traps lying in wait, and was given good advice by that orchestra's conductor.
As the great day approached he was given a physical makeover, being transformed from a be-jeaned punk rocker with a colourful and flamboyant hair style into the sort of 27-year old who wouldn't look out of place in a penguin suit conducting an orchestra. A major part of the transformation involved shaving his head and providing him with a wig.
On the day he was very nervous beforehand (who wouldn't be) and proceeded to the rostrum. Once on the rostrum he was transformed. He took complete and authoritative command of the orchestra, standing erect, full eye contact with a player or section before their entries (not when or even after the player comes in, as many amateur conductors do), fluid and precise hand movements without a baton, and conducting from memory - none of the audience realising he damn well had to! He made one minor mistake, when he forgot a change in the time signature, but he recovered almost instantaneously and I doubt whether most people in the audience noticed. Afterwards he bowed and smiled most professionally to the audience, and applauded the orchestra. He was easily the most impressive of the entrants on the rostrum - the others of course were young classical professionals hoping to make it as conductors.
He didn't win, but got very high marks, including 10/10 from one judge who, when he was afterwards told the truth about the young man said he felt "very confused" by the whole affair (code for "p*ssed off", I reckon). I suspect that individuals in the orchestra, hard-bitten pros that they are, may have latched onto the game, but played along with it.
What was in our punk-rocker's favour was that, as a lead singer, he was well used to performing in front of an audience and interacting with them - and all good conductors are performers - and he had a very good sense of rhythm and timing. But there was no way in which he could have done other aspects of a conductor's job, such as taking an orchestra through rehearsals and knowing the music better than anyone in the orchestra, without first having had many years training as a classical musician.
The programme showed that people can be coached to perform a task at a professional level, even if one-off as on this occasion, much as an actor may have to be coached in a particular skill for a film, but in this case the pressure was far more intense because it was live and for real.
# Posted on March 2nd 2003 by Trevor Jennings
Re: Faking it!
Trevor, Yeah, that was a good one. Another was a classical musician who 'Faked it' as a house DJ in a london club. The reason I pose the question is because while I think I could be taught to be a blues guitar player I reckon the judges would spot me. I really dont have any blues in me (no feel for it) and that would be the give away. The sub-text to the post is - how much of a traditional root has to be in you to start with? Could a good classical fiddler (sorry violinist!) learn a few tunes and fake it at a session? Would the judges spot them?
Danny, I was looking forward to faking it at your session this week. Hopefully sometime soon.
# Posted on March 2nd 2003 by bouzyboy
Re: Faking it!
I'm waiting for the brain surgery episode.
# Posted on March 2nd 2003 by ScottC
Re: Faking it!
The other type of "faking" is to be found in orchestras and choirs, and elsewhere no doubt, where a player, finding a particular passage technically too difficult - a problem in some modern orchestral music - either pretends to play or simplifies the music slightly. As long as the player keeps to the beat and appears to be playing in sync with everyone else, and as long as there are enough players who aren't faking then there's no problem. Such fakers are often experienced string players who know what they're doing; faking is pretty obvious in the case of woodwind, brass and percussion, so it's rare with them.
# Posted on March 2nd 2003 by Trevor Jennings
Re: Faking it!
Rest assured, seasoned musicians do try it on with any conductor, fake or otherwise, and will try to trip them up just for devilment.
As far as the "fake" session player, you will also be tripped up when someone asks what the second tune was called, can you play up a tone or when you are playing along with the aforementioned seasoned musician and he suspects you and moves up a tone himself.
Although, the classically trained who is a quick listener can certainly play along with the session. I have played along with someone who enquired "How do you know that tune, I only wrote it this week?", although I don't consider that faking it - just playing along -
whats the difference?
# Posted on March 3rd 2003 by geoffwright
Re: Faking it!
The difference is that in the first instance the wool was attempting to be pulled over someone's eyes. In the second instance you were simply playing along.
# Posted on March 3rd 2003 by Andee
Re: Faking it!
"You will also be tripped up when someone asks what the second tune was called..."
No way. All you'd have to do is look around to the the other players and say, "Er... oh geez, what was the name of that one again?"
---Michael B.
# Posted on March 3rd 2003 by MichaelBolton
Re: Faking it - did we do it together?
Yes, possibly playing along, but after we stopped playing, I could have played the tune back or written it down (as long as we did it immediately after stopping).
What it might boil down to is style - play a quick learner a tune and they might be able to play it back note perfect in the same style as you. Once they learn your style, they can learn new tunes and play them in the same style as you.
We are back to the old comparison of two classically trained players, one who plays exactly what is written and the other who plays exactly what is written in the style of the person sat next to them.
# Posted on March 3rd 2003 by geoffwright
Re: Faking it!
"You will also be tripped up when someone asks what the second tune was called..."
"All you'd have to do is look around to the the other players and say, "Er... oh geez, what was the name of that one again?""
You just shrug and you can use -- "the one that comes after the one before?" "I dunno, never heard the title" or "Dang, I never can remember the names of tunes."
Zina
# Posted on March 4th 2003 by Zina Lee
Re: Faking it!
I faked it big time one night at a club in Glasgow. A friend who has a band (him and his pal and some tapes!) needed a 'stooge' for the evening as the club rules state that a 'band' should have at least 3 members. So for a 3 hour set I had to stand on stage and look as if I was playing. Funniest thing was the barmaid thought I was better than the guy (stooge) they had last time!
)))
Easy £40 though!
# Posted on March 4th 2003 by bouzyboy
Re: Faking it!
On certain occasions it's almost a self-proclaimed accolade not to remember a tune name, the implication being, you know so many tunes, that it's hard to keep up with minor details such as what they're called.
I think I get most of the titles of the tunes I play correct, but with some gaping exceptions.
I recently informed Steve Mulhern, in all sincerity, that the slow Paddy Fahy reel he had just performed with startling precision (the Martin Hayes/Denis Cahill one), was actually called The Lylebrack Ramblers, when it is of course, as everyone on this site knows instinctively, called The Blacksmith's Anvil.
Also the Honeybee hornpipe (the Charlie Lennon one) I inadvertently rechristened The Bumblebee(!!??!!??) - of which "The Flight of.." is about the speed Steve plays it at!
.....So I suppose I was faking it, after all.....
# Posted on March 4th 2003 by Rudall the time
Re: Faking it!
That's the problem with the whole name issue. The wonderful player sitting next to you will lean over and say, in all sincerity, "that was 'The Mincing Accountant', which I learned from Paddy Fahy himself back in 1923..." Later, you find out it was actually Cooley's reel or something equally well-known. (Or worse yet, the reel version of the theme from side 2 of Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick", but that's another story.)
And just to wrap up on the Faking It theme -- there's a story that one of the early Northumbrian Pipers (Billy Pigg?) got called to play and be interviewed on the BBC in the '20s, and when asked later where he'd got his music from, he confided that most of his tunes were Irish and Scottish tunes that he'd adapted to the pipes and given more "appropriate" Northumbrian names to. I don't know how big a grain of salt to take this with, but if true, that's faking it on the large scale.
# Posted on March 5th 2003 by Gzeg
Re: Faking it!
No way man! The joke is on you if you're faking it! Music is about bringing out, no "luring" and "tempting" whats inside you to come out and its only when that comes to pass that real music is played and experienced. there is no room in trad for fakers. Bring 'em on! Put them beside Irelands best. I think that show would more aptly be named "Jackass"! Good conversation topic though!
# Posted on March 5th 2003 by whistlermagee
Re: Faking it!
Judas H. Are you guys for real? You may fake out a tourist or an extreme drunk but I wouldn't try that caper in Ireland if I were you. You would probably end up requiring a rectum specialist with an extremely long surgical glove.
# Posted on March 6th 2003 by DerryMan
Re: Faking it!
I've played in loads of sessions in Ireland, all over, for years, and never required any proctological procedures to be performed.
Is it possible that you have needed such services rendered?
# Posted on March 6th 2003 by Rudall the time
Re: Faking it!
Are you putting it up to me while faking it brother? Or do you just not buy into the northern dry humour?
I've heard the very best and worst of sessions in my time in Ireland and abroad. Do you really think we don't know the difference between background Irish musak and the real McCoy. Get into it proper is my advice and forget about ego.
# Posted on March 6th 2003 by DerryMan
Re: Faking it!
Scots don't need to buy into northern humour. But your advice is about right.
# Posted on March 6th 2003 by Rudall the time
Re: Faking it!
Now, I'm pretty new to this Irish traditional music, but I expect that faking this traditional music is very similar to faking the jazz I DO have a lot of experience with. In my opinion (please do correct me if I'm wrong), what you're calling faking is actually an integral part of the music.
Of course it's obvious when someone is just trying to keep up (in speed, style... whatever), but the greatest players I have ever heard were the ones who could play anything after a chorus or two. When a guy can sit down with your group and fool you into thinking they've always known the song, respect them. This is not cheating. This is the essence of music!
# Posted on March 7th 2003 by Deamiter