In recent months I have managed to open the eyes of a "violin" playing friend of mine to the joys of traditional music, and he's getting on well. He's a good violin player but he seems to be struggling with rolls or "trills" as he insists on calling them.
As a box player, i'm in no position to ofer advice... i've seen people do both "five-note-rolls" and also what appears to be a faster roll which is controled by the wrist and bow while staying on the same note.
If anyone could offer any advice on their preferences and tips on how to do them, I'd really appreciate it.
Go raibh mile mhaith agaibh,
Cian
All he needs to do is listen. If he can't hear the difference between what he may have learned of trills from his classical idium and rolls, all he needs to do is listen harder.
If he realy is a good violin player he should be used to listening. However, there are a hell of a lot of superficially good violin players who merely regurgitate. If he tends more towards the latter, he might need showing.
I heard a classical musician who had fallen in love with Irish music describe it as having its own built-in percussion. I thought it rather apt, and led me to the conclusion that ornaments in Irish music are more like the percussive sounds generated by a hurdy-gurdy player than the trills and gracenotes of a classical musician. As llig so succinctly says, all he has to do is listen; but with the proviso that he tries not to interpret what he is listening to, but to reproduce it exactly.
I work with a lot of classical players (both flutists and violinists) that want to learn ITM. It's only when the player accepts that rolls are NOT trills and they are NOT turns that they can start to get the technique right.
I start with the idea that a roll is one note with two interruptions not five notes. The interruptions shouldn't have perceivable pitch, at least to start. The upper finger touches the string just enough to interrupt the note and the main finger lifts just enough to interrupt the note.
I also use a metronome set at 60 or so and make them do each action on the beat: note, upper interruption, lower interruption. Each interruption should be as quick as possible with any left over time in the beat going to the main note. Once they get it, start to increase the speed of the metronome.
Yes, these are good descriptions. I like the insight that the music has it's own built in percussion. Too true, and this is the way to approach it. (And also the reason why the bodhran is redundant, of course). Some players seem often to get hung up on what five notes to play while missing out completely that it's not the notes that matter, but the timing of it.
Go to my site - Top right hand corner of Video's there -- Click on Learner Vid's - I've made up for a young Danish Girl --
They might help you a bit - ????
The "faster roll which is controlled by the wrist and bow while staying on the same note" that you mention is commonly referred to as a "treble" by Irish musicians, although different terms are used.
The easiest way to start him getting these correct, in my experience, is first to tackle a phrase such as this one that you might find at the start of the Congress reel:
eA (3AAA A2
or more accurately noted as
eA A/A/A A2
and (at least to begin with) bowed either
(uu) dud d
or
du dud d
I found that students would get the hang of this very quickly if I got them a) to understand that the treble part is not a triplet (three notes in the space of two) but two quick notes in the space of one, followed by an ordinary eighth note/quaver
b) to take it slowly and mentally count the beats 1-2-3 (not the notes of the treble, but the beats in the whole phrase) to make sure they stayed in time.
Once he's cracked that "off-beat" treble he can move on to other variants.
I'm not sure it's all that productive to describe such things in just words and letters. Much easier to show someone. Sufice it to say that from a clasical musician's perspective, the word "triplet" often confuses them. "treble" is better becuase a triplet is an even spacing of three notes where there are normally two or four. You do get triplets in diddley music, most often in hornpipes, but it's important for someone who knows what a triplet is for them not to get confused with what banjo players call triplets. (see other thread)
Turns and Trills are perfectly acceptable [ imo ]in irish music, particularly O Carolan pieces.
if the music is to progress and grow, it should not be stifled by ornamentation being proscribed in a Stalinist/Comhaltas manner
.your friend should listen to fiddlers as diverse as Tommy Peoples and Martin Hayes
ok i couldnt be bothered reading other peoples comments but im sure they gave good advice but annnnyywaaayyy
ive been a fiddle player for 9 years so i know what im talkin about lol.
its hard to explain how to do a roll properly but any teacher will show u how and EVENTUALLY it will come to u naturally so tell ur friend not to worry i cant even imagine not being able to do it or how i learned it
Most forms of baroque ornamentation, turns and trills included, would have been pretty common for pipers at least, if not any other musicians who take their sound from imitating the pipes. Both the o'Farrell tutor and the intro to the Goodman collection note common ornamentation, around 1805 and 1865 respectively, and in both, trills and runs are common. Seamus Ennis plays spectacular trills in his dance tunes; so do John Doherty and Ellen Galvin.
Well, three examples doesn't disprove my point. The vast majority of Irish trad players don't use trills and turns (i.e. mordents) (not "runs, whatever you mean by that).
hmmm also id advise watching other great fiddle players. u can learn a lot of focusing ur attention on a good fiddle player. watch how they do there rolls and stuff like that. rolls just naturally came to me
I agree, watch good players. But pay more attention to listening. I think rolls come naturally to most people, except maybe those who view them as stalinist impositions.
Cian, seems like it's boiling down to: "get your friend into the hands of a good Irish fiddler" then. Not a bad idea. No need to be shy about it, either--most fiddlers love a challenge and a chance to convert a violinist to the dark side.
Sorry about the typo! I meant "turns", not "runs", although "runs" are a different ornament I would codify. I use the term to describe a quick, smooth motion over a large interval - generally more than a third. Bobby Casey, for example, uses them extensively in the second part of his Drunken Gauger: instead of D|GAB c3|, he plays D|(5EFGAB c3, or something like it.
Also, three examples clearly isn't refutation, or evidence of statistical normalcy - I only intended to show that major players in multiple styles regularly employed those techniques, and that they should be considered generally acceptable in Irish traditional music.
"...and that they should be considered generally acceptable in Irish traditional music."
Sorry, but I've listened to Doherty, Casey, and a ton of other Irish fiddlers and never heard any classical turns or mordents as part of their Irish dance music repertoire. They do cuts, long rolls, short rolls, trebles, open string crans, but no mordents or classical turns. I'm also intimately familiar with Casey's playing of Drunken Gauger, and that run's a beautiful example of the drunken swagger he puts into the tune. along with numerous smears, a wild vibrato, and much freedom with the rhythm. His presentation of that tune (on Ceol an Clair) is a one-off example of Casey's expressiveness, of giving the bottle to the gauger. While that playfulness is typical of Casey's playing, it's not representative of playing sets of tunes in sessions or for dancers (a dancer would have to be tipsy to follow Casey's swagger on that one).
Performers do all sorts of things when entertaining a listening audience with their music. I'm talking about playing this music in sessions and for dancers. If you're building an exhaustive encyclopedia of Irish traditional twiddly bits, then yes, you could well include all of these things. But I suspect most traditional players would classify trills, mordents, and other tonally decorative bits as distant in significance compared to cuts, rolls, trebles, and other articulations of rhythm and timing.
Matt Molloy does the odd trill now and again. He gets it from pipers of course, who also trill now and again. And I think I've tried it myself on the fiddle on the odd occasion of reckless abandon.
But the point is, it's not a common thing to do and nor should it be. Even if you put only one trill in each set of tunes you play they would start to sound out of place. So a discussion of the use of trills in Irish music, on a thread where advice on twiddley bits for a beginner is being sought, gives out the wrong message.
OK, so the classical violin player in the opening post is either playing trills when he should be playing rolls, or his use of the term is a misnomer. But that's no excuse to go down the road of who where when to play trills. It's, at best, distracting to someone who is new to the music and is looking to embrace it.
It's like getting in to a car with a learner driver and showing them how to do a hand break turn as they pull up to the lights. It's just plain inappropriate.
To be fair, the problem may be that I’m simply unfamiliar with Baroque ornamentation in a Baroque performance context. I’ve understood the turn as a four- or five-note sequence in which a “home” pitch alternates with the adjacent higher and lower pitches. As I hear it, it’s analogous to a “polka roll,” comprising four or five notes of quick but roughly equal duration (as opposed to the piper’s roll, two or three notes separated by two cuts or taps); I associate it particularly with Padraig o’Keeffe and his students, as well as Johnny o’Leary and Denis Doody. The mordent, as far as I’m concerned, is basically a decorative triplet, again centered on a home pitch, or alternatively a structure created by a single grace note. Would you agree with these definitions? Would you agree that they describe common ornaments in Irish music (at least in Sliabh Luachra music)?
I suppose I’d never actually thought about whether playing style or artistic choices change dramatically in session playing vs. dance playing vs. performance playing, but my experience has generally been that in a session, with other musicians reinforcing the basic shape of the tune, I (and others) would be more likely to play interesting (read: potentially outlandish) ornaments or variations. And the one time I did see a fiddler and dancer perform the Drunken Gauger together, the fiddler did indeed play ‘the Casey swagger’, and the dancer loved it
Also, your second-to-last sentence could potentially launch me into a tirade about how "most traditional players" would place "tonally decorative bits" more highly than cuts, rolls and trebles, and would mainly articulate rhythm in the basic bowing technique, and also most people today don't play a traditional style, and the Rainey brothers hardly played rolls or cuts at all, and blah and scratchnanny and foopah! :P
listen, trills have been used in irish music for over 50 years, Seamus Ennis used them .
pipers use them on the high g high a and the high b.
they also use an ornamentation called the shiveron the low f #, wqhich sonds to me like a fast trill.so for michgael gill and will to be saying it is wrong is nonsense[imo], unless they have the eccentric view point that its ok for pipers to trill but not fiddlers.
Beginner Fiddle Advice please...
Beginner Fiddle Advice please...
In recent months I have managed to open the eyes of a "violin" playing friend of mine to the joys of traditional music, and he's getting on well. He's a good violin player but he seems to be struggling with rolls or "trills" as he insists on calling them.
As a box player, i'm in no position to ofer advice... i've seen people do both "five-note-rolls" and also what appears to be a faster roll which is controled by the wrist and bow while staying on the same note.
If anyone could offer any advice on their preferences and tips on how to do them, I'd really appreciate it.
Go raibh mile mhaith agaibh,
Cian
# Posted on October 13th 2010 by Cian O Gallchobhair
Re: Beginner Fiddle Advice please...
All he needs to do is listen. If he can't hear the difference between what he may have learned of trills from his classical idium and rolls, all he needs to do is listen harder.
If he realy is a good violin player he should be used to listening. However, there are a hell of a lot of superficially good violin players who merely regurgitate. If he tends more towards the latter, he might need showing.
# Posted on October 13th 2010 by ...
Re: Beginner Fiddle Advice please...
I heard a classical musician who had fallen in love with Irish music describe it as having its own built-in percussion. I thought it rather apt, and led me to the conclusion that ornaments in Irish music are more like the percussive sounds generated by a hurdy-gurdy player than the trills and gracenotes of a classical musician. As llig so succinctly says, all he has to do is listen; but with the proviso that he tries not to interpret what he is listening to, but to reproduce it exactly.
# Posted on October 13th 2010 by gam
Re: Beginner Fiddle Advice please...
I work with a lot of classical players (both flutists and violinists) that want to learn ITM. It's only when the player accepts that rolls are NOT trills and they are NOT turns that they can start to get the technique right.
I start with the idea that a roll is one note with two interruptions not five notes. The interruptions shouldn't have perceivable pitch, at least to start. The upper finger touches the string just enough to interrupt the note and the main finger lifts just enough to interrupt the note.
I also use a metronome set at 60 or so and make them do each action on the beat: note, upper interruption, lower interruption. Each interruption should be as quick as possible with any left over time in the beat going to the main note. Once they get it, start to increase the speed of the metronome.
# Posted on October 13th 2010 by iampeterfonda
Re: Beginner Fiddle Advice please...
Yes, these are good descriptions. I like the insight that the music has it's own built in percussion. Too true, and this is the way to approach it. (And also the reason why the bodhran is redundant, of course). Some players seem often to get hung up on what five notes to play while missing out completely that it's not the notes that matter, but the timing of it.
# Posted on October 13th 2010 by ...
Re: Beginner Fiddle Advice please...
Go to my site - Top right hand corner of Video's there -- Click on Learner Vid's - I've made up for a young Danish Girl --
They might help you a bit - ????
http://www.youtube.com/user/fiddle4u
jim,,,
# Posted on October 13th 2010 by FIDDLE4
Re: Beginner Fiddle Advice please...
The "faster roll which is controlled by the wrist and bow while staying on the same note" that you mention is commonly referred to as a "treble" by Irish musicians, although different terms are used.
The easiest way to start him getting these correct, in my experience, is first to tackle a phrase such as this one that you might find at the start of the Congress reel:
eA (3AAA A2
or more accurately noted as
eA A/A/A A2
and (at least to begin with) bowed either
(uu) dud d
or
du dud d
I found that students would get the hang of this very quickly if I got them a) to understand that the treble part is not a triplet (three notes in the space of two) but two quick notes in the space of one, followed by an ordinary eighth note/quaver
b) to take it slowly and mentally count the beats 1-2-3 (not the notes of the treble, but the beats in the whole phrase) to make sure they stayed in time.
Once he's cracked that "off-beat" treble he can move on to other variants.
These are useful on the box too!
# Posted on October 13th 2010 by Jeeves Tones
Re: Beginner Fiddle Advice please...
that should of course be
(uu) dud u
and
du dud u
(Although you can do it the way I wrote, too.) I'm getting sidetracked by all these discussions of down-bonking and up-bonking...
# Posted on October 13th 2010 by Jeeves Tones
Re: Beginner Fiddle Advice please...
I'm not sure it's all that productive to describe such things in just words and letters. Much easier to show someone. Sufice it to say that from a clasical musician's perspective, the word "triplet" often confuses them. "treble" is better becuase a triplet is an even spacing of three notes where there are normally two or four. You do get triplets in diddley music, most often in hornpipes, but it's important for someone who knows what a triplet is for them not to get confused with what banjo players call triplets. (see other thread)
# Posted on October 13th 2010 by ...
Re: Beginner Fiddle Advice please...
Turns and Trills are perfectly acceptable [ imo ]in irish music, particularly O Carolan pieces.
if the music is to progress and grow, it should not be stifled by ornamentation being proscribed in a Stalinist/Comhaltas manner
.your friend should listen to fiddlers as diverse as Tommy Peoples and Martin Hayes
# Posted on October 13th 2010 by Dick Miles
Re: Beginner Fiddle Advice please...
ok i couldnt be bothered reading other peoples comments but im sure they gave good advice but annnnyywaaayyy
i cant even imagine not being able to do it or how i learned it 
ive been a fiddle player for 9 years so i know what im talkin about lol.
its hard to explain how to do a roll properly but any teacher will show u how and EVENTUALLY it will come to u naturally so tell ur friend not to worry
# Posted on October 13th 2010 by Patrick Murray
Re: Beginner Fiddle Advice please...
and tell to play in LOADS of sessions, great for a fiddle player.
# Posted on October 13th 2010 by Patrick Murray
Re: Beginner Fiddle Advice please...
Most forms of baroque ornamentation, turns and trills included, would have been pretty common for pipers at least, if not any other musicians who take their sound from imitating the pipes. Both the o'Farrell tutor and the intro to the Goodman collection note common ornamentation, around 1805 and 1865 respectively, and in both, trills and runs are common. Seamus Ennis plays spectacular trills in his dance tunes; so do John Doherty and Ellen Galvin.
# Posted on October 13th 2010 by Danjo
Re: Beginner Fiddle Advice please...
Well, three examples doesn't disprove my point. The vast majority of Irish trad players don't use trills and turns (i.e. mordents) (not "runs, whatever you mean by that).
# Posted on October 13th 2010 by Will Harmon
Re: Beginner Fiddle Advice please...
hmmm also id advise watching other great fiddle players. u can learn a lot of focusing ur attention on a good fiddle player. watch how they do there rolls and stuff like that. rolls just naturally came to me
# Posted on October 13th 2010 by Patrick Murray
Re: Beginner Fiddle Advice please...
I agree, watch good players. But pay more attention to listening. I think rolls come naturally to most people, except maybe those who view them as stalinist impositions.
# Posted on October 13th 2010 by ...
Re: Beginner Fiddle Advice please...
Cian, seems like it's boiling down to: "get your friend into the hands of a good Irish fiddler" then. Not a bad idea. No need to be shy about it, either--most fiddlers love a challenge and a chance to convert a violinist to the dark side.
# Posted on October 13th 2010 by Will Harmon
Re: Beginner Fiddle Advice please...
Sorry about the typo! I meant "turns", not "runs", although "runs" are a different ornament I would codify. I use the term to describe a quick, smooth motion over a large interval - generally more than a third. Bobby Casey, for example, uses them extensively in the second part of his Drunken Gauger: instead of D|GAB c3|, he plays D|(5EFGAB c3, or something like it.
Also, three examples clearly isn't refutation, or evidence of statistical normalcy - I only intended to show that major players in multiple styles regularly employed those techniques, and that they should be considered generally acceptable in Irish traditional music.
# Posted on October 14th 2010 by Danjo
Re: Beginner Fiddle Advice please...
"...and that they should be considered generally acceptable in Irish traditional music."
Is that a fair compromise?
Sorry, but I've listened to Doherty, Casey, and a ton of other Irish fiddlers and never heard any classical turns or mordents as part of their Irish dance music repertoire. They do cuts, long rolls, short rolls, trebles, open string crans, but no mordents or classical turns. I'm also intimately familiar with Casey's playing of Drunken Gauger, and that run's a beautiful example of the drunken swagger he puts into the tune. along with numerous smears, a wild vibrato, and much freedom with the rhythm. His presentation of that tune (on Ceol an Clair) is a one-off example of Casey's expressiveness, of giving the bottle to the gauger. While that playfulness is typical of Casey's playing, it's not representative of playing sets of tunes in sessions or for dancers (a dancer would have to be tipsy to follow Casey's swagger on that one).
Performers do all sorts of things when entertaining a listening audience with their music. I'm talking about playing this music in sessions and for dancers. If you're building an exhaustive encyclopedia of Irish traditional twiddly bits, then yes, you could well include all of these things. But I suspect most traditional players would classify trills, mordents, and other tonally decorative bits as distant in significance compared to cuts, rolls, trebles, and other articulations of rhythm and timing.
# Posted on October 14th 2010 by Will Harmon
Re: Beginner Fiddle Advice please...
Matt Molloy does the odd trill now and again. He gets it from pipers of course, who also trill now and again. And I think I've tried it myself on the fiddle on the odd occasion of reckless abandon.
But the point is, it's not a common thing to do and nor should it be. Even if you put only one trill in each set of tunes you play they would start to sound out of place. So a discussion of the use of trills in Irish music, on a thread where advice on twiddley bits for a beginner is being sought, gives out the wrong message.
OK, so the classical violin player in the opening post is either playing trills when he should be playing rolls, or his use of the term is a misnomer. But that's no excuse to go down the road of who where when to play trills. It's, at best, distracting to someone who is new to the music and is looking to embrace it.
It's like getting in to a car with a learner driver and showing them how to do a hand break turn as they pull up to the lights. It's just plain inappropriate.
# Posted on October 14th 2010 by ...
Re: Beginner Fiddle Advice please...
To be fair, the problem may be that I’m simply unfamiliar with Baroque ornamentation in a Baroque performance context. I’ve understood the turn as a four- or five-note sequence in which a “home” pitch alternates with the adjacent higher and lower pitches. As I hear it, it’s analogous to a “polka roll,” comprising four or five notes of quick but roughly equal duration (as opposed to the piper’s roll, two or three notes separated by two cuts or taps); I associate it particularly with Padraig o’Keeffe and his students, as well as Johnny o’Leary and Denis Doody. The mordent, as far as I’m concerned, is basically a decorative triplet, again centered on a home pitch, or alternatively a structure created by a single grace note. Would you agree with these definitions? Would you agree that they describe common ornaments in Irish music (at least in Sliabh Luachra music)?
I suppose I’d never actually thought about whether playing style or artistic choices change dramatically in session playing vs. dance playing vs. performance playing, but my experience has generally been that in a session, with other musicians reinforcing the basic shape of the tune, I (and others) would be more likely to play interesting (read: potentially outlandish) ornaments or variations. And the one time I did see a fiddler and dancer perform the Drunken Gauger together, the fiddler did indeed play ‘the Casey swagger’, and the dancer loved it
Also, your second-to-last sentence could potentially launch me into a tirade about how "most traditional players" would place "tonally decorative bits" more highly than cuts, rolls and trebles, and would mainly articulate rhythm in the basic bowing technique, and also most people today don't play a traditional style, and the Rainey brothers hardly played rolls or cuts at all, and blah and scratchnanny and foopah! :P
# Posted on October 14th 2010 by Danjo
Re: Beginner Fiddle Advice please...
listen, trills have been used in irish music for over 50 years, Seamus Ennis used them .
pipers use them on the high g high a and the high b.
they also use an ornamentation called the shiveron the low f #, wqhich sonds to me like a fast trill.so for michgael gill and will to be saying it is wrong is nonsense[imo], unless they have the eccentric view point that its ok for pipers to trill but not fiddlers.
# Posted on October 14th 2010 by Dick Miles
Re: Beginner Fiddle Advice please...
And which well known respected traditional fiddlers use it for dance music?
# Posted on October 14th 2010 by bogman
Re: Beginner Fiddle Advice please...
cian you play enuf instruments :P
# Posted on October 14th 2010 by James Morgan