This might be a bit convoluted and metaphysical - I dunno.
I know that playing together in a session requires a great deal of common ground (like all being in the same key and at the same speed!), and what follows does not necessarily apply to that situation.
But when you play:
Do you take a tune and make it your own? Do you play it your way?, or do you try to imitate some other (possibly famous) player?
Some of the great recorded works of ITM are by people who play a given tune in their own particular way. Granted you may learn something from listening to them, but if you set out to imitate their particular playing of a tune, are you not, ipso facto, failing to do so. (The logic is that you are imitating him/her, whereas he/she is not imitating anyone, but giving his/her own interpretation of the tune - something you are not doing).
I'm not talking about daft extremes like making The Kid on the Mountain into a March, or putting the b-part of Martin Wynne's No2 into the middle of Limericks Lamentation, I am talking about having your own style, in a way that, for example, an ABC player or a pianola doesn't - they can only play exactly what the dots say.
I have many tunes I play with my own particular style, and people who hear me play are (usually) very appreciative, and I don't take any carp from anyone saying I play them wrong. If someone else plays them differently, I am all ears.
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
I've gotten two widely different opinions of my playing: on the one hand, someone will say, wow, still looking for a style you can call your own, huh? (I am, though not so actively as all that, these days.) On the other, someone will say, wow, you have a style that's distinctly all your own, don't you? (I suppose I can't help that without slavishly imitating my betters.) Hopefully they like what they hear, but I guess I also can't help it if they don't.
So, largely, besides listening to ever more players to pick up what I like and not what I don't out of it (if, that is, I'm not just listening to enjoy it), I've given up *trying* to make a particular way of playing a tune something I do in any consistent way. I just play the damn thing, and it comes out however it comes out.
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
BTW
I'm not talking about anything dreadfully Over The Top here (Look at me everybody! - see how wonderful I am!), nor about any sort of one-upmanship (making it hard for anyone else to join in) - just about being creative/artistic.
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
A beginners perspective: I would love someday to be able to take a tune and make it my own, but I think I need to apprentice to the "masters" for now until I know what I'm doing. There's no teachers in the vicinity, so what I do is slavishly copy what I find on recordings.
I'm hoping that this copying, plus what I absorb by listening to all kinds of trad music will eventually bring me to the point where I'll be able to try some things independently .
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
Like Zina I just play the tune to the best of my ability and sometimes surprise myself with a little triplet or roll I hadn't planned to put in but I don't worry about it at all. If I can hang on in the session and not disgrace myself I am more than happy. If I really love a tune more seems to come out if you know what I mean. I suppose I put more feeling into it and if I am playing with someone I empathise with musically like Dublinflute or Peter Piper well then it can sound quite okay - at least I think so!! Just relax and enjoy the music I think is the best way to proceed.
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
Those with whom I play might have a clearer perspective, but here's a few observations on how it feels as the player.
- How much a tune is my own is very strongly influenced by my familiarity with it. Ownership comes easily to some tunes from the outset, but generally, if I've been playing the tune a long time the melody is firmly set in my mind, so effort goes elsewhere. It could be rhythmic ornaments, or melodic ornaments, or it could be in listening more closely to other players' ornaments and playing the ornaments they use along with them next time through. Nothing quite as cool as catching another players' ear during a tune, momentarily locking eyes, upping the energy and in doing so getting more out of yourself and the tune.
- How well, or completely perhaps, I understand a tune has a proportional relationship to what I can get out of it. Whereas I might, initially, almost parrot a particular player's interpretation of a tune, I absolutely love the way ITM allows players to apply various tools from their kits. Taste is a must, but there's lots of opportunity when our choices add to the music.
- It is particularly valuable for me to seek out various players' settings of tunes while yet learning the tune, before that basic imprinting is done. So many varied settings! Unless I consciously try to separate the settings, it seems very natural to lift the particular elements from other players and combine those that appeal to my tastes and abilities. Frequently listening to new tunes performed on other instruments was a valuable suggestion of a good friend. It's understood that unique, particular, settings probably need to stand on their own.
I agree with Zina that there's no need to force anything. And, as always, there may be better choices of words that I failed to consider. But I know this - tonight's session night and all the usuals are back in town, and there's no better place I'd rather be than in that circle.
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
Surely 'making a tune your own' is something you inevitably do unless you make a big effort to copy someone else, note for note and roll for roll. As you become more proficient hopefully the distinctiveness of the tune should change from being defined by your technical limitations and lack of musical knowledge to being defined by your growing technical prowess and styles and techniques you absorb and assimilate. But all along that route, the tune will be played in a way that's distinctively yours.
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
Yes to Stevie's mention of learning tunes off of instruments different from your own. Or even just thinking like a different instrument when you're playing a tune. For instance, on fiddle you could take Mulqueen's and fill it with scratch triplets and fairly staccato bowing to sound the way a banjo might, or smooth it out with rolls, long slurry bowing, and little melodic turns the way a flute might, or toss a D cran in the first bar and look for ways to emulate a pipe sound with double stops and a bit more lean into the strings.
Funny, I don't think in terms of "making a tune my own." Is it about "owning" a tune or putting "your stamp" on it? Or is it about exploring the tune's own topography with the tools you happen to have at hand?
I mean, you can't help but sound like yourself when you play (unless you work really hard at copying someone else, and even then you're likely to still sound more like yourselft). So why focus on that?
I guess I tend to think of it as following the tune as it unravels just ahead of me, and responding to the dips and rises, the curves, the intersections, and the straightaways. When you play, of course, *how* you respond is completely up to you. But I would argue that what you play depends more on the tune itself.
It's like a dance where you respond to what your partner is doing--the amount of swing, of pressure with the hand in the small of their back, of distance between you, etc.--and they respond back to you. Afterwards, someone might say, "S/he really has a distinctive, personal style," and it would be true (don't we all?), but it also misses the interplay and exchange--that is more than the sum of the two parts--between you and the tune.
Maybe what I'm trying to say is that for me, the most interesting music happens when the tune leads and the player follows, rather than the other way around.
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
No, no, I think I understand, because I went through the same thing -- everybody kept saying, make the tune your own, make the tune your own, don't just copy somebody else's, it's dead like that, make it live and be your own. "What the hell?" I kept thinking. "It's a string of notes, how do I make it my own? How is it alive one way but not the other?" So I kept on trying to "make it my own" without really knowing how to do that, or knowing what "make it my own" really means.
So here's what I finally came up with. Remember when you were, oh, say about 12, and everyone kept saying, when you grow up, you'll know yourself better? I always thought, how can I not know myself? I'm in here with me, aren't I? What are they talking about, fer cat's sake?
Well, as you get older, you come to find out that, yeah, you really do have to know yourself better, figure out where all the dark corners are and try to clean them out, what works for you in life and what doesn't, how you react to things, etc. You start accepting, changing, all the bad things about you, but you can't do that til you know what they are. You can love yourself better because you have come to know who you are.
Well, making a tune your own, at least for me, is something like that.
When you first start out in this life, you tend to do things as your family and friends always have or do. They give you examples of how to react to what and how to behave in certain situations. You behave like they do either because that's how you think it's supposed to go, or you're punished until you do conform to that behavior, or you don't.
When you first start out playing, you do the same thing -- you roll when your teacher rolls, you cut when they do, etc. You handle yourself in sessions the way they teach you by word or example. You copy the settings and variations of your betters directly.
Sooner or later, though, just like in life, you start choosing to ornament, make variations, play how it feels right to *you*. Until that time, no, the tune isn't yours, and so there's only a certain kind of life to it, not the one that it will have when it really is yours.
I guess I was sort of flippant with the earlier reply -- sorry about that.
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
Geez, Zina, posting at thesesh.org from your analyst's couch--isn't that like calling a friend long distance and then arguing with your spouse over the line in the kitchen?
JUST KIDDING!
Very insightful, as usual. If my post helps think about this subject *after* you know who you are (which it does for me, but maybe not for anyone else), then Zina's certainly helps us understand how we get there. Nicely put, O Warrior Princess. I've never thought of it so concisely as that, and you're spot on.
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
In *this* case, it's displacement activity -- I'd rather write about this stuff than do my actual work, which thankfully I can do some of it at the same time I write. Ah, modern technology...yes, I wrote this while you were writing your post, Will, and I think that you're right, they do cover two different areas of time in the process of making a tune your own - they dovetail quite nicely, I think.
The day I believe that you don't think of things concisely is the day the world ends, okay? *smirk*
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
Re: concisely: when it comes to my ongoing childhood, the reel tends to run in real time in my head, which is why I'm still reliving it . Honestly, I had a pretty idyllic first 18 years, so I've never bothered to boil it down or abstract the maturation process, which you've done so well.
Besides, it wasn't a day or two ago someone here was slagging me for how much concentration it took to wade through my posts...
:-|
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
Creative people - musicians, artists, writers - have for centuries done their apprenticeships in their crafts by studying in detail the works of the great ones in their field, and also learning how to create work in a particular style. When all that is done and well and truly under the belt, then, and only then I think, will the individual's true personal style start to emerge.
Trevor
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
Dave, in your original post you say about playing in sessions: " what follows does not necessarily apply to that situation." What do you do differently when you sit down at a session (other than speed and key?) Do you hold back on ornamentation and variations so as not to clash with the group?
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
Trevor, sometimes I think that sounding awful *is* my true personal style....
Grego, my experience in sessions is that some settings vary so much from what's "standard" at that session that they just won't jibe, so you have to adapt or cease and desist. And even smaller variations can jangle on people's ears, or be swallowed whole by the overall sound. In my own local sesh, I'll toss variations in fairly freely, trying to come up with stuff that blends in with and complements what I expect (based on experience) others to play. But with unfamiliar players I tend to either play more quietly (to avoid my variations being a distraction to others), or I play relatively simpler versions. A lot depends on the other players and what they can run with.
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
I'm forever saying "Go with the flow" in a session situation and this probably applies here too. However, there's nothing wrong with having your own style and I, too, will add things here and there---often triplets as I'm firstly used to playing mandolin--but I try make sure that it blends in with what the others are doing. A lot of the time you have to adapt to what's going on around you. There's no point in saying "I'm playing this the right way or my way" and carrying on regardless. I've known some players to incorporate some outrageously imaginative variations --some good and some dreadful. It's like having to learn a new tune on the spot to keep up with them sometimes. Another guy I know "makes tunes his own" by playing them in different keys. He delights in playing "Farewell to Nigg" on the ocarina in E flat minor( It's normally in B minor). However, that's an extreme example.
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
I think imitation is a great way to learn, because it gives you a model for what is authentic. Especially if you have a teacher in a particular style. When you have a model, some guidelines and boundaries, you know what you can and can't do within the traditon and then when you are more experienced, you can then use those guidelines to explore further or different aspects.
To me, I think the phrase Will used, "exploring the tune's own topography with the tools you happen to have at hand." says it better than "making the tune one's own".
I see it less as an opportunity to be creative, and more as a wonderful twisty puzzle with different possible ways to put it all together--a puzzle you can dance to! The creative part for me I guess is the emotional expression that comes through in the playing. By emotional, I don't mean happy or sad necessarily--just un-named ways of feeling and being that can't be expressed any other way.
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
Well I haven't read the all thread and that is a good question Dave
About lerning tunes from ABC or other form of notation I think that is good if you heard the tune before and you know wow it should sound, if not, there are some aspects in the the tune that are going to keep unreveld, and the way ABC player transmit the tune is sort of kind of plastic information, resulting in a plastic performance.
Learnig from others is good and it doesen't mean you are doing copy of their style of playing that is a good help for any player cause every time we play with someone we took to us someting we haven't seen in that tune, well wen we sart to play this, manny years back we tried to imitate others, and normaly every artist does that in the beginnig and only with time our won style comes to live and that is part of the prosses!
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
As what I refer to as a "clumsey intermediate" level of player, I guess any tune I play is probably my own because I don't think I sound like anyone in particular. I live in an area where NOBODY is available to session with, so I have only recordings to listen to and try to sound like. I can play the tunes I know relatively smoothly, and have begun putting in rolls and triplets where I think they sound OK. I've listened to enough sessions in places like Milwaukee and Kansas City that I have reasonable impression of the "session sound," if you will. I'd be very reluctant to join a session without being asked because I have the awful feeling I'd stand out like a tuba player in a church choir and offend at least a few people. (That impression may or may not be true, but . . . ) To finally get to the point of this note, I realize there is no "correct" version of most session tunes, but is there a line beyond which we dare not step (as non-polished players) without offending anyone?
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
Now then, have I met you, sfarrell? Were you around at one point when Siucra came through Lincoln and Omaha time before last? I'm trying to remember if I met someone monikered S. Farrell because it sounds familiar...
The thing about this stuff is that it's group music. A player walking into an unfamiliar session has to be on their toes and do a lot of listening, because how a tune is played on a recording or even around their own home sessions is not necessarily going to mean that the folks at the new session play it the same way.
A good player (of any level) will play, but will keep an ear cocked for tunes that are played with a different number of repeats, whether they play the tune with F or C naturals or sharps, and whether the chord structure, etc. (minor, major, different mode, blah blah) is different from the setting of the tune played at their home session.
Basically, listening is the key. Either as you're listening or playing, you have to make the call as to whether your setting of the tune clashes with the new session's (or new player's) version. (If they ask you to start a tune, it's polite for them to hew to *your* setting, but due to all manner of things, such as noise level or gormlessness or such, that might not happen and it's not worth getting upset about.) If it all works fine without any dissonance, likely it's hunky dory.
There *are* players in the Omaha/Lincoln area (many also play Old Time, though), have you met up with any of them? D'you want me to try to find some of them for you to hook up with?
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
Guess I should have used an alias. Was never good at subterfuge, however. Been around the Omaha area for 20 years, and have been involved with the Irish in the area since 1991. I know many of the Old Time players around here. As far as our having met, I'm terrible with names, so we possibly have met. I'm aware of some of the better Irish players around here, but am hesitant to inquire about sessions, because I have a distinct aversion to people who horn in where they are not wanted, and I find it safe to assume everyone else feels likewise. Furthermore, even if I think I'm a low-level intermediate player, skill level, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. I can get through a reel I really know without too many mistakes (AABB) in about 30 seconds on a good night when I've been playing a while. I'd never try to play that fast where anyone could hear me, however. After I wrote the query last night I realized I should have addressed it to the Entry Level discussion elswehere on the page. Regarding your offer to hook me up with others in the area, I'll take all the help I can get. You can contact me at ravfarrell@aol.com. Thanks.
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
I learned to play the 'pennywhistle' while teaching in an isolated region of alaska in the mid-seventies. Hee Hee, I ordered a bunch of music books and went at it. I didn't have the smarts to order some tapes (or LP'S). Just me the pennywhistle and sheet music. Needless to say I developed a style. Nothing like isolation with no feedback from others to do that. A couple of years went by I flew south to Seattle attended a session. Whewee! Imagine my surprise!! Well, since that time I've really learned to value 'Listening' to how others play, both on recordings and in sessions. In sessions I like to blend with whats going on around me whether I'm playing flute, pennywhistle or fiddle. When playing alone I tend to incorporate more of an individual style (which of course is a melding of techniques learned by hearing others play as well as my personal 'take' on the tune), which for me at least is automatic. That is, for me in general, I'm not thinking of any particular style to play in. It just flows out. Surprisingly, this 'flow' can really be different depending on the instrument , how I'm feeling, time of day, acoustics of the room, etc. One thing I'm glad of, I did not make myself wrong for how I learned those first tunes and the unusual way some of them were played. In fact the interesting (thats what I like to call them) way in which I learned various ornaments back then still pop-up occasionally when they seem to fit in solo playing.
Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
This might be a bit convoluted and metaphysical - I dunno.
I know that playing together in a session requires a great deal of common ground (like all being in the same key and at the same speed!), and what follows does not necessarily apply to that situation.
But when you play:
Do you take a tune and make it your own? Do you play it your way?, or do you try to imitate some other (possibly famous) player?
Some of the great recorded works of ITM are by people who play a given tune in their own particular way. Granted you may learn something from listening to them, but if you set out to imitate their particular playing of a tune, are you not, ipso facto, failing to do so. (The logic is that you are imitating him/her, whereas he/she is not imitating anyone, but giving his/her own interpretation of the tune - something you are not doing).
I'm not talking about daft extremes like making The Kid on the Mountain into a March, or putting the b-part of Martin Wynne's No2 into the middle of Limericks Lamentation, I am talking about having your own style, in a way that, for example, an ABC player or a pianola doesn't - they can only play exactly what the dots say.
I have many tunes I play with my own particular style, and people who hear me play are (usually) very appreciative, and I don't take any carp from anyone saying I play them wrong. If someone else plays them differently, I am all ears.
Tell me your thoughts.
Dave
# Posted on January 16th 2004 by showaddydadito
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
I've gotten two widely different opinions of my playing: on the one hand, someone will say, wow, still looking for a style you can call your own, huh? (I am, though not so actively as all that, these days.) On the other, someone will say, wow, you have a style that's distinctly all your own, don't you? (I suppose I can't help that without slavishly imitating my betters.) Hopefully they like what they hear, but I guess I also can't help it if they don't.
So, largely, besides listening to ever more players to pick up what I like and not what I don't out of it (if, that is, I'm not just listening to enjoy it), I've given up *trying* to make a particular way of playing a tune something I do in any consistent way. I just play the damn thing, and it comes out however it comes out.
# Posted on January 16th 2004 by Zina Lee
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
BTW
I'm not talking about anything dreadfully Over The Top here (Look at me everybody! - see how wonderful I am!), nor about any sort of one-upmanship (making it hard for anyone else to join in) - just about being creative/artistic.
Dave
# Posted on January 16th 2004 by showaddydadito
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
A beginners perspective: I would love someday to be able to take a tune and make it my own, but I think I need to apprentice to the "masters" for now until I know what I'm doing. There's no teachers in the vicinity, so what I do is slavishly copy what I find on recordings.
I'm hoping that this copying, plus what I absorb by listening to all kinds of trad music will eventually bring me to the point where I'll be able to try some things independently .
Make sense, or is this the path to ruin?
# Posted on January 16th 2004 by grego
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
Like Zina I just play the tune to the best of my ability and sometimes surprise myself with a little triplet or roll I hadn't planned to put in but I don't worry about it at all. If I can hang on in the session and not disgrace myself I am more than happy. If I really love a tune more seems to come out if you know what I mean. I suppose I put more feeling into it and if I am playing with someone I empathise with musically like Dublinflute or Peter Piper well then it can sound quite okay - at least I think so!! Just relax and enjoy the music I think is the best way to proceed.
# Posted on January 16th 2004 by MollyB
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
Those with whom I play might have a clearer perspective, but here's a few observations on how it feels as the player.
- How much a tune is my own is very strongly influenced by my familiarity with it. Ownership comes easily to some tunes from the outset, but generally, if I've been playing the tune a long time the melody is firmly set in my mind, so effort goes elsewhere. It could be rhythmic ornaments, or melodic ornaments, or it could be in listening more closely to other players' ornaments and playing the ornaments they use along with them next time through. Nothing quite as cool as catching another players' ear during a tune, momentarily locking eyes, upping the energy and in doing so getting more out of yourself and the tune.
- How well, or completely perhaps, I understand a tune has a proportional relationship to what I can get out of it. Whereas I might, initially, almost parrot a particular player's interpretation of a tune, I absolutely love the way ITM allows players to apply various tools from their kits. Taste is a must, but there's lots of opportunity when our choices add to the music.
- It is particularly valuable for me to seek out various players' settings of tunes while yet learning the tune, before that basic imprinting is done. So many varied settings! Unless I consciously try to separate the settings, it seems very natural to lift the particular elements from other players and combine those that appeal to my tastes and abilities. Frequently listening to new tunes performed on other instruments was a valuable suggestion of a good friend. It's understood that unique, particular, settings probably need to stand on their own.
I agree with Zina that there's no need to force anything. And, as always, there may be better choices of words that I failed to consider. But I know this - tonight's session night and all the usuals are back in town, and there's no better place I'd rather be than in that circle.
# Posted on January 16th 2004 by Stevie C
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
Surely 'making a tune your own' is something you inevitably do unless you make a big effort to copy someone else, note for note and roll for roll. As you become more proficient hopefully the distinctiveness of the tune should change from being defined by your technical limitations and lack of musical knowledge to being defined by your growing technical prowess and styles and techniques you absorb and assimilate. But all along that route, the tune will be played in a way that's distinctively yours.
# Posted on January 16th 2004 by Ottery
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
Yes to Stevie's mention of learning tunes off of instruments different from your own. Or even just thinking like a different instrument when you're playing a tune. For instance, on fiddle you could take Mulqueen's and fill it with scratch triplets and fairly staccato bowing to sound the way a banjo might, or smooth it out with rolls, long slurry bowing, and little melodic turns the way a flute might, or toss a D cran in the first bar and look for ways to emulate a pipe sound with double stops and a bit more lean into the strings.
Funny, I don't think in terms of "making a tune my own." Is it about "owning" a tune or putting "your stamp" on it? Or is it about exploring the tune's own topography with the tools you happen to have at hand?
I mean, you can't help but sound like yourself when you play (unless you work really hard at copying someone else, and even then you're likely to still sound more like yourselft). So why focus on that?
I guess I tend to think of it as following the tune as it unravels just ahead of me, and responding to the dips and rises, the curves, the intersections, and the straightaways. When you play, of course, *how* you respond is completely up to you. But I would argue that what you play depends more on the tune itself.
It's like a dance where you respond to what your partner is doing--the amount of swing, of pressure with the hand in the small of their back, of distance between you, etc.--and they respond back to you. Afterwards, someone might say, "S/he really has a distinctive, personal style," and it would be true (don't we all?), but it also misses the interplay and exchange--that is more than the sum of the two parts--between you and the tune.
Maybe what I'm trying to say is that for me, the most interesting music happens when the tune leads and the player follows, rather than the other way around.
# Posted on January 16th 2004 by Will Harmon
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
No, no, I think I understand, because I went through the same thing -- everybody kept saying, make the tune your own, make the tune your own, don't just copy somebody else's, it's dead like that, make it live and be your own. "What the hell?" I kept thinking. "It's a string of notes, how do I make it my own? How is it alive one way but not the other?" So I kept on trying to "make it my own" without really knowing how to do that, or knowing what "make it my own" really means.
So here's what I finally came up with. Remember when you were, oh, say about 12, and everyone kept saying, when you grow up, you'll know yourself better? I always thought, how can I not know myself? I'm in here with me, aren't I? What are they talking about, fer cat's sake?
Well, as you get older, you come to find out that, yeah, you really do have to know yourself better, figure out where all the dark corners are and try to clean them out, what works for you in life and what doesn't, how you react to things, etc. You start accepting, changing, all the bad things about you, but you can't do that til you know what they are. You can love yourself better because you have come to know who you are.
Well, making a tune your own, at least for me, is something like that.
When you first start out in this life, you tend to do things as your family and friends always have or do. They give you examples of how to react to what and how to behave in certain situations. You behave like they do either because that's how you think it's supposed to go, or you're punished until you do conform to that behavior, or you don't.
When you first start out playing, you do the same thing -- you roll when your teacher rolls, you cut when they do, etc. You handle yourself in sessions the way they teach you by word or example. You copy the settings and variations of your betters directly.
Sooner or later, though, just like in life, you start choosing to ornament, make variations, play how it feels right to *you*. Until that time, no, the tune isn't yours, and so there's only a certain kind of life to it, not the one that it will have when it really is yours.
I guess I was sort of flippant with the earlier reply -- sorry about that.
# Posted on January 16th 2004 by Zina Lee
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
Geez, Zina, posting at thesesh.org from your analyst's couch--isn't that like calling a friend long distance and then arguing with your spouse over the line in the kitchen?
JUST KIDDING!
Very insightful, as usual. If my post helps think about this subject *after* you know who you are (which it does for me, but maybe not for anyone else), then Zina's certainly helps us understand how we get there. Nicely put, O Warrior Princess. I've never thought of it so concisely as that, and you're spot on.
# Posted on January 16th 2004 by Will Harmon
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
In *this* case, it's displacement activity -- I'd rather write about this stuff than do my actual work, which thankfully I can do some of it at the same time I write.
Ah, modern technology...yes, I wrote this while you were writing your post, Will, and I think that you're right, they do cover two different areas of time in the process of making a tune your own - they dovetail quite nicely, I think.
The day I believe that you don't think of things concisely is the day the world ends, okay? *smirk*
# Posted on January 16th 2004 by Zina Lee
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
Re: concisely: when it comes to my ongoing childhood, the reel tends to run in real time in my head, which is why I'm still reliving it
. Honestly, I had a pretty idyllic first 18 years, so I've never bothered to boil it down or abstract the maturation process, which you've done so well.
Besides, it wasn't a day or two ago someone here was slagging me for how much concentration it took to wade through my posts...
:-|
# Posted on January 16th 2004 by Will Harmon
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
Creative people - musicians, artists, writers - have for centuries done their apprenticeships in their crafts by studying in detail the works of the great ones in their field, and also learning how to create work in a particular style. When all that is done and well and truly under the belt, then, and only then I think, will the individual's true personal style start to emerge.
Trevor
# Posted on January 16th 2004 by Trevor Jennings
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
Nah, not mine, Trev -- that happens when I start in on the drink... ;)
# Posted on January 16th 2004 by Zina Lee
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
Dave, in your original post you say about playing in sessions: " what follows does not necessarily apply to that situation." What do you do differently when you sit down at a session (other than speed and key?) Do you hold back on ornamentation and variations so as not to clash with the group?
# Posted on January 16th 2004 by grego
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
Trevor, sometimes I think that sounding awful *is* my true personal style....
Grego, my experience in sessions is that some settings vary so much from what's "standard" at that session that they just won't jibe, so you have to adapt or cease and desist. And even smaller variations can jangle on people's ears, or be swallowed whole by the overall sound. In my own local sesh, I'll toss variations in fairly freely, trying to come up with stuff that blends in with and complements what I expect (based on experience) others to play. But with unfamiliar players I tend to either play more quietly (to avoid my variations being a distraction to others), or I play relatively simpler versions. A lot depends on the other players and what they can run with.
# Posted on January 16th 2004 by Will Harmon
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
I'm forever saying "Go with the flow" in a session situation and this probably applies here too. However, there's nothing wrong with having your own style and I, too, will add things here and there---often triplets as I'm firstly used to playing mandolin--but I try make sure that it blends in with what the others are doing. A lot of the time you have to adapt to what's going on around you. There's no point in saying "I'm playing this the right way or my way" and carrying on regardless. I've known some players to incorporate some outrageously imaginative variations --some good and some dreadful. It's like having to learn a new tune on the spot to keep up with them sometimes. Another guy I know "makes tunes his own" by playing them in different keys. He delights in playing "Farewell to Nigg" on the ocarina in E flat minor( It's normally in B minor). However, that's an extreme example.
John
# Posted on January 16th 2004 by Johnny Jay
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
I think imitation is a great way to learn, because it gives you a model for what is authentic. Especially if you have a teacher in a particular style. When you have a model, some guidelines and boundaries, you know what you can and can't do within the traditon and then when you are more experienced, you can then use those guidelines to explore further or different aspects.
To me, I think the phrase Will used, "exploring the tune's own topography with the tools you happen to have at hand." says it better than "making the tune one's own".
I see it less as an opportunity to be creative, and more as a wonderful twisty puzzle with different possible ways to put it all together--a puzzle you can dance to! The creative part for me I guess is the emotional expression that comes through in the playing. By emotional, I don't mean happy or sad necessarily--just un-named ways of feeling and being that can't be expressed any other way.
That make sense to anyone?
# Posted on January 16th 2004 by Andee
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
Yes, Andee, and tomorrow it will probably feel different from today.
# Posted on January 17th 2004 by Clear Drops
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
Well I haven't read the all thread and that is a good question Dave
About lerning tunes from ABC or other form of notation I think that is good if you heard the tune before and you know wow it should sound, if not, there are some aspects in the the tune that are going to keep unreveld, and the way ABC player transmit the tune is sort of kind of plastic information, resulting in a plastic performance.
Learnig from others is good and it doesen't mean you are doing copy of their style of playing that is a good help for any player cause every time we play with someone we took to us someting we haven't seen in that tune, well wen we sart to play this, manny years back we tried to imitate others, and normaly every artist does that in the beginnig and only with time our won style comes to live and that is part of the prosses!
Marco
# Posted on January 17th 2004 by pitnekit
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
As what I refer to as a "clumsey intermediate" level of player, I guess any tune I play is probably my own because I don't think I sound like anyone in particular. I live in an area where NOBODY is available to session with, so I have only recordings to listen to and try to sound like. I can play the tunes I know relatively smoothly, and have begun putting in rolls and triplets where I think they sound OK. I've listened to enough sessions in places like Milwaukee and Kansas City that I have reasonable impression of the "session sound," if you will. I'd be very reluctant to join a session without being asked because I have the awful feeling I'd stand out like a tuba player in a church choir and offend at least a few people. (That impression may or may not be true, but . . . ) To finally get to the point of this note, I realize there is no "correct" version of most session tunes, but is there a line beyond which we dare not step (as non-polished players) without offending anyone?
# Posted on January 17th 2004 by sfarrell
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
Now then, have I met you, sfarrell? Were you around at one point when Siucra came through Lincoln and Omaha time before last? I'm trying to remember if I met someone monikered S. Farrell because it sounds familiar...
The thing about this stuff is that it's group music. A player walking into an unfamiliar session has to be on their toes and do a lot of listening, because how a tune is played on a recording or even around their own home sessions is not necessarily going to mean that the folks at the new session play it the same way.
A good player (of any level) will play, but will keep an ear cocked for tunes that are played with a different number of repeats, whether they play the tune with F or C naturals or sharps, and whether the chord structure, etc. (minor, major, different mode, blah blah) is different from the setting of the tune played at their home session.
Basically, listening is the key. Either as you're listening or playing, you have to make the call as to whether your setting of the tune clashes with the new session's (or new player's) version. (If they ask you to start a tune, it's polite for them to hew to *your* setting, but due to all manner of things, such as noise level or gormlessness or such, that might not happen and it's not worth getting upset about.) If it all works fine without any dissonance, likely it's hunky dory.
There *are* players in the Omaha/Lincoln area (many also play Old Time, though), have you met up with any of them? D'you want me to try to find some of them for you to hook up with?
Zina
# Posted on January 18th 2004 by Zina Lee
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
Guess I should have used an alias. Was never good at subterfuge, however. Been around the Omaha area for 20 years, and have been involved with the Irish in the area since 1991. I know many of the Old Time players around here. As far as our having met, I'm terrible with names, so we possibly have met. I'm aware of some of the better Irish players around here, but am hesitant to inquire about sessions, because I have a distinct aversion to people who horn in where they are not wanted, and I find it safe to assume everyone else feels likewise. Furthermore, even if I think I'm a low-level intermediate player, skill level, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. I can get through a reel I really know without too many mistakes (AABB) in about 30 seconds on a good night when I've been playing a while. I'd never try to play that fast where anyone could hear me, however. After I wrote the query last night I realized I should have addressed it to the Entry Level discussion elswehere on the page. Regarding your offer to hook me up with others in the area, I'll take all the help I can get. You can contact me at ravfarrell@aol.com. Thanks.
# Posted on January 18th 2004 by sfarrell
Re: Taking a tune and making it your own - or not.
I learned to play the 'pennywhistle' while teaching in an isolated region of alaska in the mid-seventies. Hee Hee, I ordered a bunch of music books and went at it. I didn't have the smarts to order some tapes (or LP'S). Just me the pennywhistle and sheet music. Needless to say I developed a style. Nothing like isolation with no feedback from others to do that. A couple of years went by I flew south to Seattle attended a session. Whewee! Imagine my surprise!! Well, since that time I've really learned to value 'Listening' to how others play, both on recordings and in sessions. In sessions I like to blend with whats going on around me whether I'm playing flute, pennywhistle or fiddle. When playing alone I tend to incorporate more of an individual style (which of course is a melding of techniques learned by hearing others play as well as my personal 'take' on the tune), which for me at least is automatic. That is, for me in general, I'm not thinking of any particular style to play in. It just flows out. Surprisingly, this 'flow' can really be different depending on the instrument , how I'm feeling, time of day, acoustics of the room, etc. One thing I'm glad of, I did not make myself wrong for how I learned those first tunes and the unusual way some of them were played. In fact the interesting (thats what I like to call them) way in which I learned various ornaments back then still pop-up occasionally when they seem to fit in solo playing.
# Posted on January 21st 2004 by gleann