There have been several discussions about practicing and learning tunes. I wonder how people approach learning a tune that might prove somewhat difficult (like the tune just doesn't want to be played). Do you keep working at it for as long as it takes (hours, days, weeks) or do you simply move on to another tune to improve your repertoire? What do you think is the best approach? Is this a chicken and the egg question?
Keep up with that tune you are having trouble playing. After a week or so, learn another tune, but also keep working on the problem tune. I definitely had some tunes that were a real bitch at first, but slowly got better such as the Musical Priest and the Mooncoin jig. The M Priest was really hard at first on flute, but I made sure I played it several times a week and it's now a tune I feel comfortable starting up with my music buds. Every week I have a small list of problem tunes or tunes with a problem A or B part. I make sure I work on them almost every day or a few times a week.
Sometimes if a tune is more trouble than it's worth, I find a better setting and relearn the tune. I originally learned Father Kelly's from a fiddle buddy but it was hard for me on flute. After months of struggling with it, I relearned the tune from Jimmy Noonan's Clare Connection. A beautiful setting perfect for flute. Now I can start that tune up in a session no problem.
In a music workshop this summer, John Skelton told us not to avoid the tricky tunes.
It depends if you like the tune.
Ignore its technical aspects and sing it in your head. If you like it, learn it. There is nothing worse than learning stuff just because its hard.
I was wondering if this trick I suggested a ways back might work. If you warm up before playing, Include difficult passages from tunes into your warm up. Go tackle that tune after you can hammer the difficult passage in the warm up exercise.
I have dropped tunes in the past because they were way above my head. As my skill level increased - I could go back to them and learn them. You need to push the envelope to improve. I think everyone agrees with that. If it doesn't come to you in a few weeks of diligent effort - Don't worry - You play better because of your effort - the experience helped. Go try a few other tunes that you can add fairly easily. If you like - leave the difficult piece in your to learn list indefinately. Run through it occasionally. One day you will have it down and forget all the pain you went through to get it.
Believe it or not Gravel Walk comes to my mind. It was my first big challenge.
I only learn and work hard on the tunes I really like and find catchy whether they are hard or easy. But I try not to shy away just because a tune is hard.....I think the Musical Priest is a lovely reel, but didn't give up becuase I found the fingering tricky. I just played it very slowly in the beginning and tried different things with it.
C-
Joyce's suggestion to look for a less difficult setting is a good one because it helps you get the tune into your head and fingers. Then you can tackle the tricky parts later. On fiddle, it's usually not too hard to strip out tricky ornaments or fingerings, and sometimes it helps to go so far as to change the key (for beginners, some tunes in G major are easier in A major because you avoid the BG and dG double stop fingering positions when playing arpeggios like G2 BG dGBG, which in A would be A2 cA eAcA and easier on the left hand). Of course, if you're looking to play the tune in a session, you ought to learn it in the key everyone else plays it in. But I've often seen entire sessions transpose for the sake of incorporating a tune (or a player), and the better session players either know many tunes in several keys or can make the shift on the fly.
Some settings are just damn hard, often on purpose. When I first learned the Tarbolton, it was from a Chieftains cd, a Sean Keane solo, ripping fast and chock full of triplets, rolls, flashy bowing patterns, and string crossings--much more of a competition show piece than a session setting. It was great stuff, but designed to impress. Well, that was the only version I'd ever heard. Besides, I wanted to my Tarbolton to sound like Sean Keane's. (What can I say--I was a teenager eager to knock everyone's socks off. Now that I'm older, I know that people are easier to be around with their socks still on, heh.) So I slavishly learned every phrase and grace note, every flourish, and struggled for years to get the timing right and bring it up to speed. Years later, putting sets together for a gig, the other fiddler in our band suggested the Tarbolton. I said, "sure, I know that one." And proceeded to prove that I still couldn't play it with any authority. But then she launched into a fairly straightforward setting, and it was like parting the curtains on a picture window.
Of course I still hear Keane's version in my head whenever I play the tune, and it's hard for me to leave the tricky parts out now when I play the Tarbolton. Which sounds like reason enough to learn simpler settings and gradually build your own setting by adding variations and ornaments. That way, the core melody is ingrained in your mind, and if you want to embellish it, you can.
Some tunes do have more difficult phrases than can't readily be reduced to something easier to play without losing the identity of the tune. On fiddle, I'm thinking of things like the finger tangle in the B part of Tommy Tarbukas, or the three-string jump in the B part of Miller of Droghan or from G to g at the start of Pigtown Fling. Or if your bowed triplets aren't yet up to snuff, how do you play Dinky's or Maids of Mount Cisco, say, and make it sound good? For these situations, I'd say you've found your current ceiling and you'll know exactly what you need to work on to make those parts click. For example, if your bowed triplets are mushy, don't shy away from Maids of Mount Cisco--embrace the tune and use it as a practice piece for those triplets. It might take a while before you're ready to trot it out in public, but that's no reason not to play a tune. Do it for yourself, for your own sense of progress and acheivement, with the expectation that some day you'll do justice to the tune. In other words, don't do it *because* it's hard, but in recognition that it takes some work to make the tricky parts sound as effortless as the easy parts, but boy oh boy will it be fun to play when you've mastered it.
Also, it's obvious that difficult passages get even harder when you speed up. So slow down. Play as slowly as needed to get through the part or tune cleanly. Give it a few weeks/months/years (depending on just how difficult a piece it is), and the speed will come when you're ready.
Joyce, I agree that being drawn to a tune is a great reason to learn it. But as a session player, I've learned a lot by picking up tunes that didn't initially jump out at me. I've learned lots of tunes simply because someone else wanted to play them at the session or in our band, and I wanted to be able to play with them. Sometimes I learned a technical trick that I might otherwised have missed. More often, I've grown to love tunes that just needed a little TLC. To me, that's one of the advantages of playing with a fluctuating group of people (such as a session)--fresh tunes coming from many different angles and preferences. I mean, I almost *like* playing polkas now.... *chuckle*
Will - good advice on learning tunes that friends play. I will be working on picking up some tunes just so I can play with my new music buddies. I'm sure there will be tunes that don't grab me right off, but I'm sure I'll grow to love them.
Will, I like that Tarbolton story
I think it illustrates one of the reasons I'm not to keen on Keane. (personal opinion ofcourse)
The first version I learned was Michael coleman's, along with most other diddlers.
Do you like Matt Molloy's version on the Matt Molloy and Donal Lunny Album? I particularly like the B at the start instead of the E. Gives the tune a better progression
Re: If it doesn't want to be played, learn another
I open a book and try to play a few new tunes every day and if I am still whistling a tune in bed, or even better, if I can remember some of it next day, it is a GOOD tune so worth working on.
I keep a "jotter" of GOOD tunes and if we are still playing them after a month, they become repertoire.
I have jotters going back 20 odd years and it is good to resurect tunes you havn't played for donkeys years. (They sometimes even make more sense after time).
Michael, I do like Molloy's version, but then I just plain like the Tarbolton. I don't think I've ever heard a setting I didn't like. And I agree about Keane--a mighty player, but not my first choice for a fiddler's role model. When I went through that phase of imitating various fiddlers to get inside their approach to the tunes, it helped to try on a few Keane arrangements because I never would've dreamed of putting ornaments in some of the places Keane manages to fit them, heh, heh.
Maybe more to the point of your question, Kev, I've noticed over the years that you eventually reach a level where you can passably play just about any tune in the trad repertoire. But to work a difficult one up to solo standards might take some serious woodshedding. This is similar to what Geoff gets at--that as your abilities improve, you come back to old tunes and find that they're no longer impossible, though they may still demand more attention than less complicated tunes.
In other words, there are tunes I would never foist on a beginning player because they're just too demanding. But once you get your basic chops in line (cut notes, rolls, triplets, good tone and timing with the bow, and decent intonation with the left hand), almost any tune is fair game. But realize that some tunes may not reach their potential until you have more fully reached your own. Keep playing them--that's the only way you'll learn. But be patient, and enjoy playing all the easier tunes too.
As a fiddler from initially a classical background, I found that I could quite easily play the notes for tunes from the printed page. Unfortunately I couldn't remember them so well afterwards when the page was not there. If I had learned a tune by ear however, while it took me longer, I could remember it very well from then on. One method I 've used is to play a tune from the printed page and record myself doing so. I can then listen to the tune ad nauseum and remember it much better. A sort of combination of learning a tune by reading the notes and learning it by ear.
I've never learned to read music, so I've never really experienced that problem, but I've heard that it's very common to people who sight-read music.
I've heard people say that only play from memory if they can visualize the sheet music in front of them, thereby sight reading the music from a mental image of the page. I'm facinated by the sight reading skill. All those tiny dots just seem to mush together on the page so I'm utterly hopeless at it!
I learn by ear and from the dots. When I use sheet music I use it only as a loose reference & only for tunes I know by heart (but can't yet play). A lot of sheet music has different settings than what might be standard in your neck of the woods (or it could just be a lousy transcription). This has been said alot - but it can't be said enough. I think learning by ear is better because you hear the swing, where people put the ornaments & those great variations that you just can't get from a one-time-through condensed sheet music version.
This must have been said ad nausium on this web sit, but it can never be stessed enough. There simply is not enough information in the dots to learn a tune properly. You either have to have prior knowledge of the traddition so you can ad in the missing bits, or, learn it by ear
The tune just doesn't want to be played!
The tune just doesn't want to be played!
There have been several discussions about practicing and learning tunes. I wonder how people approach learning a tune that might prove somewhat difficult (like the tune just doesn't want to be played). Do you keep working at it for as long as it takes (hours, days, weeks) or do you simply move on to another tune to improve your repertoire? What do you think is the best approach? Is this a chicken and the egg question?
--
Cao
# Posted on November 20th 2002 by Caoimghgin
Re: The tune just doesn't want to be played!
Keep up with that tune you are having trouble playing. After a week or so, learn another tune, but also keep working on the problem tune. I definitely had some tunes that were a real bitch at first, but slowly got better such as the Musical Priest and the Mooncoin jig. The M Priest was really hard at first on flute, but I made sure I played it several times a week and it's now a tune I feel comfortable starting up with my music buds. Every week I have a small list of problem tunes or tunes with a problem A or B part. I make sure I work on them almost every day or a few times a week.
Sometimes if a tune is more trouble than it's worth, I find a better setting and relearn the tune. I originally learned Father Kelly's from a fiddle buddy but it was hard for me on flute. After months of struggling with it, I relearned the tune from Jimmy Noonan's Clare Connection. A beautiful setting perfect for flute. Now I can start that tune up in a session no problem.
In a music workshop this summer, John Skelton told us not to avoid the tricky tunes.
Joyce
# Posted on November 20th 2002 by JMH
Re: The tune just doesn't want to be played!
It depends if you like the tune.
Ignore its technical aspects and sing it in your head. If you like it, learn it. There is nothing worse than learning stuff just because its hard.
# Posted on November 20th 2002 by llig leahcim
Re: The tune just doesn't want to be played!
Kevin,
OOOPPPS!!!!!!
Caoimghgin,
I was wondering if this trick I suggested a ways back might work. If you warm up before playing, Include difficult passages from tunes into your warm up. Go tackle that tune after you can hammer the difficult passage in the warm up exercise.
I have dropped tunes in the past because they were way above my head. As my skill level increased - I could go back to them and learn them. You need to push the envelope to improve. I think everyone agrees with that. If it doesn't come to you in a few weeks of diligent effort - Don't worry - You play better because of your effort - the experience helped. Go try a few other tunes that you can add fairly easily. If you like - leave the difficult piece in your to learn list indefinately. Run through it occasionally. One day you will have it down and forget all the pain you went through to get it.
Believe it or not Gravel Walk comes to my mind. It was my first big challenge.
Mark
# Posted on November 20th 2002 by Mark Cordova
Re: The tune just doesn't want to be played!
I only learn and work hard on the tunes I really like and find catchy whether they are hard or easy. But I try not to shy away just because a tune is hard.....I think the Musical Priest is a lovely reel, but didn't give up becuase I found the fingering tricky. I just played it very slowly in the beginning and tried different things with it.
Joyce
# Posted on November 20th 2002 by JMH
Re: The tune just doesn't want to be played!
C-
Joyce's suggestion to look for a less difficult setting is a good one because it helps you get the tune into your head and fingers. Then you can tackle the tricky parts later. On fiddle, it's usually not too hard to strip out tricky ornaments or fingerings, and sometimes it helps to go so far as to change the key (for beginners, some tunes in G major are easier in A major because you avoid the BG and dG double stop fingering positions when playing arpeggios like G2 BG dGBG, which in A would be A2 cA eAcA and easier on the left hand). Of course, if you're looking to play the tune in a session, you ought to learn it in the key everyone else plays it in. But I've often seen entire sessions transpose for the sake of incorporating a tune (or a player), and the better session players either know many tunes in several keys or can make the shift on the fly.
Some settings are just damn hard, often on purpose. When I first learned the Tarbolton, it was from a Chieftains cd, a Sean Keane solo, ripping fast and chock full of triplets, rolls, flashy bowing patterns, and string crossings--much more of a competition show piece than a session setting. It was great stuff, but designed to impress. Well, that was the only version I'd ever heard. Besides, I wanted to my Tarbolton to sound like Sean Keane's. (What can I say--I was a teenager eager to knock everyone's socks off. Now that I'm older, I know that people are easier to be around with their socks still on, heh.) So I slavishly learned every phrase and grace note, every flourish, and struggled for years to get the timing right and bring it up to speed. Years later, putting sets together for a gig, the other fiddler in our band suggested the Tarbolton. I said, "sure, I know that one." And proceeded to prove that I still couldn't play it with any authority. But then she launched into a fairly straightforward setting, and it was like parting the curtains on a picture window.
Of course I still hear Keane's version in my head whenever I play the tune, and it's hard for me to leave the tricky parts out now when I play the Tarbolton. Which sounds like reason enough to learn simpler settings and gradually build your own setting by adding variations and ornaments. That way, the core melody is ingrained in your mind, and if you want to embellish it, you can.
Some tunes do have more difficult phrases than can't readily be reduced to something easier to play without losing the identity of the tune. On fiddle, I'm thinking of things like the finger tangle in the B part of Tommy Tarbukas, or the three-string jump in the B part of Miller of Droghan or from G to g at the start of Pigtown Fling. Or if your bowed triplets aren't yet up to snuff, how do you play Dinky's or Maids of Mount Cisco, say, and make it sound good? For these situations, I'd say you've found your current ceiling and you'll know exactly what you need to work on to make those parts click. For example, if your bowed triplets are mushy, don't shy away from Maids of Mount Cisco--embrace the tune and use it as a practice piece for those triplets. It might take a while before you're ready to trot it out in public, but that's no reason not to play a tune. Do it for yourself, for your own sense of progress and acheivement, with the expectation that some day you'll do justice to the tune. In other words, don't do it *because* it's hard, but in recognition that it takes some work to make the tricky parts sound as effortless as the easy parts, but boy oh boy will it be fun to play when you've mastered it.
Also, it's obvious that difficult passages get even harder when you speed up. So slow down. Play as slowly as needed to get through the part or tune cleanly. Give it a few weeks/months/years (depending on just how difficult a piece it is), and the speed will come when you're ready.
Joyce, I agree that being drawn to a tune is a great reason to learn it. But as a session player, I've learned a lot by picking up tunes that didn't initially jump out at me. I've learned lots of tunes simply because someone else wanted to play them at the session or in our band, and I wanted to be able to play with them. Sometimes I learned a technical trick that I might otherwised have missed. More often, I've grown to love tunes that just needed a little TLC. To me, that's one of the advantages of playing with a fluctuating group of people (such as a session)--fresh tunes coming from many different angles and preferences. I mean, I almost *like* playing polkas now.... *chuckle*
Hope this helps....
# Posted on November 20th 2002 by Will CPT
Re: The tune just doesn't want to be played!
Will - good advice on learning tunes that friends play. I will be working on picking up some tunes just so I can play with my new music buddies. I'm sure there will be tunes that don't grab me right off, but I'm sure I'll grow to love them.
Joyce
# Posted on November 20th 2002 by JMH
Re: The tune just doesn't want to be played!
Will, I like that Tarbolton story
I think it illustrates one of the reasons I'm not to keen on Keane. (personal opinion ofcourse)
The first version I learned was Michael coleman's, along with most other diddlers.
Do you like Matt Molloy's version on the Matt Molloy and Donal Lunny Album? I particularly like the B at the start instead of the E. Gives the tune a better progression
# Posted on November 20th 2002 by llig leahcim
Re: If it doesn't want to be played, learn another
I open a book and try to play a few new tunes every day and if I am still whistling a tune in bed, or even better, if I can remember some of it next day, it is a GOOD tune so worth working on.
I keep a "jotter" of GOOD tunes and if we are still playing them after a month, they become repertoire.
I have jotters going back 20 odd years and it is good to resurect tunes you havn't played for donkeys years. (They sometimes even make more sense after time).
# Posted on November 20th 2002 by geoffwright
Re: The tune just doesn't want to be played!
Michael, I do like Molloy's version, but then I just plain like the Tarbolton. I don't think I've ever heard a setting I didn't like. And I agree about Keane--a mighty player, but not my first choice for a fiddler's role model. When I went through that phase of imitating various fiddlers to get inside their approach to the tunes, it helped to try on a few Keane arrangements because I never would've dreamed of putting ornaments in some of the places Keane manages to fit them, heh, heh.
# Posted on November 21st 2002 by Will CPT
Re: The tune just doesn't want to be played!
Maybe more to the point of your question, Kev, I've noticed over the years that you eventually reach a level where you can passably play just about any tune in the trad repertoire. But to work a difficult one up to solo standards might take some serious woodshedding. This is similar to what Geoff gets at--that as your abilities improve, you come back to old tunes and find that they're no longer impossible, though they may still demand more attention than less complicated tunes.
In other words, there are tunes I would never foist on a beginning player because they're just too demanding. But once you get your basic chops in line (cut notes, rolls, triplets, good tone and timing with the bow, and decent intonation with the left hand), almost any tune is fair game. But realize that some tunes may not reach their potential until you have more fully reached your own. Keep playing them--that's the only way you'll learn. But be patient, and enjoy playing all the easier tunes too.
# Posted on November 21st 2002 by Will CPT
Re: The tune just doesn't want to be played!
As a fiddler from initially a classical background, I found that I could quite easily play the notes for tunes from the printed page. Unfortunately I couldn't remember them so well afterwards when the page was not there. If I had learned a tune by ear however, while it took me longer, I could remember it very well from then on. One method I 've used is to play a tune from the printed page and record myself doing so. I can then listen to the tune ad nauseum and remember it much better. A sort of combination of learning a tune by reading the notes and learning it by ear.
# Posted on November 23rd 2002 by Niall L
Re: The tune just doesn't want to be played!
Interesting suggestion Niall. I've come into fiddling from a classical cello background, and know exactly the problem. I'll try out your solution!
trevor
# Posted on November 23rd 2002 by lazyhound
Re: The tune just doesn't want to be played!
I've never learned to read music, so I've never really experienced that problem, but I've heard that it's very common to people who sight-read music.
I've heard people say that only play from memory if they can visualize the sheet music in front of them, thereby sight reading the music from a mental image of the page. I'm facinated by the sight reading skill. All those tiny dots just seem to mush together on the page so I'm utterly hopeless at it!
# Posted on November 23rd 2002 by Caoimghgin
Re: The tune just doesn't want to be played!
I learn by ear and from the dots. When I use sheet music I use it only as a loose reference & only for tunes I know by heart (but can't yet play). A lot of sheet music has different settings than what might be standard in your neck of the woods (or it could just be a lousy transcription). This has been said alot - but it can't be said enough. I think learning by ear is better because you hear the swing, where people put the ornaments & those great variations that you just can't get from a one-time-through condensed sheet music version.
# Posted on November 23rd 2002 by Mad Baloney
Re: The tune just doesn't want to be played!
This must have been said ad nausium on this web sit, but it can never be stessed enough. There simply is not enough information in the dots to learn a tune properly. You either have to have prior knowledge of the traddition so you can ad in the missing bits, or, learn it by ear
# Posted on November 23rd 2002 by llig leahcim