I've been looking for a standard set of syllables to to use for lilting fiddle tunes as I learn them. Whistling just doesn't do it for me where ornamentation is concerned.
I have a dandy old recording "Celtic Mouth Music" that samples lilting across the UK, Australia, Canada, and Appalacia. I'm impressed wiith the variety and the value of it for learning tunes is dead obvious. As a kid I learned lots of lilting refrains in songs, but not coming from lilting folk, I have no language of my own.
some googling turned up "canntaireachd"
"a Scottish system of bagpipe notation in which syllables stand for recognized groups of notes and ornaments on the bagpipe. Using this complex type of 'mouth music', pipers could preserve tunes by passing them on even when the instruments were banned or unavailable"
Has anyone formalized a system especially well suited to fiddle tunes?
nah, i'm looking to lilt, which needs nonsense syllables, easy to remember, systematically well-mapped to fiddle sounds. I could make up my own I spose, but I'm guessing, but I'll bet a lilting technique modeled on a good Irish lilter would get me further. I'd give any thing to hear a recordings of great fiddle players litling, then hear them play the same tunes a Rosetta Stone.
I'm on the same track you described in your post - learning tunes by ear and a good lilting "code" would certainly help. Right now I have only a mental image of the tune to work from and have to play it in my head - not the same as singing it somehow. Singing it, I can try different things - the other is just a mental image of how i heard it which can drift over time.
Real words won't work for a lot of reasons, chief among which would be the sheer complexity of trying to fit syllables to notes.
in recent thread for example - there was an example of what i'm looking was posted by Saltcast describing bowing: "" Avoid slurring into an unaccented note. For example, the rythm of a jig should NOT come out: DA-dum dit DA-dum dit DA-dum dit DA-dum (slurring unaccented notes) It should be: Dum dit da-DUM dit da-DUM dit da-DUM.."
I'm looking for syllables that work well to describe details like the slurs on unaccented notes as well as the phrasing. I've developed some along the way but I'm thinking someone has maybe written down something like the scottish system.
in Ptarmigan's answer to your prev thread... he says he litls as he drives... I'm guessing he uses some consistent strategy for mapping from one tune to the next. That's what I'm looking for.
as far as i'm concerned, there's no need to be so systematic. you've heard the recordings, then use the sounds! usually its a mix of diddles and dees and dohs and dies with some tittles and tees thrown in. there's some dums, too; my grandma says lum, especially on pickup notes.
as far as ornamentation goes... you practice fiddle ornamentation on the fiddle. it would be nonsense for me to practice concertina bellows by making different sounds for each direction. if you're after the stylistic sound of an ornamentation, mimick it with your voice, dont regulate it to a meaningless phoneme that sounds nothing like it.
if you're using a mental image, that means you need to work on your singing. try some solfege, or just 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8. you can lilt without learning to sing, but ive found it only helps in the short term. if i can sing / hear a 3rd or a 4th, then when i have a tune stuck in my head i can pause the tune and sing different intervals until it matches what the tune does.
start by not lilting tunes you've learned by music or have played at all. learn new tunes by ear, lilted only. toss it around through your head and your mouth for a few weeks before you pick up the fiddle or try to find some dots.
I'd have to agree with Daiv. I don't think it's quite so systematic. Diddlee Di's and Dum de dum's work well. As I understand it, the Scottish canntaireachd singing is more suited to piping, and uses specific sounds to identify actual notes. Irish lilting is far more informal than that. More important that you know the tune, as well as ornamentation and the "nyah" and replicate it with the lilting than anything else.
kenbridge - for some reason when you said neagh (nyah) i remembered this. often times i lilt a tune to get the melody and the neagh, and then i finger the tune on my legs or something to get the technique if i dont have an instrument with me. i dont do it often, but if i want to work on fingerings and bellows, then i can (which is what it seems ratbiscuit wants). i assigned pulling the bellows to movements away from my thumbs (so its mirrored) and then pushing towards the center. i can play on my legs, on a table, or any thing. i dont even have to pull or push my fingers, i just put pressure so i can feel the direction. for flute and whistle i just visualize it in my head; concertina is too hard to do mentally without a lot of effort.
ratbiscuit - i'm sure you could do similarly for fiddle. you could finger notes on one knee, and move the other hand back and forth on the other knee; not spastically, never moving more than an inch in either direction. classical musicians use their arm as a fiddle neck, but i so no problem in inverting your fingering hand.
thats where its nice to be systematic, in fake fingering things. my uncle learned the pipes by being bored in meetings and fingering them on his pen while he went over lilting to himself in his head tunes he knew on whistle/flute. my grandma learned to dance by using her fingers to work out steps while she was bored in class. i dont know if there's a fake fingering tradtion, but in my family there is, so thats tradition enough for me.
This might be a problem more for folks like me who didn’t grow up in ITM who didn’t absorb a lilting vocabulary in those magic language learning years. I’d really love to hear recordings of fiddlers I admire lilting - it would answer some of this question for me. I’d especially love to hear Lucy Farr lilting as I’m learning the tunes from Heart and Home –and read somewhere that she was a lovely lilter - for that matter I’d just love to hear a recording of her talking.
The Tabla suggestion from highdesertbob is actually closest to what I’m thinking for sure. My reason for wanting to develop a more systematic way of thinking of tunes, is to take advantage or those language circuits in my head. I'm not primarily concerned with ornamentation, per se, I want to "articulate" the tunes more clearly in my head rythmically and then, in ornamentation.. i already find my self naturally making certain sounds for slurs, slides, and cuts, but I don’t have a way to make certain rhythmic details and I think as long as I’m about it, it might really help to have a system – extraneous sounds such as shifting consonants are just a distraction. If I marked the beginnings of call and response phrases with a particular sound it would for example, help consolidate the phrase in memory.
It's a funny thing but I find it distracting to do fake fingerings – at the level I’m at, if I can hear/think it, my fingers will play it – if it’s not too complicated. Especially since I haven't made a connection the other way around, i.e., hearing in my head the tunes my fingers would make on an imaginary keyboard. Although I can imagine my fingers on the fingerboard and sing intervals. (Although when listening to music I can't keep my hands still they wave all around marking rhythm and contours of tunes).
What I’m after is really about listening and singing before playing, so moving to fingerings is not the answer. I think lilting without or without a system will get me where I need to go for now, I’m just trying to understand how other folks think of it and if there are more or less productive ways to do it.
"die, dee, dum, ta, tee, la, diddle, um" are sounds that work for Irish music. Check out some of the Irish songs that have nonsense syllables for other ideas (Whiskey in the Jar et al).
"Skee bop doo wah" are sounds that work for American music, where mouth music is referred to as 'scat' singing.
thanks, Al - I 've been working the d's and t's pretty much on an intuitive basis, so it's good to know I'm on the right track - I've got a nice die-ee-ddum sound for an ascending double grace note. -- like fg e, (not sure how to say thiat in abcs) and I can sort of sing a long roll but haven't got consonants in there. But I think this is worth flogging.
I'm working on articulation - big problem for fiddling I think and critical for the sound i'm after.
make all deedle dums and dohs going one direction, and all tittle tees and toes going the other. the problem with that, though, is that your tiddles and your tittles would sound the same (meaning if you switchied direction after the beat) because of the phonemes of the english language; the phonetic combination tl is missing from colloquial speach in most regions. you could be very awkward about it and make it a true t sound to differentiate, or you could put a glottal stop in there.
tell me your problems with that, and we can work something out. its going to be very difficult to make a system that is mathematically precise while still sounding like traditional lilting. it can be done scratch, and i'll help you, but i dont see the point. singing is a different "instrument", just as fiddle and pipes are different. you dont need to pause to breathe on the fiddle, so already your lilting will have different phrasing than your fiddle playing.
the traditional sound of lilting is choosing different sounds and letters that help shape a tune, adding a personal touch. by trying to systematically lilt, you will hurt the aesthetic of lilting and turn it into purely functional. just as there are reels that sound better slow than fast (and vice versa), there are certain phrases you lilt that sound better with a diddle dum dee doo than a tittle tee do tum.
now that i've aired my feelings on the matter, if you are interested i would not mind trying to figure out something with you. i went down this same road, but i wanted note length and relative pitch, and i decided it wasnt worth it and learned instead to work on lilting in tune, concentrating on the sound and feel rather than the logic and structure. fiddle technique would be easier than what i was trying, and if its worth it to you, then it would be a fun thing to explore.
and for the record... the tabla bol (as it is called) is different than lilting. they are singing the finger combinations for rhythm. when they recite the phrase http://raganet.com/RagaNet/Issues/5/recite1.ram they play http://raganet.com/RagaNet/Issues/5/example1.ram . however, when they are singing, playing or writing down melody, they use the swar, which are sa re ga ma pa dha ni, which do not account for tehcnique.
Lilting linguistics...tongue-tied in tucson
Lilting linguistics...tongue-tied in tucson
I've been looking for a standard set of syllables to to use for lilting fiddle tunes as I learn them. Whistling just doesn't do it for me where ornamentation is concerned.
I have a dandy old recording "Celtic Mouth Music" that samples lilting across the UK, Australia, Canada, and Appalacia. I'm impressed wiith the variety and the value of it for learning tunes is dead obvious. As a kid I learned lots of lilting refrains in songs, but not coming from lilting folk, I have no language of my own.
some googling turned up "canntaireachd"
"a Scottish system of bagpipe notation in which syllables stand for recognized groups of notes and ornaments on the bagpipe. Using this complex type of 'mouth music', pipers could preserve tunes by passing them on even when the instruments were banned or unavailable"
Has anyone formalized a system especially well suited to fiddle tunes?
# Posted on August 26th 2006 by ratbiscuit
Re: Lilting linguistics...tongue-tied in tucson
Unless it's too New Age for you, you could always do some kind of affirmation.
My personal favorite is, "I will find a parking place, I will fi-iiind a parking place." Mystic as all get out >wg<.
# Posted on August 26th 2006 by cathrynb
Re: Lilting linguistics...tongue-tied in tucson
nah, i'm looking to lilt, which needs nonsense syllables, easy to remember, systematically well-mapped to fiddle sounds. I could make up my own I spose, but I'm guessing, but I'll bet a lilting technique modeled on a good Irish lilter would get me further. I'd give any thing to hear a recordings of great fiddle players litling, then hear them play the same tunes a Rosetta Stone.
I'm on the same track you described in your post - learning tunes by ear and a good lilting "code" would certainly help. Right now I have only a mental image of the tune to work from and have to play it in my head - not the same as singing it somehow. Singing it, I can try different things - the other is just a mental image of how i heard it which can drift over time.
Real words won't work for a lot of reasons, chief among which would be the sheer complexity of trying to fit syllables to notes.
in recent thread for example - there was an example of what i'm looking was posted by Saltcast describing bowing: "" Avoid slurring into an unaccented note. For example, the rythm of a jig should NOT come out: DA-dum dit DA-dum dit DA-dum dit DA-dum (slurring unaccented notes) It should be: Dum dit da-DUM dit da-DUM dit da-DUM.."
I'm looking for syllables that work well to describe details like the slurs on unaccented notes as well as the phrasing. I've developed some along the way but I'm thinking someone has maybe written down something like the scottish system.
in Ptarmigan's answer to your prev thread... he says he litls as he drives... I'm guessing he uses some consistent strategy for mapping from one tune to the next. That's what I'm looking for.
# Posted on August 26th 2006 by ratbiscuit
Re: Lilting linguistics...tongue-tied in tucson
as far as i'm concerned, there's no need to be so systematic. you've heard the recordings, then use the sounds! usually its a mix of diddles and dees and dohs and dies with some tittles and tees thrown in. there's some dums, too; my grandma says lum, especially on pickup notes.
as far as ornamentation goes... you practice fiddle ornamentation on the fiddle. it would be nonsense for me to practice concertina bellows by making different sounds for each direction. if you're after the stylistic sound of an ornamentation, mimick it with your voice, dont regulate it to a meaningless phoneme that sounds nothing like it.
if you're using a mental image, that means you need to work on your singing. try some solfege, or just 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8. you can lilt without learning to sing, but ive found it only helps in the short term. if i can sing / hear a 3rd or a 4th, then when i have a tune stuck in my head i can pause the tune and sing different intervals until it matches what the tune does.
start by not lilting tunes you've learned by music or have played at all. learn new tunes by ear, lilted only. toss it around through your head and your mouth for a few weeks before you pick up the fiddle or try to find some dots.
# Posted on August 26th 2006 by daiv
Re: Lilting linguistics...tongue-tied in tucson
Hmm.. ever consider asking the bodhrani?
http://www.sandip-tabla.com/tabla_pages/tabla_language.html
Or at least a goat flogger from the subcontinent.
--Bob
# Posted on August 27th 2006 by highdesertbob
Re: Lilting linguistics...tongue-tied in tucson
I'd have to agree with Daiv. I don't think it's quite so systematic. Diddlee Di's and Dum de dum's work well. As I understand it, the Scottish canntaireachd singing is more suited to piping, and uses specific sounds to identify actual notes. Irish lilting is far more informal than that. More important that you know the tune, as well as ornamentation and the "nyah" and replicate it with the lilting than anything else.
# Posted on August 27th 2006 by kenbridge
Re: Lilting linguistics...tongue-tied in tucson
kenbridge - for some reason when you said neagh (nyah) i remembered this. often times i lilt a tune to get the melody and the neagh, and then i finger the tune on my legs or something to get the technique if i dont have an instrument with me. i dont do it often, but if i want to work on fingerings and bellows, then i can (which is what it seems ratbiscuit wants). i assigned pulling the bellows to movements away from my thumbs (so its mirrored) and then pushing towards the center. i can play on my legs, on a table, or any thing. i dont even have to pull or push my fingers, i just put pressure so i can feel the direction. for flute and whistle i just visualize it in my head; concertina is too hard to do mentally without a lot of effort.
ratbiscuit - i'm sure you could do similarly for fiddle. you could finger notes on one knee, and move the other hand back and forth on the other knee; not spastically, never moving more than an inch in either direction. classical musicians use their arm as a fiddle neck, but i so no problem in inverting your fingering hand.
thats where its nice to be systematic, in fake fingering things. my uncle learned the pipes by being bored in meetings and fingering them on his pen while he went over lilting to himself in his head tunes he knew on whistle/flute. my grandma learned to dance by using her fingers to work out steps while she was bored in class. i dont know if there's a fake fingering tradtion, but in my family there is, so thats tradition enough for me.
# Posted on August 28th 2006 by daiv
Re: Lilting linguistics...tongue-tied in tucson
*but i see no problem in inverting your fingering hand.
# Posted on August 28th 2006 by daiv
Re: Lilting linguistics...tongue-tied in tucson
This might be a problem more for folks like me who didn’t grow up in ITM who didn’t absorb a lilting vocabulary in those magic language learning years. I’d really love to hear recordings of fiddlers I admire lilting - it would answer some of this question for me. I’d especially love to hear Lucy Farr lilting as I’m learning the tunes from Heart and Home –and read somewhere that she was a lovely lilter - for that matter I’d just love to hear a recording of her talking.
The Tabla suggestion from highdesertbob is actually closest to what I’m thinking for sure. My reason for wanting to develop a more systematic way of thinking of tunes, is to take advantage or those language circuits in my head. I'm not primarily concerned with ornamentation, per se, I want to "articulate" the tunes more clearly in my head rythmically and then, in ornamentation.. i already find my self naturally making certain sounds for slurs, slides, and cuts, but I don’t have a way to make certain rhythmic details and I think as long as I’m about it, it might really help to have a system – extraneous sounds such as shifting consonants are just a distraction. If I marked the beginnings of call and response phrases with a particular sound it would for example, help consolidate the phrase in memory.
It's a funny thing but I find it distracting to do fake fingerings – at the level I’m at, if I can hear/think it, my fingers will play it – if it’s not too complicated. Especially since I haven't made a connection the other way around, i.e., hearing in my head the tunes my fingers would make on an imaginary keyboard. Although I can imagine my fingers on the fingerboard and sing intervals. (Although when listening to music I can't keep my hands still they wave all around marking rhythm and contours of tunes).
What I’m after is really about listening and singing before playing, so moving to fingerings is not the answer. I think lilting without or without a system will get me where I need to go for now, I’m just trying to understand how other folks think of it and if there are more or less productive ways to do it.
# Posted on August 28th 2006 by ratbiscuit
Re: Lilting linguistics...tongue-tied in tucson
"die, dee, dum, ta, tee, la, diddle, um" are sounds that work for Irish music. Check out some of the Irish songs that have nonsense syllables for other ideas (Whiskey in the Jar et al).
"Skee bop doo wah" are sounds that work for American music, where mouth music is referred to as 'scat' singing.
# Posted on August 28th 2006 by AlBrown
Re: Lilting linguistics...tongue-tied in tucson
thanks, Al - I 've been working the d's and t's pretty much on an intuitive basis, so it's good to know I'm on the right track - I've got a nice die-ee-ddum sound for an ascending double grace note. -- like fg e, (not sure how to say thiat in abcs) and I can sort of sing a long roll but haven't got consonants in there. But I think this is worth flogging.
I'm working on articulation - big problem for fiddling I think and critical for the sound i'm after.
# Posted on August 28th 2006 by ratbiscuit
Re: Lilting linguistics...tongue-tied in tucson
i am resistant (as i said), but if you insist:
make all deedle dums and dohs going one direction, and all tittle tees and toes going the other. the problem with that, though, is that your tiddles and your tittles would sound the same (meaning if you switchied direction after the beat) because of the phonemes of the english language; the phonetic combination tl is missing from colloquial speach in most regions. you could be very awkward about it and make it a true t sound to differentiate, or you could put a glottal stop in there.
tell me your problems with that, and we can work something out. its going to be very difficult to make a system that is mathematically precise while still sounding like traditional lilting. it can be done scratch, and i'll help you, but i dont see the point. singing is a different "instrument", just as fiddle and pipes are different. you dont need to pause to breathe on the fiddle, so already your lilting will have different phrasing than your fiddle playing.
the traditional sound of lilting is choosing different sounds and letters that help shape a tune, adding a personal touch. by trying to systematically lilt, you will hurt the aesthetic of lilting and turn it into purely functional. just as there are reels that sound better slow than fast (and vice versa), there are certain phrases you lilt that sound better with a diddle dum dee doo than a tittle tee do tum.
now that i've aired my feelings on the matter, if you are interested i would not mind trying to figure out something with you. i went down this same road, but i wanted note length and relative pitch, and i decided it wasnt worth it and learned instead to work on lilting in tune, concentrating on the sound and feel rather than the logic and structure. fiddle technique would be easier than what i was trying, and if its worth it to you, then it would be a fun thing to explore.
and for the record... the tabla bol (as it is called) is different than lilting. they are singing the finger combinations for rhythm. when they recite the phrase http://raganet.com/RagaNet/Issues/5/recite1.ram they play http://raganet.com/RagaNet/Issues/5/example1.ram . however, when they are singing, playing or writing down melody, they use the swar, which are sa re ga ma pa dha ni, which do not account for tehcnique.
# Posted on August 29th 2006 by daiv