In my own teaching I believe you have to give everything you have, show your students your full technique. I always begin with staff notation; nowadays with so much traditional music written down it is important for young payers to have the key to the library as it were. I also teach my pupils to pick tunes up by ear, and the best players can always do both."
.... deeep sigh ..... slow exhalation coupled with slumping of shoulders and head tipped forward .... blank stare at the floor .....
Well ... it could well be true that now, the best players can read music and play by ear. However, I'm certain that it has not always been so. And that begs the question of whether the best players now are better than the older ones?
The important thing to remember though is that being able to read music is/can be very useful. But the ability to pick up tunes by ear is a prerequisite. I'll qualify this: The amount of information in the written music is only a very very small proportion of what is actually in the music itself. And what information that is there in the written music is the easiest bits to actually hear. The harder bits, the twiddley bits, the whole ethos of variation, the whole feel of it are not represented at all in the sheet music. So the point is, that if you struggle with getting the easy bits by ear, where the heck are you gonna get the hard bits from?
Make em up as you go along. using the full range of possible ornaments, or not. As you choose. This is part of where the individual touch come from.....
I don't get it. Yes sheet music is handy from time to time. No, you're getting nowhere when you rely on it. Yes they can do both, but no they are not that good BECAUSE they can do both.
So where is the controversy, and where is the point that hasn't been discussed to death before?
if you dont want to discuss something. thats fine. but others might. thats fine.
prerequisite;
something which must exist or happen before something else can exist or happen.
so do explain, how can learning by ear be a requirement for playing trad?
Make em up as you go along. using the full range of possible ornaments, or not. As you choose. This is part of where the individual touch come from.....jig
No. There are places a certain ornament can go, and there are places where it can't. The ornaments have to fit the tune.... screetch
sorry, you mean physically? like a long roll can fit on an 1/8th note? I think my point encompassed all choices . Or are you suggesting that puting a long roll on an 1/8th note is a possible choice we might have?
''No, you're getting nowhere when you rely on it''
what do you mean? where do you want to go? Folk generally want to play music. The entire classical world relies upon the dots. Is that nowhere?
Are you really trying to tell me that playing a tune from sheet music is favourable to learning it by ear? I wouldn't contradict on saying it is handy to learn the outline, and then listen to how it sounds best, but classical musicians are trying to play exactly as it is written, and to my understanding this is not the goal in trad.
By the way, the very fact that you use the ornamentation the way you like it shows that you don't rely on sheet music either.
Ornaments are a crucial part of the rhythm of a tune. If you throw ornaments around willy-nilly then you'll muck up the rhythm of the tune. You have some freedom to improvise ornaments, but there are limits.
No I dont rely on sheet music. I am definitely not saying the dots is preferable to ear learning. I am saying that I think that restricting ourselves to learning only by ear or only by dots is unnecessary to play beautiful music.
I ornament as I choose because otherwise its just copying. Where is the originality in that? the art? the freshness?
The fact is that many people, due to their lifestyles dont have all the options available. If I ear a tune I like i catch the name, because maybe I wont hear it again. Often enough i can play it their and then but to remember it i need to play it over the course of a week or so. the dots help that.. If I play regularly with someone , or in a particular session i can pick up the tunes, but to limit myself to only learning by ear would be pointless. Why would i want to place such restrictions upon myself? t.o what purpose?
?!? What makes you so sure of that? perhaps its yourself that is missing the point?
''Ornaments are a crucial part of the rhythm of a tune.'.
That is simply untrue, it just isnt the case . You can say what you like. but that doesnt make it true.. They are not, of course, otherwise they would not be ornaments. I have recordings of players playing their tunes without ornaments. They are the icing on the cake. You dont need icing for something to be a cake.
field recorders, Cd,s internet etc etc . Yes they can be a great help, but what about the person who doesnt have all your technical gadgets? a piece of paper, will do the job as well as any gadget. Sure use all your options . That Is The Point.
Yes, and the other side of that point is that that guy has to know how the tune sounds, or how to make a tune out of the dots. As I said sheet music is handy, when I said "rely on it" I meant "only rely on sheet music", that is ignore listening, to set this straight. And since there is no popcorn left, I wish a good night.
prerequisite;
something which must exist or happen before something else can exist or happen.
yep. You have to be able to hear what's happening and be able to transfer it to your instrument. Hear it all. all the stuff that's not on the sheet of paper. If you can't do that, then you won't be able to play this music.
I've heard people who play by making up their own twiddley bits. Often they really really truly believe that their twiddley bits are the same as how they should be. They think they hear it, but they don't. And they can feck off.
Its quite clear that you have fixed ideas of what this music 'should' be,, It just so happens your Ideas exclude so many great players. Perhaps you might come to Co Clare sometime? you might find your preconceived ideas are yours alone.
I agree with Bobby Gardner.
I am sorry but I cant take anyone seriously,who extolls the virtues of ear playing,and then says that to his ears, jigs sound as if they have even triplets,anyone who says that doesnt deserve to be taken seriously.
Soft black stars, sit back and enjoy your popcorn.
I disagree on several levels with the statement attributed to Bobby Gardiner.
First off, appealing to authority is nothing more than an empty rhetorical device. Authority tends to be anecdotal and often wrong. Many generations of humankind lived with certainty under the notion that the Earth is flat, in spite of ample evidence (available to anyone) to the contrary (e.g., the curvature of Earth's shadow on the Moon). Authority said it was so, and people believed. They were wrong.
Far better to think for yourself. To wit:
"The best players can always do both" is absolutist, and so overstates the importance of the dots. Yes, it's nice to have the keys to the library, but not at the cost of going deaf. The best players use their ears. With the possible exception of the one symphony percussionist who is deaf, musicians are an aural lot. Music is sound, after all. So there have been many great players who did not or do not read sheet music. Consider the not small number of blind musicians in all genres who play at the highest levels, yet have never seen a dot of sheet music.
On the flip side, I can't think of a single decent melody musician in all of human history who was deaf throughout his or her musicial career. (Beethoven was able to continue composing after losing his hearing only because he already had the sounds in his mind--he did not start out deaf.)
It is championing the obvious to say that music requires us to listen, to use our ears, our aural centers of the brain. The eyes are, at best, a distant secondary adjunct. They can help us only if we first know what music *sounds* like. In short, it's entirely possible to play music well without eyes, but much more difficult--impossible--if we have no ears.
On top of music's essentail aural nature, Irish trad music is largely an aural tradition. Players routinely learn tunes by ear, play together by ear (rarely if ever playing from written notation when "playing out"), pass tunes down by ear, etc. In contrast to a orchestral performance of a concerto, you won't see any sheet music at an Irish trad gig or session. If you do, it's likely, by definition, not Irish trad.
Written notation is not entirely out of the picture, however. People in this tradition have long used written notation to collect tunes, as a memory aid, as a teaching aid, and as a learning aid. With the expansion of printing and the internet, written notation has become widespread and readily accessible. This is handy, especially if you understand the aural conventions of this music and so can take a printed page and make it come alive on your instrument.
It's also handy for anyone who simply wants to play the tunes without bothering to understand what they sound like when played by musicians steeped in this particular musical tradition. So you get things like the Boston Pops playing Toss the Feathers, Flogging Molly, and music stands at certain sessions. Some people enjoy that. Good for them.
I too teach my fiddle students to read written notation (both the dots and abcs), so they have the keys to the library. But I don't introduce notation until they are playing music, until they have an aural frame of reference for understanding the rorschach test that is notation. *Starting* with "staff notation"--as suggested in the quote attributed to Gardiner--would be like teaching a pre-verbal baby how to write abcs. Possible perhaps, but meaningless and not likely a good use of your or the baby's time and energy.
Another way to think of this is that written notation (much like any written language) is a way of visually symbolizing sounds. In contrast, musical sounds are *not* symbols of the inky spots on the page. The sound is reality--notation merely an inky shadow. Useful for drawing outlines, perhaps, but not the same, not as robust and alive and filled with personality, as the meat-and-bones body that cast the shadow.
Finally, it seems odd that someone would persevere in coming to a trad music web site with the apparent sole purpose of espousing techniques and tools (such as written notation, metronomes, etc.) more common among more formal genres of music, *as though traditional approaches (e.g., learning and playing by ear, finding your internal pulse, listening well to others) were somehow inferior.* That strikes me as either an endless wind up or simply argumentative, neither of which genuinely contributes to the craic, and both of which end up marring the credibility of otherwise useful (though unremarkable) notions of using whatever tools help you become a better musician.
popcorn, salt. thanks.
Apeal to authority? where. Bobby says something. I agree. not because he said it, but because it makes sense. It just so happens that I agree.
But I would respect the viewpoint of himself were i to disagree. He has been playing a lot longer than I, at a high level. I doubt there is anyone here who could approach him,[ if there is, do speak up] He is a master. I am a student.why not learn from him?
finally, I espouse tools and techniques I have discovered and used throughout my life. where they come from is, to me, irrelevant, whether they come from mars or opera, They work.
I am simply propounding an alternative viewpoint, as valid as any other. Shared by many musicians who also have no time for petty division. Music is music, be it Tibetan or Irish, bach or metallica.
However easy it is to wind up llig, thats not what I am here for. I simply put forward a point of view. If you dont like it thats not my problem. I have a right to speak ,yes? Or does free speech only stretch to people who agree with you? Hmm, are you a republican will? that would explain a lot..
ps.all recorded music is also a representation of one aspect of a human craft, the aural. It is only an approximation, however accurate. It does not include so much that is present in a real live 'performance' That doesnt mean its not a great facility , a useful tool. just that its not the real thing.
LOL, Will, there's your appeal to authority, right after you denied doing it:
"But I would respect the viewpoint of himself were i to disagree. He has been playing a lot longer than I, at a high level. I doubt there is anyone here who could approach him,[ if there is, do speak up] He is a master. I am a student.why not learn from him?"
Yeah, I could play tunes with Bobby Gardiner, which is what this music is about, after all. From what I've heard of his playing, Michael could do it justice too.
And I don't know where you got the notion that I'm questioning your right to speak your piece. You can do the wind up/argumentative thing ad nauseum for all I care. And keep getting suspended, for longer and longer spells. That's surely your perogative. LOL. I just can't imagine why that tack appeals so strongly to you that you make it your first priority upon your return from Elba....
Will CPT, you really bug me. I see this topic show up again and I am tempted to just skip the thread. But Wait!! Someone might add something helpful and, sure enough, CPT did. I wish everyone would just ignore this and other topics like it so I can safely skip them in the future without fear of missing something important.
A severe error has been made here. This idiot is back on the forum. I will not post here until he is removed, as he inevitably will be eventually. Goodbye. And no need for bollockings, jeremy.
LOL, feardearg, rest assured, it's all been said before, in much more entertaining threads. C'mon, at number 16,385, you've been around long enough to have seen it all....
Awww, Steve, stick around and play. We can make it really interesting by referring to jig and myself by our (ironically) shared real first name: "Will"
Its called respect , respect for other viewpoints. You have right to yours, I to mine.
patronising comments like this;''You can do the wind up/argumentative thing ad nauseum for all I care. And keep getting suspended, for longer and longer spells. That's surely your prerogative. LOL'' Im sure we can all do without.
Where do they relate to the subject? nowhere. You simply start making unpleasant comments to attempt to put me down. is that the best you can offer?
''Yeah, I could play tunes with Bobby Gardiner, which is what this music is about, after all. ''
And? so could a crap bodhranist , wouldnt sound very good but...
I asked if there was any one approaching his level. Do you really think you or llig are? really? I have asked you to demonstrate but you appear reluctant. you say you have Cds out, your on youtube etc. Where? As I said I cant find anything.
Its interesting what people make from a quote. I simply offered up bobby's opinion . nothing more. A man who plays at the highest level , who has been playing for 70 odd years, A true master. If we want to play this music right, shouldnt we listen to the old masters?
Look - some people might not care for bobby gardiner's playing - I wouldnt call it my favourite to be honest. And I blame in entirely on the fact that he uses both dots *and* his ear.
Seriously though - that is a stupid comment - as weve all worked out we all know heaps of people who only learn from ear who are great and heaps of people who do both who are great.....why wont this type of discussion ever go away? Why?
Wow. I never said I have CDs out. But I am on youtube (posted by someone else), and Reverend provided a link to my playing on another thread. Rev's also offered that he has other recordings of me playing and I don't mind at all if he posts them somewhere.
As I said, I could play with Mr. Gardiner. I've played with lots of brilliant musicians. So have lots of people here. We're not all wannabes. Some of us can actually play. Which is what this music and craic are about. Besides, I learned a lot of tunes years ago from listening to recordingings of Mr. Gardiner. Highly instructive. No sheet music needed. I daresay I have some of his repertoire, thanks to his indirect generosity.
Will, I wasn't putting you down at all, just pointing out the fact that you make it a priority to provoke people on this sheet music topic (among others), and it gets you booted for longer and longer periods. I think that would get tiresome, that's all. Might be more fun to suss out the nature of this online session and figure out how to sit in, rather than finding yourself out in the cold wet streets week after week.
"And? so could a crap bodhranist , wouldnt sound very good but..."
So Will, what are you insinuating there? Or is that not an implied put down?
well, without endorsing the part involving "best" and "always," the only people who might find it controversial that many if not most irish students get both staff reading and ear learning from their teachers, would be people from outside the country who have swallowed the schtick and mythology that abound about "true pure traditional players" not reading music.
folks, the huge majority of the virtuoso irish kiddies in the master classes at festivals such as clancy week are all getting formal instruction from master players. and, news flash, the vast majority of them read music. AND, coequally, the vast majority all learn by ear as well, with intimidating ease. this also applies to the vast majority of irish virtuosos who are not kiddies. bobby gardiner's adjectives may be extreme, but he is describing the status quo for the teaching standard there. one of the teachers at the clancy school told me that i was a fool if i thought they didn't use written music. this person stated to me that the fiddlers, in particular, use it. he said that even when people learn a melody by ear, it is use written music when working out ornamentation.
look, this may be more ubiquitous now, but it is not a new development. i remember an anecdote on mary macnamara's now-disappeared web site, reminiscing about how martin rochford of east clare used to write out tunes while learning them and drop them in her mailbox to learn. you can see a music stand with written music in the background on her video on the custys web site, and this is just about universal there. one of the east clare musicians did this very thing for me, gave me a copy of a new tune he had learned and then written out. i've seen photos of edel fox teaching with a blackboard full of music with ornamentation behind her, same deal with a bunch of the teachers in the clancy week teaching photos. when people comment in interviews and documentaries about how the standard nowadays is incredibly high, this is one of the things they are talking about. those kids who are shotguninng in every key standing on their heads by ave nine are getting formal training that includes reading & ear learning. i'm not saying this is all great, but bobby gardiner is describing the norm there.
it's such a given as not to be worth discussing---except for this fascinating aspect: why are people from outside of this milieu so hysterical about this? the tone is like children finding out there isn't a santa claus......
Well - I was taught by a fiddle player from one of the most well known musical families in ireland. And when I asked for the abcs she almost fainted - made me learn by ear, and Ive been doing it ever since.
Ive also had prob 10-15 teachers in my time (when I lived in ireland and over here) - and none of them ever gave me sheet music.....ever..... Interesting that all these amazing teachers taught without sheet music....How very strange.
And all but one were irish - strange that they also swallowed the mythology....even the irish arent safe....oh my god
cee, no one is saying sheet music isn't useful. We're just tired of having it repeatedly crammed down our throats, as though it's an *alternative* to learning by ear. Plain and simple--the dots don't do you any good if you aren't also learning by ear.
And no--the tone here isn't shrill or santa-shock. It's just fed up with the broken record from one quarter.
All you kids who've been throwing the popcorn around are BARRED ! Someone has to clean this mess up !
( My son used to work at the local multplex, I know what it's like. )
But, seriously, did I read right that some musicians work out their ornaments using the dots ? My flabber is ghasted. Why did I think there was some element of spontanaiety left in the music ?
I'll volunteer for the clean-up, i shouldn't have bitten.
Maybe it's only me, but I haven't read a single statement that damns sheet music in this thread. A few stated that it's not necessary and most stated that it can't be used instead of listening, but let alone the always in "best always both" no-one contradicted the statement, it is just Will purposely arguing to keep the fight alive, but then I'm not quite awake and haven't had a coffee yet.
Get your seats the room darkens, commercials are almost over....
.... deeper sigh ..... slow exhalation and a barely audible moan coupled with slumping of shoulders and head tipped forward and at a slight angle .... blank, unblinking stare at the floor .....
Yep, I'm fed up. Yep, No one is being anti dots per say. Dots are a good thing, but only in the right hands. And the right hands are from within the tradition and in conjunction with the conventions of how the music is actually heard and then played. (That's important, heard and then played, not the other way round.) I'm certain Bobby Gardiner would concur
But where the dots fall down as a useful tool is when someone from outside the tradition who can already read music decides they'd like a go at it. They stumble across a place like this, an international forum, head straight to the tune section, print a few tunes off, maybe give a listen to the midi (heaven forbid) and away they go.
The music that comes out of this process is always a hideous miss mash of false pre conceptions and made-up twiddly bits.
Jig once said: "If you don't wish to conform to a preconceived concept of what Irish music sounds like, then you can play tunes as you choose. It may not sound like Irish Music, but so what?"
So what indeed, each to their own, but I have respect for what Irish music sounds like. I like the way Irish music sounds. I want to play it how it sounds.
I said above: "The harder bits, the twiddley bits, the whole ethos of variation, the whole feel of it are not represented at all in the sheet music. So the point is, that if you struggle with getting the easy bits by ear, where the heck are you gonna get the hard bits from?"
I have a quote from a great traditional musician as well - Donegal fiddler Danny O'Donnell :
"Learning to play music from a sheet of paper is like telling someone to go into an art gallery and learn to paint by smelling the pictures".
I like "drone"'s phrase - "Read with your ears".
I'm fond of a good conclusion. I'm fond of statin' the bleedin' obvious. But unfortunately, such a thing is utterly useless in this context. This nonsense will run and run and run no matter what sense gets politely, or otherwise, put. Such is the nature of it.
If you do any teaching or workshops at all, you need to be able to show and tell people what they are doing wrong and what they should be doing.
Not saying you need a classical education in performance or technique, but without the theoretical knowledge, you are at a disadvantage.
(You may also get pedants in your workshop who will rip you to bits if you get it wrong. You can't do it all in ABC.
I don't get what you're saying, Geoff. In any case, ABCs are just anotehr form of notation, so there's no point in distinguishing them from 'the dots'.
But it's definitely true that you can do it all by ear in a workshop situation. I've seen it done over and over. I've also seen, at one particular summer school, several different classes where some teachers were using some form of notation and others weren't. Interestingly, there was more progress with the classes teaching entirely by ear. (Though even those tend these days to allow or provide dots at the end of each session.)
Okay, enough popcorn. And if the nachos have jalapenos on them I'll have to pick them off.
It must be obvious by now that no-one is convincing anyone to come to the other side, whatever side that is. Why, I'm beginning to think some folks like to argue just for the sake of arguing! Could it be?? Everyone needs to go out and get some fresh air. Llig and CPT, it hurts me to see you banging your heads against yon brick wall AGAIN. Please, for the sake of your health, stop
Oh, I'm not banging my head against the brick wall. In general, my posts are directed at the crowd of puzzled onlookers standing around the brick wall, wondering why it's been erected smack in the middle of an otherwise cozy, friendly little pub....
Yeah, I just got back myself. I saw the brick wall, made one joke, and took off for a few minutes, to continue the analogy. That Will talking to Will thing took a while to sort out. Thought our man here was losing it. I was going to say, what did all those swing fiddlers do to you at that fiddle camp, anyway?
Usually I play my flute and whistles with my hands and mouth. I'll have to try this ear method and see how it pans out.
Seriously though, I can sight read music and while it comes in handy, it's a serious boon to be able to pick out a tune by listening to it. I wouldn't say I'm the best player, but I would say that in my experience, the people who blow me away the most are those who cannot read; then those who can do both; and then those who read but cannot play by ear.
bobby gardiner did not say at any point in the opening quote, that you can learn irish music solely by written dots. in fact, he said the opposite. yet here some folks are, foaming at the mouth about what he has said. this is that "WHAT? NO SANTA?????" phenom that is so amazing to me. yes, great players, perhaps many of the greatest if you love an older style, learned solely by ear. but bobby gardiner's remarks described the norm for much ITM teaching, in ireland, today.
and that in no way contradicts the fact that most teachers teach tune melodies by ear and tell you you need to be able to learn by ear. most of mine have, and i have been learning almost exclusively by ear off of cds or tapes for five or more years, this after taking ear-training classes at night to get better at it.
but teaching tune melodies by ear and telling students they need to be able to learn music by ear, (which i agree, you do), in no way excludes the proposition that staff music is also used and is considered important, which it is what bobby gardiner in essence said and is standard operating procedure in much serious ITM teaching in ireland. it is by no means only a comhaltas phenom, but Exhibit A might be the fact that the comhaltas live site has that "this week's tutorial" feature, or whatever it's called, and they give the staff music for download in addition to the audio.
a few of the famous people who tsk-tsk foreigners about dots do not know how to read music and are saving face. some of them do read music, and in real life, teach their own students both by ear and by written music, but are playing Hide the Ball with credulous outsiders.
very common in formal lessons, and at programs like university of limerick, is this---melodies are indeed learned by ear. written music is used to help conceptualize where to put ornaments, and things like phrasing, bowing patterns, bellows patterns, bass arrangements for instruments having that capability, etc, etc.
i spent three years in the clancy school "master class" in box (i qualified only in the sense of being good enough to keep up). at the start of the class, the instructor went around and asked all the irish kids, age 10 to 17/18 ish, who their teacher was. "bobby gardiner" was one name i heard each year. bobby gardiner is a brilliant and highly entertaining master of a certain b/c accordion style. i myself prefer a sparer, cleaner style, but he is a fantastic musician, particularly for dance. it was a big class, and many of the students played to a super-high standard of virtuosity. most of them had clearly had written training, and not only by bobby gardiner. it was an ear-only class, and they also learned the tunes by ear, super fast, with great facility. the few people who could not ear-learn (two out of the three foreigner adults and maybe two irish kids) were sent to a class that used dots. but the remaining irish kids clearly had had experience with written music. they inserted ornaments with a predictable uniformity almost instantly after learning the melody, to the great annoyance of the instructor. this is one tip-off that they all have had staff-reading.
i took a private lesson after the week was over with a different teacher at the school, also a brilliant b/c player. this is the person who told me i was an idiot if i thought irish players did not use written music as well as ear-learning. we took a tune i already knew (and had learned by ear, in point of fact). when this gent was showing me how to start thinking about ornamentation, he got a written copy of the tune and showed it to me visually. in this capacity, the dots were more a picture or diagram of the tune. it was extremely effective, so effective that he warned me not to ornament uniformly (this is what was going on in my class). the effectiveness of seeing a "picture" of an entire tune when thinking about embllishment, is why written music, with arrows for bow or bellow direction, and ornament patterns written out like algebraic formulas, is visible on blackboards or whatevever, in so many photos of teachers in class in ireland.
my initial foray into itm was an ill-starred few years at fiddle (i had bow-wrist tendonitis and couldn't continue). my fiddle teacher was a master of the east clare style who taught by ear, and also handed out dots. just like i described above, this teacher used the dots to show you points in the tune that were receptive versus non-receptive, to ornamentation, to show bow directions, blah, blah. and also out of pity for lame people like i then was, who needed help with the melody.
for better or worse, the fact is that in many quarters, ITM training in ireland today greatly resembles academic conservatory-standard training. indeed, in academy training, whether you are talking about jazz or classical, students are drilled mercilessly in both ear training and sight reading. (the ear-training classes i mentioned i took---you had to take a semester of theory with each semester of ear learning. i did three, so i have gone through classical fugue, which was horrible).
when this sort of methodology is used to teach traditional folk music genres, the result is that you can get a scary level of virtuosity in a very short time. it is a huge reason why there has been such a spectacular level of early-age virtuosity among young irish players in the post learning-under-the-hedgerow-out-on-the-farm era. does it have a certain fungible, antiseptic quality that lacks character? or is it a huge step forward? you can debate it till the cows come home, but bobby gardiner is not unique, he is the norm.
but here is the real question---given that he never said that you can "grok" the music using only staff writing, and given that anyone is free to learn however they like, why are people here so bothered about this??????
cee, I don't see anyone foaming at the mouth here about the dots (although your post comes close).
You appear to miss the context within which jig offered this thread--after he was suspended from the site for two weeks. His first post upon return is this baiting or a wind up.
See, we've been through this for years now, and no one disagrees that the dots are handy or that they're used in the tradition. (Yet "The best players can always do both" goes too far--I'd hate to tell that to Ray Charles or Doc Watson or Stevie Wonder.)
So the only "controversial" item here is jig's penchant for sh*te stirring and spouting ill-informed advice (vis a vis his notion on another current thread that fiddlers in a session should consider synchronizing their bowing). And that brings on the slagging (not foaming mouths--more like wry smirks).
I remember hearing a certain Kevin Crawford say he can't read music; in fact, he said someone at a workshop asked for the dots to one of the Christy Barry's, and he looked them up here on thesession. Say what you will--if it's in ya, it'll come out, as 'the best players' know how to bring life and lift to whatever they play.
What I find most interesting Cee - is that someone had to show you where to put the ornaments by showing you dots of where they go. That is purely bizarre and Ive never heard of it being done. I dont know who you were hanging out with in Ireland - but I know alot of virtuosos who teach and yet - I have never heard about that particular technique. The fact is no one should be showing you where to put your ornaments - its something you should be able to figure out yourself.
Its not about getting worked up because of some santa analogy(good one) its about looking at this forum and constantly seeing people of a certain level giving out ridiculously bad info to impressionable beginners. And that is all it is,
bb, but the Seamus Ennis, Leo Rowsome and Willie Clancy pipe tutorial books, to recall a few, all have dot diagrams of pipe ornamentations. Is that what you mean?
I guess that's helpful when learners can't make out what is happening when they hear rolls and crans, and haven't got anyone to ask.
exactly, Duijera. it is done and done and done. it is not showing every ornament and every spot. it is using a picture of the tune and talking about possibilities, to teach you to make your own creative choices.
no one "had" to show me where to put ornaments. I was starting to do it before the lesson I described above. but the teacher in that lesson, plus others in group settings, have shown me, and other fellow students, on written music, the types of spots that are amenable (and also spots that are not amenable) to ornamenation, so that i (and fellow learners where it happened in groups) could use this knowledge to think about the types of ornamentation choices we might wish to make. It was extremely illuminating. When it works, it fosters creativity rather than uniformity. Guess all of the master teachers in Ireland and elsewhere who do this using written music on blackboards, music stands, tables, and elsewhere, better be worried about getting a big spanky-tossy now.
ha, i think some kind of an anti-naughty-word function kicked in becaiuse i originally wrote, spanky-plus-word-that-rhymes-with-spanky!
i actually do not ornament using written music from tune to tune. but that lesson and other demonstrations in group classes, that did use staff, were huge in helping me conceptualize it. and there is plenty of evidence out there testify that it is far from "bizarre." i just thought of two more master musicians who do it....
Aaahh, it's nice to know nothing much has changed round the old place, except that popcorn seems to have supplanted cow tipping in these kinds of threads. :D
I've taken lesssons or workshops in person from a number of fiddlers, including Kevin Burke, Sean Smyth, Oisin MacDiarmada, Brian Conway, John Carty, and Cait Reed. Brian Conway was the only one who used sheet music.
I've taught various types of music for 34 years now--in private lessons, music shops, camps, festival workshops, and at a community college. I usually provide sheet music and abc notation for anyone who wants it. But I ask students to learn by ear as much as possible--in nearly every instance, they need to improve their ear learning abilities (and this includes students who learn only by ear). It's such an essential skill *for playing music* and especially for this music.
Music notation helps some people remember the tunes after the lesson. It also can help people "see" the structure of a tune. But the vast majority of people I've taught who *want* music notation also are tethered to it and struggle to learn without it.
From my experience, it boils down to this: It doesn't matter whether you can read notation or not. Once you get past the beginner stage, people who struggle to learn by ear are the ones who take lessons. People who are really adept at learning by ear don't need lessons--they just immerse themselves in the music.
I stand corrected, I had no idea how wide spread written music was. I really did not realise just how "done" it was, and by everyone it seems (just not the 10-15 teachers I have had all from Ireland and all the workshops I have ever done, or any musician I had the luck to become friends with when I lived in Ireland) But everyone else obviously.
Not everyone else, I wouldn't think, bb. Maybe the teachers who don't use sheet music didn't learn by sheet music themselves, or maybe they don't even read it for the same reason.
I remember a few high-profile players from Ireland giving lessons over a year or so each in Sydney who used either dots or abc in teaching tunes.
"People who are really adept at learning by ear don't need lessons--they just immerse themselves in the music"willcpt.
I disagree, they need lessons to help with technique,.
before anyone comes in:
traditional music requires players to have good technique,so that the player can acheive the sound that they would like.
a good teacher will help the pupil to progress more quickly.Dick Miles
This is just so offensive will. I open a discussion for serious debate and you start bringing in irrelevant personal untrue insinuations. In no way at all is this a windup. it appears you just cant tolerate a different viewpoint.
''You appear to miss the context within which jig offered this thread--after he was suspended from the site for two weeks. His first post upon return is this baiting or a wind up.''
For the record I dont teach formal reading and writing, however my students come to me using various systems of notation taught to them in their other classes around Feakle and this area. I dont particularly approve but that is the norm. I in fact learnt the local whistle ABC from my students so as to write the tunes they learn by ear from me down as a memory aid.
"Once you get past the beginner stage, people who struggle to learn by ear are the ones who take lessons. People who are really adept at learning by ear don't need lessons--they just immerse themselves in the music."
You can't be serious, Will. Dickens is absolutely right---lessons are for learning technique, and I think for learning musicality as well, and how to practice too. If the ability to learn by ear were all that was needed, I'd be one of the best players in town by now. Which I'm certainly *not*!!!
And you yourself go to workshops. Those are lessons too, aren't they?
"I stand corrected, I had no idea how wide spread written music was. I really did not realise just how "done" it was, and by everyone it seems (just not the 10-15 teachers I have had all from Ireland and all the workshops I have ever done, or any musician I had the luck to become friends with when I lived in Ireland) But everyone else obviously."
Why the sarcasm, bb? My teacher uses written music as well, in just the way ceemonster described, to help analyze the music for patterns and shapes and places for emphasis and ornamentation. I believe this goes back very far in Irish music---I have a book of the great fiddler James Morrisson's tunes---he used to write out tunes for his students complete with instructions for ornamentation, as well as (gasp!) scales and even shifting exercises. And we know that Padraig O'Keefe used his own form of notation with his students.
I really think the only true thing that can be said about this is that traditional music teaching styles are as individual as each player, and there are many different authentic ways to approach it.
Teaching AND learning styles are as individual as each player. To say anyone MUST do something a certain way (use a teacher, use the dots, don't use the dots, etc) is going against the spirit of the first sentence, in a way.
I think the only prerequisites are being able to hear the music and being able to play it. That's seems to be the only definition of a musician, one who plays music. I don't think there's anything about 'must have studied with a teacher' or 'musicians must know how to read music' or any other qualifiers, really.
Also, this seems to be all agreed upon by all the parties in this never ending scuffle. It's amazing it continues to rage the way it does. Or amusing, if you have enough popcorn, I suppose. Munch munch.
There is scarcely any room for doubt that the pre-Christian inhabitants of Ireland had the use of letters, the ogham scale, and the ogham music tablature. The Bressay inscription furnishes an early example of music scoring; and it is quite apparent that the inscriber regarded the ogham and the quaint tablature employed as one and the same--in fact, three of the mystic strokes are identical with three musical signs.[1]
Inasmuch, therefore, as there are genuine ogham inscriptions dating from the third century, we are forced to believe that the music tablature also co-existed at the same early period.
"I think the only prerequisites are being able to hear the music and being able to play it."
Not quite, it's actually simpler than that. Being able to play the music is the goal, not a prerequisite. So, the only prerequisite is to be able to hear it. If you then require any aid other than the aural to transfer what you are hearing to your music making, it just means that you are actually having a little dificulty hearing it.
nope, not formally. I don't think I'd have the patience for it. However, I've shown plenty of people stuff. So yes, often people have difficulty hearing what's going on and showing them is a good way to sort this kind of stuff out. That's the way I learned also. From lots and lots of listening and good players showing me stuff.
There's nothing wrong with making use of written music in trad. It might not be essential, but it can be useful.
There is everything wrong with people who are new to trad using dots alone to learn to play tunes, as if they were classical pieces. I think that this is where the anti-dot sentiment is really coming from.
Ha! That's what lessons are, a good player shows you stuff. And then watches to see if you're doing it right. And then figures out why you're not doing it right and tells you what to tweak to do it better. And you're right, it requires a lot of patience.
The reason I asked is because you said "If you then require any aid other than the aural to transfer what you are hearing to your music making, it just means that you are actually having a little dificulty hearing it", which implied to me that you think that lessons are unnecessary because all you have to do is listen better---but that completely disregards the physical aspect of playing---you can have ears that work fine, but getting your fingers to do what you want them to is a matter of coordination and relaxation in addition to hearing, and that's where lessons can help. Actually lessons can help with hearing as well.
Kennedy, please note that I said "Once you get past the beginner stage."
And also bear in mind that lots of people have learned to play fiddle without any instruction, formal or otherwise. If you're incredulous, then I'm not sure you understand what I'm trying to say. I'll try to make it clearer.
"Technique" is a symptom, not the end goal. It's a symptom of trying to get the sounds you've heard and want to reproduce.
The main reasons I take workshops (rare enough these days) are as follows:
- to financially support the musician offering them. They came all the way to Montana, the least I can do is send some cash their way.
- to see how someone else teaches (to pick up tips that I can use in my own teaching).
- to learn a bit about how that person thinks about the music.
I learned to do cuts, rolls, and triplets on fiddle not from a teacher, but by listening intently to Irish fiddlers (and pipers), by trial and error, and by listening some more. I also had no formal instruction in how to hold the bow beyond "don't grip it--relax." Yet when I showed up for "violin" lessons with Walter Oliveras (in hopes of improving my technique) he said, "I won't touch your bow hand--it's one of the best I've ever seen."
This stuff isn't rocket surgery. If it feels "hard" then you're probably working it too forcefully. Learning your instrument and learning this music is like making a life-long friend. Some of it will feel right instantaneously--"like I've known you all my life even though we've just met." And some of it will come around only after many hours in one another's company, making the unfamiliar familiar.
Using written notation to understand the sounds of this music is handy, especially for those of us who are strongly visually oriented. As a highly visual person myself (with a form of photographic memory), I can still say, however, that every time I've relied on sheet music, abcs, or some other visual aid, I've only postponed using my ears to learn the same thing.
Using the dots or abcs takes away an opportunity to learn the same thing with your ears--and your ears are ultimately what you need to use to play this music.
Ink on the page may feel like a faster, more efficient way to learn tunes, to suss out the twiddly bits, etc. But in the long run, you'll still need to learn all the same stuff aurally.
Ah, cross posting. But Kennedy you've said precisely what Michael and I are getting at: "lessons can help with hearing as well."
Just take off the "as well."
All that learning to play an instrument or this music needs to be is "learning to hear." Yes, of course it helps to have a mentor or teacher help you listen, hear, aurally assimilate better.
***That's what music is.***
The dots can be an aid, but ultimately they are a distraction *because they aren't aural.*
I'm always amazed at how many people will insist on using the dots even though they don't "read with their ears." They can't hear the music from the dots, the way any adroit "sight reader" can. The way the dots were meant to be used--as representations of sounds.
Far too many people read the dots as code for where to put their fingers and how long to count the timing for each note. That's not music.
But those same people insist on using the dots, instead of learning to make music. I know because I've taught hundreds of them over the years. And teaching them to hear well is the hardest part of my job--not because they can't use their ears, but because they are so entranced by the inky spots that they won't leave them behind. They refuse to trust their ears. And that's a shame.
"All that learning to play an instrument or this music needs to be is "learning to hear." "
I don't agree. I have a ways to go before my fingers catch up with my ears on a consistent basis. It's a physical thing, the kinesthetic aspect, learning the feel of the instrument and ingraining it into my hands until I don't have to think about it very much---that's the struggle for me. And I'm surprised that you would dispute any of that, Will, because you yourself have talked about this many times on this site, about learning to relax, learning to feel the bow through the fingers, etc. It's almost like you're contradicting yourself. Which is fine, I guess, I'm often guilty of that myself, but I happen to agree with what you've said previously and not so much now.
And I know that some/many people have taught themselves to play fiddle. I know it's not impossible. I just know that I could never have done it that way---I tried once, years ago, for a few months, and had no idea of what I was doing and gave up. This time I got smart---I found myself someone who knew what he was doing and I do everything he tells me, and whaddya know, it's starting to work.
And then also---you said "once you get past the beginner stage"---I would think you would have to get past the intermediate stage as well, to the point where all the needed techniques were acquired and the issue is just interpretation. Or is that your definition of beginner/not beginner? We are talking in vague terms, after all...
Kennedy, this is simple music. Yes, fiddle can feel difficult, but that's just because it's unfamiliar.
Instead of fighting to gain technique, try letting go--just letting yourself relax. Go look at Todd Ehle's videos on the bow hand and intonation and tone production at Fiddler's Cove--everything he teaches is "natural," relaxed, no tortorous hand positions, no physical intricacies. Your bow hand is the same as your hand position when it's hanging mindlessly down at your side.
The only difficulty is in realizing how effortless all this can be. As Picasso said, it took him decades to learn how to paint like a child again.
And I've been quite consistent in my posts on this. Does it feel difficult? Yes, if you think it's difficult, it will feel difficult. And what's my mantra? "Be effortless."
Will, I've looked at all Ehle's videos. I was the first person to post them on this site.
Before I started learning to play, I used to think "if it were easy, everyone would do it"---and then I read a few things here similar to what you're saying now, that it's effortless and the only difficulty is fighting the mental block, and I thought, well what do I know, I haven't tried it, maybe it really is easy.
But I've been learning for two years now, with the best guidance and boatloads of practice, surrounded by the real stuff, both recorded and live, and I can say that I still think what I thought at the beginning---if it were easy, everyone would do it. Or at least it wouldn't take too long to learn. And you know what, not that many people do it, and it does take a significant amount of time to learn. Years. Even for the really good players I know. How many easy things take years and thousands of hours of practice to learn?
But you do have a point. Thinking it's hard is indeed a mental block that inhibits learning. So I try not to think that way, at least when I'm playing---and this itself is a learned skill!
It takes a lot of effort before it becomes an option to be effortless. Sometimes people who have been playing for a very long time tend to forget that.
Two years is not a long time for learning fiddle. For me it took a decade of playing violin before I could take any pleasure in how I sounded, if that puts it into perspective.
I just finished a week of teaching at fiddle camp. One student had been playing less than 8 months. No previous musical experience. She kept up fine with people who've been playing for years. She had no reason not to trust her ears and her hands.
Yet I never said it doesn't take time. In fact, like a really good friendship, playing this music does take time. That doesn't mean that it's difficult, though.
Learning to speak a language takes time, but even 4 year old children can babble away in whatever their native tongue is. Try to teach an adult how to speak Mandarin or Icelandic and they'll complain how hard it is. Only because it's unfamiliar. Familiarity--genuine immersion--takes time. Of course. But it's not difficult.
Kenny Werner has done a great job of demystifying the ease of making music. Read his book, Effortless Mastery.
Will, if something takes time to learn, then it is difficult. The difference between difficult and impossible is that difficult things can be done with enough time.
That's great Dick. But you've posted many times here about the books you use (and your own tutorials), and the importance of dots. I think it shows in your playing.
Kennedy and Screetch, I really don't think in terms of easy and hard, or easy and difficult. I've done too many things over the years that I thought were "difficult" at the beginning and soon found that once I was familiar with it, whatever "it" was, I could do it with ease. And the ease--relaxing--was usually a big part of feeling at ease with what I was doing.
Humans have these amazing brains and bodies that are capable of many things beyond walking upright and starting a fire. We seem predisposed to doing things other organisms would never be able to accomplish. Lucky us. Too bad so many of us go around telling ourselves, "if that were easy, everyone would be doing it."
As a teen, I was a professional juggler. Juggling seven balls was genuinely difficult--at the edge of my hand speed, throw accuracy, and coordination. That took real concentrated effort, in part because I have a congenital nerve disorder, and my hands sometimes don't work as well as they should. But learning to juggle five balls was never "difficult," it just took some time. The basic technique and skill required were no differen than juggling three balls, and I've taught many people to ably juggle three balls in less than 15 minutes.
I learned to ride a unicycle in 2 days. Learning to ride a 20 foot tall unicycle wasn't any harder (in fact it's easier, like the difference between balancing a short pencil on the end of your finger vs. balancing a long broom handle). But *fear* made it feel difficult until I felt how eaesy it was and let go of my fear.
I went through the same fear-to-familiar learning curve as a whitewater rafting guide and becoming a telemark ski instructor.
Fear makes most things difficult, if you let it. Fear of sounding bad, fear of making mistakes, fear of failure, fear of being rejected, fear of pain. Perhaps the most difficult thing to do is to relinquish your fears.
I suspect most things that people think are difficult are just the stuff they're afraid of, or stuff they've tried only in a half-arsed way, not really submerging themselves and losing themselves in it. Lots of people dabble at things and then give up. But dabbling tends to leave things feeling difficult, because you haven't really tried.
And I've met many, many people who are so dependent on the dots that they are truly fearful of trusting their ears. Then they get frustrated when their musical progress isn't what they want it to be. But fear makes it difficult for them to let go of the dots and just listen.
Until you can listen, and then make the sound with your voice or instrument, you're not really playing music. And really playing music will feel difficult until you give yourself up to listening, to the sound.
P.S. Kennedy, I think we understand each other well enough from our many emails to not take any of this personally in an unpleasant way. I'm acutally *happy* that you're probing this, asking questions, challenging what seems contrary to your own experience. That's part of how we learn.
But focusing on the difficulties can slow us down, too, get in our way. One of my early fiddle teachers was Linda Danielson, who now teaches at Valley of the Moon fiddle camp. One day, she got fed up with my complaining about how hard something was and the normally soft-spoken, patient Linda yelled at me--"I can't take all this negativity! It's not helping *my* playing any! It sure can't be helping yours." Boy howdy what a wake up call.
With a new attitude, it was just a matter of weeks before she was sending me off to lessons with Kevin Burke.
I've started late, about 20, been playing hmm 17 years, get a bit better by leaps and bounds each year - I'm never going to be good, but you might think me passable.
I learned by listening and listening, and by listening and watching. I use dots on occasion - speeding up the unfamiliar new-tune learning when impatience gets the better of me - guilty as charged. However, I have never used them as a guide to how the tune *sounds* - just the basic shape. Most of the time I realise that I have a tune I don't play, so grab the fiddle and find I've learned it. I grew up listening to this music - it gets it in your mental structure, so to speak.
Ear and familarity, ease, comfort, like going for a chat with old friends or family members - that is what counts. The dots are like stilted letters with people you've lost contact with. Useful on occasion, but no substitute.
As for the wider question of these discussions... Well, I would say they do more harm than good. With the best will in the world (not an intentional pun) the signal to noise ratio is so appalling that I hate to imagine what bizarre noises people in farflung backwaters are creating.
It is not the job of the users who can play to "police" these pages - the avalanche of rubbish seems to be exponentially growing. Jeremy, I would say: call a halt - either leave these pages to the idiots who haven't a clue, or pull the plug. Or start deleting the obvious culprits.
Most people haven't the time or inclination to browse 6 years of yammering to work out who speaks sense or not - it's a dirtier old stew in here these days than it used to be (even).
Will, it seems to me that you're just a naturally physically coordinated guy. And I believe the part about fear getting in the way---I once tried to teach a 35 year old friend to swim and it was a big surprise to me how terrified he was just to try to float in 3 ft. of water, with me standing right there. I learned to swim when I was four, and being in the water feels exhilarating to me. I've also taught my nieces to swim, and they were fearful too, but much more excited about learning to do something they really wanted to do, which was swim in the ocean just like their mom and their aunt. I try to remember that excitement with my own efforts in music.
But back to the physical coordination thing. I think it comes more easily to some, less so to others who have to work harder at it, and to some not at all. I'm kind of in the middle of that range. I learned to be a sign language interpreter many years ago, and I ended up getting pretty good at it, but it took a good 3 years of constant training and practice. And it was hard! Hard to learn, hard sometimes to do.
And I'll tell you something else---I never met one hearing person who learned it completely fluently (could sign like a deaf person) who hadn't learned it as a child. There is something about the young brain that allows for a different kind of learning than what an adult can do. My fiddle teacher and I were talking about this last week---I asked him if he had ever met anyone who became a really good player who started at a late age, and he hadn't. I've met one, but he plays old-time fiddle---all the good Irish players I've ever met have played since they were 6. Which isn't to say it can't be done as an adult---I just think it attests to the reality that it's not an easy thing to do.
And you never did say what you think *is* difficult...
Heh, I did say juggling 7 balls was difficult. And teaching people to trust their ears is difficult--it's hard to come up with ways to break through their reliance on the dots and their reluctance to take the aural leap.
I'm not sure physical coordination has much to do with playing fiddle, although it can't hurt. More important perhaps is the plasticity of the brain. I'm a native English speaker, but I became fluent in Italian by the time I was 5 years old. Then learned French in 1st grade from a teacher who spoke no English (or Italian). Then took Spanish (for 7 years) and German (for 5 years) in school and college. All the while learning to play various kinds of music (rock, bluegrass, old timey, Irish) on various instruments (drums, guitar, mandolin, fiddle, banjo). So between languages and music, my aural brain got a lot of exercise.
But I think adults can recover that chidlike frame of mind for learning and assimilating and absorbing, as long as we don't tell ourselves that we can't.
yes - there was sarcasm - sorry - I just get worked up about this stupid topic....yet I cant seem to stop myself posting. Also that Cee was going on about how "everyone" in Ireland does it that way when, what? - Cees been to Willie week like 3 times..big deal.
Kennedy - it is difficult to pick this up as an adult - I started at a later age and fiddle still drives me insane, I'll never be as good as my friends who started at 6 years old BUT I can still learn all tunes by ear. Its the same as anything - it just takes lots of practice.
If you need proof re dots versus ear - then just reffer to Will's post with the youtube clips.
I teach sometimes - and I make students pick tunes up by ear...if they feel they need the dots then I direct them here to print them out - but do tell them they should just try and do without. Its obvious just from these clips posted that even if the tunes were learnt by ear - some where perhaps not really *listening*.
"I teach sometimes - and I make students pick tunes up by ear...if they feel they need the dots then I direct them here to print them out - but do tell them they should just try and do without"
bb
,this is precisely what I do as well ,in fact I would rather record on to a pupils mobile phone,than write out abc or music.
Finally to the comment made by Zargblast,he is not a genuine account holder,but someone with a personal grudge against me,as was a previous commenter, Fisting for Jesus,who did not have a genuine account either.
judging from the timing of the last comment [ Zargblast] it might indicate someone from this forum.
I know who it is,and find it very sad that anyone has to make up a false account twice,purely to say something unpleasant.
in fact it is very sad that there is not much tolerance shown to other peoples points of view on this forum.
Mutandis, wonderful analogy about the dots being "stilted letters" from old friends.
As far as the backwaters go, we're hanging in there. Lucky us, Florida has retired senior citizens from all over the country, even plenty. They bring their music and instruments with them, and they come to sessions. I can't speak for other places that are truly isolated, without any teacher/mentor/clan elders around and how that works out, though. A topic for a different discussion, perhaps. Probably done before, "Technology and ITM " or something.
As far as moderating these discussions go, it does look like a pain. I guess that's why people try to help Jeremy as much as possible. Maybe he needs some moderators, some of you even-keeled veterans. It's too bad so many good folks got scared away, but there's still so many, and some good ones have returned too.
...but then that would ruin the great experiment, right? The whole liberty, free for all thing is appealing. The session with no host. Strong players/posters rising to the top, though sometimes you get loud eejits. [shrug]
Im sorry , I dont get it? the session will cpt posted demonstrates nothing about ear learning, only that Its a beginners session with a mixed bunch of folk What is it supposed to show? I found it hard to listen too as it happens. Is that it will?
Dicks air sounds absolutely lovely.
ps i learnt by ear the first 10yrs or so so banish for exampl was learnt by ear.
http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=dE0nP9F1XF8,
this was learned from the dots originally.
you cant say that this is stilted,
there are other players on this forum who have learned by ear and by the dots,and I bet youcant say which of their tunes are which.
if youwant to compare like with like put something up of yourself solo,
with respect everyone sounds better in a group situation.
LOl, go on then, jig and dick, dig yourselves deeper into the hole. You're missing the point.
Let me make it clear: based on your clips which you've posted publicly, you both have serious issues with timing (speeding up and slowing down) and you have absolutely no lift, no pulse, no nyah. Yet you both insist in this forum on pushing your wrongheaded book-learned, dot-ridden, metronomic approach to learning this music. If you could play, you'd have a case to make. But as it happens, neither of you would be able to keep up in any session I've played in, including just the "average" ones.
That you both claim to be teachers of this music (really, dick, a tutorial?! Shouldn't you learn to play first?) shows just how full of yourselves and how deaf to your own noise you truly are.
This isn't about learning by ear vs. learning from the dots--it's about whether or not you can even play the music. Because if you can't (as we've now heard), then you shouldn't be misleading people about your prowess and all the dots, scales, metronome drills, etc., that got you to this brilliant level of musicianship. In the old days, townspeople would run snake oil salesmen out of town. We can only hope Jeremy wakes up and does the same.
See, I don't claim to be god's gift to the music. So I don't spend my time recording myself and posting it to the web. If there are recordings of me playing, it's because *someone else* thought it was worth recording (not my own ego), and if it gets posted to YouTube or wherever, that's fine with me. When Reverend gets back from Zoukfest, perhaps he'll post some clips of my playing. I have no idea if he has anything of me playing solo or not. Whatever.
But trying to have a discussion with people who are this delusional is pointless. I quit.
Tunes can be learned from sheet music provided the player already understands and has a firm grip on the style and ornamentation. Many fine players have told me that they found a particular tune in manuscript and learned it from that source. The problem with written music is if learners use it without the proper audio reference as a guide.
I personally prefer to have my students who can read music notation put it aside and only use it as a reminder of how the tune goes... like taking notes. But I insist they do their best to use the audio reference primarily. I also suggest they attend sessions as listeners first to start getting the tunes in their head. If that's not possible I suggest they listen to recordings repeatedly. I steer them towards the Foinn session recordings since those are the most session-like and feature common settings for well-known tunes. But I steer them away from the sheet music that accompanies those recordings.
Will, I understand where you're coming from and I kind of agree with what you're saying, but I object on principle to such attacks on other posters' playing.
I don't want this board to become a place where people who disagree dig up YouTube clips of each other to hold up and ridicule; I just don't like where that kind of thing leads. Even in a case like this where it's somewhat justified, it's still nasty and unpleasant.
There's plenty to attack by sticking to the words being posted. We really don't need to hear how certain people play to know that they might not know as much as they pretend; it's clear from the posts themselves.
Let's not get to the point where we're challenging each other to post clips of playing, so that we can tear one another apart. I think this sets a bad precident. It implies that people have to post clips of their playing to prove that they have a right to post in discussions here, at the risk of having their playing picked apart and ridiculed.
No one needs to hear jig's playing to know that he pretends to know more than he does, we can see all we need to from what he writes. Using this board to attack others' playing is something that I think will make a lot of people here uncomfortable.
Screetch, while I agree that it's unpleasant, I have to disagree that "everyone" can see the blather for what it is. Plus, real people are being hurt and driven off by this self-proclaimed guru of the music.
Before I ever posted his own public clips, Jig launched attacks on other members' playing (including ridiculing Reverend's playing based on one clip), and ran good people off with his over-inflated boasts mixed with harmful advice. He doesn't limit himself to doing this on the board--he also tears people down in emails. Frankly, I'm tired of getting emails from people wounded by his criticisms of their playing and ideas.
There's plenty of room on this board for differing opinions and healthy back-and-forth. Some of us long-time members have nurtured exactly that, and even vouched for members to keep them on board when popular sentiment veered the other way.
What there should not be room for is outright lying and incivility (and worse) just to prop up one's own ego. Jeremy's suspensions clearly aren't helping improve the offending behavior. I don't know why it's allowed to continue.
Finally, some of us posted clips of our playing a long time ago on the Might Craic. It turned out to be a fair way for participants to assess whose advice warranted a listening, and whose perhaps to regard with more skepticism. Chiff and Fipple has gone through much the same process, weeding out some vociferous advice-givers who, it turned out, didn't know what they were talking about. That's not a bad thing. Like in a real session, if you're in over your head, it's wise to do more listening than chiming in.
Another way to think of it is a lot of relative beginners here might get more out of thesession.org if they asked questions instead of spouting advice. I'm not saying this to be mean, but to be helpful. Sure, join in the craic, pass along what you've learned from more experienced players. This is a great place for that sort of thing. But it's also a great place for listening to and learning from some folks who've really been around the track more than once and who have something to share.
Screetch, I'm uncomfortable also with the "prove it" thing, and it would indeed be a bad thing if it sets a precedent. However, the context of Will resorting to it is the culmination of a long time of difficult tooing and frowing. Yes, the chasm between Jig's ability and his crowing has been obvious to most of us ever since he started here, but this place is often visited by newcomers, genuine enthusiasts in search of a bit of knowledge. And I've lost count of the amount of times in the past few months that perfectly amiable and informative discussions have been derailed by this character's bonkers intrusions. So posting links to his dismal playing - freely available, uploaded by himself - is, though lamentable, a seemingly reasonable last resort.
However, "shut up and play" is grand advice - coming in a close second to "shut up and listen".
Well there you go, your all big enough to make your own judgements, but at least we have the nerve to post our playing rather than hiding behind a bunch of others in a session, I man come on, you post a link to show us how 'good' you are but we cant hear you at all?What have you got to hide? For the record its been about 15 yrs since I spent any time with the banjo, 7 for the mandolin. I hardly ever play tunes on the guitar any more though I have just bought a new guitar so may spend some time at it again. Thats me playing cold after many years absence so I dont worry too much about your comments, not that I really care what you think anyhow. Were you to demonstrate that you are not all mouth , as Im sure you can, cant you? then I might view it differently.
I have been personally attacked,my ability to be able to write a tutorial has been questioned.
Edel Fox;said this about my playing
jig ,nice pace, nice use of ornamentation.
Slowair played with great feeling nice chording.
Reel ,watch your tempo,good playing.
Polka,nice dance pace,lovely playing on an English concertina
Patricia Higgins
Slow Air ,very well played good variation good phrasing.
Reel good steady tempo throughout,good performance.
Jig;wellplayed good steady tempo throughout.Hornpipe good use of triplets in first part. I felt the second part was crowded with too much variation.DickMiles
Questioned and insulted by someone who hasnt the nerve to demonstrate his supposed prowess.
ps I didnt ridicule your friends playing will actually, if I did, then you can surely cut and paste to prove it. Elliot, fair enough I did make a couple of comments but its a big bad world out here folks, if you cant handle the heat, get out of the kitchen....
my tutor[for] theEnglish Concertina is not just about itm,
it covers Song accompaniment ,northumbrian style,
playing in awkward flat keys,as well as Irish ornamentation and is aimed at beginne rto intermediate level
my credentials are these, I spent three years playing in a classical concertina quartet,and over thirty years playing traditional tunes and accompanying songs as aprofessional musician,.DickMiles
Why are uncomfortable with this 'prove it' thing llig? dont be shy, Im sure you are a great fiddler, same with will. Why not show us?Whats there to be scared of? some unpleasant snide insulting comments? come on be brave , sticks and stones and all that...... besides I can assure you I would'nt stoop to making derogatory comments. After all I think Ive heard you play many years ago. I didnt make any comments did I ? not positive , not negative. just observed .
Because ultimately it's pointless. I'm not interested in proving anything, I have no ego about it. I used to, many years ago, but I've grown out of it. And it would be particularly pointless for you anyway. How would you be able to rate my playing when you are so incapable of rating you own.
ultimately life is pointless llig so thats just a meaningless excuse. I can well rate my own playing, and that of the people I play with. I Why do you think I am interested in 'rateing' your playing? I am just curious, perhaps you really are all that you make yourself out to be? the best music in The town of the night, lets here you. Surely you can demonstrate? Perhaps you really do know what you are talking about? I have it on good authority that you are plain wrong on at least one issue, and I know from my own discussions with you that its not the only time. Perhaps you cant stand on your own .?.... You have no ego about it?! thats great, so you wont mind demonstrating then..... whether you get good comments or bad it means nothing to you right? no ego. no attachment.... I find that hard to believe actually, I think you are kidding yourself.
Actually, all of this arguing is pointless because none of you can hold a candle to Kevin Burke, Martin Hayes, Liz Carroll, Tommy Peoples, Randal Bays, etc. etc. etc.--just to name some fiddlers.
If you want to help beginners get started on the right foot--and I assume that's what this is all about, because otherwise it would just be childish bickering, right?--point them to the really great players for proper examples of how it's done. Compared to their playing, I doubt that your own efforts--sincere as they might be--are worth arguing about.
"However easy it is to wind up llig, thats not what I am here for." Jig
"This nonsense will run and run and run no matter what sense gets politely, or otherwise, put. Such is the nature of it." Me
You are probably right there Mickray, and I'll point myself in the direction of Liz Carroll any day. But when someone comes along with all this nonsense about how they've been playing for 30 years and this and that is the way I've done it and it's worked for me etc. and wallows in self aggrandisement while trying to goad others and is actually a really really dreadful player, what else can you do? The fellow has no humility. He doesn't believe in it. I don't even think he knows it exists.
Going away will not solve anything unfortunately. There is nothing Jig would like more than for him to be the only person here. For him to be unopposed.
Agreed, but thats OK, its not a competition. My First gig is as a backer thats what I mostly do at sessions, Im surrounded by the most amazing fiddlers, box players and Im just happy they welcome me into the sessions. I have no illusions when comparing myself with these people. folk who have been playing over 40 yrs. Some of the best musicians in Ireland bar none give me big grins so I know Im doing something right
But there is a serious point to all this. Will is being thoroughly unpleasant insulting myself and dick but is not prepared to demonstrate the position upon which he judges from. If he really is as good as he says then let him prove it. I mean he teaches fiddle camps and stuff so surely he must be good. so why wont he show us? put his money where his mouth is? I dont doubt him but at the same time I have only his word upon it and as his behavior at the moment has sunk so low I wonder where he is coming from.. Is that a surprising position? I am happy to stick a few old tunes down , just remembered Rodneys glory thanks to dick's link. just recorded it for the crack. why not? the kids are asleep. I am at peace, at home, just put some strings on my SO's mandolin, [I dont have one.... ]press record.... simple
mind you theres an annoying flutter thats just appeared? Oh well wonder what that is..?
So, for months now, you've been handing out all this advice on how to play tunes and how your ornaments are not part of the tune etc and how classical violin technique is really good for you and you practice scales and that, with a metronome and read music etc etc - and put blue tack on your bridge - etc ....
I was talking to Alisdar White the other day (from Battlefield band) and when he mentioned he lived in Edingburgh I said I was on the same forum as one Michael gill - he replied "ah jesus Bridie, that Michael is a lovely fiddle player, really top notch"
I dont need to see a clip to know that llig is a great fiddle player, I have heard if from the mouths of such people as Alisdar White and Chris Drever (from Lau). And that is better than any recording. Sorry if I embarrassed you llig - it had to be done.
I'm sorry, but this really is just nonsense. It's rare that someone can lead me to lose my patience, yet that's what's happened here. I apologize to anyone caught off guard by my comments here--especially to those who've bothered to read my posts over the years and now find themselves wincing at the spectacle this has become.
I'm also tired of being held to a double standard. So the reason I called jig and dickens on the discrepancy between their boasts and their actual playing is this: all it takes for incivility to triumph is for good people to do nothing.
[please disregard my previous post, I plead temporary insanity]
Will, I'm glad that you're trying to do something about the problem even if I don't like some of the methods. Jig is ruining the discussion board and something does need to be done about it.
But I don't think anything short of a ban is going to do it. If it were possible to shame jig into going away, that would have happened long ago.
Jig needs to be banned, plain and simple. Until he is, we have the awful choice between ignoring him and allowing his nonsense to possibly do harm, or tear down his nonsense at the cost of getting into the cycle of attacks that he seems to enjoy and which make the board unpleasant to read.
I don't think you can fix this, Will, I think it's up to Jeremy.
Jeremy's advice in such situations is to simply ignore the problem. But that doesn't stop the eejits from trampling all over other people' feelings and sensibilities. So it goes.
[Also that Cee was going on about how "everyone" in Ireland does it that way when, what? - Cees been to Willie week like 3 times..big deal.]
there is that a-bray-sive, gratuitous, ad hominem nastiness, and, last but not least, that penchant for mischaracterizing what one has said, (also known in some quarters as, lying), that had, alas, until recently, for whatever blissful reason, been absent from this site for a lovely too-short while.
as this problematic poster well knows, i nowhere said that "everyone" in ireland uses sheet music. i said it is far from bizarre, ("bizarre," being in fact this individual's word---see, when you cite someone's words in quotes, they need to have in fact used the word), and is very much the done thing in many quarters. the ascribing of the word "everyone" to me, and the mendacious use of quote marks, is the sort of dirty pool i am so sorry to see being played here again.
as for what my experiences with irish master teachers has been, they number many aside of three years at clancy week, and, nothing in anything i've said even came close to justifying this apparently reading-comprehension-handicapped individual's characterizations. is this person sloppy-drunk? or merely malicious? it's like cruella de vil on seconal, lurching around with a pitcher of gin martinis, braying at the puppies. .
[why the sarcasm]? kennedy, i don't get it either. one might not agree with my input, but the seeming inability to disagree without personalized sarcasm and ad hominem braying is so, so wearisome. please, please, please---sober up, or get some help, i don't care what the cause of it is, just desist.
Oh - and just so we are clear. The reason I was absent (for that "blissful lovley too short while" - was all down to you Cee and no one else. I actually came back because I thought you were not t posting anymore...
The discussion I posted was simply quoting one of Irelands finest, if not THE finest B/C box player in Ireland . The point being that Surely we need to listen to and respect the opinions of people like this? I certainly do even if I dont agree.
It degenerated into personal attacks which is rather a shame but cest la vie. ITs quite clear who is being civil and who is being insulting on this thread... As I said llig is probably a fine fiddler, as is will, so why wont they show us the benefits of their approach? There all to ready to put others down to attempt to raise their own standing but not to engage in reasoned , discussion without resorting to negative behaviour. This is an open forum, we are entitled to air our opinions. What is wrong with that? were we young lads with no experiance we would nonethe less be entitled to express those without petty insults. The rule is civility, There are no preconditions that you must be able to play a certain number of tunes befor you can post. We are not responsible for others behaviour, only our own .
Will decided that he would post some links to a small sample of mine and dicks playing to make some point about ear learning? Which I have done all my life bar the first 9 years. He put a link to a large session which is , to be charitable, a bit rough, to demonstrate what? something about not learning from the dots? I still dont get that one..... we cant even hear him play amidst all the chaos. ?
You started this will, you 'threw down the glove' Are you going to back out with your tail between your legs or post your playing, unaccompanied, warts and all ?
Just what is it with "Kick Will" day? Probably the most generous contributor on this site. If you were to kick people off in order of the value of their contributions over the years he'd be that last
''the best players can always do both."
''the best players can always do both."
In my own teaching I believe you have to give everything you have, show your students your full technique. I always begin with staff notation; nowadays with so much traditional music written down it is important for young payers to have the key to the library as it were. I also teach my pupils to pick tunes up by ear, and the best players can always do both."
A quote from Bobby Gardiner.
controversial eh?
# Posted on June 12th 2008 by jig
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Gee, and I'm fresh out of popcorn
# Posted on June 12th 2008 by soft black stars
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Don't you ever get tired of this, jig? At least it's pretty clear who Learner was, if there was any doubt.
# Posted on June 12th 2008 by Marklar
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
I can't do both, and I am a great player.
# Posted on June 12th 2008 by bodhran bliss
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
I also can read music in the unperceivable quasi-realm of sub-space, which means I can do it three ways.
# Posted on June 12th 2008 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
I would agree with Bobby Gardiner.
# Posted on June 12th 2008 by cathycook
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
I like his honesty - referring to his students as "payers". very noble.
# Posted on June 12th 2008 by airport
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
.... deeep sigh ..... slow exhalation coupled with slumping of shoulders and head tipped forward .... blank stare at the floor .....
Well ... it could well be true that now, the best players can read music and play by ear. However, I'm certain that it has not always been so. And that begs the question of whether the best players now are better than the older ones?
The important thing to remember though is that being able to read music is/can be very useful. But the ability to pick up tunes by ear is a prerequisite. I'll qualify this: The amount of information in the written music is only a very very small proportion of what is actually in the music itself. And what information that is there in the written music is the easiest bits to actually hear. The harder bits, the twiddley bits, the whole ethos of variation, the whole feel of it are not represented at all in the sheet music. So the point is, that if you struggle with getting the easy bits by ear, where the heck are you gonna get the hard bits from?
# Posted on June 12th 2008 by llig leahcim
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Make em up as you go along. using the full range of possible ornaments, or not. As you choose. This is part of where the individual touch come from.....
# Posted on June 12th 2008 by jig
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
No. There are places a certain ornament can go, and there are places where it can't. The ornaments have to fit the tune.
# Posted on June 12th 2008 by Marklar
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Quite right screetch.
# Posted on June 12th 2008 by llig leahcim
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
I don't get it. Yes sheet music is handy from time to time. No, you're getting nowhere when you rely on it. Yes they can do both, but no they are not that good BECAUSE they can do both.
So where is the controversy, and where is the point that hasn't been discussed to death before?
# Posted on June 12th 2008 by TMB
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
if you dont want to discuss something. thats fine. but others might. thats fine.
prerequisite;
something which must exist or happen before something else can exist or happen.
so do explain, how can learning by ear be a requirement for playing trad?
Make em up as you go along. using the full range of possible ornaments, or not. As you choose. This is part of where the individual touch come from.....jig
No. There are places a certain ornament can go, and there are places where it can't. The ornaments have to fit the tune.... screetch
sorry, you mean physically? like a long roll can fit on an 1/8th note? I think my point encompassed all choices . Or are you suggesting that puting a long roll on an 1/8th note is a possible choice we might have?
''No, you're getting nowhere when you rely on it''
what do you mean? where do you want to go? Folk generally want to play music. The entire classical world relies upon the dots. Is that nowhere?
# Posted on June 12th 2008 by jig
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
soft black stars - if you've found that popcorn ... can I have some?
# Posted on June 12th 2008 by benhall.1
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
This is a bad remake. What's playing in Theatre #2?
# Posted on June 12th 2008 by grego
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Are you really trying to tell me that playing a tune from sheet music is favourable to learning it by ear? I wouldn't contradict on saying it is handy to learn the outline, and then listen to how it sounds best, but classical musicians are trying to play exactly as it is written, and to my understanding this is not the goal in trad.
By the way, the very fact that you use the ornamentation the way you like it shows that you don't rely on sheet music either.
# Posted on June 12th 2008 by TMB
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Jig, you're missing the point completely.
Ornaments are a crucial part of the rhythm of a tune. If you throw ornaments around willy-nilly then you'll muck up the rhythm of the tune. You have some freedom to improvise ornaments, but there are limits.
I don't know why I'm bothering. But I'm bored.
# Posted on June 12th 2008 by Marklar
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
It's best if your ears can read. However you came by the tune, the soul you put into it is what everybody else takes from it. Pass the popcorn.
# Posted on June 12th 2008 by drone
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
No I dont rely on sheet music. I am definitely not saying the dots is preferable to ear learning. I am saying that I think that restricting ourselves to learning only by ear or only by dots is unnecessary to play beautiful music.
I ornament as I choose because otherwise its just copying. Where is the originality in that? the art? the freshness?
The fact is that many people, due to their lifestyles dont have all the options available. If I ear a tune I like i catch the name, because maybe I wont hear it again. Often enough i can play it their and then but to remember it i need to play it over the course of a week or so. the dots help that.. If I play regularly with someone , or in a particular session i can pick up the tunes, but to limit myself to only learning by ear would be pointless. Why would i want to place such restrictions upon myself? t.o what purpose?
# Posted on June 12th 2008 by jig
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Jig, that's what field recorders are for.
# Posted on June 12th 2008 by Marklar
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Jig, you're missing the point completely.
?!? What makes you so sure of that? perhaps its yourself that is missing the point?
''Ornaments are a crucial part of the rhythm of a tune.'.
That is simply untrue, it just isnt the case . You can say what you like. but that doesnt make it true.. They are not, of course, otherwise they would not be ornaments. I have recordings of players playing their tunes without ornaments. They are the icing on the cake. You dont need icing for something to be a cake.
# Posted on June 12th 2008 by jig
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
field recorders, Cd,s internet etc etc . Yes they can be a great help, but what about the person who doesnt have all your technical gadgets? a piece of paper, will do the job as well as any gadget. Sure use all your options . That Is The Point.
# Posted on June 12th 2008 by jig
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Yes, and the other side of that point is that that guy has to know how the tune sounds, or how to make a tune out of the dots. As I said sheet music is handy, when I said "rely on it" I meant "only rely on sheet music", that is ignore listening, to set this straight. And since there is no popcorn left, I wish a good night.
# Posted on June 12th 2008 by TMB
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
prerequisite;
something which must exist or happen before something else can exist or happen.
yep. You have to be able to hear what's happening and be able to transfer it to your instrument. Hear it all. all the stuff that's not on the sheet of paper. If you can't do that, then you won't be able to play this music.
I've heard people who play by making up their own twiddley bits. Often they really really truly believe that their twiddley bits are the same as how they should be. They think they hear it, but they don't. And they can feck off.
# Posted on June 12th 2008 by llig leahcim
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Aye, goodnight. I've no desire to bash my head against this brick wall of stupidity any longer
# Posted on June 12th 2008 by llig leahcim
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Its quite clear that you have fixed ideas of what this music 'should' be,, It just so happens your Ideas exclude so many great players. Perhaps you might come to Co Clare sometime? you might find your preconceived ideas are yours alone.
good night. to you both.
# Posted on June 12th 2008 by jig
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Wait, don't quit now! I just made enough popcorn for everyone! Grego, sometimes you just have to put up with bad re-makes. Popcorn makes it all better
# Posted on June 12th 2008 by soft black stars
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Perhaps you might come to Co Clare sometime? you might find your preconceived ideas are yours alone.
good night. to you both.
# Posted on June 12th 2008 by jig
You mean there is Irish traditional music in Clare?
It must be all those who moved to Shannon from Belfast in the 1970s, and their offspring.
# Posted on June 12th 2008 by bodhran bliss
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
I agree with Bobby Gardner.
I am sorry but I cant take anyone seriously,who extolls the virtues of ear playing,and then says that to his ears, jigs sound as if they have even triplets,anyone who says that doesnt deserve to be taken seriously.
# Posted on June 13th 2008 by dickens metrognome
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Soft black stars, sit back and enjoy your popcorn.
I disagree on several levels with the statement attributed to Bobby Gardiner.
First off, appealing to authority is nothing more than an empty rhetorical device. Authority tends to be anecdotal and often wrong. Many generations of humankind lived with certainty under the notion that the Earth is flat, in spite of ample evidence (available to anyone) to the contrary (e.g., the curvature of Earth's shadow on the Moon). Authority said it was so, and people believed. They were wrong.
Far better to think for yourself. To wit:
"The best players can always do both" is absolutist, and so overstates the importance of the dots. Yes, it's nice to have the keys to the library, but not at the cost of going deaf. The best players use their ears. With the possible exception of the one symphony percussionist who is deaf, musicians are an aural lot. Music is sound, after all. So there have been many great players who did not or do not read sheet music. Consider the not small number of blind musicians in all genres who play at the highest levels, yet have never seen a dot of sheet music.
On the flip side, I can't think of a single decent melody musician in all of human history who was deaf throughout his or her musicial career. (Beethoven was able to continue composing after losing his hearing only because he already had the sounds in his mind--he did not start out deaf.)
It is championing the obvious to say that music requires us to listen, to use our ears, our aural centers of the brain. The eyes are, at best, a distant secondary adjunct. They can help us only if we first know what music *sounds* like. In short, it's entirely possible to play music well without eyes, but much more difficult--impossible--if we have no ears.
On top of music's essentail aural nature, Irish trad music is largely an aural tradition. Players routinely learn tunes by ear, play together by ear (rarely if ever playing from written notation when "playing out"), pass tunes down by ear, etc. In contrast to a orchestral performance of a concerto, you won't see any sheet music at an Irish trad gig or session. If you do, it's likely, by definition, not Irish trad.
Written notation is not entirely out of the picture, however. People in this tradition have long used written notation to collect tunes, as a memory aid, as a teaching aid, and as a learning aid. With the expansion of printing and the internet, written notation has become widespread and readily accessible. This is handy, especially if you understand the aural conventions of this music and so can take a printed page and make it come alive on your instrument.
It's also handy for anyone who simply wants to play the tunes without bothering to understand what they sound like when played by musicians steeped in this particular musical tradition. So you get things like the Boston Pops playing Toss the Feathers, Flogging Molly, and music stands at certain sessions. Some people enjoy that. Good for them.
I too teach my fiddle students to read written notation (both the dots and abcs), so they have the keys to the library. But I don't introduce notation until they are playing music, until they have an aural frame of reference for understanding the rorschach test that is notation. *Starting* with "staff notation"--as suggested in the quote attributed to Gardiner--would be like teaching a pre-verbal baby how to write abcs. Possible perhaps, but meaningless and not likely a good use of your or the baby's time and energy.
Another way to think of this is that written notation (much like any written language) is a way of visually symbolizing sounds. In contrast, musical sounds are *not* symbols of the inky spots on the page. The sound is reality--notation merely an inky shadow. Useful for drawing outlines, perhaps, but not the same, not as robust and alive and filled with personality, as the meat-and-bones body that cast the shadow.
Finally, it seems odd that someone would persevere in coming to a trad music web site with the apparent sole purpose of espousing techniques and tools (such as written notation, metronomes, etc.) more common among more formal genres of music, *as though traditional approaches (e.g., learning and playing by ear, finding your internal pulse, listening well to others) were somehow inferior.* That strikes me as either an endless wind up or simply argumentative, neither of which genuinely contributes to the craic, and both of which end up marring the credibility of otherwise useful (though unremarkable) notions of using whatever tools help you become a better musician.
(I'll take my popcorn now, with butter, thanks.)
# Posted on June 13th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
popcorn, salt. thanks.
Apeal to authority? where. Bobby says something. I agree. not because he said it, but because it makes sense. It just so happens that I agree.
But I would respect the viewpoint of himself were i to disagree. He has been playing a lot longer than I, at a high level. I doubt there is anyone here who could approach him,[ if there is, do speak up] He is a master. I am a student.why not learn from him?
finally, I espouse tools and techniques I have discovered and used throughout my life. where they come from is, to me, irrelevant, whether they come from mars or opera, They work.
I am simply propounding an alternative viewpoint, as valid as any other. Shared by many musicians who also have no time for petty division. Music is music, be it Tibetan or Irish, bach or metallica.
However easy it is to wind up llig, thats not what I am here for. I simply put forward a point of view. If you dont like it thats not my problem. I have a right to speak ,yes? Or does free speech only stretch to people who agree with you? Hmm, are you a republican will? that would explain a lot.
.
ps.all recorded music is also a representation of one aspect of a human craft, the aural. It is only an approximation, however accurate. It does not include so much that is present in a real live 'performance' That doesnt mean its not a great facility , a useful tool. just that its not the real thing.
# Posted on June 13th 2008 by jig
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
LOL, Will, there's your appeal to authority, right after you denied doing it:
"But I would respect the viewpoint of himself were i to disagree. He has been playing a lot longer than I, at a high level. I doubt there is anyone here who could approach him,[ if there is, do speak up] He is a master. I am a student.why not learn from him?"
Yeah, I could play tunes with Bobby Gardiner, which is what this music is about, after all. From what I've heard of his playing, Michael could do it justice too.
And I don't know where you got the notion that I'm questioning your right to speak your piece. You can do the wind up/argumentative thing ad nauseum for all I care. And keep getting suspended, for longer and longer spells. That's surely your perogative. LOL. I just can't imagine why that tack appeals so strongly to you that you make it your first priority upon your return from Elba....
# Posted on June 13th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Will CPT, you really bug me. I see this topic show up again and I am tempted to just skip the thread. But Wait!! Someone might add something helpful and, sure enough, CPT did. I wish everyone would just ignore this and other topics like it so I can safely skip them in the future without fear of missing something important.
Thanks alot, pal.
# Posted on June 13th 2008 by feardearg
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
A severe error has been made here. This idiot is back on the forum. I will not post here until he is removed, as he inevitably will be eventually. Goodbye. And no need for bollockings, jeremy.
# Posted on June 13th 2008 by Steve Shaw
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
LOL, feardearg, rest assured, it's all been said before, in much more entertaining threads. C'mon, at number 16,385, you've been around long enough to have seen it all....
# Posted on June 13th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Awww, Steve, stick around and play. We can make it really interesting by referring to jig and myself by our (ironically) shared real first name: "Will"
Imagine the confusion we can wreak!
# Posted on June 13th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Beeeeeeppppppppppppppppppp!!!!
# Posted on June 13th 2008 by bb
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
We could discuss the Irish trad/session.org relevance of the movie Ground Hog Day.....
# Posted on June 13th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Its called respect , respect for other viewpoints. You have right to yours, I to mine.
patronising comments like this;''You can do the wind up/argumentative thing ad nauseum for all I care. And keep getting suspended, for longer and longer spells. That's surely your prerogative. LOL'' Im sure we can all do without.
Where do they relate to the subject? nowhere. You simply start making unpleasant comments to attempt to put me down. is that the best you can offer?
''Yeah, I could play tunes with Bobby Gardiner, which is what this music is about, after all. ''
And? so could a crap bodhranist , wouldnt sound very good but...
I asked if there was any one approaching his level. Do you really think you or llig are? really? I have asked you to demonstrate but you appear reluctant. you say you have Cds out, your on youtube etc. Where? As I said I cant find anything.
Its interesting what people make from a quote. I simply offered up bobby's opinion . nothing more. A man who plays at the highest level , who has been playing for 70 odd years, A true master. If we want to play this music right, shouldnt we listen to the old masters?
# Posted on June 13th 2008 by jig
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Look - some people might not care for bobby gardiner's playing - I wouldnt call it my favourite to be honest. And I blame in entirely on the fact that he uses both dots *and* his ear.
Seriously though - that is a stupid comment - as weve all worked out we all know heaps of people who only learn from ear who are great and heaps of people who do both who are great.....why wont this type of discussion ever go away? Why?
# Posted on June 13th 2008 by bb
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Wow. I never said I have CDs out. But I am on youtube (posted by someone else), and Reverend provided a link to my playing on another thread. Rev's also offered that he has other recordings of me playing and I don't mind at all if he posts them somewhere.
As I said, I could play with Mr. Gardiner. I've played with lots of brilliant musicians. So have lots of people here. We're not all wannabes. Some of us can actually play. Which is what this music and craic are about. Besides, I learned a lot of tunes years ago from listening to recordingings of Mr. Gardiner. Highly instructive. No sheet music needed. I daresay I have some of his repertoire, thanks to his indirect generosity.
Will, I wasn't putting you down at all, just pointing out the fact that you make it a priority to provoke people on this sheet music topic (among others), and it gets you booted for longer and longer periods. I think that would get tiresome, that's all. Might be more fun to suss out the nature of this online session and figure out how to sit in, rather than finding yourself out in the cold wet streets week after week.
"And? so could a crap bodhranist , wouldnt sound very good but..."
So Will, what are you insinuating there? Or is that not an implied put down?
# Posted on June 13th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Beebs, please post a link to you playing some reels, so "jig" here can hear a brill palyer who doesn't bother with the dots. Ta'
# Posted on June 13th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
[controversial eh? ]
well, without endorsing the part involving "best" and "always," the only people who might find it controversial that many if not most irish students get both staff reading and ear learning from their teachers, would be people from outside the country who have swallowed the schtick and mythology that abound about "true pure traditional players" not reading music.
folks, the huge majority of the virtuoso irish kiddies in the master classes at festivals such as clancy week are all getting formal instruction from master players. and, news flash, the vast majority of them read music. AND, coequally, the vast majority all learn by ear as well, with intimidating ease. this also applies to the vast majority of irish virtuosos who are not kiddies. bobby gardiner's adjectives may be extreme, but he is describing the status quo for the teaching standard there. one of the teachers at the clancy school told me that i was a fool if i thought they didn't use written music. this person stated to me that the fiddlers, in particular, use it. he said that even when people learn a melody by ear, it is use written music when working out ornamentation.
look, this may be more ubiquitous now, but it is not a new development. i remember an anecdote on mary macnamara's now-disappeared web site, reminiscing about how martin rochford of east clare used to write out tunes while learning them and drop them in her mailbox to learn. you can see a music stand with written music in the background on her video on the custys web site, and this is just about universal there. one of the east clare musicians did this very thing for me, gave me a copy of a new tune he had learned and then written out. i've seen photos of edel fox teaching with a blackboard full of music with ornamentation behind her, same deal with a bunch of the teachers in the clancy week teaching photos. when people comment in interviews and documentaries about how the standard nowadays is incredibly high, this is one of the things they are talking about. those kids who are shotguninng in every key standing on their heads by ave nine are getting formal training that includes reading & ear learning. i'm not saying this is all great, but bobby gardiner is describing the norm there.
it's such a given as not to be worth discussing---except for this fascinating aspect: why are people from outside of this milieu so hysterical about this? the tone is like children finding out there isn't a santa claus......
# Posted on June 13th 2008 by ceemonster
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Well - I was taught by a fiddle player from one of the most well known musical families in ireland. And when I asked for the abcs she almost fainted - made me learn by ear, and Ive been doing it ever since.
Ive also had prob 10-15 teachers in my time (when I lived in ireland and over here) - and none of them ever gave me sheet music.....ever..... Interesting that all these amazing teachers taught without sheet music....How very strange.
And all but one were irish - strange that they also swallowed the mythology....even the irish arent safe....oh my god
# Posted on June 13th 2008 by bb
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
cee, no one is saying sheet music isn't useful. We're just tired of having it repeatedly crammed down our throats, as though it's an *alternative* to learning by ear. Plain and simple--the dots don't do you any good if you aren't also learning by ear.
And no--the tone here isn't shrill or santa-shock. It's just fed up with the broken record from one quarter.
# Posted on June 13th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
And our point is that it's NOT controversial, except for the way jig won't let it drop.
***No one is saying the dots aren't useful.***
But neither are the dots as integral to this music as some would urge us to believe.
# Posted on June 13th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
I brought some nachos, what time does the main feature start?
# Posted on June 13th 2008 by Mike Floorstand
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Drink and talk sh*te?
# Posted on June 13th 2008 by de Selby
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
All you kids who've been throwing the popcorn around are BARRED ! Someone has to clean this mess up !
( My son used to work at the local multplex, I know what it's like. )
But, seriously, did I read right that some musicians work out their ornaments using the dots ? My flabber is ghasted. Why did I think there was some element of spontanaiety left in the music ?
# Posted on June 13th 2008 by Guernsey Pete
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
I'll volunteer for the clean-up, i shouldn't have bitten.
Maybe it's only me, but I haven't read a single statement that damns sheet music in this thread. A few stated that it's not necessary and most stated that it can't be used instead of listening, but let alone the always in "best always both" no-one contradicted the statement, it is just Will purposely arguing to keep the fight alive, but then I'm not quite awake and haven't had a coffee yet.
Get your seats the room darkens, commercials are almost over....
# Posted on June 13th 2008 by TMB
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
.... deeper sigh ..... slow exhalation and a barely audible moan coupled with slumping of shoulders and head tipped forward and at a slight angle .... blank, unblinking stare at the floor .....
Yep, I'm fed up. Yep, No one is being anti dots per say. Dots are a good thing, but only in the right hands. And the right hands are from within the tradition and in conjunction with the conventions of how the music is actually heard and then played. (That's important, heard and then played, not the other way round.) I'm certain Bobby Gardiner would concur
But where the dots fall down as a useful tool is when someone from outside the tradition who can already read music decides they'd like a go at it. They stumble across a place like this, an international forum, head straight to the tune section, print a few tunes off, maybe give a listen to the midi (heaven forbid) and away they go.
The music that comes out of this process is always a hideous miss mash of false pre conceptions and made-up twiddly bits.
Jig once said: "If you don't wish to conform to a preconceived concept of what Irish music sounds like, then you can play tunes as you choose. It may not sound like Irish Music, but so what?"
So what indeed, each to their own, but I have respect for what Irish music sounds like. I like the way Irish music sounds. I want to play it how it sounds.
I said above: "The harder bits, the twiddley bits, the whole ethos of variation, the whole feel of it are not represented at all in the sheet music. So the point is, that if you struggle with getting the easy bits by ear, where the heck are you gonna get the hard bits from?"
Jig's reply was: "Make it up".
# Posted on June 13th 2008 by llig leahcim
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
You need a conclusion, Michael. You need to state the bleeing obvious. You're good at that. And I mean that as a sincere compliment.
My conclusion is - use the dots, they're useful. Play the tunes you hear - that's essential.
I can't get it in fewer words than that, but I bet you can Mr Gill.
# Posted on June 13th 2008 by benhall.1
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
I have a quote from a great traditional musician as well - Donegal fiddler Danny O'Donnell :
"Learning to play music from a sheet of paper is like telling someone to go into an art gallery and learn to paint by smelling the pictures".
I like "drone"'s phrase - "Read with your ears".
# Posted on June 13th 2008 by Kenny
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
I'm fond of a good conclusion. I'm fond of statin' the bleedin' obvious. But unfortunately, such a thing is utterly useless in this context. This nonsense will run and run and run no matter what sense gets politely, or otherwise, put. Such is the nature of it.
# Posted on June 13th 2008 by llig leahcim
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
If you do any teaching or workshops at all, you need to be able to show and tell people what they are doing wrong and what they should be doing.
Not saying you need a classical education in performance or technique, but without the theoretical knowledge, you are at a disadvantage.
(You may also get pedants in your workshop who will rip you to bits if you get it wrong. You can't do it all in ABC.
# Posted on June 13th 2008 by geoffwright
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
I don't get what you're saying, Geoff. In any case, ABCs are just anotehr form of notation, so there's no point in distinguishing them from 'the dots'.
But it's definitely true that you can do it all by ear in a workshop situation. I've seen it done over and over. I've also seen, at one particular summer school, several different classes where some teachers were using some form of notation and others weren't. Interestingly, there was more progress with the classes teaching entirely by ear. (Though even those tend these days to allow or provide dots at the end of each session.)
The above is anecdotal, of course ...
# Posted on June 13th 2008 by benhall.1
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
"Learning to play music from a sheet of paper is like telling someone to go into an art gallery and learn to paint by smelling the pictures".
I like that.
I like Simon Cowells one too..
'It's like eating water for dinner...'
Ha
# Posted on June 13th 2008 by Hugo Chavez
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Okay, enough popcorn. And if the nachos have jalapenos on them I'll have to pick them off.
It must be obvious by now that no-one is convincing anyone to come to the other side, whatever side that is. Why, I'm beginning to think some folks like to argue just for the sake of arguing! Could it be?? Everyone needs to go out and get some fresh air. Llig and CPT, it hurts me to see you banging your heads against yon brick wall AGAIN. Please, for the sake of your health, stop
# Posted on June 13th 2008 by soft black stars
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Oh, I'm not banging my head against the brick wall. In general, my posts are directed at the crowd of puzzled onlookers standing around the brick wall, wondering why it's been erected smack in the middle of an otherwise cozy, friendly little pub....
# Posted on June 13th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Yeah, I just got back myself. I saw the brick wall, made one joke, and took off for a few minutes, to continue the analogy. That Will talking to Will thing took a while to sort out. Thought our man here was losing it. I was going to say, what did all those swing fiddlers do to you at that fiddle camp, anyway?
# Posted on June 13th 2008 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
LOL, actually, I infected them with nyah....
# Posted on June 13th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Usually I play my flute and whistles with my hands and mouth. I'll have to try this ear method and see how it pans out.
Seriously though, I can sight read music and while it comes in handy, it's a serious boon to be able to pick out a tune by listening to it. I wouldn't say I'm the best player, but I would say that in my experience, the people who blow me away the most are those who cannot read; then those who can do both; and then those who read but cannot play by ear.
# Posted on June 13th 2008 by cloudbuster
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
bobby gardiner did not say at any point in the opening quote, that you can learn irish music solely by written dots. in fact, he said the opposite. yet here some folks are, foaming at the mouth about what he has said. this is that "WHAT? NO SANTA?????" phenom that is so amazing to me. yes, great players, perhaps many of the greatest if you love an older style, learned solely by ear. but bobby gardiner's remarks described the norm for much ITM teaching, in ireland, today.
and that in no way contradicts the fact that most teachers teach tune melodies by ear and tell you you need to be able to learn by ear. most of mine have, and i have been learning almost exclusively by ear off of cds or tapes for five or more years, this after taking ear-training classes at night to get better at it.
but teaching tune melodies by ear and telling students they need to be able to learn music by ear, (which i agree, you do), in no way excludes the proposition that staff music is also used and is considered important, which it is what bobby gardiner in essence said and is standard operating procedure in much serious ITM teaching in ireland. it is by no means only a comhaltas phenom, but Exhibit A might be the fact that the comhaltas live site has that "this week's tutorial" feature, or whatever it's called, and they give the staff music for download in addition to the audio.
a few of the famous people who tsk-tsk foreigners about dots do not know how to read music and are saving face. some of them do read music, and in real life, teach their own students both by ear and by written music, but are playing Hide the Ball with credulous outsiders.
very common in formal lessons, and at programs like university of limerick, is this---melodies are indeed learned by ear. written music is used to help conceptualize where to put ornaments, and things like phrasing, bowing patterns, bellows patterns, bass arrangements for instruments having that capability, etc, etc.
i spent three years in the clancy school "master class" in box (i qualified only in the sense of being good enough to keep up). at the start of the class, the instructor went around and asked all the irish kids, age 10 to 17/18 ish, who their teacher was. "bobby gardiner" was one name i heard each year. bobby gardiner is a brilliant and highly entertaining master of a certain b/c accordion style. i myself prefer a sparer, cleaner style, but he is a fantastic musician, particularly for dance. it was a big class, and many of the students played to a super-high standard of virtuosity. most of them had clearly had written training, and not only by bobby gardiner. it was an ear-only class, and they also learned the tunes by ear, super fast, with great facility. the few people who could not ear-learn (two out of the three foreigner adults and maybe two irish kids) were sent to a class that used dots. but the remaining irish kids clearly had had experience with written music. they inserted ornaments with a predictable uniformity almost instantly after learning the melody, to the great annoyance of the instructor. this is one tip-off that they all have had staff-reading.
i took a private lesson after the week was over with a different teacher at the school, also a brilliant b/c player. this is the person who told me i was an idiot if i thought irish players did not use written music as well as ear-learning. we took a tune i already knew (and had learned by ear, in point of fact). when this gent was showing me how to start thinking about ornamentation, he got a written copy of the tune and showed it to me visually. in this capacity, the dots were more a picture or diagram of the tune. it was extremely effective, so effective that he warned me not to ornament uniformly (this is what was going on in my class). the effectiveness of seeing a "picture" of an entire tune when thinking about embllishment, is why written music, with arrows for bow or bellow direction, and ornament patterns written out like algebraic formulas, is visible on blackboards or whatevever, in so many photos of teachers in class in ireland.
my initial foray into itm was an ill-starred few years at fiddle (i had bow-wrist tendonitis and couldn't continue). my fiddle teacher was a master of the east clare style who taught by ear, and also handed out dots. just like i described above, this teacher used the dots to show you points in the tune that were receptive versus non-receptive, to ornamentation, to show bow directions, blah, blah. and also out of pity for lame people like i then was, who needed help with the melody.
for better or worse, the fact is that in many quarters, ITM training in ireland today greatly resembles academic conservatory-standard training. indeed, in academy training, whether you are talking about jazz or classical, students are drilled mercilessly in both ear training and sight reading. (the ear-training classes i mentioned i took---you had to take a semester of theory with each semester of ear learning. i did three, so i have gone through classical fugue, which was horrible).
when this sort of methodology is used to teach traditional folk music genres, the result is that you can get a scary level of virtuosity in a very short time. it is a huge reason why there has been such a spectacular level of early-age virtuosity among young irish players in the post learning-under-the-hedgerow-out-on-the-farm era. does it have a certain fungible, antiseptic quality that lacks character? or is it a huge step forward? you can debate it till the cows come home, but bobby gardiner is not unique, he is the norm.
but here is the real question---given that he never said that you can "grok" the music using only staff writing, and given that anyone is free to learn however they like, why are people here so bothered about this??????
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by ceemonster
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
cee, I don't see anyone foaming at the mouth here about the dots (although your post comes close).
You appear to miss the context within which jig offered this thread--after he was suspended from the site for two weeks. His first post upon return is this baiting or a wind up.
See, we've been through this for years now, and no one disagrees that the dots are handy or that they're used in the tradition. (Yet "The best players can always do both" goes too far--I'd hate to tell that to Ray Charles or Doc Watson or Stevie Wonder.)
So the only "controversial" item here is jig's penchant for sh*te stirring and spouting ill-informed advice (vis a vis his notion on another current thread that fiddlers in a session should consider synchronizing their bowing). And that brings on the slagging (not foaming mouths--more like wry smirks).
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
I remember hearing a certain Kevin Crawford say he can't read music; in fact, he said someone at a workshop asked for the dots to one of the Christy Barry's, and he looked them up here on thesession. Say what you will--if it's in ya, it'll come out, as 'the best players' know how to bring life and lift to whatever they play.
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by mellow yellow
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
What I find most interesting Cee - is that someone had to show you where to put the ornaments by showing you dots of where they go. That is purely bizarre and Ive never heard of it being done. I dont know who you were hanging out with in Ireland - but I know alot of virtuosos who teach and yet - I have never heard about that particular technique. The fact is no one should be showing you where to put your ornaments - its something you should be able to figure out yourself.
Its not about getting worked up because of some santa analogy(good one) its about looking at this forum and constantly seeing people of a certain level giving out ridiculously bad info to impressionable beginners. And that is all it is,
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by bb
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
bb, but the Seamus Ennis, Leo Rowsome and Willie Clancy pipe tutorial books, to recall a few, all have dot diagrams of pipe ornamentations. Is that what you mean?
I guess that's helpful when learners can't make out what is happening when they hear rolls and crans, and haven't got anyone to ask.
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by Duijera Dubh
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
exactly, Duijera. it is done and done and done. it is not showing every ornament and every spot. it is using a picture of the tune and talking about possibilities, to teach you to make your own creative choices.
no one "had" to show me where to put ornaments. I was starting to do it before the lesson I described above. but the teacher in that lesson, plus others in group settings, have shown me, and other fellow students, on written music, the types of spots that are amenable (and also spots that are not amenable) to ornamenation, so that i (and fellow learners where it happened in groups) could use this knowledge to think about the types of ornamentation choices we might wish to make. It was extremely illuminating. When it works, it fosters creativity rather than uniformity. Guess all of the master teachers in Ireland and elsewhere who do this using written music on blackboards, music stands, tables, and elsewhere, better be worried about getting a big spanky-tossy now.
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by ceemonster
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
ha, i think some kind of an anti-naughty-word function kicked in becaiuse i originally wrote, spanky-plus-word-that-rhymes-with-spanky!
i actually do not ornament using written music from tune to tune. but that lesson and other demonstrations in group classes, that did use staff, were huge in helping me conceptualize it. and there is plenty of evidence out there testify that it is far from "bizarre." i just thought of two more master musicians who do it....
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by ceemonster
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Aaahh, it's nice to know nothing much has changed round the old place, except that popcorn seems to have supplanted cow tipping in these kinds of threads. :D
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by Tish
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
unpopped popcorn, Tish, I think.
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by Duijera Dubh
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
I've taken lesssons or workshops in person from a number of fiddlers, including Kevin Burke, Sean Smyth, Oisin MacDiarmada, Brian Conway, John Carty, and Cait Reed. Brian Conway was the only one who used sheet music.
I've taught various types of music for 34 years now--in private lessons, music shops, camps, festival workshops, and at a community college. I usually provide sheet music and abc notation for anyone who wants it. But I ask students to learn by ear as much as possible--in nearly every instance, they need to improve their ear learning abilities (and this includes students who learn only by ear). It's such an essential skill *for playing music* and especially for this music.
Music notation helps some people remember the tunes after the lesson. It also can help people "see" the structure of a tune. But the vast majority of people I've taught who *want* music notation also are tethered to it and struggle to learn without it.
From my experience, it boils down to this: It doesn't matter whether you can read notation or not. Once you get past the beginner stage, people who struggle to learn by ear are the ones who take lessons. People who are really adept at learning by ear don't need lessons--they just immerse themselves in the music.
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
I stand corrected, I had no idea how wide spread written music was. I really did not realise just how "done" it was, and by everyone it seems (just not the 10-15 teachers I have had all from Ireland and all the workshops I have ever done, or any musician I had the luck to become friends with when I lived in Ireland) But everyone else obviously.
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by bb
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Not everyone else, I wouldn't think, bb. Maybe the teachers who don't use sheet music didn't learn by sheet music themselves, or maybe they don't even read it for the same reason.
I remember a few high-profile players from Ireland giving lessons over a year or so each in Sydney who used either dots or abc in teaching tunes.
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by Duijera Dubh
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
"People who are really adept at learning by ear don't need lessons--they just immerse themselves in the music"willcpt.
I disagree, they need lessons to help with technique,.
before anyone comes in:
traditional music requires players to have good technique,so that the player can acheive the sound that they would like.
a good teacher will help the pupil to progress more quickly.Dick Miles
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by dickens metrognome
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
This is just so offensive will. I open a discussion for serious debate and you start bringing in irrelevant personal untrue insinuations. In no way at all is this a windup. it appears you just cant tolerate a different viewpoint.
''You appear to miss the context within which jig offered this thread--after he was suspended from the site for two weeks. His first post upon return is this baiting or a wind up.''
For the record I dont teach formal reading and writing, however my students come to me using various systems of notation taught to them in their other classes around Feakle and this area. I dont particularly approve but that is the norm. I in fact learnt the local whistle ABC from my students so as to write the tunes they learn by ear from me down as a memory aid.
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by jig
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
"Once you get past the beginner stage, people who struggle to learn by ear are the ones who take lessons. People who are really adept at learning by ear don't need lessons--they just immerse themselves in the music."
You can't be serious, Will. Dickens is absolutely right---lessons are for learning technique, and I think for learning musicality as well, and how to practice too. If the ability to learn by ear were all that was needed, I'd be one of the best players in town by now. Which I'm certainly *not*!!!
And you yourself go to workshops. Those are lessons too, aren't they?
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by kennedy
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
"I stand corrected, I had no idea how wide spread written music was. I really did not realise just how "done" it was, and by everyone it seems (just not the 10-15 teachers I have had all from Ireland and all the workshops I have ever done, or any musician I had the luck to become friends with when I lived in Ireland) But everyone else obviously."
Why the sarcasm, bb? My teacher uses written music as well, in just the way ceemonster described, to help analyze the music for patterns and shapes and places for emphasis and ornamentation. I believe this goes back very far in Irish music---I have a book of the great fiddler James Morrisson's tunes---he used to write out tunes for his students complete with instructions for ornamentation, as well as (gasp!) scales and even shifting exercises. And we know that Padraig O'Keefe used his own form of notation with his students.
I really think the only true thing that can be said about this is that traditional music teaching styles are as individual as each player, and there are many different authentic ways to approach it.
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by kennedy
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
well said kennedy
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by jig
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Teaching AND learning styles are as individual as each player. To say anyone MUST do something a certain way (use a teacher, use the dots, don't use the dots, etc) is going against the spirit of the first sentence, in a way.
I think the only prerequisites are being able to hear the music and being able to play it. That's seems to be the only definition of a musician, one who plays music. I don't think there's anything about 'must have studied with a teacher' or 'musicians must know how to read music' or any other qualifiers, really.
Also, this seems to be all agreed upon by all the parties in this never ending scuffle. It's amazing it continues to rage the way it does. Or amusing, if you have enough popcorn, I suppose. Munch munch.
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Oh no. I don't agree with ANY of that, SWFL.
In fact, I'm violently opposed to it.
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by benhall.1
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
There is scarcely any room for doubt that the pre-Christian inhabitants of Ireland had the use of letters, the ogham scale, and the ogham music tablature. The Bressay inscription furnishes an early example of music scoring; and it is quite apparent that the inscriber regarded the ogham and the quaint tablature employed as one and the same--in fact, three of the mystic strokes are identical with three musical signs.[1]
Inasmuch, therefore, as there are genuine ogham inscriptions dating from the third century, we are forced to believe that the music tablature also co-existed at the same early period.
http://www.libraryireland.com/IrishMusic/III-2.php
So it appears that notation has a long history in Ireland.
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by jig
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
"I think the only prerequisites are being able to hear the music and being able to play it."
Not quite, it's actually simpler than that. Being able to play the music is the goal, not a prerequisite. So, the only prerequisite is to be able to hear it. If you then require any aid other than the aural to transfer what you are hearing to your music making, it just means that you are actually having a little dificulty hearing it.
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by llig leahcim
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Michael, have you ever taught anyone to play an instrument? Fiddle in particular?
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by kennedy
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
nope, not formally. I don't think I'd have the patience for it. However, I've shown plenty of people stuff. So yes, often people have difficulty hearing what's going on and showing them is a good way to sort this kind of stuff out. That's the way I learned also. From lots and lots of listening and good players showing me stuff.
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by llig leahcim
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
There's nothing wrong with making use of written music in trad. It might not be essential, but it can be useful.
There is everything wrong with people who are new to trad using dots alone to learn to play tunes, as if they were classical pieces. I think that this is where the anti-dot sentiment is really coming from.
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by Marklar
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Ha! That's what lessons are, a good player shows you stuff. And then watches to see if you're doing it right. And then figures out why you're not doing it right and tells you what to tweak to do it better. And you're right, it requires a lot of patience.
The reason I asked is because you said "If you then require any aid other than the aural to transfer what you are hearing to your music making, it just means that you are actually having a little dificulty hearing it", which implied to me that you think that lessons are unnecessary because all you have to do is listen better---but that completely disregards the physical aspect of playing---you can have ears that work fine, but getting your fingers to do what you want them to is a matter of coordination and relaxation in addition to hearing, and that's where lessons can help. Actually lessons can help with hearing as well.
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by kennedy
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Kennedy, please note that I said "Once you get past the beginner stage."
And also bear in mind that lots of people have learned to play fiddle without any instruction, formal or otherwise. If you're incredulous, then I'm not sure you understand what I'm trying to say. I'll try to make it clearer.
"Technique" is a symptom, not the end goal. It's a symptom of trying to get the sounds you've heard and want to reproduce.
The main reasons I take workshops (rare enough these days) are as follows:
- to financially support the musician offering them. They came all the way to Montana, the least I can do is send some cash their way.
- to see how someone else teaches (to pick up tips that I can use in my own teaching).
- to learn a bit about how that person thinks about the music.
I learned to do cuts, rolls, and triplets on fiddle not from a teacher, but by listening intently to Irish fiddlers (and pipers), by trial and error, and by listening some more. I also had no formal instruction in how to hold the bow beyond "don't grip it--relax." Yet when I showed up for "violin" lessons with Walter Oliveras (in hopes of improving my technique) he said, "I won't touch your bow hand--it's one of the best I've ever seen."
This stuff isn't rocket surgery. If it feels "hard" then you're probably working it too forcefully. Learning your instrument and learning this music is like making a life-long friend. Some of it will feel right instantaneously--"like I've known you all my life even though we've just met." And some of it will come around only after many hours in one another's company, making the unfamiliar familiar.
Using written notation to understand the sounds of this music is handy, especially for those of us who are strongly visually oriented. As a highly visual person myself (with a form of photographic memory), I can still say, however, that every time I've relied on sheet music, abcs, or some other visual aid, I've only postponed using my ears to learn the same thing.
Using the dots or abcs takes away an opportunity to learn the same thing with your ears--and your ears are ultimately what you need to use to play this music.
Ink on the page may feel like a faster, more efficient way to learn tunes, to suss out the twiddly bits, etc. But in the long run, you'll still need to learn all the same stuff aurally.
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Ah, cross posting. But Kennedy you've said precisely what Michael and I are getting at: "lessons can help with hearing as well."
Just take off the "as well."
All that learning to play an instrument or this music needs to be is "learning to hear." Yes, of course it helps to have a mentor or teacher help you listen, hear, aurally assimilate better.
***That's what music is.***
The dots can be an aid, but ultimately they are a distraction *because they aren't aural.*
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
I'm always amazed at how many people will insist on using the dots even though they don't "read with their ears." They can't hear the music from the dots, the way any adroit "sight reader" can. The way the dots were meant to be used--as representations of sounds.
Far too many people read the dots as code for where to put their fingers and how long to count the timing for each note. That's not music.
But those same people insist on using the dots, instead of learning to make music. I know because I've taught hundreds of them over the years. And teaching them to hear well is the hardest part of my job--not because they can't use their ears, but because they are so entranced by the inky spots that they won't leave them behind. They refuse to trust their ears. And that's a shame.
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
"All that learning to play an instrument or this music needs to be is "learning to hear." "
I don't agree. I have a ways to go before my fingers catch up with my ears on a consistent basis. It's a physical thing, the kinesthetic aspect, learning the feel of the instrument and ingraining it into my hands until I don't have to think about it very much---that's the struggle for me. And I'm surprised that you would dispute any of that, Will, because you yourself have talked about this many times on this site, about learning to relax, learning to feel the bow through the fingers, etc. It's almost like you're contradicting yourself. Which is fine, I guess, I'm often guilty of that myself, but I happen to agree with what you've said previously and not so much now.
And I know that some/many people have taught themselves to play fiddle. I know it's not impossible. I just know that I could never have done it that way---I tried once, years ago, for a few months, and had no idea of what I was doing and gave up. This time I got smart---I found myself someone who knew what he was doing and I do everything he tells me, and whaddya know, it's starting to work.
And then also---you said "once you get past the beginner stage"---I would think you would have to get past the intermediate stage as well, to the point where all the needed techniques were acquired and the issue is just interpretation. Or is that your definition of beginner/not beginner? We are talking in vague terms, after all...
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by kennedy
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
The following are all publicly available clips from sound lantern and YouTube.
Here's what it sounds like when you rely on the dots:
Dick Miles (wait till about 2:05) to hear his playing of a reel): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vrt6Xkkq-co
Jig: http://www.soundlantern.com/UpdatedUser.do?UsName=jig&UsId=574
And here's what it sounds like when you trust your ears.
Paddy Canny: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zF0b35jn-Ts
Myself and some friends at a house session: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJljaWNhzgM
Your choice--how do you want your music to sound?
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Kennedy, this is simple music. Yes, fiddle can feel difficult, but that's just because it's unfamiliar.
Instead of fighting to gain technique, try letting go--just letting yourself relax. Go look at Todd Ehle's videos on the bow hand and intonation and tone production at Fiddler's Cove--everything he teaches is "natural," relaxed, no tortorous hand positions, no physical intricacies. Your bow hand is the same as your hand position when it's hanging mindlessly down at your side.
The only difficulty is in realizing how effortless all this can be. As Picasso said, it took him decades to learn how to paint like a child again.
And I've been quite consistent in my posts on this. Does it feel difficult? Yes, if you think it's difficult, it will feel difficult. And what's my mantra? "Be effortless."
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Will, I've looked at all Ehle's videos. I was the first person to post them on this site.
Before I started learning to play, I used to think "if it were easy, everyone would do it"---and then I read a few things here similar to what you're saying now, that it's effortless and the only difficulty is fighting the mental block, and I thought, well what do I know, I haven't tried it, maybe it really is easy.
But I've been learning for two years now, with the best guidance and boatloads of practice, surrounded by the real stuff, both recorded and live, and I can say that I still think what I thought at the beginning---if it were easy, everyone would do it. Or at least it wouldn't take too long to learn. And you know what, not that many people do it, and it does take a significant amount of time to learn. Years. Even for the really good players I know. How many easy things take years and thousands of hours of practice to learn?
But you do have a point. Thinking it's hard is indeed a mental block that inhibits learning. So I try not to think that way, at least when I'm playing---and this itself is a learned skill!
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by kennedy
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
"if it were easy, everyone would do it."
not everybody likes it.
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by llig leahcim
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
It's easy when you already know how to do it.
It takes a lot of effort before it becomes an option to be effortless. Sometimes people who have been playing for a very long time tend to forget that.
Two years is not a long time for learning fiddle. For me it took a decade of playing violin before I could take any pleasure in how I sounded, if that puts it into perspective.
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by Marklar
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Oh God. Zargblast was right. I assumed it was you at first, Will.
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by benhall.1
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
I just finished a week of teaching at fiddle camp. One student had been playing less than 8 months. No previous musical experience. She kept up fine with people who've been playing for years. She had no reason not to trust her ears and her hands.
Yet I never said it doesn't take time. In fact, like a really good friendship, playing this music does take time. That doesn't mean that it's difficult, though.
Learning to speak a language takes time, but even 4 year old children can babble away in whatever their native tongue is. Try to teach an adult how to speak Mandarin or Icelandic and they'll complain how hard it is. Only because it's unfamiliar. Familiarity--genuine immersion--takes time. Of course. But it's not difficult.
Kenny Werner has done a great job of demystifying the ease of making music. Read his book, Effortless Mastery.
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Okay.
Tell me, I'm curious, Will, what kind of a thing do you think is difficult?
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by kennedy
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by kennedy
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Will, if something takes time to learn, then it is difficult. The difference between difficult and impossible is that difficult things can be done with enough time.
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by Marklar
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
will cpt.
I learned both those tunes,on the you tube clip by ear.
Dick Miles
# Posted on June 14th 2008 by dickens metrognome
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
That's great Dick. But you've posted many times here about the books you use (and your own tutorials), and the importance of dots. I think it shows in your playing.
Kennedy and Screetch, I really don't think in terms of easy and hard, or easy and difficult. I've done too many things over the years that I thought were "difficult" at the beginning and soon found that once I was familiar with it, whatever "it" was, I could do it with ease. And the ease--relaxing--was usually a big part of feeling at ease with what I was doing.
Humans have these amazing brains and bodies that are capable of many things beyond walking upright and starting a fire. We seem predisposed to doing things other organisms would never be able to accomplish. Lucky us. Too bad so many of us go around telling ourselves, "if that were easy, everyone would be doing it."
As a teen, I was a professional juggler. Juggling seven balls was genuinely difficult--at the edge of my hand speed, throw accuracy, and coordination. That took real concentrated effort, in part because I have a congenital nerve disorder, and my hands sometimes don't work as well as they should. But learning to juggle five balls was never "difficult," it just took some time. The basic technique and skill required were no differen than juggling three balls, and I've taught many people to ably juggle three balls in less than 15 minutes.
I learned to ride a unicycle in 2 days. Learning to ride a 20 foot tall unicycle wasn't any harder (in fact it's easier, like the difference between balancing a short pencil on the end of your finger vs. balancing a long broom handle). But *fear* made it feel difficult until I felt how eaesy it was and let go of my fear.
I went through the same fear-to-familiar learning curve as a whitewater rafting guide and becoming a telemark ski instructor.
Fear makes most things difficult, if you let it. Fear of sounding bad, fear of making mistakes, fear of failure, fear of being rejected, fear of pain. Perhaps the most difficult thing to do is to relinquish your fears.
I suspect most things that people think are difficult are just the stuff they're afraid of, or stuff they've tried only in a half-arsed way, not really submerging themselves and losing themselves in it. Lots of people dabble at things and then give up. But dabbling tends to leave things feeling difficult, because you haven't really tried.
# Posted on June 15th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
And I've met many, many people who are so dependent on the dots that they are truly fearful of trusting their ears. Then they get frustrated when their musical progress isn't what they want it to be. But fear makes it difficult for them to let go of the dots and just listen.
Until you can listen, and then make the sound with your voice or instrument, you're not really playing music. And really playing music will feel difficult until you give yourself up to listening, to the sound.
# Posted on June 15th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
P.S. Kennedy, I think we understand each other well enough from our many emails to not take any of this personally in an unpleasant way. I'm acutally *happy* that you're probing this, asking questions, challenging what seems contrary to your own experience. That's part of how we learn.
But focusing on the difficulties can slow us down, too, get in our way. One of my early fiddle teachers was Linda Danielson, who now teaches at Valley of the Moon fiddle camp. One day, she got fed up with my complaining about how hard something was and the normally soft-spoken, patient Linda yelled at me--"I can't take all this negativity! It's not helping *my* playing any! It sure can't be helping yours." Boy howdy what a wake up call.
With a new attitude, it was just a matter of weeks before she was sending me off to lessons with Kevin Burke.
# Posted on June 15th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
"People who are really adept at learning by ear don't need lessons--they just immerse themselves in the music."
Put that on the homepage and delete the rest of the s(h)ite!
# Posted on June 15th 2008 by mutatis mutandis
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
But seriously.
I've started late, about 20, been playing hmm 17 years, get a bit better by leaps and bounds each year - I'm never going to be good, but you might think me passable.
I learned by listening and listening, and by listening and watching. I use dots on occasion - speeding up the unfamiliar new-tune learning when impatience gets the better of me - guilty as charged. However, I have never used them as a guide to how the tune *sounds* - just the basic shape. Most of the time I realise that I have a tune I don't play, so grab the fiddle and find I've learned it. I grew up listening to this music - it gets it in your mental structure, so to speak.
Ear and familarity, ease, comfort, like going for a chat with old friends or family members - that is what counts. The dots are like stilted letters with people you've lost contact with. Useful on occasion, but no substitute.
As for the wider question of these discussions... Well, I would say they do more harm than good. With the best will in the world (not an intentional pun) the signal to noise ratio is so appalling that I hate to imagine what bizarre noises people in farflung backwaters are creating.
It is not the job of the users who can play to "police" these pages - the avalanche of rubbish seems to be exponentially growing. Jeremy, I would say: call a halt - either leave these pages to the idiots who haven't a clue, or pull the plug. Or start deleting the obvious culprits.
Most people haven't the time or inclination to browse 6 years of yammering to work out who speaks sense or not - it's a dirtier old stew in here these days than it used to be (even).
My 2p worth. No offence intended to anyone.
# Posted on June 15th 2008 by mutatis mutandis
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Will, it seems to me that you're just a naturally physically coordinated guy. And I believe the part about fear getting in the way---I once tried to teach a 35 year old friend to swim and it was a big surprise to me how terrified he was just to try to float in 3 ft. of water, with me standing right there. I learned to swim when I was four, and being in the water feels exhilarating to me. I've also taught my nieces to swim, and they were fearful too, but much more excited about learning to do something they really wanted to do, which was swim in the ocean just like their mom and their aunt. I try to remember that excitement with my own efforts in music.
But back to the physical coordination thing. I think it comes more easily to some, less so to others who have to work harder at it, and to some not at all. I'm kind of in the middle of that range. I learned to be a sign language interpreter many years ago, and I ended up getting pretty good at it, but it took a good 3 years of constant training and practice. And it was hard! Hard to learn, hard sometimes to do.
And I'll tell you something else---I never met one hearing person who learned it completely fluently (could sign like a deaf person) who hadn't learned it as a child. There is something about the young brain that allows for a different kind of learning than what an adult can do. My fiddle teacher and I were talking about this last week---I asked him if he had ever met anyone who became a really good player who started at a late age, and he hadn't. I've met one, but he plays old-time fiddle---all the good Irish players I've ever met have played since they were 6. Which isn't to say it can't be done as an adult---I just think it attests to the reality that it's not an easy thing to do.
And you never did say what you think *is* difficult...
# Posted on June 15th 2008 by kennedy
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Heh, I did say juggling 7 balls was difficult. And teaching people to trust their ears is difficult--it's hard to come up with ways to break through their reliance on the dots and their reluctance to take the aural leap.
I'm not sure physical coordination has much to do with playing fiddle, although it can't hurt. More important perhaps is the plasticity of the brain. I'm a native English speaker, but I became fluent in Italian by the time I was 5 years old. Then learned French in 1st grade from a teacher who spoke no English (or Italian). Then took Spanish (for 7 years) and German (for 5 years) in school and college. All the while learning to play various kinds of music (rock, bluegrass, old timey, Irish) on various instruments (drums, guitar, mandolin, fiddle, banjo). So between languages and music, my aural brain got a lot of exercise.
But I think adults can recover that chidlike frame of mind for learning and assimilating and absorbing, as long as we don't tell ourselves that we can't.
# Posted on June 15th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
yes - there was sarcasm - sorry - I just get worked up about this stupid topic....yet I cant seem to stop myself posting. Also that Cee was going on about how "everyone" in Ireland does it that way when, what? - Cees been to Willie week like 3 times..big deal.
Kennedy - it is difficult to pick this up as an adult - I started at a later age and fiddle still drives me insane, I'll never be as good as my friends who started at 6 years old BUT I can still learn all tunes by ear. Its the same as anything - it just takes lots of practice.
If you need proof re dots versus ear - then just reffer to Will's post with the youtube clips.
I teach sometimes - and I make students pick tunes up by ear...if they feel they need the dots then I direct them here to print them out - but do tell them they should just try and do without. Its obvious just from these clips posted that even if the tunes were learnt by ear - some where perhaps not really *listening*.
# Posted on June 15th 2008 by bb
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
"I teach sometimes - and I make students pick tunes up by ear...if they feel they need the dots then I direct them here to print them out - but do tell them they should just try and do without"
bb
,this is precisely what I do as well ,in fact I would rather record on to a pupils mobile phone,than write out abc or music.
Finally to the comment made by Zargblast,he is not a genuine account holder,but someone with a personal grudge against me,as was a previous commenter, Fisting for Jesus,who did not have a genuine account either.
judging from the timing of the last comment [ Zargblast] it might indicate someone from this forum.
I know who it is,and find it very sad that anyone has to make up a false account twice,purely to say something unpleasant.
in fact it is very sad that there is not much tolerance shown to other peoples points of view on this forum.
# Posted on June 15th 2008 by dickens metrognome
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Mutandis, wonderful analogy about the dots being "stilted letters" from old friends.
As far as the backwaters go, we're hanging in there. Lucky us, Florida has retired senior citizens from all over the country, even plenty. They bring their music and instruments with them, and they come to sessions. I can't speak for other places that are truly isolated, without any teacher/mentor/clan elders around and how that works out, though. A topic for a different discussion, perhaps. Probably done before, "Technology and ITM " or something.
Oh yeah, recently:
http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/17790/
As far as moderating these discussions go, it does look like a pain. I guess that's why people try to help Jeremy as much as possible. Maybe he needs some moderators, some of you even-keeled veterans. It's too bad so many good folks got scared away, but there's still so many, and some good ones have returned too.
...but then that would ruin the great experiment, right? The whole liberty, free for all thing is appealing. The session with no host. Strong players/posters rising to the top, though sometimes you get loud eejits. [shrug]
# Posted on June 15th 2008 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Im sorry , I dont get it? the session will cpt posted demonstrates nothing about ear learning, only that Its a beginners session with a mixed bunch of folk What is it supposed to show? I found it hard to listen too as it happens. Is that it will?
Dicks air sounds absolutely lovely.
ps i learnt by ear the first 10yrs or so so banish for exampl was learnt by ear.
# Posted on June 15th 2008 by jig
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3FwKEAS6eM ,come on then tell me how these were learned.
# Posted on June 15th 2008 by dickens metrognome
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=dE0nP9F1XF8,
this was learned from the dots originally.
you cant say that this is stilted,
there are other players on this forum who have learned by ear and by the dots,and I bet youcant say which of their tunes are which.
if youwant to compare like with like put something up of yourself solo,
with respect everyone sounds better in a group situation.
# Posted on June 15th 2008 by dickens metrognome
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
LOl, go on then, jig and dick, dig yourselves deeper into the hole. You're missing the point.
Let me make it clear: based on your clips which you've posted publicly, you both have serious issues with timing (speeding up and slowing down) and you have absolutely no lift, no pulse, no nyah. Yet you both insist in this forum on pushing your wrongheaded book-learned, dot-ridden, metronomic approach to learning this music. If you could play, you'd have a case to make. But as it happens, neither of you would be able to keep up in any session I've played in, including just the "average" ones.
That you both claim to be teachers of this music (really, dick, a tutorial?! Shouldn't you learn to play first?) shows just how full of yourselves and how deaf to your own noise you truly are.
This isn't about learning by ear vs. learning from the dots--it's about whether or not you can even play the music. Because if you can't (as we've now heard), then you shouldn't be misleading people about your prowess and all the dots, scales, metronome drills, etc., that got you to this brilliant level of musicianship. In the old days, townspeople would run snake oil salesmen out of town. We can only hope Jeremy wakes up and does the same.
See, I don't claim to be god's gift to the music. So I don't spend my time recording myself and posting it to the web. If there are recordings of me playing, it's because *someone else* thought it was worth recording (not my own ego), and if it gets posted to YouTube or wherever, that's fine with me. When Reverend gets back from Zoukfest, perhaps he'll post some clips of my playing. I have no idea if he has anything of me playing solo or not. Whatever.
But trying to have a discussion with people who are this delusional is pointless. I quit.
# Posted on June 15th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Tunes can be learned from sheet music provided the player already understands and has a firm grip on the style and ornamentation. Many fine players have told me that they found a particular tune in manuscript and learned it from that source. The problem with written music is if learners use it without the proper audio reference as a guide.
I personally prefer to have my students who can read music notation put it aside and only use it as a reminder of how the tune goes... like taking notes. But I insist they do their best to use the audio reference primarily. I also suggest they attend sessions as listeners first to start getting the tunes in their head. If that's not possible I suggest they listen to recordings repeatedly. I steer them towards the Foinn session recordings since those are the most session-like and feature common settings for well-known tunes. But I steer them away from the sheet music that accompanies those recordings.
# Posted on June 15th 2008 by Phantom Button
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Will, I understand where you're coming from and I kind of agree with what you're saying, but I object on principle to such attacks on other posters' playing.
I don't want this board to become a place where people who disagree dig up YouTube clips of each other to hold up and ridicule; I just don't like where that kind of thing leads. Even in a case like this where it's somewhat justified, it's still nasty and unpleasant.
There's plenty to attack by sticking to the words being posted. We really don't need to hear how certain people play to know that they might not know as much as they pretend; it's clear from the posts themselves.
Let's not get to the point where we're challenging each other to post clips of playing, so that we can tear one another apart. I think this sets a bad precident. It implies that people have to post clips of their playing to prove that they have a right to post in discussions here, at the risk of having their playing picked apart and ridiculed.
No one needs to hear jig's playing to know that he pretends to know more than he does, we can see all we need to from what he writes. Using this board to attack others' playing is something that I think will make a lot of people here uncomfortable.
# Posted on June 15th 2008 by Marklar
The best do both
~ perhaps not at the same time.
Ah, the perennial dilema of a musical discussion; how does one 'discuss' what one hears?
It is constantly being translated.
Sheet music, ears, abc, YouTube . . .
I still like Zappa's line,
"Shut up & play . . ."
# Posted on June 15th 2008 by Random_notes
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Screetch, while I agree that it's unpleasant, I have to disagree that "everyone" can see the blather for what it is. Plus, real people are being hurt and driven off by this self-proclaimed guru of the music.
Before I ever posted his own public clips, Jig launched attacks on other members' playing (including ridiculing Reverend's playing based on one clip), and ran good people off with his over-inflated boasts mixed with harmful advice. He doesn't limit himself to doing this on the board--he also tears people down in emails. Frankly, I'm tired of getting emails from people wounded by his criticisms of their playing and ideas.
There's plenty of room on this board for differing opinions and healthy back-and-forth. Some of us long-time members have nurtured exactly that, and even vouched for members to keep them on board when popular sentiment veered the other way.
What there should not be room for is outright lying and incivility (and worse) just to prop up one's own ego. Jeremy's suspensions clearly aren't helping improve the offending behavior. I don't know why it's allowed to continue.
Finally, some of us posted clips of our playing a long time ago on the Might Craic. It turned out to be a fair way for participants to assess whose advice warranted a listening, and whose perhaps to regard with more skepticism. Chiff and Fipple has gone through much the same process, weeding out some vociferous advice-givers who, it turned out, didn't know what they were talking about. That's not a bad thing. Like in a real session, if you're in over your head, it's wise to do more listening than chiming in.
# Posted on June 15th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Another way to think of it is a lot of relative beginners here might get more out of thesession.org if they asked questions instead of spouting advice. I'm not saying this to be mean, but to be helpful. Sure, join in the craic, pass along what you've learned from more experienced players. This is a great place for that sort of thing. But it's also a great place for listening to and learning from some folks who've really been around the track more than once and who have something to share.
# Posted on June 15th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Screetch, I'm uncomfortable also with the "prove it" thing, and it would indeed be a bad thing if it sets a precedent. However, the context of Will resorting to it is the culmination of a long time of difficult tooing and frowing. Yes, the chasm between Jig's ability and his crowing has been obvious to most of us ever since he started here, but this place is often visited by newcomers, genuine enthusiasts in search of a bit of knowledge. And I've lost count of the amount of times in the past few months that perfectly amiable and informative discussions have been derailed by this character's bonkers intrusions. So posting links to his dismal playing - freely available, uploaded by himself - is, though lamentable, a seemingly reasonable last resort.
However, "shut up and play" is grand advice - coming in a close second to "shut up and listen".
# Posted on June 15th 2008 by llig leahcim
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Well there you go, your all big enough to make your own judgements, but at least we have the nerve to post our playing rather than hiding behind a bunch of others in a session, I man come on, you post a link to show us how 'good' you are but we cant hear you at all?What have you got to hide? For the record its been about 15 yrs since I spent any time with the banjo, 7 for the mandolin. I hardly ever play tunes on the guitar any more though I have just bought a new guitar so may spend some time at it again. Thats me playing cold after many years absence so I dont worry too much about your comments, not that I really care what you think anyhow. Were you to demonstrate that you are not all mouth , as Im sure you can, cant you? then I might view it differently.
# Posted on June 15th 2008 by jig
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
I have been personally attacked,my ability to be able to write a tutorial has been questioned.
Edel Fox;said this about my playing
jig ,nice pace, nice use of ornamentation.
Slowair played with great feeling nice chording.
Reel ,watch your tempo,good playing.
Polka,nice dance pace,lovely playing on an English concertina
Patricia Higgins
Slow Air ,very well played good variation good phrasing.
Reel good steady tempo throughout,good performance.
Jig;wellplayed good steady tempo throughout.Hornpipe good use of triplets in first part. I felt the second part was crowded with too much variation.DickMiles
# Posted on June 15th 2008 by dickens metrognome
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Questioned and insulted by someone who hasnt the nerve to demonstrate his supposed prowess.
ps I didnt ridicule your friends playing will actually, if I did, then you can surely cut and paste to prove it. Elliot, fair enough I did make a couple of comments but its a big bad world out here folks, if you cant handle the heat, get out of the kitchen....
# Posted on June 15th 2008 by jig
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
my tutor[for] theEnglish Concertina is not just about itm,
it covers Song accompaniment ,northumbrian style,
playing in awkward flat keys,as well as Irish ornamentation and is aimed at beginne rto intermediate level
my credentials are these, I spent three years playing in a classical concertina quartet,and over thirty years playing traditional tunes and accompanying songs as aprofessional musician,.DickMiles
# Posted on June 15th 2008 by dickens metrognome
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Thanks Michael.
'Shut up & listen' works for me since it helps me hear whether or not I have something worth contributing. If so, then I play.
I do know some very good players who are capable of talking a blue streak when i would rather they simply,'Shut up & play.'
But, hey, you tell someone on a forum to shut up & , well . . . you know.
Cheers
# Posted on June 15th 2008 by Random_notes
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Why are uncomfortable with this 'prove it' thing llig? dont be shy, Im sure you are a great fiddler, same with will. Why not show us?Whats there to be scared of? some unpleasant snide insulting comments? come on be brave , sticks and stones and all that...... besides I can assure you I would'nt stoop to making derogatory comments. After all I think Ive heard you play many years ago. I didnt make any comments did I ? not positive , not negative. just observed .
# Posted on June 15th 2008 by jig
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Because ultimately it's pointless. I'm not interested in proving anything, I have no ego about it. I used to, many years ago, but I've grown out of it. And it would be particularly pointless for you anyway. How would you be able to rate my playing when you are so incapable of rating you own.
# Posted on June 15th 2008 by llig leahcim
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
http://www.soundlantern.com/UpdatedSoundPage.do?ToId=1255&Path=rodneysglory.mp3.
# Posted on June 15th 2008 by dickens metrognome
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
ultimately life is pointless llig so thats just a meaningless excuse. I can well rate my own playing, and that of the people I play with. I Why do you think I am interested in 'rateing' your playing? I am just curious, perhaps you really are all that you make yourself out to be? the best music in The town of the night, lets here you. Surely you can demonstrate? Perhaps you really do know what you are talking about? I have it on good authority that you are plain wrong on at least one issue, and I know from my own discussions with you that its not the only time. Perhaps you cant stand on your own .?.... You have no ego about it?! thats great, so you wont mind demonstrating then..... whether you get good comments or bad it means nothing to you right? no ego. no attachment.... I find that hard to believe actually, I think you are kidding yourself.
# Posted on June 15th 2008 by jig
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Perhaps we should all just go away until the village what's missing its idiot finally comes and claims this one....
# Posted on June 16th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Actually, all of this arguing is pointless because none of you can hold a candle to Kevin Burke, Martin Hayes, Liz Carroll, Tommy Peoples, Randal Bays, etc. etc. etc.--just to name some fiddlers.
If you want to help beginners get started on the right foot--and I assume that's what this is all about, because otherwise it would just be childish bickering, right?--point them to the really great players for proper examples of how it's done. Compared to their playing, I doubt that your own efforts--sincere as they might be--are worth arguing about.
# Posted on June 16th 2008 by mickray
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
"However easy it is to wind up llig, thats not what I am here for." Jig
"This nonsense will run and run and run no matter what sense gets politely, or otherwise, put. Such is the nature of it." Me
You are probably right there Mickray, and I'll point myself in the direction of Liz Carroll any day. But when someone comes along with all this nonsense about how they've been playing for 30 years and this and that is the way I've done it and it's worked for me etc. and wallows in self aggrandisement while trying to goad others and is actually a really really dreadful player, what else can you do? The fellow has no humility. He doesn't believe in it. I don't even think he knows it exists.
Going away will not solve anything unfortunately. There is nothing Jig would like more than for him to be the only person here. For him to be unopposed.
# Posted on June 16th 2008 by llig leahcim
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Oh, I see Will. I challenge you on something, and now I should just shut up and stop posting. Just some friendly advice, right?
Don't worry, you'll get your wish. I've had about enough of certain over-inflated egos around here.
# Posted on June 16th 2008 by Marklar
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Agreed, but thats OK, its not a competition. My First gig is as a backer thats what I mostly do at sessions, Im surrounded by the most amazing fiddlers, box players and Im just happy they welcome me into the sessions. I have no illusions when comparing myself with these people. folk who have been playing over 40 yrs. Some of the best musicians in Ireland bar none give me big grins so I know Im doing something right
But there is a serious point to all this. Will is being thoroughly unpleasant insulting myself and dick but is not prepared to demonstrate the position upon which he judges from. If he really is as good as he says then let him prove it. I mean he teaches fiddle camps and stuff so surely he must be good. so why wont he show us? put his money where his mouth is? I dont doubt him but at the same time I have only his word upon it and as his behavior at the moment has sunk so low I wonder where he is coming from.. Is that a surprising position? I am happy to stick a few old tunes down , just remembered Rodneys glory thanks to dick's link. just recorded it for the crack. why not? the kids are asleep. I am at peace, at home, just put some strings on my SO's mandolin, [I dont have one.... ]press record.... simple
mind you theres an annoying flutter thats just appeared? Oh well wonder what that is..?
http://www.soundlantern.com/MySounds.do
# Posted on June 16th 2008 by jig
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Agreed, but thats OK, etc was in answer to mickray
# Posted on June 16th 2008 by jig
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
So, for months now, you've been handing out all this advice on how to play tunes and how your ornaments are not part of the tune etc and how classical violin technique is really good for you and you practice scales and that, with a metronome and read music etc etc - and put blue tack on your bridge - etc ....
But you don't actually play tunes, you strum?
# Posted on June 16th 2008 by llig leahcim
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
?
# Posted on June 16th 2008 by jig
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
I was talking to Alisdar White the other day (from Battlefield band) and when he mentioned he lived in Edingburgh I said I was on the same forum as one Michael gill - he replied "ah jesus Bridie, that Michael is a lovely fiddle player, really top notch"
I dont need to see a clip to know that llig is a great fiddle player, I have heard if from the mouths of such people as Alisdar White and Chris Drever (from Lau). And that is better than any recording. Sorry if I embarrassed you llig - it had to be done.
# Posted on June 16th 2008 by bb
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
I'm sorry, but this really is just nonsense. It's rare that someone can lead me to lose my patience, yet that's what's happened here. I apologize to anyone caught off guard by my comments here--especially to those who've bothered to read my posts over the years and now find themselves wincing at the spectacle this has become.
I'm also tired of being held to a double standard. So the reason I called jig and dickens on the discrepancy between their boasts and their actual playing is this: all it takes for incivility to triumph is for good people to do nothing.
# Posted on June 16th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
[please disregard my previous post, I plead temporary insanity]
Will, I'm glad that you're trying to do something about the problem even if I don't like some of the methods. Jig is ruining the discussion board and something does need to be done about it.
But I don't think anything short of a ban is going to do it. If it were possible to shame jig into going away, that would have happened long ago.
Jig needs to be banned, plain and simple. Until he is, we have the awful choice between ignoring him and allowing his nonsense to possibly do harm, or tear down his nonsense at the cost of getting into the cycle of attacks that he seems to enjoy and which make the board unpleasant to read.
I don't think you can fix this, Will, I think it's up to Jeremy.
# Posted on June 16th 2008 by Marklar
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
[Thank goodness it was only temporary.
]
Jeremy's advice in such situations is to simply ignore the problem. But that doesn't stop the eejits from trampling all over other people' feelings and sensibilities. So it goes.
# Posted on June 16th 2008 by Will CPT
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
[Also that Cee was going on about how "everyone" in Ireland does it that way when, what? - Cees been to Willie week like 3 times..big deal.]
there is that a-bray-sive, gratuitous, ad hominem nastiness, and, last but not least, that penchant for mischaracterizing what one has said, (also known in some quarters as, lying), that had, alas, until recently, for whatever blissful reason, been absent from this site for a lovely too-short while.
as this problematic poster well knows, i nowhere said that "everyone" in ireland uses sheet music. i said it is far from bizarre, ("bizarre," being in fact this individual's word---see, when you cite someone's words in quotes, they need to have in fact used the word), and is very much the done thing in many quarters. the ascribing of the word "everyone" to me, and the mendacious use of quote marks, is the sort of dirty pool i am so sorry to see being played here again.
as for what my experiences with irish master teachers has been, they number many aside of three years at clancy week, and, nothing in anything i've said even came close to justifying this apparently reading-comprehension-handicapped individual's characterizations. is this person sloppy-drunk? or merely malicious? it's like cruella de vil on seconal, lurching around with a pitcher of gin martinis, braying at the puppies. .
[why the sarcasm]? kennedy, i don't get it either. one might not agree with my input, but the seeming inability to disagree without personalized sarcasm and ad hominem braying is so, so wearisome. please, please, please---sober up, or get some help, i don't care what the cause of it is, just desist.
# Posted on June 16th 2008 by ceemonster
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Bad musicians making their mark on this website has caused it Cee.
Sorry you got in the cross fire....I'm not drunk....but after reading your above post I really wish I was.
# Posted on June 16th 2008 by bb
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Oh - and just so we are clear. The reason I was absent (for that "blissful lovley too short while" - was all down to you Cee and no one else. I actually came back because I thought you were not t posting anymore...
# Posted on June 16th 2008 by bb
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
The discussion I posted was simply quoting one of Irelands finest, if not THE finest B/C box player in Ireland . The point being that Surely we need to listen to and respect the opinions of people like this? I certainly do even if I dont agree.
It degenerated into personal attacks which is rather a shame but cest la vie. ITs quite clear who is being civil and who is being insulting on this thread... As I said llig is probably a fine fiddler, as is will, so why wont they show us the benefits of their approach? There all to ready to put others down to attempt to raise their own standing but not to engage in reasoned , discussion without resorting to negative behaviour. This is an open forum, we are entitled to air our opinions. What is wrong with that? were we young lads with no experiance we would nonethe less be entitled to express those without petty insults. The rule is civility, There are no preconditions that you must be able to play a certain number of tunes befor you can post. We are not responsible for others behaviour, only our own .
Will decided that he would post some links to a small sample of mine and dicks playing to make some point about ear learning? Which I have done all my life bar the first 9 years. He put a link to a large session which is , to be charitable, a bit rough, to demonstrate what? something about not learning from the dots? I still dont get that one..... we cant even hear him play amidst all the chaos. ?
You started this will, you 'threw down the glove' Are you going to back out with your tail between your legs or post your playing, unaccompanied, warts and all ?
# Posted on June 16th 2008 by jig
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
you know fine well you started this thread for no other reason thann to stir sh*t.
# Posted on June 16th 2008 by llig leahcim
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
I would like to hear Will's playing by himself. I think it might be informative for all of the advice he's so generous with on this site.
# Posted on June 16th 2008 by Phantom Button
Re: ''the best players can always do both."
Just what is it with "Kick Will" day? Probably the most generous contributor on this site. If you were to kick people off in order of the value of their contributions over the years he'd be that last