Hi to everyone and happy new year!
I'm Maria Teresa from Italy. I'm trying to learn some tune with my fiddle but I have a little problem ............. I saw and I heard that in irish trad music often a tune can be played in different ways: somtime only few notes change, sometime more.
It's difficult for me to know which variation i have to learn, which one is the knownest, and also I have the doubt that if I play a different variation during a session I can disturb other players.
How can I behave and what have I to learn?
It doesn't mind, really. You can learn the most standard one and, at the end, you'll do your own variation of the tune. By my experience, having a different version doesn't disturb the other musicians in a session. It's perfectly normal.
Regards from other fiddler. I'm from Spain, but this year I'm studing in Sligo.
ooh, good question marite. The straight forward response is that if you can answer it successfully, then you must indeed be a a true master of this tradition.
It depends where you come at it, but this is either a problem or the simple joy of it.
Basically, a variation is not the tune. The tune is tune, and a variation is something you come up with on the fly - a little like a snippet of jazz improvisation.
AND
The tune is never set in stone, and the variations are differences that have come from various sources, be them deliberate or merely mistakes in learning process.
The skill is in reconciling the word "AND" and not arguing whether it should be "OR".
There are many tunes that have alternative basic forms that are different enough to clash - a classic being the B part of Connaughtman's Rambles. This needs to be straightened out long before you worry about applying "variations". I think that is what you mean, marite?
The answer is to listen carefully to what your friends at the session are playing. If there is a problem somewhere in the tune where you seem to be playing something that clashes with everyone else, ask a friendly player to go over it (even write out the passage) for you.
More often than not the differences between the versions of the tune will harmonize nicely, and you can continue play your version, or use it as a "varation" to add interest.
I often find this frustrating. I hear a tune at a session and ask the name. If there are those who are lesser players who actually know and admit that they know the name, I jot it down. I come to the/Session to get the spots. I spend the next few days learning it. When the session reconvenes and I proudly start my new treasure, it is sometimes significantly different. I come back here to make sure I learned it right and discover that I did.
Sometimes it is really difficult to unlearn a tune to relearn it.
I know this is an argument in favor of learning tunes by ear and among whom one plays.
What really bothers me, though, is when someone had learned a tune off of a CD and imposes the version on the session.
This has always been a source of frustration and contributes to the love/hate relationship I have with the music. I love it for its diversity at the same time loathing it for having to many variables., But the way I've come to deal with this is to find out what the person's source was for the tune if I hear someone playing it. Often the people playing the tune will shrug and say they don't know, but later you find out they knew all along, but that's a topic for another thread. If people aren't trying to conceal the source it comes in handy for tracking down the same version they're playing. As certain tunes spread through the local ITM community it's handy to know what the source was to eliminate the frustration of learning a different version.
Another thing that can happen is that you might know a tune that is more obscure and no one plays, but the tune will show up in a different version on a popular new CD that's making the rounds. Suddenly a tune you've known and loved shows up in the new incarnation and you have to unlearn the version you knew to play the new version with other folks. I find unlearning tunes a lot harder than learning new ones.
Modern Irish tunebooks usually seem to have uncontroversial settings of session tunes. Those entered in The Session database can sometimes contain mistakes or not very good settings in the sheet music (been guilty here!), but often someone enters a better setting in abc notation underneath.
What's post is very good. The Button's frustrations are inherent in the process and are therefor unavoidable. On the one hand he is annoyed when some one won't let on that they learned a tune from a particular recording, because it makes it harder for him to learn that version. And on the other hand, if the majority of players are playing from the same hymn book, that annoys him because it's not his hymn book. There is nothing that can be done about this, except maybe not to get annoyed.
The only time ive beeen at a session and heard the same tune played by everyone the same way was when everyone read music... after a while that gets boring... thats why I love Paddy Maloneys playing--- he can improvise ---listen to him a lot and you will get ideas that may help.
Guys ............ you are realy great!!!!!
It gives me comfrot to know that it's not a personal problem that one I asked about !!!
Probably I have also the problem that I'm a beginner both to play fiddle and to play ITM and also beacouse here in my city there aren't sessions or people who play this kind of music.
So that I have to look for music and sheet music on internet!
And when I find 5, 10 or 15 divverent ways to play the some tune I realy don't know which one I have to learn, so I choose the simplier hoping that it's the right one but........................ Is this true? I hope so but it's hard to belive it!
thanks to everyone!
I someone gave you comfrot you need to see your doctor and get it checked out. Sometimes it can be stubborn to get rid of with topical cremes alone. You might have to be prescribed something to take orally.
David and Michael... I said it was a love/hate relationship. That implies that even though it's frustrating at times I still love the diversity. (I think I said it the same way above anyway.) But David claims to have several different versions of each tune all in his head ready to go in whatever session he's in. If that's really true -- more power to you David. I have enough trouble keeping tunes that sound similar from getting matted. Tunes like; Down the Broom, The Rainy Day, The Corner House, etc. Or The Knotted Cord and The Concert Reel (A dor) are hard enough to keep straight without adding different versions on top.
But sometimes the differences can be glaring and having both versions available to play on command seems like a stretch. I admire anyone that can actually do this. But even the big boys have problems keeping tunes straight. Once when Martin Hayes asked me to play with him he asked me to suggest one or two of the medleys. So I suggested Martin Wynne's/The Drunken Landlady/The Boys of Ballisodare... and when we got to the second tune he played Pigeon on the Gate instead.
Ignore that fellow Dow, he's a joker. Also I'd like to see him write in a second language. You're doing fine.
Also, if you are going to sessions, remember that some of the "classic" tune collections, like O'Neills, reflect how they played the tunes when they were collected. If you can find more modern collections they will be closer to how people are playing the tunes now.
Marite, don't worry. When your technique improves your problems will gradually go away.
In sessions tunes are usually played two to three times before switching to the second tune in the set. You will want to have more than just one version because it will get quite boring to play a short tune two three times in a row each time the same way.
It's quite enough that you learn only the one version you like the most and then compare how the other versions differ from it. Don't learn the other versions by heart from the dots, but instead just steal some of the best ideas in them to make your own additional variations.
I think that since there is a lot of "ear" playing and learning that has gone on since forever, that sometimes people remember a tune a little wrong, go home, play and practice it, bring it out, and voila... a new setting. A lot of this may be due to simple bad memory in conjunction with ear playing.
I have to confess I was mortified by recording a tune I "learned" that ear/bad memory way. The funny thing, is a few people asked where that nice setting came from, and have started to play it that way. I did confess, in each case, and am still totally embarrassed...but... yes, it is so hard to unlearn a tune, I keep playing it that way. The funnier thing, is that no one complained.
In any case, bet that's how many variations are born. The evolution of trad music? Bad Memory? Could it be so simple as that?
Marite - everyone has explained things pretty well, considering that there is no right answer to your questions anyway.
Amazingly, they haven't referred much to playing by ear. If there are no others playing Irish music in your area then do try to get hold of some recordings. At the end of the day it's best to play what you like most. So get a few different CDs of different Irish fiddlers and pick a few tunes that you like the most and learn them from the CDs. They will still probably turn out to be the "worng" versions when you finally get to a session, but at least they will be ones you like!
Equally, if there are any musicians in your world playing the music, try to learn some tunes either directly from them or from the same source that they have used. Then at least you will be able to play together.
David, I'm sorry if I misunderstood you, but when you said, "If you learn a few different ways of playing a tune from different sources, then with time you'll find it easier to hear how the other people are playing it in the various sessions you're going to, and be able to modify your setting to fit with theirs." it sounds to me like you might have honed a few different versions for your tunes. I'm envious... I wish I could do that. Why do you find that offensive?
Anyway, yes, I did use the "snippet method" with Martin, and I said the names of the tunes for further clarity, and no, it didn't derail the set. But it does underline my point that it's hard enough just keeping similar tunes straight let alone having different versions of each one.
Iris Nevins writes: "I have to confess I was mortified by recording a tune I "learned" that ear/bad memory way. The funny thing is, a few people asked where that nice setting came from, and have started to play it that way. I did confess, in each case, and am still totally embarrassed...but... yes, it is so hard to unlearn a tune, I keep playing it that way. The funnier thing, is that no one complained."
I have a friend who plays a tune that a few people around here have learned from her now, and when I asked her to send me a source for the tune (a tape of her playing it preferably) she sent me an mp3 she found of someone else playing it on a recording. The tune turned out being called, "The Drake's Neck," and I promptly learned it. When we got together next we played it and realized that the version she sent me was quite different from what she plays.
A short while later at a music camp the tune came up from a musician living in Portland and the version was more like the one I learned from the recording and my friend was left listening to us instead of playing along. Later, when we were back in SF she lamented about it and said she originally heard the tune at a session and learned it from memory afterwards. Realizing now she had remembered it differently from what was probably played, she announced she was now going to learn the "right" version. I spent a while convincing her that her version was really nice and she shouldn't let go of it... it's her version.
So now we have a local version of ‘The Drake's Neck’ that's making the rounds here in the SF area. Of course this adds to the confusion... but the confusion has a certain quality as well. I'm sure, as you pointed out; this is the "folk process" and it’s something that happens quite naturally.
This happens all the time, it really is the folk process. Someone in the old days visits a nearby town, drinking no doubt, brings it home a little different, and maybe people say it's the version from this or that county.
Noel Hill just played at IAANJ and played a brilliant version of, I think, Bonnie Kate...it had a really haunting part B no one around here ever heard before. No one said it was wrong, that's for sure.
David writes: "But seriously, you find it hard to learn more than one setting of a tune? Don't you find that when you hear someone phrase something differently, you want to see how or why they do it that way?"
There are certain tunes that I can learn two settings of, like The Maple Leaf for example. There's the original version found on a Boston recording by the same name, and the Northern version I learned from Frankie and Mairead. There are some other examples I can keep separate, but some versions are different enough to clash, but to similar to keep separate. On these tunes there's a danger in trying to have all the versions understood and ready to execute on command because I end up with a jumbled tune whenever I try to play it by myself. Or, I just feel awkward every time it comes up.
The mind is a mysterious place. Sometimes I'll be playing along on with my flute on a tune just fine until the moment I realize I've never played it on my flute but only played it on my concertina. Or I'll play a tune at home just fine, and then later that night at the session I can't remember the 2nd part. Or at a session a tune will come up I haven't played in a decade and I play along just fine, but at home I try to play it and keep winding up on a different tune all together.
The tunes that I haven't tried to learn different versions of are less likely to get mangled over time. I think there’s a value to having solid versions of tunes just to keep them all intact. I’ve found that as my repertoire grows this becomes more essential. I’ll expound on this with some allegory.
If you think of your tune collection that’s in your head as a toy car collection, and you make a habit of taking off bumpers, doors, etc., of one toy car and putting on different ones from other similar toy cars… you end up with a box full of bits and pieces that you can’t remember which car they came from. You might end up putting them back together in a way that will make them harder to distinguish from one another. You might even end up with more bits and pieces than actual toy cars.
I once was talking to Paddy O’Brien about this and told him that some of the settings I've learned from his recordings clashed with what some of the local musicians played, and I asked him what he does when he plays with other people that have different settings. He told me something to the effect of, “I just play them the way I like to play them.”
I'm a bit surprised at the general gist of the responses here. I know lots of different settings/versions of most of the tunes I play, and many of the people I've sessioned with over the years can charge into way more settings than I can. In my (woefully anecdotal and inadequate) experience, having lots of settings/versions at the ready is the norm, not the exception.
Some tunes lend themselves to morphing through different modes; some come with 2, 3, 4, 5, or more parts; some simply want to be played in different keys and that changes the flow and pulse of the melody; others come in widely divergent regional forms; and some just invite melodic invention. Just my opinion, but far from being frustrating, this is the life and joy in the music.
About twenty or so years ago, I introduced Tombigbee Waltz at a session and played it on harmonica. I didn't have a G harp with me, so I played it in D and explained that it really is traditionally played in G, so please don't learn it in D. Since then, the tune has come back to me through two different people in the key of D. The tune was in D, not the people. Both of them learned it from somebody in that session.
So now I feel like I've put a little dent in the tradition and I've become cautious about passing on a tune in the "wrong" key. I know a key change can sometimes be a cool thing, but I'd rather do it because it sounds good, not because I brought the wrong instrument.
I play several tunes on the guitar in non-traditional keys just because the guitar often sounds better in a different key, but I try to avoid that if there's any danger of somebody learning it. In fact, I sometimes discourage fiddlers and tootlers from learning a tune from my guitar playing because it's too ... well, guitaristic. Guitar settings can be a little reductionistic, whatever that means.
Will writes: "having lots of settings/versions at the ready is the norm, not the exception."
I'm feeling that I must be extraordinarily thick right now because I don't have multiple settings and versions available for most of my tunes. I only have a couple of different versions for a handful of certain tunes at best.
So now I'm wondering; how many people here agree that, "having lots of settings/versions at the ready is the norm, not the exception"?
Not the norm around here, certainly, but a couple of the better players seem to know several versions of everything or are very quick at latching on to a new one when they hear it. I'm jealous.
Jack, I don't really keep track of it numerically. So the following is just off the top of my head.
Some of the differences are pretty basic, though they'd clash if you played them together, like the Dmix setting of Garret Barry's and the "older" D dorian version (a tune I also play it in Gmix and Cmix, but with a sometimes flatted third in the B part). Similar changeling tunes include Cheif O'Neill's Favorite, the Broken Pladge, Or Calliope House in at least four different keys.
Seems like lots of Dmix and Ador tunes also have Dmaj and Amix counterparts: Blackhaired Lass, Jenny Picking Cockles, Within a Mile of Dublin, Nine Points of Roguery, Maids of Mitchellstown, Dinny O'Brien's, Bantry Lasses, Buried my Wife, the Doon, Down the Broom, Sligo Maids, Sergeant Early's Dream, Tuttle's, My Love is in America (which also comes in 3 or 4 parts, beyond the common 2), Crib of Perches, etc.
There are tunes that come in both Ionian and Aeloian forms--a number of Paddy Fahey jigs and reels, Whistler of Rossleigh and some other Reavey tunes.
Tunes with variable numbers of parts: Maid at the Spinning Wheel, Mayor Harrison's Fedora, Kid on the Mountain, Mason's Apron, Boil the Breakfast Early, Cook in the Kitchen, Pigtown Fling, Over the Moor to Maggie, Rights of Man, Trip to Durrow, Monaghan Jig, etc.
Some tunes have widely divergent melodic settings: some as "standard" as Silver Spear or Drowsy Maggie that grow less arppegiated, and others more complex, like Dr. Gilbert's or Galway Hornpipe or the Scholar.
Lots of tunes come with multiple and very different regional forms--Heathery Cruach, Young Tom Ennis, Flower of the Flock, Abbey Reel, Apples in Winter, Star of Munster (and in three different keys), Killavil Fancy, Crosses of Annagh, Bag of Spuds (also in at least two keys), Belles of Tipperary, Goodnatured Man, Fairhaired Molly (a major version from the north, and a minor version from East Galway), Whinny Hills of Leitrim, Frost is All Over, Pigeon on the Gate, Johnny's Wedding, Mullingar Lea, Coppers and Brass.
There are loads more, and like I said above, I've played with many people whose store of settings goes way beyond mine.
Hmmm, I certainly didn't mean to make anyone feel "thick" about this. Sorry. I was just surprised because my personal experience is different from what I was reading here.
Some people know a zillion tunes, but few different settings. Some people can create different settings whole cloth on the fly (one of our fiddlers is fond of careening from Ionian to Aelion at the flip of a switch). Some people are "collectors" of different settings, and worry less about total tunage.
All I'm saying is that in my session experiences, many people--especially the more experienced players--have known and played many different settings, very adept at switching keys, modes, numbers of parts, melody lines, etc. When I've learned tunes from these folks, it has been the norm rather than the exception that they've shown me two or three very different settings of the same tune, to place it in context.
All that said, yes, there are plenty of tunes that don't seem to generate so many variable settings.
Wow... well your sessions in Montana must be on a very high level then I guess. Here in SF we can usually tell what recording people learned their tunes from, and sometimes I can adjust, but most of the time I'm happy just to have gotten the tune out at all let alone having regional variances in multiple keys. The kind of variables that are most noticeable here are when a tune like The Humours of Trim shows up and half the people learned it from Randal Bays and the other half from Kevin Crawford. Kevin recorded it as The Rolling Wave and made all the Cs as naturals instead of sharp, as well as changing the shape slightly. The same clash between the C#s and C naturals happens every time and few if any are making adjustments. When the Fahey tunes come up it can be a train wreck as well until the more polite players succumb to the minor or major version. Fiddlers usually have the easiest time adjusting to Fahey tunes if they want, but often they’ll just stop.
But I noticed you have Down the Broom in your list. Do you ever have any problem keeping it straight with those other similar A dor tunes that all have very similar B-parts? And if so, wouldn’t it just add to the confusion to have multiple versions of tunes like that?
Not just sessions in Montana, but the US and Canada. There are some billiant players whiling away their time over tunes in nondescript pubs all over.
Heh, "reels in Ador are all interchangeable." Brendan Bulger said that.
I think keeping the tunes and various settings straight is mostly a matter of paying attention to nuances and listening to what other people are playing, and being able to adjust on the fly.
David, I agree--horses for courses. Personally, I tend to prefer sessions where different settings come up, but some nights it's nice to just stick to common ground. Nothing at all wrong with that, and one approach certainly isn't "better" than the other.
The Bucks is another common tune with loads of different settings. And the Congress, Hunters Purse, a reel I know as Charlie Lennon's, Boys of the Lough....
Jack, my guess is that you probably know at least twice as many tunes as I do, and you play two instruments well, whereas I play fiddle well enough, wheeze into a flute on occasion, and sound like a hammered dulcimer falling down a staircase on tenor banjo.
It's just a case of different priorities in how and what we play.
Seems like Mr. Crawford is more adept than most at confusing tune names. Humours of Trim appears in O'Neill's (with c sharps), but it's been recorded here and there (including by the Chieftains) without a name or under a number of other titles.
Yep, you carry with you lots of version/vatiations of most tunes. It simply ain't the music if you don't. It's just regurgitated repetition (and before someone grasses me up, sorry for the alliterated tautology)
I like the element of surprise when you're playing with someone and a new setting pops out, whether by accident or on purpose. Many times people break out their recorders and ask the person to play that part again so they can learn it....
Well, yes, the various versions are a big part of the tradition. Even back in the day when regional styles were more distinct in Ireland, players took pride (and enjoyment) in knowing settings from other regions.
For my part, I have a lot of tunes that I have a few different versions of, and like Jack, I've got a few hundred tunes. I think if you're really into a tune and you really love the music, then you naturally pick up different versions as you explore the tune for yourself. For me it's not just a case of learning a tune and then moving on to the next one, you're constantly relearning tunes, changing the way you play them, adding variations in as you hear them from different sources, and doing things like adding double stops or chords in as your interpretation of the tune changes over time. I think it boils down to your priorities and your view of the music. If I were a performer on stage rather than a session musician, I'd probably stick to one version of a tune and practise it up until I had it just right, and so that my version and variations meshed perfectly with those of the other members of my band. That's not for me. I find that approach pretty unrewarding, but others mightn't agree.
Most of us, having played for a decade or more, and having heard of tunes from numerous live and recorded (and perhaps also printed) sources, internalize, to some degree, multiple variants and variations, or elements thereof. We also ,over time, develop the technique ('ear-hand co-ordination', 'neurological pathways', whatever you want to call it) to transfer the music in our heads spontaneously to our instruments. Thus, we develop a degree of flexiblity to adapt our playing of a tune to that of our fellow musicians.
But I think there are relatively few players who can actually commit to memory multiple fully-formed settings of tunes, 'as played by XYZ'.
Ok... here's an example. The last tune I learned is The Liffy Banks. I've been hearing it played by a couple of people at the session, but they wouldn't tell me, or forgot (yea right, they just learned it) but I did manage the to get the name out of them. I went to this website and found that Will had transcribed it from a recording by Mike and Mary Rafferty’s The Road From Ballinakill... so there's one version. Then I found it had also been recorded by Teada, Brian Conway, Seamus Tansey, Todd Denman And Bill Dennehy, etc., etc. Some of the versions are similar, and others are quite different and would clash with one another. So I learned Rafferty's version thinking that one would be down to Earth enough, but when I played it with the two fellas at the session, my version clashed. I stopped and listened carefully to what they were playing and then when I was at home the next day I realized they lifted it from Teada. So I relearned it that way.
I can’t at this point imagine learning it both ways, or more. It takes time to get these tunes into your head enough to play it on command, and for it to stick I have to play it at sessions and such over a long period. This is what I've done with all the hundreds of tunes in my head. Occasionally I'll go back and rework bits as my technique develops on my instruments, and here and there I might be able to sus out a unique version and add bits of it, but there's a certain danger in tampering too much with the tunes set in memory. Some tunes I've played for ages are now easily derailed because I tinkered around with them too much. If I start learning all the different versions of most of the tunes I'll be likely lose my ability to start and carry tunes on my own.
As Iris points out, I love hearing different versions and will stop playing to listen when I realize someone’s playing a different (or clashing) version. But I will rarely set out to learn it. On the occasions that I have it can throw a wrench into the tune (as I mentioned above.)
There are certain tunes where something about the version is learnable because it’s different enough to be added on to my memory like an attachment without screwing up the main tune. A tune like The Green Mountain for example that has a version I heard Kevin Crawford and Tony Linnane playing on the Gort tape. There’s a segment that I can either put in or leave out without confusing the way I originally learned it. But most clashing versions of tunes have overlapping paths that would be very confusing to keep straight and sound like hell if they’re played at the same time. I can’t imagine knowing these different versions and keeping them straight when I try to play the tune without it sounding like perpetual noodling.
I can't help but think what Paddy O'Brien might think if he stumbles aross this thread and realizes he must now go back and learn all the different versions of the 500 tunes he recorded and published the sheet music for. hahahahaha
This is a very interesting topic, though, and it goes to the heart of what people with several years playing under their belt think of as a good session. Does rolling out a different version of a tune constitute an occasional novelty, or a necessary break from "the monotony" of always playing the same version?
Michael's comment that it "simply ain't the music unless you do" is probably more applicable to people inserting interesting variations on some of the go-arounds rather than plaing the C-natural version of a tune instead of the C-sharp version once in a while.
Ok... here's another example since it was brought up in this thread. Take a tune like 'Crib of Perches'. When Zina showed up at our session she wanted to play this tune but our versions clashed in the second part and I stopped. She said she learned it from this website, and I looked and found a similar setting to mine in the comments. But take a look at these ABCs I put together so they will all play together as if in a session, and (if your computer allows it) play the midi and listen what happens. I can't imagine having these different versions all in my head together and expect to access it suddenly at a session after a lot of time has gone by.
well, for example grego, I can think of a few tunes that have very nice Gmin settings that will often get played if there are no flutes or pipes in the session, but common courtesy makes you play the Gmaj with the flutes. (unless the flute player is really good of course)
But Button, I can only apologise for being unable to decipher what above is gobbledegook to me (and the last thing I'm gonna do is make my inanimate computer play it. As if that would help). However, I can't help feeling that you give too much importance to the written versions you find. One of the problems of having written versions is that these are then set in stone as versions, and variations are considered something different. But really, they should all be a beautiful shade of grey that should keep your ears open at all times.
I can understand people you play with being reticent about letting on about their sources of tunes. I just don't think this music is very receptive to your, in my opinion, over-analytical approach.
Seriously though, if you're going to stop and stare at the other players every time they play a note that's different from what you're playing, it's going to make for a pretty tense session. Just relax and play the tunes. If someone plays a different version to you, you should be a good enough player after 20 or 30 years or however long you've been playing to be able to pick up the other person's version on the fly if you're familiar enough with the tune. You shouldn't need to go home and find which CD they got it off and sit down and learn it. Maybe you need to permit yourself to noodle once in a while. What's that quote about the session being a place where the music lives and breathes and flexes its muscles etc? You don't have to sound like you're recording a CD the whole time. Have a beer, relax, smile, and just enjoy playing the tunes.
Michael writes: "I can't help feeling that you give too much importance to the written versions you find. One of the problems of having written versions is that these are then set in stone as versions, and variations are considered something different. But really, they should all be a beautiful shade of grey that should keep your ears open at all times."
We're on a website that uses written music to share tunes... hello? Do you want me to ring you and play it over the phone instead? How else am I going to convey my point, and how else will we share tunes? I think you're putting far to much importance on what's being written in these threads.
Michael continues: "I can understand people you play with being reticent about letting on about their sources of tunes. I just don't think this music is very receptive to your, in my opinion, over-analytical approach."
Of course I'm the only one here who's ever learned a tune from a CD or analyzed it... right Michael? But if you want to talk realistically about why people are reticent to reveal sources it probably has more to do with either wanting to appear more like a true "traditional" musician, or wanting to keep the tune out of circulation.
Dow writes: "Seriously though, if you're going to stop and stare at the other players every time they play a note that's different from what you're playing, it's going to make for a pretty tense session."
Can't anyone make a point on this website without you jumping to some absurd and extreme assumption? I think even you can sometimes recognize when two different versions of tunes are clashing. That's what this whole thread is about after all. But it doesn't surprise me really that you'd be the sort that wouldn't dream of stopping to give way to someone else's version. You'd just be "relaxing" I suppose.
David, to a certain extent I can, but it's very limited. Here's another example: I play Charlie Lennon's 'Smiling Bride' and someone came in one night who learned it off the Mulcahy Family recording that leaves the whole second ending of the A part out. I tried to follow this and it felt very awkward and I ended up flubbing the ending each time. But I couldn't play it as Charie intended because the clash was unbearable. (I think even Dow would agree.) So now I just don't play it if people are playing that version. There are other less dramatic and obvious examples, but if I tried to learn all of the versions for most of my tunes I don't think I'd have enough room left in my head to remember my name.
Now I don't doubt that people in here have learned different versions for most of their tunes, but I'm amazed that they're able to do something that to me seems like you'd have to be idot savant. I don't know... maybe I did too many drugs in my youth.
So, what is the right amount of drugs for a youth to do? The next generation anxiously awaits the wisdom of the elders so they may test the hypothesis.
Back to the issue at hand, it seems to me that this is one place that makes clear the difference between a traditional musician and a student of tradition. The traditional musician learns and plays the version(s?) that those around him/her plays - end(?) of story. The student of traditional music learns lots of versions so he/she can play with traditional musicians from different micro-"regional" traditions (where "region" is no longer defined by physical geography, but by the topology - for the mathematically inclined - of modern global communication).
The distinction is between those who play mostly with the same circle of people whose repertoire is derived from a limited collection of sources and those who want to be able to play with just about everone. (No value judgements here, there's room for both and everything in between - but the approaches and values are very different.)
I can think of plenty people who I'd call traditional musicians and who've learnt a lot of tunes off recordings. And even the most "traditional" musos in Ireland can play with just about anyone. I'm sick of this stereotypical image of traditional musicians as being stuck away in some village somewhere surrounded by a herd of cows and isolated from the outside world. It's a right load of bollox and also incredibly condescending actually.
Just back from a day in the snow, and it's nice to see we're right back where Dow asked how I know about players back in the day learning tunes in different regional styles.
The main reason I believe that is because Kevin Burke told me stories about old players he learned from who commonly knew a Sligo setting, a Donegal setting, a Galway setting, etc, for many of the tunes. I took it on his authority (as fallacious as that might seem ).
I've heard similar things from Mike Rafferty, and from Joanie Madden talking about her dad's store of tunes. And the literature (Northern Fiddler, Brethnach, Vallely, Moloney,) also mentions players traveling to pick up tunes and coming home with new settings of familiar local tunes, or picking up new settings from traveling "masters." Those travelers (Like Master Crowley, John Doherty, Johnny and Felix Doran, and later Seamus Ennis) were renowned for having many divergent settings, collected from counties and players all around.
This echoes what I've experienced playing with some people well immersed in the music today. Perhaps it's more common nowadays than it once was, I don't know. But it's so easy to learn wildliy different settings from all the recorded material available now, and there are so many brilliant versions floating around! Take the Swallowtail Reel--everyone knows the "standard" setting, but how can you not pick up the upside-down setting from Dervish? And keep both.
I have a hard time imagining NOT knowing a number of settings for many of the tunes I play. When I've travelled and played in other sessions, it's as expected as knowing certain old chestnuts--you either have the various settings already in hand, or you pick them up on the fly from knowing the tune well enough that the differences are readily apparent and easily (immediately) sorted out as you play. I remember doing this at an informal gig sort of thing I played with Zina and Pete down on the Front Range in Colorado a year ago. They launched into Garrett Barry's, and neither of the two settings I knew at the time sat well with theirs. So I played along, softly where the differences were (two phrases in the A part, and most of the B), and had it all by the third time around.
My own local sesh doesn't do as much of this as other sessions I've sat it on, but one of our other fiddlers in particular is really keen (and adept) on this sort of thing, so we keep our chops up and gives tunes a twist at the session whenever we can. We also have a whistler friend from out of town who knows different settings, so things get interesting whenever he shows up.
I suspect this whole notion sits easier with fiddlers than with players of some other instruments. It's not at all unusual to have a fiddle setting and a more flute-friendly setting (as Michael alluded to above)--changing the key, mode, or melodic phrasing to better suit flute. I find I often do the same thing to better match the pipes or a banjo as well.
It also goes with learning aurally, as opposed to knowing a tune only by "feel." On fiddle, changing keys almost always alters the fingering and bowing, even if you play the exact same melodic intervals. So after 20 or 30 years of this, it grows comfortable. And fun.
That Dervish version of the Swallow Tail is different enough to be a seperate tune. I have no problem knowing both versions. But the difference in the B-parts for the versions of Crib of Perches are the sort that I have no room in my head to know each version of. The differences aren't separate and thay overlap and converge. I had to just choose one and submit it to memory. If someone else starts that tune and I hear the clash I might try to quietly shift my version to match if I can, but sometimes the frustration isn't wroth the effort and I'll just drop out and listen instead.
Well the way I'd approach it, PB, is that I'd forget the setting I posted. It was transcribed from a session recording, but looking at it now, I'd say it's almost definitely a mangled version of Matt Molloy's setting, so just listen to the Matt Molloy CD a few times and allow yourself to absorb it. Then when you hear it in a session, you'll know which of your 2 versions it is and will be able to fit in. And then you'll be able to stop stressing and worrying about it.
I'm not stressing about it, Dow, it's the topic of the thread... hello?
I first heard the tune played by Kevin Crawford and Tony Linanne on the Gort tape. It also appeared in that same incarnation on Moher's CD. This is the version I play. But if you want to talk about Matt Molloy's recordings... there have been tunes I learned from him that show up differently at the session as well. So as good as he is, his versions aren't necessarily the gospel either.
But I have never said I object to the different versions, all I'm saying is that I find it amazing that the opinions expressed on this thread conclude that the standard is to know multiple versions for most of your tunes. This seems unattainable for me, and I don't know many people that can actually do this. It seems like the exception, but I'm told here that it's not.
But I'll tell you something that does bug me a bit. I've played the 'New Found Out' reel ever since it showed up on the first Providence CD. Not many people knew it, well, actually no one around here, but every now and then I'd toss it into the mix. Now one guy learned the tune off of a recent CD and when I started playing it he said, "But mine doesn't go like that... learn my version." But if I do, I think the way I've been playing it will get written over by the new version and I'll lose it. So I'm reluctant.
Then there's the case of the Limerick Lasses. I learned the Kathleen Collins 4-part version, and everyone else plays the 3-part version. They're very similar and would be hard to keep apart in my head I think. But in this case I'm have the 'Johnny come lately' version. Oh, the humanity!
Good point, Michael. But the session doesn't shrivel up and die if the players don't have the versatility to play both the Gmaj and Gmin settings of the tunes. It would be nice, but it's not necessary.
I'm reading your posts, Jack, (and everybody's) and find one point interesting. You tend to classify settings or versions almost exclusively by the player/CD from which a session player learned them. I'm not implying a value judgement or anything - but just wondering. Is this just the way you think, or the way most of the folk in your regular sessions approach learning and classifying tunes.
I learn a lot of stuff from recordings, too, but I tend to be less faithful to one version - adding in bits that I've heard from here and there, my own variations, etc. I don't play in sessions much, except for the very low key kind where lots of tune sharing, discussing, etc goes on. It makes me wonder, if I showed up at your session whether people would be desperately trying to figure out where I "got" my versions of different tunes. Hmmmm.
Also, what WIll said about earlier players having a Sligo setting, a Galway setting, etc. I have heard that, too, and often wondered whether that was really what they had! Judging from how people talk about music, if a visitor came to a session and picked up a new setting, somebody would probably have told them "That's how we play it in Sligo (or South Sligo or Gurteen) but then when you listen to three different players from one area you often hear three quite different setting of the same tune anyway. (Unless they are all following a Coleman recording!)
For me, the differences in the way different people play a tune, and the endlessly different ways one person can vary a tune is where it's at. But I don't tend to think "okay, he's doing the Kevin Burke version" or "sounds like we're headed for the West Clare setting of this one"
"Michael G: "I can understand people you play with being reticent about letting on about their sources of tunes. I just don't think this music is very receptive to your, in my opinion, over-analytical approach."
.....about why people are reticent to reveal sources it probably has more to do with either wanting to appear more like a true "traditional" musician, or wanting to keep the tune out of circulation."
Michael G and Phantom B: Your analyses may hold true for certain individuals. But is it not entirely plausible that a player might genuinely have forgotten the source of a tune? Isn't it enough to remember 1000-odd tunes without having to remember where you learnt them as well?
Roll on the day when I've got even half of 1000-odd tunes in my head! I must be well on the way, because I not only forget where I learnt the tunes I do know, but in most cases I don't even remember their names.
Kris... about 80% of the time people around here pick up tunes from CDs. People also pick up tunes at sessions, from other people who learned them off of a CD, and occasionally tunes will be picked up from recordings of sessions they bring back from Ireland. I have learned tunes in all of these ways.
If I lived in Ireland and grew up in a musical family or lived in an area rich in the tradition, I'd have a different story, but I'm living way out on the West Coast of the US and have few options aside from what I mentioned. But even friends of mine living in Ireland tell me they got such and such tune off of such and such CD. Even Kevin Crawford was telling me once about his favorite CDs to play along with. And if you look at the liner notes from some of his recordings he sites his sources as coming from certain CDs. I think we all do to some degree... don't we?
~~~
Spoon... I'm sure you right about tunes people learned a long time ago; I can't remember the sources for all of my tunes. But the tunes I referred to were recently learned by people who "forgot" where they got them. What would you think if someone played a couple of tunes they learned recently and when you ask where they got them they say they can't remember?
As for me personally, for some reason I can remember most all the names as well as who or where I learned them. It seems I can remember names of tunes better than people's names. But the human memory remains a complete mystery to me. Even so, I would think someone would remember the source for their recently learned tunes.
When people ask me where I got my tunes I can usually tell them with enough detail to track it down, unless it came from an obscure session tape or individual. I can usually remember any commercial recordings from where I originally found tunes, but not all of my tunes were learned from commercial recordings. I can't guarantee that my version will match the recording note for note, but it will be close enough usually.
I do learn them note for note from the original source. Over time I might change it here and there depending on what I've heard other people play. And sometimes I'll pick and choose from a couple of different sources to compile the version I settle on. But I very rarely learn more than one version. I will have variations that develop over time, but none that would clash with the base setting. Any version that comes along that clashes with what I already know would have to be pretty damned spectacular before I'd attempt to retool the tune all together. And as I said above, having similar but contrasting and converging versions of the same tune would be too confusing for me.
Jack - I wasn't surprised to hear that people learn tunes from CDs - me, too! (And other sources, like yourself.) And I'm not putting anybody down for that.
I guess what surprised me is that you seem to identify a persons version of a tune as the one off this or that CD, and maybe to imply that this is a common mindset in your circle. Like, "Oh, he plays the Matt Molloy version" or "Will we play the Kevin Burke version or the Paddy Glackin one?" So if I came to one or your sessions, people would be mentally running checks on my playing to figure out where I learned stuff. As I said, I'm not putting any value judgement on this approach, it just came as sort of a surprise to me, and I am trying to ask whether I understand you right.
Kris -- I don't know what other people in our session are thinking, but I'm sure we'd all enjoy your company. As for me personally, yes, I sometimes can recognize where people were likely to get their version of this or that tune. Whether they got it directly from the recording, or learned it from someone who got it from a particular recording, I wouldn't know or care unless it revealed a clue about how that version of the tune goes.
But it really doesn't matter at the end of the day, and there's no value judgment made or any such nonsense. I'm sure that there are some people that can see my discography on my forehead when I start tunes, but so what -- that's a big source of tunes for me. And when I recognize a version someone plays that likely originated with a particular recording I'll know whether I can join in or should sit out. No harm in that really. It might be as simple as knowing they're going to likely double the parts or add the extra one etc. But I don't expect all the tunes and versions played to have a discography behind them.
Maybe discussing tune versions and such on this message board is giving you the impression that I'm taking this all very seriously, but I'm not. At our sessions I'm there mainly for drink and tunes with my pals, to meet new people, and to watch the people in the bar carry on. I can't do that here, so we discuss details about the tunes and such instead. But if I showed up at your session I wouldn't behave any different than you and your pals really. I think we're all there for pretty much the same reason.
Thanks, Jack. It's probably me that's taking it all a bit seriously - it was just a new thought for me, and I got curious. I don't go to sessions that much anymore, precisely because I'm more interested in hearing tunes played solo, or nearly so, than a group rendition. However, never say never. Perhaps we'll meet one day...
Button, what percentage of your tunes would you say you learned in a session?. I don't mean heard in a session and found where it came from and learned it there, or found the name and dug out a CD or the dots. I mean just simply learned it at the session. Not even a recording of a session, or even getting someone you heard playing it and getting them to show you it. Just simply picked up ... on the fly?
"On the fly?" hmmm... not sure what you mean by that, but there are tunes that I've sat and listened to over the years and I know where the melody’s going… and suddenly find that I can play along without hardly missing a note. But what percentage of my tunes came like that? I don't know really... I'd have to take a wild guess. The tunes that came like that tend to be common tunes that are played often.
Before I was living anywhere that had sessions I was advised to get Bothy Band and Kevin Burke recordings and start there. By the time I moved to SF I had a couple of dozen I learned this way. I would make recordings of the sessions, but I found they sounded rather jumbled since half the people were playing the tune and the rest seemed to be noodling. I would ask the names of the tunes I was interested in and/or where they got them and many knew of a source, so I would go there to find a less jumbled rendition. But there were many tunes that didn't strike me as much, or that I hadn't found time to pursue, that I would sit and listen to night after night. Often I knew the name long before attempting to play along, but eventually I would find myself playing them. Sometimes I would discover that version later on a recording and it would register as the source in my memory for that particular tune
Recently, most of the new tunes that pass through are a result of a popular new CD that came out and is getting passed around. I've selected a few tunes off such recordings myself and introduced them to the gang, but many others I learn because someone else learned them and started playing them at the session. Occasionally someone will introduce a tune they learned from an individual they met in Ireland or whatever, and we'll have no other source except for that person to get the tune.
But I digress… the truth is, I don’t know what percentage of tunes I know were picked up at a session. Sorry.
Sometimes your own source for a tune really is hard to sort out. "Silver bow" here recently brought Boys of Ballycastle to our local session. After he played it a couple weeks in a row, I had the melody running through my head. It clicked with some old memory of the tune. I was able to suss it out from memory alone (easy enough cuz it's a fairly straightforward, repetitive hornpipe), and then realized that it had been stuck there from hearing Kevin Burke play it 20-some years ago. And Silver bow got his version off a Kevin Burke cd, so the two jibed. I finally dug up a net clip of Kevin playing the tune, and found I could play right along, and that cemented it, though I play my own variations, not Burke's.
I've posted this before, but it strikes me as relevant here, too: paraphrasing Vassar Clements, when asked if he wasn't bored playing the same bluegrass repertoire all those years, he said that sure, they were the same tunes, but he played them differently now than 20 years ago, and hoped he'd be playing them altogether differently a year, or five years, or 20 years ahead.
That works for me in Irish trad music--yes, there are lots of great tunes too learn, but each tune also holds its own potential for growth and freshness.
Then there's this from Ciaran Carson, in Last Night's Fun. It's a bit long, but beautifully captures the essence of this music:
"Then Tansey does his preliminary twiddle [i.e., "noodle" ] again and a hush descends on the murky lounge bar. He soars into the Battering Ram--not the standard version, but the one he got from Jim Donoghue, the great Sligo tin-whistle player who perversely played a C whistle (D is standard) out of the side of his mouth, and produced a great strong flute-like tone full of wood and embouchure and breath, jumping octaves; and he put a funny twist into this jig, reversing it and generally standing phrases on their heads. Tansey imputes many of his stylistic traits to Donoghue, and this tune is a tribute, an hommage, a dedication, Tansey playing it as beautifully as he can because he loves the playing of Jim Donoghue and he is beholden to him. But Tansey is his own man too, and knows he's good. All great musicians recognise their ancestry and pay respect to it, and they know the thing is bigger than the sum of individuals: it progresses in a multiplicity of exponential steps and fractal variations; and stepping on a butterfly way back there in the past will have an unforseen chaotic implication for the present or the future. Because a note was bent back then, the whole tune has taken on another bent or warp or woof, and sometimes, someone will put in another bend that gets back to the source, just as the flooded Mississippi breaks its banks and takes a straighter, faster course between its hitherto meanderings. The river-bend becomes an ox-bow lake. Whole towns are abandoned. It's all in flux. In bars in towns called Memphis, Thebes, and Cairo, the river pilots gather to discuss their current Nile, or what was current yesterday, and prognosticate its future course, the shifting of its underwater reefs and bars and snags. To be a river pilot you must have a photographic memory, or rather a filmic memory, since the images are never static: soundings must be taken all the time. The pilot scans the water constantly, reading it for change, for dissolution and establishment of hazards.... Musicians, borne on a spate of music, take their soundings; hearing something new, they search the memory bank for parallels and precedents, getting its approximation, its relative shape. A rough internal course is plotted out before embarking; fingers mime the notes. Then the details--little snags and twists--are filled in, or attempted.... till they come as if by chance from some obscure source in the brain: the fingers find the pattern without conscious effort. But of course the instinct is instructed by years of listening. We drift on in the wide, swift current of the music, trusting to our memories and to past associations."
Sure there are extraordinary musicians like Tansey whose head might contain multiple versions for most of the tunes he knows, (although that's not what Ciaran suggests here,) but isn't Tansey an exception?
What I heard a couple of people in this thread say is that it's not the exception, but the norm that most people have multiple versions for most of their tunes. I'm not talking about variations, but different versions that are the same tune. I know one flute player in Dublin who I've witnessed with this ability, and a concertina player in Ennis, and a few others. But they are definitely exceptional players at the top of their game. Most people I know have basically one version for most of their tunes and can play a few variations. But none of my peers locally have multiple versions for most tunes. I know I certainly don’t.
As was said above, how you play depends on what your priorities are. For some people, this music is a daily opportunity to be expressive and inventive and playful--to make it fresh every time. I've played with plenty of unexceptional musicians who are nonetheless very adept at changing things up, sometimes radically, and sounding good all the while.
I've also played with people who play the same notes--the same "arrangements" of tunes--year after year after year. The variations they do typically fall in the same places, almost like they're playing from a score. They sound highly polished, like a recording. All power to them, but that's not my cup of tea.
My (woefully anecdotal and inadequate, yet unexceptional) experience has led me to a mindset reflected in my previous post. It's the approach I personally appreciate most when I find other musicians who share it, so maybe it compels me to see Tansey and a "filmic memory" and taking soundings all the time as the way this music works, not the exception. Maybe I'm wrong. But I'm happy playing this way.
thanks for starting off this discussion - these funny old duffers will keep the coversation going until someone turns the lights out, or the drinks run out. I'm just sneaking off to refill my glass ...
Will, I think we might be talking about two different things. In the interest of clarity, here's the two quotes that started us down this path concerning 'versions' and not variations.
Will writes: "I know lots of different settings/versions of most of the tunes I play, and many of the people I've sessioned with over the years can charge into way more settings than I can. In my (woefully anecdotal and inadequate) experience, having lots of settings/versions at the ready is the norm, not the exception."
And Michael writes: "Yep, you carry with you lots of version/vatiations of most tunes."
I my next post I said, "Variations aside..." meaning that I wasn't talking about variations. But I think you might still be talking about that. I'm always developing variations for the tunes I know too, but what I thought we were talking about were different pre-determined or learned 'versions'. In other wrods, different structural concepts for the same tune that you could play on command. (not including variations)
The impression I got from what you and Michael said was that you have multiple 'versions' (not variations) for most of your tunes. I develop variations for most of my tunes, but I don't have different 'versions'. I'm usually basing my variations on one basic tune structure, or 'version' that I originally learned. There's only a handful of tunes that I have actual multiple versions of.
(Sorry about the redundancy, but I'm trying to be clear about what I'm talking about)
So are you saying that you have multiple pre-determined or learned 'versions' for most of your tunes? Or do you just mean you develop variations on most of your tunes as time goes on?
Now, I think Michael has noted an important difference in learning styles. That of asking a person at a session where they learned a tune, then going and finding the same recording and learning from that, as opposed to just picking it up in a session. Of course, if you do it that way you will be more inclined to think of it as the Liam O'Flynn version, or whatever.
Equally, I guess how you approach the learning (from the CD) is going to make a difference. If you sit down with a fairly unfamiliar track and just start learning the tune bit by bit you will have a different view than if you have just listened to the CD a lot and absorbed the tune. I tend to use the latter method, and if anything I don't sit down with the CD enough to check that I am as close to the original as I would like to be.
Jack, I'm talking about different versions or settings, not just variations. I'm talking about different ways to play a tune that would clash against another way to play the tune, not variations that blend. And yes, I do have multiple versions of many tunes in my head.
But it's a blurry area. Some fresh variations on the fly can clash with what everyone else is playing, yet still work within the tune. If you remember it later, that becomes the basis for a whole new version. You can also have very limited variations that clash. Think of the two ways of playing Cathal McConnell's "The Sunset"--one that stays on F sharps in the B part, and one that slides into F nats one time around. Since it's only a measure and a half that's different, I have a hard time thinking of that as a whole new version, but as a "variation" it would clearly clash with what everyone else was playing.
Of course, when actually playing, I don't worry about terminology. It works just fine to listen and follow along. Bear in mind that not all distinct versions are "pre-determined" or learned ahead of time. For instance, on fiddle if you know a melody line well enough, you can play it in an unfamiliar key on the fly, even though how you articulate (ornament) the notes and bowing and even phrasing will be distinctly different from your "normal" version in the familiar key.
Just an example: I first learned the jig "Hole in the Hedge" off Martin Hayes' Lonesome Touch cd, in C major. Our flute player liked the tune and learned it from memory at home after hearing it at the session over many months. Except that on his keyless D flute it came out naturally in D major. So when he launched into it at the session, he didn't realize he was doing anything different. Two of us fiddlers recognized the melody and joined in, in D major. Instantly, entirely new options opened up for moving triplets, rolls, phrasings, really a whole new mood to the tune. We had so much fun we played it 6 times through. Now the D major setting is the "standard" at our session, but I can still play the C major setting, and have tinkered with it in other keys as well (It's beautiful in F). My guess is that Hayes moved from the original D to C to suit his own tastes, and here we are back in D. Very much what Carson gets at in his explanation above.
Ok... thanks for the clarification, Will. Yes, I also have a good few multiple versions of certain tunes the same way you describe. I guess my question should be directed towards Michael at this point because he said he has multiple versions for most of his tunes, and that's the norm.
Michael writes: "Yep, you carry with you lots of version/vatiations of most tunes."
Now for me, most tunes would mean around 300 or more. If Michael knows anywhere near the same number of tunes I do, (I'm assuming he knows at least that many or more) then he would have different versions for hundreds of tunes... and so would all his session mates. This is hard for me to comprehend.
Okay, well I know hundreds of tunes myself, somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 the last time I bothered to think about them that way. And I'd say that I do have multiple versions (not just variations) ready at hand for a third to half of them. But it doesn't feel that pre-determined or pre-arranged. Again, it's more in line with another quote from Ciaran Carson: "The same tune is never the same tune twice." That's true not just due to variations, but sometimes due to whole cloth changes to the tune. And sometimes it's not true. I certainly have plenty of tunes that I don't mess around with much, or at least I haven't yet.
Playing a tune in different keys on the fiddle is less a matter of "having" each version in your head from rehearsing it, and more a matter of being able to simply transpose on the fly, even when all the fingering and bowing patterns change. To my way of thinking, that depends not only on how ingrained the basic melody line is in your head (regardless of key), but also how well you know your instrument, and how free your bow hand is.
In other words, sometimes a distinct setting is pre-arranged and practiced, and sometimes it's not--it's done ad hoc, in the moment.
Will writes: "In other words, sometimes a distinct setting is pre-arranged and practiced, and sometimes it's not--it's done ad hoc, in the moment."
Fair enough... but I would exclude the "ad hoc, in the moment." ones from what I've been talking about when I say "versions." I would call the "ad hoc, in the moment" ones 'improvised versions'... something quite different all together.
What percentage of your tunes have additional "pre-arranged and practiced" versions ready to go?
BTW... I've never actually counted how many tunes I know; I'm just making a wild guess.
That may be too fine a split for how I think about playing music. Yes, I know a fair number of pre-arranged settings (e.g., the Dmix and Dor versions of Garrett Barry's I mentioned earlier, or Trip to Durrow with two parts or with three parts, etc.). But in the course of 30 years, I've forgotten most of the different ways tunes have come out at one time or another, so it's hard to say how "fresh" or premeditated something might be, particularly on tunes I've played for yonks.
Jack, I think maybe the difference we're dancing around in our personal approaches to the music is that you've spent more time honing the established versions of tunes you know, and I've spent more time experimenting with different settings.
Again, it's a matter of priorities. And I'm suggesting that players who make it their priority to know multiple settings and to be able to transpose/adapt/adjust on the fly don't have to be "extraordinary" musicians at the top of their game to pull it off well. It's just how they're accustomed to making music.
This reminds me a bit of the distinction Barry Green makes in The Inner Game of Music between the analytical approach and the global approach. In the former, we tend to focus on learning a tune note by note or phrase by phrase, gradually building a whole, and in the latter we learn the overall shape or feel of the tune, then suss out the pieces. Of course, most people do some of both, but we may tend to favor one approach over the other. I find I'm happily split between the two, a by-product, I suspect, of years of teaching music to hundreds of students who came at this from all angles.
I've gone through periods of being more analytical, and found that experimenting with more intuitive, global approaches to the music has enhanced those abilities for me. And vice versa.
Well, we'll have to wait and see what Michael's response is, but what you're talking about here isn't much different from my own approach. But I'm still unable to play any of the various independent versions of a tune like Crib of Perches that I posted above as an example. I can do variations of the basic tune I play, but if someone starts a different version all together I can't produce their version even if I'm aware it exists. Some times different versions of tunes I know sound like what I play turned inside-out. If I tried to learn those versions I think it would just scramble the tune in my head all together and I would end up noodling the part every time the tune came up.
Sure they are, but you try to store too many like that in your long-term memory you'll find yourself lost on the B-part when the tune comes up in 6 months or a year.
Cathal McConnell springs to mind. He'll sit down and say, "Do you know such and such?" and we'll nod and say yeah go for it. Then he'll say, "Ah, but have you such and such's?". And he'll proceed to play the most delightful inversion of something otherwise very well known. and he'll often do this for some time. And when your playing a tune yourself, he'll hang back until he knows which version you're playing, then when it's finished will often give you more ways of playing certain bits. I suspect a lot of his versions are his own variations, but he's such a self effacing gent, he never admits it.
I always find it fun to do this in sessions, rather than the straight forward blasting through homogeneous sets. I think it's much more rewarding to have many many versions of just a few a few tunes rather than the standard twitcher approach of simply ticking them off. I even enjoy revisiting the same tune in the same evening, something that is frowned upon by your average sessioner.
Admittedly, often I will just be sitting with my mates and blasting through the many hundreds of tunes that we have successfully synchronised over the years (standard practice that I'm sure you are all familiar with) though a break from this to a more considered approach is always welcome.
Broadly speaking we do carry with us versions/vatiations of most of our tunes and though it sounds like a contradiction to marry this with the syncronisation, in practise, provided you keep your ears open, it works.
Michael writes: "I think it's much more rewarding to have many many versions of just a few a few tunes rather than the standard twitcher approach of simply ticking them off."
...and he continues: "Broadly speaking we do carry with us versions/vatiations of most of our tunes"
Sorry, I understand that I wrote that in a bit of a confusing way. I'll try to be clearer ...
Speaking for me and my mates, we do carry with us versions/vatiations of most of our tunes.
Speaking generally and with a tinge of regret, I think it's much more rewarding to have many many versions of just a few tunes rather than the standard twitcher approach of simply ticking them off.
I'm referring here to my regret that I have learned too many tunes. Though I do carry versions/vatiations of most of them, I'd rather that I had less tunes, and more versions/vatiations of the few corkers remaining.
Variations of a tune
Variations of a tune
Hi to everyone and happy new year!
I'm Maria Teresa from Italy. I'm trying to learn some tune with my fiddle but I have a little problem ............. I saw and I heard that in irish trad music often a tune can be played in different ways: somtime only few notes change, sometime more.
It's difficult for me to know which variation i have to learn, which one is the knownest, and also I have the doubt that if I play a different variation during a session I can disturb other players.
How can I behave and what have I to learn?
Thanks to everyone
Maria teresa
# Posted on December 27th 2006 by marite
Re: Variations of a tune
It doesn't mind, really. You can learn the most standard one and, at the end, you'll do your own variation of the tune. By my experience, having a different version doesn't disturb the other musicians in a session. It's perfectly normal.
Regards from other fiddler. I'm from Spain, but this year I'm studing in Sligo.
# Posted on December 27th 2006 by Miguel L.
Re: Variations of a tune
ooh, good question marite. The straight forward response is that if you can answer it successfully, then you must indeed be a a true master of this tradition.
It depends where you come at it, but this is either a problem or the simple joy of it.
Basically, a variation is not the tune. The tune is tune, and a variation is something you come up with on the fly - a little like a snippet of jazz improvisation.
AND
The tune is never set in stone, and the variations are differences that have come from various sources, be them deliberate or merely mistakes in learning process.
The skill is in reconciling the word "AND" and not arguing whether it should be "OR".
# Posted on December 27th 2006 by ...
Re: Variations of a tune
There are many tunes that have alternative basic forms that are different enough to clash - a classic being the B part of Connaughtman's Rambles. This needs to be straightened out long before you worry about applying "variations". I think that is what you mean, marite?
The answer is to listen carefully to what your friends at the session are playing. If there is a problem somewhere in the tune where you seem to be playing something that clashes with everyone else, ask a friendly player to go over it (even write out the passage) for you.
More often than not the differences between the versions of the tune will harmonize nicely, and you can continue play your version, or use it as a "varation" to add interest.
# Posted on December 27th 2006 by grego
Re: Variations of a tune
I often find this frustrating. I hear a tune at a session and ask the name. If there are those who are lesser players who actually know and admit that they know the name, I jot it down. I come to the/Session to get the spots. I spend the next few days learning it. When the session reconvenes and I proudly start my new treasure, it is sometimes significantly different. I come back here to make sure I learned it right and discover that I did.
Sometimes it is really difficult to unlearn a tune to relearn it.
I know this is an argument in favor of learning tunes by ear and among whom one plays.
What really bothers me, though, is when someone had learned a tune off of a CD and imposes the version on the session.
# Posted on December 27th 2006 by feardearg
Re: Variations of a tune
This has always been a source of frustration and contributes to the love/hate relationship I have with the music. I love it for its diversity at the same time loathing it for having to many variables., But the way I've come to deal with this is to find out what the person's source was for the tune if I hear someone playing it. Often the people playing the tune will shrug and say they don't know, but later you find out they knew all along, but that's a topic for another thread. If people aren't trying to conceal the source it comes in handy for tracking down the same version they're playing. As certain tunes spread through the local ITM community it's handy to know what the source was to eliminate the frustration of learning a different version.
Another thing that can happen is that you might know a tune that is more obscure and no one plays, but the tune will show up in a different version on a popular new CD that's making the rounds. Suddenly a tune you've known and loved shows up in the new incarnation and you have to unlearn the version you knew to play the new version with other folks. I find unlearning tunes a lot harder than learning new ones.
# Posted on December 27th 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Variations of a tune
Modern Irish tunebooks usually seem to have uncontroversial settings of session tunes. Those entered in The Session database can sometimes contain mistakes or not very good settings in the sheet music (been guilty here!), but often someone enters a better setting in abc notation underneath.
# Posted on December 27th 2006 by nicholas
Re: Variations of a tune
What's post is very good. The Button's frustrations are inherent in the process and are therefor unavoidable. On the one hand he is annoyed when some one won't let on that they learned a tune from a particular recording, because it makes it harder for him to learn that version. And on the other hand, if the majority of players are playing from the same hymn book, that annoys him because it's not his hymn book. There is nothing that can be done about this, except maybe not to get annoyed.
# Posted on December 28th 2006 by ...
Re: Variations of a tune
The only time ive beeen at a session and heard the same tune played by everyone the same way was when everyone read music... after a while that gets boring... thats why I love Paddy Maloneys playing--- he can improvise ---listen to him a lot and you will get ideas that may help.
# Posted on December 28th 2006 by The Merry Highlander
Re: Variations of a tune
Guys ............ you are realy great!!!!!
!!!
It gives me comfrot to know that it's not a personal problem that one I asked about
Probably I have also the problem that I'm a beginner both to play fiddle and to play ITM and also beacouse here in my city there aren't sessions or people who play this kind of music.
So that I have to look for music and sheet music on internet!
And when I find 5, 10 or 15 divverent ways to play the some tune I realy don't know which one I have to learn, so I choose the simplier hoping that it's the right one but........................ Is this true? I hope so but it's hard to belive it!
thanks to everyone!
# Posted on December 28th 2006 by marite
Re: Variations of a tune
I someone gave you comfrot you need to see your doctor and get it checked out. Sometimes it can be stubborn to get rid of with topical cremes alone. You might have to be prescribed something to take orally.
# Posted on December 28th 2006 by Dr. Dow
Re: Variations of a tune
You're very welcomed, marite, I hope it helps.
David and Michael... I said it was a love/hate relationship. That implies that even though it's frustrating at times I still love the diversity. (I think I said it the same way above anyway.) But David claims to have several different versions of each tune all in his head ready to go in whatever session he's in. If that's really true -- more power to you David. I have enough trouble keeping tunes that sound similar from getting matted. Tunes like; Down the Broom, The Rainy Day, The Corner House, etc. Or The Knotted Cord and The Concert Reel (A dor) are hard enough to keep straight without adding different versions on top.
But sometimes the differences can be glaring and having both versions available to play on command seems like a stretch. I admire anyone that can actually do this. But even the big boys have problems keeping tunes straight. Once when Martin Hayes asked me to play with him he asked me to suggest one or two of the medleys. So I suggested Martin Wynne's/The Drunken Landlady/The Boys of Ballisodare... and when we got to the second tune he played Pigeon on the Gate instead.
# Posted on December 28th 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Variations of a tune
Ignore that fellow Dow, he's a joker. Also I'd like to see him write in a second language. You're doing fine.
Also, if you are going to sessions, remember that some of the "classic" tune collections, like O'Neills, reflect how they played the tunes when they were collected. If you can find more modern collections they will be closer to how people are playing the tunes now.
# Posted on December 28th 2006 by Guernsey Pete
Re: Variations of a tune
http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/6130/comments#comment245759
# Posted on December 28th 2006 by Dr. Dow
Re: Variations of a tune
But yes you're right, I was joking. I'm sorry, sensitive session.orgers, if my wordplay on that typo causes offence
# Posted on December 28th 2006 by Dr. Dow
Re: Variations of a tune
Marite, don't worry. When your technique improves your problems will gradually go away.
In sessions tunes are usually played two to three times before switching to the second tune in the set. You will want to have more than just one version because it will get quite boring to play a short tune two three times in a row each time the same way.
It's quite enough that you learn only the one version you like the most and then compare how the other versions differ from it. Don't learn the other versions by heart from the dots, but instead just steal some of the best ideas in them to make your own additional variations.
# Posted on December 28th 2006 by Risto
Re: Variations of a tune
I think that since there is a lot of "ear" playing and learning that has gone on since forever, that sometimes people remember a tune a little wrong, go home, play and practice it, bring it out, and voila... a new setting. A lot of this may be due to simple bad memory in conjunction with ear playing.
I have to confess I was mortified by recording a tune I "learned" that ear/bad memory way. The funny thing, is a few people asked where that nice setting came from, and have started to play it that way. I did confess, in each case, and am still totally embarrassed...but... yes, it is so hard to unlearn a tune, I keep playing it that way. The funnier thing, is that no one complained.
In any case, bet that's how many variations are born. The evolution of trad music? Bad Memory? Could it be so simple as that?
# Posted on December 28th 2006 by irisnevins
Re: Variations of a tune
Marite - everyone has explained things pretty well, considering that there is no right answer to your questions anyway.
Amazingly, they haven't referred much to playing by ear. If there are no others playing Irish music in your area then do try to get hold of some recordings. At the end of the day it's best to play what you like most. So get a few different CDs of different Irish fiddlers and pick a few tunes that you like the most and learn them from the CDs. They will still probably turn out to be the "worng" versions when you finally get to a session, but at least they will be ones you like!
Equally, if there are any musicians in your world playing the music, try to learn some tunes either directly from them or from the same source that they have used. Then at least you will be able to play together.
Best of luck!
# Posted on December 28th 2006 by kris
Re: Variations of a tune
David, I'm sorry if I misunderstood you, but when you said, "If you learn a few different ways of playing a tune from different sources, then with time you'll find it easier to hear how the other people are playing it in the various sessions you're going to, and be able to modify your setting to fit with theirs." it sounds to me like you might have honed a few different versions for your tunes. I'm envious... I wish I could do that. Why do you find that offensive?
Anyway, yes, I did use the "snippet method" with Martin, and I said the names of the tunes for further clarity, and no, it didn't derail the set. But it does underline my point that it's hard enough just keeping similar tunes straight let alone having different versions of each one.
# Posted on December 28th 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Variations of a tune
Iris Nevins writes: "I have to confess I was mortified by recording a tune I "learned" that ear/bad memory way. The funny thing is, a few people asked where that nice setting came from, and have started to play it that way. I did confess, in each case, and am still totally embarrassed...but... yes, it is so hard to unlearn a tune, I keep playing it that way. The funnier thing, is that no one complained."
I have a friend who plays a tune that a few people around here have learned from her now, and when I asked her to send me a source for the tune (a tape of her playing it preferably) she sent me an mp3 she found of someone else playing it on a recording. The tune turned out being called, "The Drake's Neck," and I promptly learned it. When we got together next we played it and realized that the version she sent me was quite different from what she plays.
A short while later at a music camp the tune came up from a musician living in Portland and the version was more like the one I learned from the recording and my friend was left listening to us instead of playing along. Later, when we were back in SF she lamented about it and said she originally heard the tune at a session and learned it from memory afterwards. Realizing now she had remembered it differently from what was probably played, she announced she was now going to learn the "right" version. I spent a while convincing her that her version was really nice and she shouldn't let go of it... it's her version.
So now we have a local version of ‘The Drake's Neck’ that's making the rounds here in the SF area. Of course this adds to the confusion... but the confusion has a certain quality as well. I'm sure, as you pointed out; this is the "folk process" and it’s something that happens quite naturally.
# Posted on December 28th 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Variations of a tune
This happens all the time, it really is the folk process. Someone in the old days visits a nearby town, drinking no doubt, brings it home a little different, and maybe people say it's the version from this or that county.
Noel Hill just played at IAANJ and played a brilliant version of, I think, Bonnie Kate...it had a really haunting part B no one around here ever heard before. No one said it was wrong, that's for sure.
great fun!
# Posted on December 28th 2006 by irisnevins
Re: Variations of a tune
Hey...what?!!? How do you pay a Telepathy Bill?
# Posted on December 28th 2006 by irisnevins
Re: Variations of a tune
David writes: "But seriously, you find it hard to learn more than one setting of a tune? Don't you find that when you hear someone phrase something differently, you want to see how or why they do it that way?"
There are certain tunes that I can learn two settings of, like The Maple Leaf for example. There's the original version found on a Boston recording by the same name, and the Northern version I learned from Frankie and Mairead. There are some other examples I can keep separate, but some versions are different enough to clash, but to similar to keep separate. On these tunes there's a danger in trying to have all the versions understood and ready to execute on command because I end up with a jumbled tune whenever I try to play it by myself. Or, I just feel awkward every time it comes up.
The mind is a mysterious place. Sometimes I'll be playing along on with my flute on a tune just fine until the moment I realize I've never played it on my flute but only played it on my concertina. Or I'll play a tune at home just fine, and then later that night at the session I can't remember the 2nd part. Or at a session a tune will come up I haven't played in a decade and I play along just fine, but at home I try to play it and keep winding up on a different tune all together.
The tunes that I haven't tried to learn different versions of are less likely to get mangled over time. I think there’s a value to having solid versions of tunes just to keep them all intact. I’ve found that as my repertoire grows this becomes more essential. I’ll expound on this with some allegory.
If you think of your tune collection that’s in your head as a toy car collection, and you make a habit of taking off bumpers, doors, etc., of one toy car and putting on different ones from other similar toy cars… you end up with a box full of bits and pieces that you can’t remember which car they came from. You might end up putting them back together in a way that will make them harder to distinguish from one another. You might even end up with more bits and pieces than actual toy cars.
I once was talking to Paddy O’Brien about this and told him that some of the settings I've learned from his recordings clashed with what some of the local musicians played, and I asked him what he does when he plays with other people that have different settings. He told me something to the effect of, “I just play them the way I like to play them.”
# Posted on December 28th 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Variations of a tune
I'm a bit surprised at the general gist of the responses here. I know lots of different settings/versions of most of the tunes I play, and many of the people I've sessioned with over the years can charge into way more settings than I can. In my (woefully anecdotal and inadequate) experience, having lots of settings/versions at the ready is the norm, not the exception.
Some tunes lend themselves to morphing through different modes; some come with 2, 3, 4, 5, or more parts; some simply want to be played in different keys and that changes the flow and pulse of the melody; others come in widely divergent regional forms; and some just invite melodic invention. Just my opinion, but far from being frustrating, this is the life and joy in the music.
# Posted on December 28th 2006 by Will Harmon
Re: Variations of a tune
Variations aside, how many settings that would otherwise clash with each other do you have ready for most of your tunes, Will?
# Posted on December 28th 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Variations of a tune
About twenty or so years ago, I introduced Tombigbee Waltz at a session and played it on harmonica. I didn't have a G harp with me, so I played it in D and explained that it really is traditionally played in G, so please don't learn it in D. Since then, the tune has come back to me through two different people in the key of D. The tune was in D, not the people. Both of them learned it from somebody in that session.
So now I feel like I've put a little dent in the tradition and I've become cautious about passing on a tune in the "wrong" key. I know a key change can sometimes be a cool thing, but I'd rather do it because it sounds good, not because I brought the wrong instrument.
I play several tunes on the guitar in non-traditional keys just because the guitar often sounds better in a different key, but I try to avoid that if there's any danger of somebody learning it. In fact, I sometimes discourage fiddlers and tootlers from learning a tune from my guitar playing because it's too ... well, guitaristic. Guitar settings can be a little reductionistic, whatever that means.
# Posted on December 28th 2006 by Bob himself
Re: Variations of a tune
Will writes: "having lots of settings/versions at the ready is the norm, not the exception."
I'm feeling that I must be extraordinarily thick right now because I don't have multiple settings and versions available for most of my tunes. I only have a couple of different versions for a handful of certain tunes at best.
So now I'm wondering; how many people here agree that, "having lots of settings/versions at the ready is the norm, not the exception"?
# Posted on December 28th 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Variations of a tune
Not the norm around here, certainly, but a couple of the better players seem to know several versions of everything or are very quick at latching on to a new one when they hear it. I'm jealous.
# Posted on December 28th 2006 by grego
Re: Variations of a tune
Jack, I don't really keep track of it numerically. So the following is just off the top of my head.
Some of the differences are pretty basic, though they'd clash if you played them together, like the Dmix setting of Garret Barry's and the "older" D dorian version (a tune I also play it in Gmix and Cmix, but with a sometimes flatted third in the B part). Similar changeling tunes include Cheif O'Neill's Favorite, the Broken Pladge, Or Calliope House in at least four different keys.
Seems like lots of Dmix and Ador tunes also have Dmaj and Amix counterparts: Blackhaired Lass, Jenny Picking Cockles, Within a Mile of Dublin, Nine Points of Roguery, Maids of Mitchellstown, Dinny O'Brien's, Bantry Lasses, Buried my Wife, the Doon, Down the Broom, Sligo Maids, Sergeant Early's Dream, Tuttle's, My Love is in America (which also comes in 3 or 4 parts, beyond the common 2), Crib of Perches, etc.
There are tunes that come in both Ionian and Aeloian forms--a number of Paddy Fahey jigs and reels, Whistler of Rossleigh and some other Reavey tunes.
Tunes with variable numbers of parts: Maid at the Spinning Wheel, Mayor Harrison's Fedora, Kid on the Mountain, Mason's Apron, Boil the Breakfast Early, Cook in the Kitchen, Pigtown Fling, Over the Moor to Maggie, Rights of Man, Trip to Durrow, Monaghan Jig, etc.
Some tunes have widely divergent melodic settings: some as "standard" as Silver Spear or Drowsy Maggie that grow less arppegiated, and others more complex, like Dr. Gilbert's or Galway Hornpipe or the Scholar.
Lots of tunes come with multiple and very different regional forms--Heathery Cruach, Young Tom Ennis, Flower of the Flock, Abbey Reel, Apples in Winter, Star of Munster (and in three different keys), Killavil Fancy, Crosses of Annagh, Bag of Spuds (also in at least two keys), Belles of Tipperary, Goodnatured Man, Fairhaired Molly (a major version from the north, and a minor version from East Galway), Whinny Hills of Leitrim, Frost is All Over, Pigeon on the Gate, Johnny's Wedding, Mullingar Lea, Coppers and Brass.
There are loads more, and like I said above, I've played with many people whose store of settings goes way beyond mine.
# Posted on December 29th 2006 by Will Harmon
Re: Variations of a tune
Hmmm, I certainly didn't mean to make anyone feel "thick" about this. Sorry. I was just surprised because my personal experience is different from what I was reading here.
Some people know a zillion tunes, but few different settings. Some people can create different settings whole cloth on the fly (one of our fiddlers is fond of careening from Ionian to Aelion at the flip of a switch). Some people are "collectors" of different settings, and worry less about total tunage.
All I'm saying is that in my session experiences, many people--especially the more experienced players--have known and played many different settings, very adept at switching keys, modes, numbers of parts, melody lines, etc. When I've learned tunes from these folks, it has been the norm rather than the exception that they've shown me two or three very different settings of the same tune, to place it in context.
All that said, yes, there are plenty of tunes that don't seem to generate so many variable settings.
# Posted on December 29th 2006 by Will Harmon
Re: Variations of a tune
Wow... well your sessions in Montana must be on a very high level then I guess. Here in SF we can usually tell what recording people learned their tunes from, and sometimes I can adjust, but most of the time I'm happy just to have gotten the tune out at all let alone having regional variances in multiple keys. The kind of variables that are most noticeable here are when a tune like The Humours of Trim shows up and half the people learned it from Randal Bays and the other half from Kevin Crawford. Kevin recorded it as The Rolling Wave and made all the Cs as naturals instead of sharp, as well as changing the shape slightly. The same clash between the C#s and C naturals happens every time and few if any are making adjustments. When the Fahey tunes come up it can be a train wreck as well until the more polite players succumb to the minor or major version. Fiddlers usually have the easiest time adjusting to Fahey tunes if they want, but often they’ll just stop.
But I noticed you have Down the Broom in your list. Do you ever have any problem keeping it straight with those other similar A dor tunes that all have very similar B-parts? And if so, wouldn’t it just add to the confusion to have multiple versions of tunes like that?
# Posted on December 29th 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Variations of a tune
Not just sessions in Montana, but the US and Canada. There are some billiant players whiling away their time over tunes in nondescript pubs all over.
Heh, "reels in Ador are all interchangeable." Brendan Bulger said that.
I think keeping the tunes and various settings straight is mostly a matter of paying attention to nuances and listening to what other people are playing, and being able to adjust on the fly.
David, I agree--horses for courses. Personally, I tend to prefer sessions where different settings come up, but some nights it's nice to just stick to common ground. Nothing at all wrong with that, and one approach certainly isn't "better" than the other.
The Bucks is another common tune with loads of different settings. And the Congress, Hunters Purse, a reel I know as Charlie Lennon's, Boys of the Lough....
# Posted on December 29th 2006 by Will Harmon
Re: Variations of a tune
Jack, my guess is that you probably know at least twice as many tunes as I do, and you play two instruments well, whereas I play fiddle well enough, wheeze into a flute on occasion, and sound like a hammered dulcimer falling down a staircase on tenor banjo.
It's just a case of different priorities in how and what we play.
# Posted on December 29th 2006 by Will Harmon
Re: Variations of a tune
(Er, not meaning that I *enjoy* sounding like a disintegrating ducimer when I try to play banjo....)
# Posted on December 29th 2006 by Will Harmon
Re: Variations of a tune
Ah.... The Humors Of Trim, I wondered about that! I play The Rolling Wave, and thought someone had the wrong name.
This is likely how it's always been and always will be, different tunes/same name.... same tunes (almost)/different names. Part of the fun maybe!
# Posted on December 29th 2006 by irisnevins
Re: Variations of a tune
Seems like Mr. Crawford is more adept than most at confusing tune names. Humours of Trim appears in O'Neill's (with c sharps), but it's been recorded here and there (including by the Chieftains) without a name or under a number of other titles.
# Posted on December 29th 2006 by Will Harmon
Re: Variations of a tune
Will - the more hammered dulcimers that disintegrate, the better, surely!
# Posted on December 29th 2006 by kris
Re: Variations of a tune
Yep, you carry with you lots of version/vatiations of most tunes. It simply ain't the music if you don't. It's just regurgitated repetition (and before someone grasses me up, sorry for the alliterated tautology)
# Posted on December 29th 2006 by ...
Re: Variations of a tune
Oh great... so now that I have a few hundred tunes in my head I gotta go back and learn all the fecking versions for each one too. I give up.
# Posted on December 29th 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Variations of a tune
I like the element of surprise when you're playing with someone and a new setting pops out, whether by accident or on purpose. Many times people break out their recorders and ask the person to play that part again so they can learn it....
# Posted on December 29th 2006 by irisnevins
Re: Variations of a tune
Well, yes, the various versions are a big part of the tradition. Even back in the day when regional styles were more distinct in Ireland, players took pride (and enjoyment) in knowing settings from other regions.
# Posted on December 29th 2006 by Will Harmon
Re: Variations of a tune
How do you know, Will?
For my part, I have a lot of tunes that I have a few different versions of, and like Jack, I've got a few hundred tunes. I think if you're really into a tune and you really love the music, then you naturally pick up different versions as you explore the tune for yourself. For me it's not just a case of learning a tune and then moving on to the next one, you're constantly relearning tunes, changing the way you play them, adding variations in as you hear them from different sources, and doing things like adding double stops or chords in as your interpretation of the tune changes over time. I think it boils down to your priorities and your view of the music. If I were a performer on stage rather than a session musician, I'd probably stick to one version of a tune and practise it up until I had it just right, and so that my version and variations meshed perfectly with those of the other members of my band. That's not for me. I find that approach pretty unrewarding, but others mightn't agree.
# Posted on December 29th 2006 by Dr. Dow
Re: Variations of a tune
Most of us, having played for a decade or more, and having heard of tunes from numerous live and recorded (and perhaps also printed) sources, internalize, to some degree, multiple variants and variations, or elements thereof. We also ,over time, develop the technique ('ear-hand co-ordination', 'neurological pathways', whatever you want to call it) to transfer the music in our heads spontaneously to our instruments. Thus, we develop a degree of flexiblity to adapt our playing of a tune to that of our fellow musicians.
But I think there are relatively few players who can actually commit to memory multiple fully-formed settings of tunes, 'as played by XYZ'.
# Posted on December 29th 2006 by CreadurMawnOrganig
Re: Variations of a tune
Ok... here's an example. The last tune I learned is The Liffy Banks. I've been hearing it played by a couple of people at the session, but they wouldn't tell me, or forgot (yea right, they just learned it) but I did manage the to get the name out of them. I went to this website and found that Will had transcribed it from a recording by Mike and Mary Rafferty’s The Road From Ballinakill... so there's one version. Then I found it had also been recorded by Teada, Brian Conway, Seamus Tansey, Todd Denman And Bill Dennehy, etc., etc. Some of the versions are similar, and others are quite different and would clash with one another. So I learned Rafferty's version thinking that one would be down to Earth enough, but when I played it with the two fellas at the session, my version clashed. I stopped and listened carefully to what they were playing and then when I was at home the next day I realized they lifted it from Teada. So I relearned it that way.
I can’t at this point imagine learning it both ways, or more. It takes time to get these tunes into your head enough to play it on command, and for it to stick I have to play it at sessions and such over a long period. This is what I've done with all the hundreds of tunes in my head. Occasionally I'll go back and rework bits as my technique develops on my instruments, and here and there I might be able to sus out a unique version and add bits of it, but there's a certain danger in tampering too much with the tunes set in memory. Some tunes I've played for ages are now easily derailed because I tinkered around with them too much. If I start learning all the different versions of most of the tunes I'll be likely lose my ability to start and carry tunes on my own.
As Iris points out, I love hearing different versions and will stop playing to listen when I realize someone’s playing a different (or clashing) version. But I will rarely set out to learn it. On the occasions that I have it can throw a wrench into the tune (as I mentioned above.)
There are certain tunes where something about the version is learnable because it’s different enough to be added on to my memory like an attachment without screwing up the main tune. A tune like The Green Mountain for example that has a version I heard Kevin Crawford and Tony Linnane playing on the Gort tape. There’s a segment that I can either put in or leave out without confusing the way I originally learned it. But most clashing versions of tunes have overlapping paths that would be very confusing to keep straight and sound like hell if they’re played at the same time. I can’t imagine knowing these different versions and keeping them straight when I try to play the tune without it sounding like perpetual noodling.
# Posted on December 29th 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Variations of a tune
Michael, "regurgitated repitition?"- surely you mean "repeated regurgitation?" Works nicely for chicks in their nest.
And when a session has a few hundred tunes going and a variety of different instruments that can show up in different combinations it's still good.
# Posted on December 29th 2006 by grego
Re: Variations of a tune
# Posted on December 29th 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Variations of a tune
This is a very interesting topic, though, and it goes to the heart of what people with several years playing under their belt think of as a good session. Does rolling out a different version of a tune constitute an occasional novelty, or a necessary break from "the monotony" of always playing the same version?
Michael's comment that it "simply ain't the music unless you do" is probably more applicable to people inserting interesting variations on some of the go-arounds rather than plaing the C-natural version of a tune instead of the C-sharp version once in a while.
# Posted on December 29th 2006 by grego
Re: Variations of a tune
Ok... here's another example since it was brought up in this thread. Take a tune like 'Crib of Perches'. When Zina showed up at our session she wanted to play this tune but our versions clashed in the second part and I stopped. She said she learned it from this website, and I looked and found a similar setting to mine in the comments. But take a look at these ABCs I put together so they will all play together as if in a session, and (if your computer allows it) play the midi and listen what happens. I can't imagine having these different versions all in my head together and expect to access it suddenly at a session after a lot of time has gone by.
X:1
T:Crib of Perches
M:4/4
L:1/8
R:reel
V:1 flute
V:2 fiddle
V:3 accordion
K:Dmix
V:1 A3B AGFD|E/F/G AB c3A|G2EC G,CEG|cAGc AGFG|
V:2 A3B AGFD|E/F/G AB c2cA|G/A/G EC G,CEG|cG~G2 AGFG|
V:3 A2AB AGFD|E/F/G AB ~c3A|G2EC G,CEG|cG~G2 AGFG|
%
V:1 A2GB AGFD|E/F/G AB c2Ac|dfec dcAc|1BdAG FDDF:|2B2AG FDD2||
V:2 ~A3B AGFD|E/F/G AB c2cA|df~f2 e^cdB|AFGE FDD2:||
V:3 A2AB AGFD|E/F/G AB c2Bc|df~f2 e/d/^c dB|1AFGE D2 FG:|2AFGE D2 Bc||
%
V:1 df~f2 af~f2|Adfa gfed|B/^c/d ef ge^de|be^de ^cAAc|
V:2 df~f2 af~f2|bfaf gfed|^cdef ge~e2|ge^cA GABz|
V:3 df~f2 af~f2|bfaf gfed|B/^c/d ef gece|ge^cA ^GABc|
%
V:1 df~f2 ~a3f|Adaf gfed|B/^c/d ge dBcB|1AFGE D3A:|2AFGE D4||
V:2 df~f2 af~f2|d2fd edcA|B/^c/d ec decB|AFGE D4:||
V:3 df~f2 af~f2|defd efdA|B/^c/d ec de d/c/B|1AFGE D2 Bc:|2AFGE D2 FG||
# Posted on December 30th 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Variations of a tune
Easy to understand why you're one of the snippet method's most enthusiastic supporters, Jack.
# Posted on December 30th 2006 by ∅
Re: Variations of a tune
And one of noodling's most enthusiastic critics.
# Posted on December 30th 2006 by Dr. Dow
Re: Variations of a tune
well, for example grego, I can think of a few tunes that have very nice Gmin settings that will often get played if there are no flutes or pipes in the session, but common courtesy makes you play the Gmaj with the flutes. (unless the flute player is really good of course)
But Button, I can only apologise for being unable to decipher what above is gobbledegook to me (and the last thing I'm gonna do is make my inanimate computer play it. As if that would help). However, I can't help feeling that you give too much importance to the written versions you find. One of the problems of having written versions is that these are then set in stone as versions, and variations are considered something different. But really, they should all be a beautiful shade of grey that should keep your ears open at all times.
I can understand people you play with being reticent about letting on about their sources of tunes. I just don't think this music is very receptive to your, in my opinion, over-analytical approach.
# Posted on December 30th 2006 by ...
Re: Variations of a tune
Seriously though, if you're going to stop and stare at the other players every time they play a note that's different from what you're playing, it's going to make for a pretty tense session. Just relax and play the tunes. If someone plays a different version to you, you should be a good enough player after 20 or 30 years or however long you've been playing to be able to pick up the other person's version on the fly if you're familiar enough with the tune. You shouldn't need to go home and find which CD they got it off and sit down and learn it. Maybe you need to permit yourself to noodle once in a while. What's that quote about the session being a place where the music lives and breathes and flexes its muscles etc? You don't have to sound like you're recording a CD the whole time. Have a beer, relax, smile, and just enjoy playing the tunes.
# Posted on December 30th 2006 by Dr. Dow
Re: Variations of a tune
Accommodation and adaptation---they put you in the flying groove, my brutha.
# Posted on December 30th 2006 by ∅
Re: Variations of a tune
# Posted on December 30th 2006 by ∅
Re: Variations of a tune
I'm sorry, David. I play |afge faec#|d... and so I can't possibly play along with you. You'll have to play solo.
# Posted on December 30th 2006 by Dr. Dow
Re: Variations of a tune
Yes, and you'll have to choose one version of the above. You can't possibly remember every single one.
# Posted on December 30th 2006 by Dr. Dow
Re: Variations of a tune
Michael writes: "I can't help feeling that you give too much importance to the written versions you find. One of the problems of having written versions is that these are then set in stone as versions, and variations are considered something different. But really, they should all be a beautiful shade of grey that should keep your ears open at all times."
We're on a website that uses written music to share tunes... hello? Do you want me to ring you and play it over the phone instead? How else am I going to convey my point, and how else will we share tunes? I think you're putting far to much importance on what's being written in these threads.
Michael continues: "I can understand people you play with being reticent about letting on about their sources of tunes. I just don't think this music is very receptive to your, in my opinion, over-analytical approach."
Of course I'm the only one here who's ever learned a tune from a CD or analyzed it... right Michael? But if you want to talk realistically about why people are reticent to reveal sources it probably has more to do with either wanting to appear more like a true "traditional" musician, or wanting to keep the tune out of circulation.
# Posted on December 30th 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Variations of a tune
Dow writes: "Seriously though, if you're going to stop and stare at the other players every time they play a note that's different from what you're playing, it's going to make for a pretty tense session."
Can't anyone make a point on this website without you jumping to some absurd and extreme assumption? I think even you can sometimes recognize when two different versions of tunes are clashing. That's what this whole thread is about after all. But it doesn't surprise me really that you'd be the sort that wouldn't dream of stopping to give way to someone else's version. You'd just be "relaxing" I suppose.
# Posted on December 30th 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Variations of a tune
David, to a certain extent I can, but it's very limited. Here's another example: I play Charlie Lennon's 'Smiling Bride' and someone came in one night who learned it off the Mulcahy Family recording that leaves the whole second ending of the A part out. I tried to follow this and it felt very awkward and I ended up flubbing the ending each time. But I couldn't play it as Charie intended because the clash was unbearable. (I think even Dow would agree.) So now I just don't play it if people are playing that version. There are other less dramatic and obvious examples, but if I tried to learn all of the versions for most of my tunes I don't think I'd have enough room left in my head to remember my name.
Now I don't doubt that people in here have learned different versions for most of their tunes, but I'm amazed that they're able to do something that to me seems like you'd have to be idot savant. I don't know... maybe I did too many drugs in my youth.
# Posted on December 30th 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Variations of a tune
Quite possibly.
# Posted on December 30th 2006 by Dr. Dow
Re: Variations of a tune
So, what is the right amount of drugs for a youth to do? The next generation anxiously awaits the wisdom of the elders so they may test the hypothesis.
Back to the issue at hand, it seems to me that this is one place that makes clear the difference between a traditional musician and a student of tradition. The traditional musician learns and plays the version(s?) that those around him/her plays - end(?) of story. The student of traditional music learns lots of versions so he/she can play with traditional musicians from different micro-"regional" traditions (where "region" is no longer defined by physical geography, but by the topology - for the mathematically inclined - of modern global communication).
The distinction is between those who play mostly with the same circle of people whose repertoire is derived from a limited collection of sources and those who want to be able to play with just about everone. (No value judgements here, there's room for both and everything in between - but the approaches and values are very different.)
# Posted on December 30th 2006 by GaryAMartin
Re: Variations of a tune
I can think of plenty people who I'd call traditional musicians and who've learnt a lot of tunes off recordings. And even the most "traditional" musos in Ireland can play with just about anyone. I'm sick of this stereotypical image of traditional musicians as being stuck away in some village somewhere surrounded by a herd of cows and isolated from the outside world. It's a right load of bollox and also incredibly condescending actually.
# Posted on December 30th 2006 by Dr. Dow
Re: Variations of a tune
Just back from a day in the snow, and it's nice to see we're right back where Dow asked how I know about players back in the day learning tunes in different regional styles.
).
The main reason I believe that is because Kevin Burke told me stories about old players he learned from who commonly knew a Sligo setting, a Donegal setting, a Galway setting, etc, for many of the tunes. I took it on his authority (as fallacious as that might seem
I've heard similar things from Mike Rafferty, and from Joanie Madden talking about her dad's store of tunes. And the literature (Northern Fiddler, Brethnach, Vallely, Moloney,) also mentions players traveling to pick up tunes and coming home with new settings of familiar local tunes, or picking up new settings from traveling "masters." Those travelers (Like Master Crowley, John Doherty, Johnny and Felix Doran, and later Seamus Ennis) were renowned for having many divergent settings, collected from counties and players all around.
This echoes what I've experienced playing with some people well immersed in the music today. Perhaps it's more common nowadays than it once was, I don't know. But it's so easy to learn wildliy different settings from all the recorded material available now, and there are so many brilliant versions floating around! Take the Swallowtail Reel--everyone knows the "standard" setting, but how can you not pick up the upside-down setting from Dervish? And keep both.
I have a hard time imagining NOT knowing a number of settings for many of the tunes I play. When I've travelled and played in other sessions, it's as expected as knowing certain old chestnuts--you either have the various settings already in hand, or you pick them up on the fly from knowing the tune well enough that the differences are readily apparent and easily (immediately) sorted out as you play. I remember doing this at an informal gig sort of thing I played with Zina and Pete down on the Front Range in Colorado a year ago. They launched into Garrett Barry's, and neither of the two settings I knew at the time sat well with theirs. So I played along, softly where the differences were (two phrases in the A part, and most of the B), and had it all by the third time around.
My own local sesh doesn't do as much of this as other sessions I've sat it on, but one of our other fiddlers in particular is really keen (and adept) on this sort of thing, so we keep our chops up and gives tunes a twist at the session whenever we can. We also have a whistler friend from out of town who knows different settings, so things get interesting whenever he shows up.
I suspect this whole notion sits easier with fiddlers than with players of some other instruments. It's not at all unusual to have a fiddle setting and a more flute-friendly setting (as Michael alluded to above)--changing the key, mode, or melodic phrasing to better suit flute. I find I often do the same thing to better match the pipes or a banjo as well.
It also goes with learning aurally, as opposed to knowing a tune only by "feel." On fiddle, changing keys almost always alters the fingering and bowing, even if you play the exact same melodic intervals. So after 20 or 30 years of this, it grows comfortable. And fun.
# Posted on December 30th 2006 by Will Harmon
Re: Variations of a tune
What was it again? Ad verecundiam?
I'm sure I've used a straw man up there somewhere, or maybe it was ad populum. Hey, it's all good.
# Posted on December 30th 2006 by Dr. Dow
Re: Variations of a tune
That Dervish version of the Swallow Tail is different enough to be a seperate tune. I have no problem knowing both versions. But the difference in the B-parts for the versions of Crib of Perches are the sort that I have no room in my head to know each version of. The differences aren't separate and thay overlap and converge. I had to just choose one and submit it to memory. If someone else starts that tune and I hear the clash I might try to quietly shift my version to match if I can, but sometimes the frustration isn't wroth the effort and I'll just drop out and listen instead.
# Posted on December 30th 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Variations of a tune
Well the way I'd approach it, PB, is that I'd forget the setting I posted. It was transcribed from a session recording, but looking at it now, I'd say it's almost definitely a mangled version of Matt Molloy's setting, so just listen to the Matt Molloy CD a few times and allow yourself to absorb it. Then when you hear it in a session, you'll know which of your 2 versions it is and will be able to fit in. And then you'll be able to stop stressing and worrying about it.
# Posted on December 30th 2006 by Dr. Dow
Re: Variations of a tune
In fact I'd probably stick with the Matt Molloy version Jack. More people are gonna know that one because Shadows On Stone is a very popular album.
# Posted on December 30th 2006 by Dr. Dow
Re: Variations of a tune
I'm not stressing about it, Dow, it's the topic of the thread... hello?
I first heard the tune played by Kevin Crawford and Tony Linanne on the Gort tape. It also appeared in that same incarnation on Moher's CD. This is the version I play. But if you want to talk about Matt Molloy's recordings... there have been tunes I learned from him that show up differently at the session as well. So as good as he is, his versions aren't necessarily the gospel either.
But I have never said I object to the different versions, all I'm saying is that I find it amazing that the opinions expressed on this thread conclude that the standard is to know multiple versions for most of your tunes. This seems unattainable for me, and I don't know many people that can actually do this. It seems like the exception, but I'm told here that it's not.
# Posted on December 30th 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Variations of a tune
Hi.
# Posted on December 30th 2006 by Dr. Dow
Re: Variations of a tune
C'mon Jack, don't be so defeatist. Nothing's unattainable! You just need to do some practice, that's all.
Please someone, stop me now
# Posted on December 30th 2006 by Dr. Dow
Re: Variations of a tune
But I'll tell you something that does bug me a bit. I've played the 'New Found Out' reel ever since it showed up on the first Providence CD. Not many people knew it, well, actually no one around here, but every now and then I'd toss it into the mix. Now one guy learned the tune off of a recent CD and when I started playing it he said, "But mine doesn't go like that... learn my version." But if I do, I think the way I've been playing it will get written over by the new version and I'll lose it. So I'm reluctant.
Then there's the case of the Limerick Lasses. I learned the Kathleen Collins 4-part version, and everyone else plays the 3-part version. They're very similar and would be hard to keep apart in my head I think. But in this case I'm have the 'Johnny come lately' version. Oh, the humanity!
# Posted on December 30th 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Variations of a tune
Good point, Michael. But the session doesn't shrivel up and die if the players don't have the versatility to play both the Gmaj and Gmin settings of the tunes. It would be nice, but it's not necessary.
# Posted on December 30th 2006 by grego
(Responding to Michael's comment way back before my son hijacked the computer to play online games.)
# Posted on December 30th 2006 by grego
Re: Variations of a tune
Its fine to learn tunes of CDs, where else are you supposed to learn them if there are hardly any sessions may I ask?
# Posted on December 30th 2006 by bb
Re: Variations of a tune
It's simple, bb, you just ring Michael and he'll hum them to you over the phone.
# Posted on December 30th 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Variations of a tune
I'm reading your posts, Jack, (and everybody's) and find one point interesting. You tend to classify settings or versions almost exclusively by the player/CD from which a session player learned them. I'm not implying a value judgement or anything - but just wondering. Is this just the way you think, or the way most of the folk in your regular sessions approach learning and classifying tunes.
I learn a lot of stuff from recordings, too, but I tend to be less faithful to one version - adding in bits that I've heard from here and there, my own variations, etc. I don't play in sessions much, except for the very low key kind where lots of tune sharing, discussing, etc goes on. It makes me wonder, if I showed up at your session whether people would be desperately trying to figure out where I "got" my versions of different tunes. Hmmmm.
Also, what WIll said about earlier players having a Sligo setting, a Galway setting, etc. I have heard that, too, and often wondered whether that was really what they had! Judging from how people talk about music, if a visitor came to a session and picked up a new setting, somebody would probably have told them "That's how we play it in Sligo (or South Sligo or Gurteen) but then when you listen to three different players from one area you often hear three quite different setting of the same tune anyway. (Unless they are all following a Coleman recording!)
For me, the differences in the way different people play a tune, and the endlessly different ways one person can vary a tune is where it's at. But I don't tend to think "okay, he's doing the Kevin Burke version" or "sounds like we're headed for the West Clare setting of this one"
Do I just need to get out more?
# Posted on December 30th 2006 by kris
Re: Variations of a tune
"Michael G: "I can understand people you play with being reticent about letting on about their sources of tunes. I just don't think this music is very receptive to your, in my opinion, over-analytical approach."
.....about why people are reticent to reveal sources it probably has more to do with either wanting to appear more like a true "traditional" musician, or wanting to keep the tune out of circulation."
Michael G and Phantom B: Your analyses may hold true for certain individuals. But is it not entirely plausible that a player might genuinely have forgotten the source of a tune? Isn't it enough to remember 1000-odd tunes without having to remember where you learnt them as well?
# Posted on December 30th 2006 by CreadurMawnOrganig
Re: Variations of a tune
Roll on the day when I've got even half of 1000-odd tunes in my head! I must be well on the way, because I not only forget where I learnt the tunes I do know, but in most cases I don't even remember their names.
# Posted on December 30th 2006 by Trevor Jennings
Re: Variations of a tune
I've got thousands of tunes. I just can't remember how any of them go.
# Posted on December 30th 2006 by CreadurMawnOrganig
Re: Variations of a tune
Kris... about 80% of the time people around here pick up tunes from CDs. People also pick up tunes at sessions, from other people who learned them off of a CD, and occasionally tunes will be picked up from recordings of sessions they bring back from Ireland. I have learned tunes in all of these ways.
If I lived in Ireland and grew up in a musical family or lived in an area rich in the tradition, I'd have a different story, but I'm living way out on the West Coast of the US and have few options aside from what I mentioned. But even friends of mine living in Ireland tell me they got such and such tune off of such and such CD. Even Kevin Crawford was telling me once about his favorite CDs to play along with. And if you look at the liner notes from some of his recordings he sites his sources as coming from certain CDs. I think we all do to some degree... don't we?
~~~
Spoon... I'm sure you right about tunes people learned a long time ago; I can't remember the sources for all of my tunes. But the tunes I referred to were recently learned by people who "forgot" where they got them. What would you think if someone played a couple of tunes they learned recently and when you ask where they got them they say they can't remember?
As for me personally, for some reason I can remember most all the names as well as who or where I learned them. It seems I can remember names of tunes better than people's names. But the human memory remains a complete mystery to me. Even so, I would think someone would remember the source for their recently learned tunes.
When people ask me where I got my tunes I can usually tell them with enough detail to track it down, unless it came from an obscure session tape or individual. I can usually remember any commercial recordings from where I originally found tunes, but not all of my tunes were learned from commercial recordings. I can't guarantee that my version will match the recording note for note, but it will be close enough usually.
I do learn them note for note from the original source. Over time I might change it here and there depending on what I've heard other people play. And sometimes I'll pick and choose from a couple of different sources to compile the version I settle on. But I very rarely learn more than one version. I will have variations that develop over time, but none that would clash with the base setting. Any version that comes along that clashes with what I already know would have to be pretty damned spectacular before I'd attempt to retool the tune all together. And as I said above, having similar but contrasting and converging versions of the same tune would be too confusing for me.
# Posted on December 30th 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Variations of a tune
Jack - I wasn't surprised to hear that people learn tunes from CDs - me, too! (And other sources, like yourself.) And I'm not putting anybody down for that.
I guess what surprised me is that you seem to identify a persons version of a tune as the one off this or that CD, and maybe to imply that this is a common mindset in your circle. Like, "Oh, he plays the Matt Molloy version" or "Will we play the Kevin Burke version or the Paddy Glackin one?" So if I came to one or your sessions, people would be mentally running checks on my playing to figure out where I learned stuff. As I said, I'm not putting any value judgement on this approach, it just came as sort of a surprise to me, and I am trying to ask whether I understand you right.
# Posted on December 31st 2006 by kris
Re: Variations of a tune
Kris -- I don't know what other people in our session are thinking, but I'm sure we'd all enjoy your company. As for me personally, yes, I sometimes can recognize where people were likely to get their version of this or that tune. Whether they got it directly from the recording, or learned it from someone who got it from a particular recording, I wouldn't know or care unless it revealed a clue about how that version of the tune goes.
But it really doesn't matter at the end of the day, and there's no value judgment made or any such nonsense. I'm sure that there are some people that can see my discography on my forehead when I start tunes, but so what -- that's a big source of tunes for me. And when I recognize a version someone plays that likely originated with a particular recording I'll know whether I can join in or should sit out. No harm in that really. It might be as simple as knowing they're going to likely double the parts or add the extra one etc. But I don't expect all the tunes and versions played to have a discography behind them.
Maybe discussing tune versions and such on this message board is giving you the impression that I'm taking this all very seriously, but I'm not. At our sessions I'm there mainly for drink and tunes with my pals, to meet new people, and to watch the people in the bar carry on. I can't do that here, so we discuss details about the tunes and such instead. But if I showed up at your session I wouldn't behave any different than you and your pals really. I think we're all there for pretty much the same reason.
# Posted on December 31st 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Variations of a tune
Thanks, Jack. It's probably me that's taking it all a bit seriously - it was just a new thought for me, and I got curious. I don't go to sessions that much anymore, precisely because I'm more interested in hearing tunes played solo, or nearly so, than a group rendition. However, never say never. Perhaps we'll meet one day...
# Posted on December 31st 2006 by kris
Re: Variations of a tune
Button, what percentage of your tunes would you say you learned in a session?. I don't mean heard in a session and found where it came from and learned it there, or found the name and dug out a CD or the dots. I mean just simply learned it at the session. Not even a recording of a session, or even getting someone you heard playing it and getting them to show you it. Just simply picked up ... on the fly?
# Posted on December 31st 2006 by ...
Re: Variations of a tune
"On the fly?" hmmm... not sure what you mean by that, but there are tunes that I've sat and listened to over the years and I know where the melody’s going… and suddenly find that I can play along without hardly missing a note. But what percentage of my tunes came like that? I don't know really... I'd have to take a wild guess. The tunes that came like that tend to be common tunes that are played often.
Before I was living anywhere that had sessions I was advised to get Bothy Band and Kevin Burke recordings and start there. By the time I moved to SF I had a couple of dozen I learned this way. I would make recordings of the sessions, but I found they sounded rather jumbled since half the people were playing the tune and the rest seemed to be noodling. I would ask the names of the tunes I was interested in and/or where they got them and many knew of a source, so I would go there to find a less jumbled rendition. But there were many tunes that didn't strike me as much, or that I hadn't found time to pursue, that I would sit and listen to night after night. Often I knew the name long before attempting to play along, but eventually I would find myself playing them. Sometimes I would discover that version later on a recording and it would register as the source in my memory for that particular tune
Recently, most of the new tunes that pass through are a result of a popular new CD that came out and is getting passed around. I've selected a few tunes off such recordings myself and introduced them to the gang, but many others I learn because someone else learned them and started playing them at the session. Occasionally someone will introduce a tune they learned from an individual they met in Ireland or whatever, and we'll have no other source except for that person to get the tune.
But I digress… the truth is, I don’t know what percentage of tunes I know were picked up at a session. Sorry.
# Posted on December 31st 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Variations of a tune
Sometimes your own source for a tune really is hard to sort out. "Silver bow" here recently brought Boys of Ballycastle to our local session. After he played it a couple weeks in a row, I had the melody running through my head. It clicked with some old memory of the tune. I was able to suss it out from memory alone (easy enough cuz it's a fairly straightforward, repetitive hornpipe), and then realized that it had been stuck there from hearing Kevin Burke play it 20-some years ago. And Silver bow got his version off a Kevin Burke cd, so the two jibed. I finally dug up a net clip of Kevin playing the tune, and found I could play right along, and that cemented it, though I play my own variations, not Burke's.
] again and a hush descends on the murky lounge bar. He soars into the Battering Ram--not the standard version, but the one he got from Jim Donoghue, the great Sligo tin-whistle player who perversely played a C whistle (D is standard) out of the side of his mouth, and produced a great strong flute-like tone full of wood and embouchure and breath, jumping octaves; and he put a funny twist into this jig, reversing it and generally standing phrases on their heads. Tansey imputes many of his stylistic traits to Donoghue, and this tune is a tribute, an hommage, a dedication, Tansey playing it as beautifully as he can because he loves the playing of Jim Donoghue and he is beholden to him. But Tansey is his own man too, and knows he's good. All great musicians recognise their ancestry and pay respect to it, and they know the thing is bigger than the sum of individuals: it progresses in a multiplicity of exponential steps and fractal variations; and stepping on a butterfly way back there in the past will have an unforseen chaotic implication for the present or the future. Because a note was bent back then, the whole tune has taken on another bent or warp or woof, and sometimes, someone will put in another bend that gets back to the source, just as the flooded Mississippi breaks its banks and takes a straighter, faster course between its hitherto meanderings. The river-bend becomes an ox-bow lake. Whole towns are abandoned. It's all in flux. In bars in towns called Memphis, Thebes, and Cairo, the river pilots gather to discuss their current Nile, or what was current yesterday, and prognosticate its future course, the shifting of its underwater reefs and bars and snags. To be a river pilot you must have a photographic memory, or rather a filmic memory, since the images are never static: soundings must be taken all the time. The pilot scans the water constantly, reading it for change, for dissolution and establishment of hazards.... Musicians, borne on a spate of music, take their soundings; hearing something new, they search the memory bank for parallels and precedents, getting its approximation, its relative shape. A rough internal course is plotted out before embarking; fingers mime the notes. Then the details--little snags and twists--are filled in, or attempted.... till they come as if by chance from some obscure source in the brain: the fingers find the pattern without conscious effort. But of course the instinct is instructed by years of listening. We drift on in the wide, swift current of the music, trusting to our memories and to past associations."
I've posted this before, but it strikes me as relevant here, too: paraphrasing Vassar Clements, when asked if he wasn't bored playing the same bluegrass repertoire all those years, he said that sure, they were the same tunes, but he played them differently now than 20 years ago, and hoped he'd be playing them altogether differently a year, or five years, or 20 years ahead.
That works for me in Irish trad music--yes, there are lots of great tunes too learn, but each tune also holds its own potential for growth and freshness.
Then there's this from Ciaran Carson, in Last Night's Fun. It's a bit long, but beautifully captures the essence of this music:
"Then Tansey does his preliminary twiddle [i.e., "noodle"
# Posted on December 31st 2006 by Will Harmon
Re: Variations of a tune
Sure there are extraordinary musicians like Tansey whose head might contain multiple versions for most of the tunes he knows, (although that's not what Ciaran suggests here,) but isn't Tansey an exception?
What I heard a couple of people in this thread say is that it's not the exception, but the norm that most people have multiple versions for most of their tunes. I'm not talking about variations, but different versions that are the same tune. I know one flute player in Dublin who I've witnessed with this ability, and a concertina player in Ennis, and a few others. But they are definitely exceptional players at the top of their game. Most people I know have basically one version for most of their tunes and can play a few variations. But none of my peers locally have multiple versions for most tunes. I know I certainly don’t.
# Posted on December 31st 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Variations of a tune
ehi guys,
When I opend this topic I didn't think that discussion could be so long eheheh,
I'm seeing that it's "a problem" for all of us!
thank you again to everybody
and have a nice last day of year and a fantastic 2007
Maria Teresa
# Posted on December 31st 2006 by marite
Re: Variations of a tune
As was said above, how you play depends on what your priorities are. For some people, this music is a daily opportunity to be expressive and inventive and playful--to make it fresh every time. I've played with plenty of unexceptional musicians who are nonetheless very adept at changing things up, sometimes radically, and sounding good all the while.
I've also played with people who play the same notes--the same "arrangements" of tunes--year after year after year. The variations they do typically fall in the same places, almost like they're playing from a score. They sound highly polished, like a recording. All power to them, but that's not my cup of tea.
My (woefully anecdotal and inadequate, yet unexceptional) experience has led me to a mindset reflected in my previous post. It's the approach I personally appreciate most when I find other musicians who share it, so maybe it compels me to see Tansey and a "filmic memory" and taking soundings all the time as the way this music works, not the exception. Maybe I'm wrong. But I'm happy playing this way.
# Posted on December 31st 2006 by Will Harmon
Everyone happy now?
Dear Maria,
thanks for starting off this discussion - these funny old duffers will keep the coversation going until someone turns the lights out, or the drinks run out. I'm just sneaking off to refill my glass ...
cheers!
# Posted on December 31st 2006 by dogbox
Re: Variations of a tune
Will, I think we might be talking about two different things. In the interest of clarity, here's the two quotes that started us down this path concerning 'versions' and not variations.
Will writes: "I know lots of different settings/versions of most of the tunes I play, and many of the people I've sessioned with over the years can charge into way more settings than I can. In my (woefully anecdotal and inadequate) experience, having lots of settings/versions at the ready is the norm, not the exception."
And Michael writes: "Yep, you carry with you lots of version/vatiations of most tunes."
I my next post I said, "Variations aside..." meaning that I wasn't talking about variations. But I think you might still be talking about that. I'm always developing variations for the tunes I know too, but what I thought we were talking about were different pre-determined or learned 'versions'. In other wrods, different structural concepts for the same tune that you could play on command. (not including variations)
The impression I got from what you and Michael said was that you have multiple 'versions' (not variations) for most of your tunes. I develop variations for most of my tunes, but I don't have different 'versions'. I'm usually basing my variations on one basic tune structure, or 'version' that I originally learned. There's only a handful of tunes that I have actual multiple versions of.
(Sorry about the redundancy, but I'm trying to be clear about what I'm talking about)
So are you saying that you have multiple pre-determined or learned 'versions' for most of your tunes? Or do you just mean you develop variations on most of your tunes as time goes on?
# Posted on December 31st 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Variations of a tune
Now, I think Michael has noted an important difference in learning styles. That of asking a person at a session where they learned a tune, then going and finding the same recording and learning from that, as opposed to just picking it up in a session. Of course, if you do it that way you will be more inclined to think of it as the Liam O'Flynn version, or whatever.
Equally, I guess how you approach the learning (from the CD) is going to make a difference. If you sit down with a fairly unfamiliar track and just start learning the tune bit by bit you will have a different view than if you have just listened to the CD a lot and absorbed the tune. I tend to use the latter method, and if anything I don't sit down with the CD enough to check that I am as close to the original as I would like to be.
# Posted on December 31st 2006 by kris
Re: Variations of a tune
Jack, I'm talking about different versions or settings, not just variations. I'm talking about different ways to play a tune that would clash against another way to play the tune, not variations that blend. And yes, I do have multiple versions of many tunes in my head.
But it's a blurry area. Some fresh variations on the fly can clash with what everyone else is playing, yet still work within the tune. If you remember it later, that becomes the basis for a whole new version. You can also have very limited variations that clash. Think of the two ways of playing Cathal McConnell's "The Sunset"--one that stays on F sharps in the B part, and one that slides into F nats one time around. Since it's only a measure and a half that's different, I have a hard time thinking of that as a whole new version, but as a "variation" it would clearly clash with what everyone else was playing.
Of course, when actually playing, I don't worry about terminology. It works just fine to listen and follow along. Bear in mind that not all distinct versions are "pre-determined" or learned ahead of time. For instance, on fiddle if you know a melody line well enough, you can play it in an unfamiliar key on the fly, even though how you articulate (ornament) the notes and bowing and even phrasing will be distinctly different from your "normal" version in the familiar key.
Just an example: I first learned the jig "Hole in the Hedge" off Martin Hayes' Lonesome Touch cd, in C major. Our flute player liked the tune and learned it from memory at home after hearing it at the session over many months. Except that on his keyless D flute it came out naturally in D major. So when he launched into it at the session, he didn't realize he was doing anything different. Two of us fiddlers recognized the melody and joined in, in D major. Instantly, entirely new options opened up for moving triplets, rolls, phrasings, really a whole new mood to the tune. We had so much fun we played it 6 times through. Now the D major setting is the "standard" at our session, but I can still play the C major setting, and have tinkered with it in other keys as well (It's beautiful in F). My guess is that Hayes moved from the original D to C to suit his own tastes, and here we are back in D. Very much what Carson gets at in his explanation above.
# Posted on December 31st 2006 by Will Harmon
Re: Variations of a tune
Ok... thanks for the clarification, Will. Yes, I also have a good few multiple versions of certain tunes the same way you describe. I guess my question should be directed towards Michael at this point because he said he has multiple versions for most of his tunes, and that's the norm.
Michael writes: "Yep, you carry with you lots of version/vatiations of most tunes."
Now for me, most tunes would mean around 300 or more. If Michael knows anywhere near the same number of tunes I do, (I'm assuming he knows at least that many or more) then he would have different versions for hundreds of tunes... and so would all his session mates. This is hard for me to comprehend.
# Posted on December 31st 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Variations of a tune
Okay, well I know hundreds of tunes myself, somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 the last time I bothered to think about them that way. And I'd say that I do have multiple versions (not just variations) ready at hand for a third to half of them. But it doesn't feel that pre-determined or pre-arranged. Again, it's more in line with another quote from Ciaran Carson: "The same tune is never the same tune twice." That's true not just due to variations, but sometimes due to whole cloth changes to the tune. And sometimes it's not true. I certainly have plenty of tunes that I don't mess around with much, or at least I haven't yet.
# Posted on December 31st 2006 by Will Harmon
Re: Variations of a tune
Maybe this will help.
Playing a tune in different keys on the fiddle is less a matter of "having" each version in your head from rehearsing it, and more a matter of being able to simply transpose on the fly, even when all the fingering and bowing patterns change. To my way of thinking, that depends not only on how ingrained the basic melody line is in your head (regardless of key), but also how well you know your instrument, and how free your bow hand is.
In other words, sometimes a distinct setting is pre-arranged and practiced, and sometimes it's not--it's done ad hoc, in the moment.
# Posted on December 31st 2006 by Will Harmon
Re: Variations of a tune
Will writes: "In other words, sometimes a distinct setting is pre-arranged and practiced, and sometimes it's not--it's done ad hoc, in the moment."
Fair enough... but I would exclude the "ad hoc, in the moment." ones from what I've been talking about when I say "versions." I would call the "ad hoc, in the moment" ones 'improvised versions'... something quite different all together.
What percentage of your tunes have additional "pre-arranged and practiced" versions ready to go?
BTW... I've never actually counted how many tunes I know; I'm just making a wild guess.
# Posted on December 31st 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Variations of a tune
That may be too fine a split for how I think about playing music. Yes, I know a fair number of pre-arranged settings (e.g., the Dmix and Dor versions of Garrett Barry's I mentioned earlier, or Trip to Durrow with two parts or with three parts, etc.). But in the course of 30 years, I've forgotten most of the different ways tunes have come out at one time or another, so it's hard to say how "fresh" or premeditated something might be, particularly on tunes I've played for yonks.
Jack, I think maybe the difference we're dancing around in our personal approaches to the music is that you've spent more time honing the established versions of tunes you know, and I've spent more time experimenting with different settings.
Again, it's a matter of priorities. And I'm suggesting that players who make it their priority to know multiple settings and to be able to transpose/adapt/adjust on the fly don't have to be "extraordinary" musicians at the top of their game to pull it off well. It's just how they're accustomed to making music.
This reminds me a bit of the distinction Barry Green makes in The Inner Game of Music between the analytical approach and the global approach. In the former, we tend to focus on learning a tune note by note or phrase by phrase, gradually building a whole, and in the latter we learn the overall shape or feel of the tune, then suss out the pieces. Of course, most people do some of both, but we may tend to favor one approach over the other. I find I'm happily split between the two, a by-product, I suspect, of years of teaching music to hundreds of students who came at this from all angles.
I've gone through periods of being more analytical, and found that experimenting with more intuitive, global approaches to the music has enhanced those abilities for me. And vice versa.
# Posted on December 31st 2006 by Will Harmon
Re: Variations of a tune
Well, we'll have to wait and see what Michael's response is, but what you're talking about here isn't much different from my own approach. But I'm still unable to play any of the various independent versions of a tune like Crib of Perches that I posted above as an example. I can do variations of the basic tune I play, but if someone starts a different version all together I can't produce their version even if I'm aware it exists. Some times different versions of tunes I know sound like what I play turned inside-out. If I tried to learn those versions I think it would just scramble the tune in my head all together and I would end up noodling the part every time the tune came up.
# Posted on January 1st 2007 by Phantom Button
Re: Variations of a tune
Hrrmmm, I *like* versions that go all inside out. That's why they're so fun to play.
# Posted on January 1st 2007 by Will Harmon
Re: Variations of a tune
Sure they are, but you try to store too many like that in your long-term memory you'll find yourself lost on the B-part when the tune comes up in 6 months or a year.
# Posted on January 1st 2007 by Phantom Button
Re: Variations of a tune
You're only lost if you don't know where you want to go....
Happy New Year, Jack.
# Posted on January 1st 2007 by Will Harmon
Re: Variations of a tune
Yea... I've improvised myself out of many a B-part before... but I'd never try to pass it off as a 'version."
Happy New Year back atcha... thanks for the discussion.
# Posted on January 1st 2007 by Phantom Button
Re: Variations of a tune
A famous horseman once said "I don't know where I'm going, but I'm not lost."
Happy New Year Will and Jack and everybody. This has been a great discussion on which to see the old one out.
(thanks marite)
# Posted on January 1st 2007 by kris
Re: Variations of a tune
Happy new year and............ Kris, it was a pleasure
# Posted on January 1st 2007 by marite
Re: Variations of a tune
Cathal McConnell springs to mind. He'll sit down and say, "Do you know such and such?" and we'll nod and say yeah go for it. Then he'll say, "Ah, but have you such and such's?". And he'll proceed to play the most delightful inversion of something otherwise very well known. and he'll often do this for some time. And when your playing a tune yourself, he'll hang back until he knows which version you're playing, then when it's finished will often give you more ways of playing certain bits. I suspect a lot of his versions are his own variations, but he's such a self effacing gent, he never admits it.
I always find it fun to do this in sessions, rather than the straight forward blasting through homogeneous sets. I think it's much more rewarding to have many many versions of just a few a few tunes rather than the standard twitcher approach of simply ticking them off. I even enjoy revisiting the same tune in the same evening, something that is frowned upon by your average sessioner.
Admittedly, often I will just be sitting with my mates and blasting through the many hundreds of tunes that we have successfully synchronised over the years (standard practice that I'm sure you are all familiar with) though a break from this to a more considered approach is always welcome.
Broadly speaking we do carry with us versions/vatiations of most of our tunes and though it sounds like a contradiction to marry this with the syncronisation, in practise, provided you keep your ears open, it works.
# Posted on January 3rd 2007 by ...
Re: Variations of a tune
Michael writes: "I think it's much more rewarding to have many many versions of just a few a few tunes rather than the standard twitcher approach of simply ticking them off."
...and he continues: "Broadly speaking we do carry with us versions/vatiations of most of our tunes"
"versions of just a few a few tunes"
"versions of most of our tunes"
# Posted on January 3rd 2007 by Phantom Button
Re: Variations of a tune
Sorry, I understand that I wrote that in a bit of a confusing way. I'll try to be clearer ...
Speaking for me and my mates, we do carry with us versions/vatiations of most of our tunes.
Speaking generally and with a tinge of regret, I think it's much more rewarding to have many many versions of just a few tunes rather than the standard twitcher approach of simply ticking them off.
I'm referring here to my regret that I have learned too many tunes. Though I do carry versions/vatiations of most of them, I'd rather that I had less tunes, and more versions/vatiations of the few corkers remaining.
# Posted on January 4th 2007 by ...