One of llig's points about this music is that it's all about the phrasing. To quote: "Phrasing is what makes the tunes work"... To which I agree (although, the rhythm is pretty important too)
To take it back to a language analogy, phrasing is learning to express musical ideas eloquently. You may be getting across the same idea, but expressing it in a different way. It seems to me that each instrument might phrase things differently, however. (And I play an instrument that llig doesn't like much) But letting go of the individual notes (like the written music conveys) is important to phrasing. And a large part of my personal music journey in the last few years has been to get away from just playing the notes the same way over and over, and learning to manipulate the phrasing as I'm playing, according to whim.
I thought I would ask people about the different things that you do that would be considered part of your phrasing.
Things off the top of my head that I do that are part of phrasing:
- move rhythmic articulation (ornamentation) around to different places
- addition (as in triplets, etc) or subtraction of notes
- subtle play with the rhythm, by leading the beat occasionally, or delaying a note occasionally
- use of accidentals, and slides up from notes not within the key/mode of the tune
- emphasis on certain notes, by playing them slightly louder, but then cutting them off to add both lift and rhythmic interest
- melodic variation, in my case, often toward the end of a phrase, where I "find a different way home"
I don't think that's a comprehensive list, by any means. But I'm curious to know what you do that helps you phrase your music. And are there things that you do in your phrasing that are real specific to your instrument?
I'm especially curious to hear llig's take here. Is this what you mean, when you refer to phrasing? Or am I completely off base?
I also feel like a lot (not all) of phrasing seems to go by the wayside when the music gets up to fast session speed. Some of that is OK, because at fast speed, the melodic turns become more interesting, and provide some of the musical interest that might be lost in the phrasing. But is phrasing at full speed something that comes more with time, or do you also allow some of the phrasing to disappear when you're playing faster?
Great thread Rev, Nicely put.
I see phrasing as different ways , rhythmically ,to say the 'same thing'. So its about where to stress notes, and where to stretch notes, punctuation, pauses. Ebb and flow, slight speeding up or slowing down within the beat . missing notes out, Dynamics of volume, Tone, ie aggressive edgy,, questioning, soft....
Just a few ideas.
Please don't allow the phrasing to disappear. It is actually what makes the tunes work at fast tempos.
Have you every had a conversation with someone about 3 - 4 years old who can speak so fast they never take a breath. Or as they would say, "Haveyoueveryhadaconversationwithsomeoneabout3-4yearsoldwhocanspeakofasttheynevertakeabreath?"
Wow Reverend, I think your list is quite comprehensive. I'm going to send that out via email as 'the things I do to phrase the music' to some friends I play with. I couldn't have explained it better myself.
Yes, things sometimes get sacrificed at high speeds. Ever play in a ceili band for dancers? I often feel like I have a play and pause button on my face, and one speed, ludicrous.
However, it's possible to play rapidly and still get a little phrasing in. In fact, just like Random says, itwouldsoundjustlikethisifyoudidn't.
Back to the language analogy - some friends and I were equating musical phrasing to the way some actors deliver their lines. Some folks deliver their "musical phrases" in a plodding John Wayne style. Others use dramatic pauses like William Shatner or Christopher Walken - often times in the most unexpected (pause) places! But blessed are those great character actors like Bob Hoskins, Meryl Streep, Lawrence Olivier, etc who can drift in and out of character seamlessly; adopt accents when needed and deliver their lines in all sorts of ways. I want to play Irish music like that some day.
"Yes-well put! Various music teachers at college often said that phrases are the sentences of music. Causing the music to breathe (real as with a wind instrument player or singer) or virtual for other instruments. It's a logical place to brake the flow for interest's sake or for the form the composer wishes to achieve. The musical sentence is all part of the larger form and makes a complete musical thought that adds to the overall idea of the music."
...and yes, there are specific fiddle things, specific instrument things. Playing with a fluter now for a while has opened my eyes (ears?) to different ways of phrasing that are unique to the flute, and I try to mimic them with the fiddle.
When I initially started, I would always attempt to mimic the phrasing of pipes, just because I listened to a lot of Planxty starting out. Then I picked up the whistle, and that created more ideas about how to phrase, and I incorporated them into my fiddle playing.
I think that's one of the great things about the fiddle, (oh geez, here he goes again) the flexibility to phrase in so many different ways.
Obviously, there are ways to phrase to sound more appropriate to this music than others. These are indicated by the phrasing of pipes, flutes, whistles, etc. Wher we hear music with players phrasing in unorthodox ways, it tips us off and we know it doesn't sound 'qutie right'.
Obviously, listening to a lot of the music and caring enough to attempt to phrase in 'traditional' ways is what creates a player whose music we recognize as something we like, something that sounds 'traditional' to our ears.
I've picked up more than a few polkas and slides from boxes, being a bit of a Luachra fiend, and sure enough, the phrasing there carries over into my fiddle playing on those types of tunes. Something about the box's phrasing (as limited as Llig might say it is) on those types of tunes just seems 'right'.
Rev, the most important thing you missed off your list is breathing.
I'm interested in Jussa's actor analogy, though I'd disagree with the findings. Lawrence Olivier may well have studied the ability to phrase his language with poise and measure, but never in a million years does it sound like conversation. Give me Christopher Walken any day. His scene about where Bruce Willis's Dad's watch spent the war, in Pulp Fiction, is a great lesson in phrasing and timing. Very natural.
Th master of phrasing is Tommy Peoples. Sublime.
Really, the knack of it is merely to make bar line invisible. To make chunks on tune, no matter where they start or finish, stand on their own.
I agree - Chris Walken is the Tommy Peoples of acting. However, Larry Olivier could probably fake a decent Walken impersonation - my point being - someone who deeply studies the craft can learn phrasing from many sources and incorporate it into a new expression completely their own.
>> Rev, the most important thing you missed off your list is breathing.
Yeah, good point. I will sometimes drop a note, maybe accenting the one before it, which mimics a flute player taking a breath. It works even on banjo.
The thing for me is really just learning to express the music through my instrument, instead of just plodding along, playing the notes. I also know a few people who play nicely enough, but they will always play the same variations in the same places. To the point where it *is* a bit like they're acting, and trying to create the exact same performance (ooops, I said the p word...) every time they play. Which is fine for, well, a performance, but not so good for a conversation. Because it gets to be a bit like "I got you babe" on the clock radio in the movie Groundhog Day... The exact same... Over and over (and over).
"Singing" through your instrument is easier on wind and bowed-string instruments, less so on plectrum instruments. But that sense of inhaling and singing out during the exhale is really what drives all phrasing. Instrumentalists who forget this tend to sound like Random's run-on little kid.
That said, in irish trad tunes, the punctuation (that separates one phrase from the next) is fairly soft--not many periods or exclamation marks in this music, because that would stop the flow. But question marks, commas, semicolons, colons (no jokes, now ), ellipses, dashes, parentheses--all of these have analogs in the ways we can tug and push at the timing and flow of the tune to shape the length and character of musical phrases.
Ideally, your own phrasing should surprise you, especially in sessions and other informal situations. It should be influenced by what you hear other people playing, and your mood, and an endless sense of playfulness with the tunes.
I tend to listen for bits of the tune that want to end or pause, and then find ways to keep the momentum going another 3 or 4 notes, or even ramp into the "next phrase" without losing momentum, and then find a different place to loiter.
(Timely thread, Rev. I'm doing a daylong fiddle camp tomorrow.)
Seems to me that the most interesting phrasings in this music happen when you loiter or carry momentum in an unusual spot in the tune, but it still "makes sense" or even puts the tune in a whole new light.
I just want to platy the tune right and make it sound pretty. I seldom analyze to this extent. I just try to play the tune as I hear it in my head. I don't know if anybody who I play with is so analytical, either. Maybe if I'm teaching a tune I'll work it out differently than usual but in any case the variations are all very slight.
Finally here is the OP's band: http://ntw.net/~reverend/MaggiesFavourite/janesjigs.mp3
His comments should be taken in context with the music he makes.
Totally with you there cocus, fair enough if others want to analyze the method of playing tunes to death but surely the vast majority of points made in this thread are obvious to anyone but a complete novice. Can't be bothered with that flowery talking nonsense really.
Ok, but its complete novices who come here looking for help!
Its OK to be a novice, we were all of us there at one stage or other, theres no shame in having an open mind and asking for advice, more power to them.
Because you or I dont analyse what we do does not mean that its not a perfectly valid approach. Its just a different one. it offers a different view point to our own way and can be of benefit to us all to consider how others approach the music.
What was the point of posting that sound clip? (Pete, you guys sound good, by the way).
If some people want to analyse phrasing or find ways to articulate how you do it, that's brilliant. I remember when I was first learning, going to workshops at tionols, and I realized my phrasing was crap (not like it isn't now) so would ask the teacher how they would describe phrasing, what advice they had on how to improve it, what things you might think about when phrasing a tune, etc. Most teachers, brilliant players themselves, had no idea how to describe phrasing. It was just something they did and was so second nature that they couldn't articulate how to do it. They just did it.
Eventually you do internalize it by listening to lots of Irish music, but I think internalization was helped along the way by a few people I encountered who were able to describe phrasing.
So if you are ever likely to teach your instrument, being able to articulate and analyse this stuff will be help your students. It is hard to articulate something you have almost on autopilot, but worthwhile. I remember once I was teaching someone to ride and they were like, "How on earth is it possible to maintain a steady position on the horse while the horse is bouncing around at a trot or canter, but at the same time be loose and supple and follow the horse?" If you've ridden for a zillion years, this is the most natural thing in the world to do, but it was a total conundrum to a beginner. The first answer I thought of was, "You just figure it out," but decided that would be totally unhelpful the student so I stumbled through a more detailed explanation. You also have to accept that the student may not change what their doing immediately as a result of your brilliant explanation, but it will give them something to think about and help them in the long term.
The other thing... I think a lot of the stuff Rev and Will are talking about is fairly advanced. Asking a beginner to *apply* that is, to go back to the horse analogy, like asking a beginner to ride upper level dressage movements which require a degree of subtlety, feel, and timing they won't have. But it is still helpful to be able to explain it. Like the green horse or green rider, the newbie musician needs to be able to play steady, supple, and forward first.
It's barely for me. I'm always impressed by Will's ability to explain in detail the finer points of things folks do intuitively by listening and knowing how to play their instrument.
It's always amusing when people who can't appreciate this feel the need to say so. OK, great, so then....uh, go away?
Um, the only reason I can articulate the intuitive stuff is because I teach music. Day in, day out, I explain these things to people who ask to be taught. When I play, I'm not in analytical mode.
But I can't think of many top tier players who don't do the same thing. Seems most of the brilliant players of this music have thought about the nuances in depth. Ask Tommy Peoples about triplets, or Sean Smyth about the micro tones between c nat and c sharp, or Kevin Burke about cuts and rolls. You'll get a longer (and likely more interesting and eduficational :-8) lecture than any thread on the mustard board.
I don't think about this stuff much while I'm playing. And one of the things I really like about playing this music is that it works out the other side of my brain... But I'm a computer programmer by trade, so my brain tends toward analytical thinking, and I do like to analyze what it is that I'm doing, or what it is that other people are doing that I like to hear. For me, a deeper intellectual understanding of what's going on in the music makes it easier for it to appear even when I'm not thinking about it...
I tend to breath at the end of phrases, but one thing that intrigues me about this music is that people often take their breaths in the middle of phrases, and those little transitions from one phrase to the next get a lot of emphasis. One difference between the jazz of my youth, and the music I play now in pubs.
Good thread, good thoughts here !
Supprised Micko Russel did not come into this discussion. Unique style of phrasing. It's the gaps between the notes that actually make the music, without these gaps we are have only gobledegook and a jumble of notes.
This may not be helpful, but I always saw phrasing, personally, as coming more from the right hand... bowing. How many notes in one bow, the direction of the bow, the control of the bow, etc. Then the left hand follows its lead. It's easier to "see" and hear on airs than on faster reels, jigs, etc. Also, aesthetically, I agree with the abstract notion of "feeling". Mood can really affect a piece of music.
Yes, murcu, the notes shouldn't all just blur together into one very long note. As one of my teachers told me when I was a teenager, "there should be daylight between the notes".
I appreciate everything you all have put into this discussion. I've been at a loss lately because I'm at a point in my playing where if my phrasing were more solid, more interesting, more something, then my playing would enter into the musical category rather than just trying to play a tune on the fiddle. I like the analytical approach, even though it's true that I won't be able to apply it right away, it'll sink in eventually...I hope!
Thanks so much for everyone's input, please keep writing! (I definitely need your help! )
Phrasing
Phrasing
One of llig's points about this music is that it's all about the phrasing. To quote: "Phrasing is what makes the tunes work"... To which I agree (although, the rhythm is pretty important too)
To take it back to a language analogy, phrasing is learning to express musical ideas eloquently. You may be getting across the same idea, but expressing it in a different way. It seems to me that each instrument might phrase things differently, however. (And I play an instrument that llig doesn't like much) But letting go of the individual notes (like the written music conveys) is important to phrasing. And a large part of my personal music journey in the last few years has been to get away from just playing the notes the same way over and over, and learning to manipulate the phrasing as I'm playing, according to whim.
I thought I would ask people about the different things that you do that would be considered part of your phrasing.
Things off the top of my head that I do that are part of phrasing:
- move rhythmic articulation (ornamentation) around to different places
- addition (as in triplets, etc) or subtraction of notes
- subtle play with the rhythm, by leading the beat occasionally, or delaying a note occasionally
- use of accidentals, and slides up from notes not within the key/mode of the tune
- emphasis on certain notes, by playing them slightly louder, but then cutting them off to add both lift and rhythmic interest
- melodic variation, in my case, often toward the end of a phrase, where I "find a different way home"
I don't think that's a comprehensive list, by any means. But I'm curious to know what you do that helps you phrase your music. And are there things that you do in your phrasing that are real specific to your instrument?
I'm especially curious to hear llig's take here. Is this what you mean, when you refer to phrasing? Or am I completely off base?
I also feel like a lot (not all) of phrasing seems to go by the wayside when the music gets up to fast session speed. Some of that is OK, because at fast speed, the melodic turns become more interesting, and provide some of the musical interest that might be lost in the phrasing. But is phrasing at full speed something that comes more with time, or do you also allow some of the phrasing to disappear when you're playing faster?
# Posted on May 15th 2009 by Reverend
Re: Phrasing
Great thread Rev, Nicely put.
I see phrasing as different ways , rhythmically ,to say the 'same thing'. So its about where to stress notes, and where to stretch notes, punctuation, pauses. Ebb and flow, slight speeding up or slowing down within the beat . missing notes out, Dynamics of volume, Tone, ie aggressive edgy,, questioning, soft....
Just a few ideas.
# Posted on May 15th 2009 by piobagusfidil
Re: Phrasing
Please don't allow the phrasing to disappear. It is actually what makes the tunes work at fast tempos.
Have you every had a conversation with someone about 3 - 4 years old who can speak so fast they never take a breath. Or as they would say, "Haveyoueveryhadaconversationwithsomeoneabout3-4yearsoldwhocanspeakofasttheynevertakeabreath?"
# Posted on May 15th 2009 by Ben Steen
*
every? O.K. less coffee for me
# Posted on May 15th 2009 by Ben Steen
Re: Phrasing
Wow Reverend, I think your list is quite comprehensive. I'm going to send that out via email as 'the things I do to phrase the music' to some friends I play with. I couldn't have explained it better myself.
Yes, things sometimes get sacrificed at high speeds. Ever play in a ceili band for dancers? I often feel like I have a play and pause button on my face, and one speed, ludicrous.
However, it's possible to play rapidly and still get a little phrasing in. In fact, just like Random says, itwouldsoundjustlikethisifyoudidn't.
Typing that was quite amusing.
# Posted on May 15th 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Phrasing
Back to the language analogy - some friends and I were equating musical phrasing to the way some actors deliver their lines. Some folks deliver their "musical phrases" in a plodding John Wayne style. Others use dramatic pauses like William Shatner or Christopher Walken - often times in the most unexpected (pause) places! But blessed are those great character actors like Bob Hoskins, Meryl Streep, Lawrence Olivier, etc who can drift in and out of character seamlessly; adopt accents when needed and deliver their lines in all sorts of ways. I want to play Irish music like that some day.
# Posted on May 15th 2009 by Jusa Nutter Eejit
Re: Phrasing
Rev, my Da thumbs up:
"Yes-well put! Various music teachers at college often said that phrases are the sentences of music. Causing the music to breathe (real as with a wind instrument player or singer) or virtual for other instruments. It's a logical place to brake the flow for interest's sake or for the form the composer wishes to achieve. The musical sentence is all part of the larger form and makes a complete musical thought that adds to the overall idea of the music."
# Posted on May 15th 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Phrasing
...and yes, there are specific fiddle things, specific instrument things. Playing with a fluter now for a while has opened my eyes (ears?) to different ways of phrasing that are unique to the flute, and I try to mimic them with the fiddle.
When I initially started, I would always attempt to mimic the phrasing of pipes, just because I listened to a lot of Planxty starting out. Then I picked up the whistle, and that created more ideas about how to phrase, and I incorporated them into my fiddle playing.
I think that's one of the great things about the fiddle, (oh geez, here he goes again) the flexibility to phrase in so many different ways.
Obviously, there are ways to phrase to sound more appropriate to this music than others. These are indicated by the phrasing of pipes, flutes, whistles, etc. Wher we hear music with players phrasing in unorthodox ways, it tips us off and we know it doesn't sound 'qutie right'.
Obviously, listening to a lot of the music and caring enough to attempt to phrase in 'traditional' ways is what creates a player whose music we recognize as something we like, something that sounds 'traditional' to our ears.
I've picked up more than a few polkas and slides from boxes, being a bit of a Luachra fiend, and sure enough, the phrasing there carries over into my fiddle playing on those types of tunes. Something about the box's phrasing (as limited as Llig might say it is) on those types of tunes just seems 'right'.
# Posted on May 15th 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Phrasing
Rev, the most important thing you missed off your list is breathing.
I'm interested in Jussa's actor analogy, though I'd disagree with the findings. Lawrence Olivier may well have studied the ability to phrase his language with poise and measure, but never in a million years does it sound like conversation. Give me Christopher Walken any day. His scene about where Bruce Willis's Dad's watch spent the war, in Pulp Fiction, is a great lesson in phrasing and timing. Very natural.
Th master of phrasing is Tommy Peoples. Sublime.
Really, the knack of it is merely to make bar line invisible. To make chunks on tune, no matter where they start or finish, stand on their own.
# Posted on May 15th 2009 by ...
Re: Phrasing
"Haveyoueveryhadaconversationwithsomeoneabout3-4yearsoldwhocanspeakofasttheynevertakeabreath?"
Sounds like my teenage daughter!
# Posted on May 15th 2009 by piobagusfidil
Re: Phrasing
I agree - Chris Walken is the Tommy Peoples of acting. However, Larry Olivier could probably fake a decent Walken impersonation - my point being - someone who deeply studies the craft can learn phrasing from many sources and incorporate it into a new expression completely their own.
# Posted on May 16th 2009 by Jusa Nutter Eejit
Re: Phrasing
>> Rev, the most important thing you missed off your list is breathing.
Yeah, good point. I will sometimes drop a note, maybe accenting the one before it, which mimics a flute player taking a breath. It works even on banjo.
The thing for me is really just learning to express the music through my instrument, instead of just plodding along, playing the notes. I also know a few people who play nicely enough, but they will always play the same variations in the same places. To the point where it *is* a bit like they're acting, and trying to create the exact same performance (ooops, I said the p word...) every time they play. Which is fine for, well, a performance, but not so good for a conversation. Because it gets to be a bit like "I got you babe" on the clock radio in the movie Groundhog Day... The exact same... Over and over (and over).
# Posted on May 16th 2009 by Reverend
Re: Phrasing
Michael beat me to it--breathing.
), ellipses, dashes, parentheses--all of these have analogs in the ways we can tug and push at the timing and flow of the tune to shape the length and character of musical phrases.
"Singing" through your instrument is easier on wind and bowed-string instruments, less so on plectrum instruments. But that sense of inhaling and singing out during the exhale is really what drives all phrasing. Instrumentalists who forget this tend to sound like Random's run-on little kid.
That said, in irish trad tunes, the punctuation (that separates one phrase from the next) is fairly soft--not many periods or exclamation marks in this music, because that would stop the flow. But question marks, commas, semicolons, colons (no jokes, now
Ideally, your own phrasing should surprise you, especially in sessions and other informal situations. It should be influenced by what you hear other people playing, and your mood, and an endless sense of playfulness with the tunes.
I tend to listen for bits of the tune that want to end or pause, and then find ways to keep the momentum going another 3 or 4 notes, or even ramp into the "next phrase" without losing momentum, and then find a different place to loiter.
(Timely thread, Rev. I'm doing a daylong fiddle camp tomorrow.)
# Posted on May 16th 2009 by Will Harmon
Re: Phrasing
Seems to me that the most interesting phrasings in this music happen when you loiter or carry momentum in an unusual spot in the tune, but it still "makes sense" or even puts the tune in a whole new light.
# Posted on May 16th 2009 by Will Harmon
Re: Phrasing
I just want to platy the tune right and make it sound pretty. I seldom analyze to this extent. I just try to play the tune as I hear it in my head. I don't know if anybody who I play with is so analytical, either. Maybe if I'm teaching a tune I'll work it out differently than usual but in any case the variations are all very slight.
Finally here is the OP's band:
http://ntw.net/~reverend/MaggiesFavourite/janesjigs.mp3
His comments should be taken in context with the music he makes.
# Posted on May 16th 2009 by David Levine
Re: Phrasing
Totally with you there cocus, fair enough if others want to analyze the method of playing tunes to death but surely the vast majority of points made in this thread are obvious to anyone but a complete novice. Can't be bothered with that flowery talking nonsense really.
# Posted on May 16th 2009 by bogman
Re: Phrasing
Ok, but its complete novices who come here looking for help!
Its OK to be a novice, we were all of us there at one stage or other, theres no shame in having an open mind and asking for advice, more power to them.
Because you or I dont analyse what we do does not mean that its not a perfectly valid approach. Its just a different one. it offers a different view point to our own way and can be of benefit to us all to consider how others approach the music.
# Posted on May 16th 2009 by piobagusfidil
Re: Phrasing
What was the point of posting that sound clip? (Pete, you guys sound good, by the way).
If some people want to analyse phrasing or find ways to articulate how you do it, that's brilliant. I remember when I was first learning, going to workshops at tionols, and I realized my phrasing was crap (not like it isn't now) so would ask the teacher how they would describe phrasing, what advice they had on how to improve it, what things you might think about when phrasing a tune, etc. Most teachers, brilliant players themselves, had no idea how to describe phrasing. It was just something they did and was so second nature that they couldn't articulate how to do it. They just did it.
Eventually you do internalize it by listening to lots of Irish music, but I think internalization was helped along the way by a few people I encountered who were able to describe phrasing.
So if you are ever likely to teach your instrument, being able to articulate and analyse this stuff will be help your students. It is hard to articulate something you have almost on autopilot, but worthwhile. I remember once I was teaching someone to ride and they were like, "How on earth is it possible to maintain a steady position on the horse while the horse is bouncing around at a trot or canter, but at the same time be loose and supple and follow the horse?" If you've ridden for a zillion years, this is the most natural thing in the world to do, but it was a total conundrum to a beginner. The first answer I thought of was, "You just figure it out," but decided that would be totally unhelpful the student so I stumbled through a more detailed explanation. You also have to accept that the student may not change what their doing immediately as a result of your brilliant explanation, but it will give them something to think about and help them in the long term.
The other thing... I think a lot of the stuff Rev and Will are talking about is fairly advanced. Asking a beginner to *apply* that is, to go back to the horse analogy, like asking a beginner to ride upper level dressage movements which require a degree of subtlety, feel, and timing they won't have. But it is still helpful to be able to explain it. Like the green horse or green rider, the newbie musician needs to be able to play steady, supple, and forward first.
# Posted on May 16th 2009 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Phrasing
Metacognition: It ain't for everybody!
It's barely for me. I'm always impressed by Will's ability to explain in detail the finer points of things folks do intuitively by listening and knowing how to play their instrument.
It's always amusing when people who can't appreciate this feel the need to say so. OK, great, so then....uh, go away?
# Posted on May 16th 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Phrasing
>> His comments should be taken in context with the music he makes.
No, my comments shouldn't be judged on music I made a couple of years ago. My playing has changed significantly in that time.
# Posted on May 16th 2009 by Reverend
Re: Phrasing
Um, the only reason I can articulate the intuitive stuff is because I teach music. Day in, day out, I explain these things to people who ask to be taught. When I play, I'm not in analytical mode.
But I can't think of many top tier players who don't do the same thing. Seems most of the brilliant players of this music have thought about the nuances in depth. Ask Tommy Peoples about triplets, or Sean Smyth about the micro tones between c nat and c sharp, or Kevin Burke about cuts and rolls. You'll get a longer (and likely more interesting and eduficational :-8) lecture than any thread on the mustard board.
# Posted on May 16th 2009 by Will Harmon
Re: Phrasing
I don't think about this stuff much while I'm playing. And one of the things I really like about playing this music is that it works out the other side of my brain... But I'm a computer programmer by trade, so my brain tends toward analytical thinking, and I do like to analyze what it is that I'm doing, or what it is that other people are doing that I like to hear. For me, a deeper intellectual understanding of what's going on in the music makes it easier for it to appear even when I'm not thinking about it...
# Posted on May 16th 2009 by Reverend
Re: Phrasing
I tend to breath at the end of phrases, but one thing that intrigues me about this music is that people often take their breaths in the middle of phrases, and those little transitions from one phrase to the next get a lot of emphasis. One difference between the jazz of my youth, and the music I play now in pubs.
Good thread, good thoughts here !
# Posted on May 17th 2009 by AlBrown
Re: Phrasing
Supprised Micko Russel did not come into this discussion. Unique style of phrasing. It's the gaps between the notes that actually make the music, without these gaps we are have only gobledegook and a jumble of notes.
# Posted on May 18th 2009 by murcu
Re: Phrasing
This may not be helpful, but I always saw phrasing, personally, as coming more from the right hand... bowing. How many notes in one bow, the direction of the bow, the control of the bow, etc. Then the left hand follows its lead. It's easier to "see" and hear on airs than on faster reels, jigs, etc. Also, aesthetically, I agree with the abstract notion of "feeling". Mood can really affect a piece of music.
# Posted on May 20th 2009 by Fiddlechick7
Re: Phrasing
Yes, murcu, the notes shouldn't all just blur together into one very long note. As one of my teachers told me when I was a teenager, "there should be daylight between the notes".
# Posted on May 25th 2009 by fauxcelt
Re: Phrasing
I appreciate everything you all have put into this discussion. I've been at a loss lately because I'm at a point in my playing where if my phrasing were more solid, more interesting, more something, then my playing would enter into the musical category rather than just trying to play a tune on the fiddle. I like the analytical approach, even though it's true that I won't be able to apply it right away, it'll sink in eventually...I hope!
)
Thanks so much for everyone's input, please keep writing! (I definitely need your help!
# Posted on July 5th 2009 by Karen Reilly