I've been thinking about the skill of being able to play a tune in different ways, even if it is just doing a triplet in one spot the first time, a roll there the next. This is an area where I am floundering. Maybe it's one of those thing that can't be taught and you just have to struggle until something clicks. But, there are these nagging questions that I would love to know the answer to ...
When you play a tune that you know well, how do the differences, the ornamentations, the things that help give a tune life, come about? Do you work out versions over time and then hear one of them in your head and play that? Or do you have bits of the tune, ornamented a particular way floating around in there and you sort of randomly pull them out? Perhaps, you hear just the melody? If so, then while you are playing the tune are you thinking things like, ok, I can do a roll on the next long b, a triplet as the next pickup,etc.? Or are you going for a certain feel to the tune and you pick the ornamentations because they give that feel? Like, maybe you do cuts and spitting triplets because you want the tune to have a sharper feel... Or do you focus on the melody and let your fingers do whatever they want? Maybe you use a particular ornamentation because it is possible at a spot? For example, in a reel where there are 2 notes the same in a row and the only thing that is fast enough is a cut between them, or, it is an off day, and you know you won't be hitting that long roll with the 4th finger, so you use a grace note instead. And how do you know how much is too much? Do you fill in a note with extra stuff because it sounds empty in a spot? But, isn't empty sometimes a good thing? When does the ornamentation cross the line between spicing a tune up and overwhelming the tune?
Also, when you are playing a part double, do you do the same ornamentations the first time through the 2 repetitions (AA) and then do a different set the next time through those 2? Or do you do it one way the first time through the part (A) and the 2nd time through you change it (A)? It seems like the first way would emphasis the part, making it sound more solid, and the second way would loosen the tune up a bit, making the A part sound longer and less substantial.
I'm sure there is no set formula for any of this, so do you have guidelines that you use?
Oh, rolls, mostly fall in place automatically (on the flute). Stuff like triplets or long notes that are in multiples of 3s, they get rolled. Sometimes i'll replace a roll with a long note (sometimes with vibrato) in the repeat, to emphasize it. Lots of little things like this we do without really thinking. Like when you really hit a note strong, and put a lot of finger vibrato in it (you don't want to do it more than once or twice in the tune, or else it starts sounding stoopid).
I think what i'm trying to say is that ornamentation (even Baroque ornamentation, as far as i'm concerned) is a lot like Zen archery, if you know what i'm talking about. You do it a million times, then your fingers start doing it without requiring too much from the brain. It comes from a lifelong quest to grok the tradition.
Well, remembering the usual disclaimer that I'm still pretty much a beginner myself, I'll give you my two cents, Sosiadh. All statements herein are only my opinion and not set in stone!
First off, I think that what you're talking about is really a matter of taste and will vary widely from player to player (which I know you know, but thought I'd start from the beginning and work my way through to the end). The more music you listen to, the more you know what "sounds Irish" -- and what sounds, ornamentation and phrasing works or is close to the sounds of the particular area of Ireland that you like best.
Because so much of the music recycles bits and pieces from other tunes, it's possible to cut and paste bits and pieces of the way a favorite player plays certain things into the tune you're working on. When you're first starting out, this is a good way to go, as most beginners usually don't have a whole lot of discernment developed as regards phrasing and how ornamentation works within any given tune. Of course there's all the bits that go into making someone's sound that you might love but don't really work for your style of playing as it evolves or even for a particular tune -- but again, that comes with developing taste and discernment.
As you grow into the music and your own style a bit more, you start paying more attention to the phrase of the tune, the parabolae that arcs through each phrase, part, and the tune itself, that make it a whole tune. A player might not be the sort to analyze a tune, sit down and draw the parabolae of the phrases and such, but they sort of automatically do this if they play with any kind of grace whatsoever.
And that in turn tells you how the tune should be ornamented, varied upon, and otherwise decorated, according to your own taste and style and music, which can't really be codified into a guideline system, really.
There's not a whole lot wrong with just playing the tune, you know. While expert players might be famous for never repeating a part the same way twice, they'll be the first to tell you that the tunes will stand up all on their own, and often do.
All of which probably doesn't help you at all, does it? *grin*
They kicked me out of Zen class, you know. They asked 'what is the sound of one hand clapping' - my answer? 'swish, swish, swish' *snort*... So, after a lifetime, the swirls will come tripping off the fingers and bow without thought? not thinking is really hard...
I believe that you shouldn't try to go too fast as you move through the process of learning the music and tradition. It is always a process, there's hardly anyone I have ever talked to who considers that they've learned all there is to learn about this stuff, so my own feeling is that we might as well enjoy the process as much as the results!
Being a beginner myself, needing to learn lots of new tunes and craving practice time that never seems to materialize, I always have to remind myself that there's a lot to be said for giving myself the grace to not have to be expert right away, or even two years from now.
We all want to be much better than we are, even the expert players I talk to. But the journey IS the goal, really, and nowhere is it better to remember that then in Irish trad music.
Usually, I hear music in my head that my fingers have a snowball's change in hell of playing
However, when I add ornamentation to a tune, it's usually based on a compromise of what i felt was right, and what sounds like it works....but I think it changes slightly every time I play. This is also true for pauses, phrasing and breaks between tunes.
This is worse (more pronounced) for me with the guitar than the mandolin for some bizarre reason.
Different styles of music are a kind of language. If you were playing bebop jazz, then the trick is learning how to improvise the entire melody line in a rythmically interesting way, playing in the right chords at the right moments, and fitting in with the tradition of bebop musicians. How do jazz players do it? They learn the whole language of jazz. Most of that is intense listening to the well-known traditional players. Then the musicians must listen to themselves as they play, until they get it.
The process isn't any different for learning the language of Irish traditional music. They key is to listen to all the great recordings out there, and listen at your local sessions, and go to concerts to listen. Also, spend time internalizing the music in your mind. Take a walk and sing the tunes to yourself instead of watching TV. Sing all the ornaments that you can remember - after all, the ornamentation is part of the language, and understanding it is vital.
Hoewver, sometimes I don't notice things very well myself when I listen, so having a teacher to point out things I miss is helpful. So, that's one reason I like to take lessons from good musicians. Often times, it's a good idea to take lessons from someone who plays a different instrument from you. It may just help you listen better to them. The other thing I always try to get from a teacher is a good list of recordings they like. Soon after the lesson, I make a trip to the CD store or Amazon.
Well, sometimes I make a mistake, and think "Wow--that sounded cool," and then I turn it into an ornament. This does not sound very erudite, does it?
When I am just learning a tune, I do the same ornament all the time. I have found that I prefer to learn tunes with some ornaments in place. As I get more comfortable with the tune, I can change or improvise ornaments. Sometimes I model after what I have heard someone else do, and sometimes I plod around and make my dogs howl and find some things that work for myself. Sometimes my teacher tells me to do a particualar thing, and I am very obedient and practice until it is just so. (Sometimes he tells me to do a particular thing, and I just roll my eyes and snort.)
If I have two tunes that I get confused in my head because they are similar, (some days, this would be all of them) I might use ornamentation to keep them straight.
However, I just have to admit that some of my ornaments are just lucky mistakes...
As for what do I hear in my head...when a tune gets hopelessly trapped on the circular tape in my head and I can hear each note, then I know I am ready to learn how to play it.
'spend time internalizing the music...instead of watching TV.'
Boy you said it! Kill your Television! Best thing you can do!
The 'never-repeated' ornamentaion appears to me to be an extention of one's mastery of the instrument and genre and tune. If you play a tune over and over and over again (like you would in a ceili dance), adding variation simply keeps everybody interested in the tune, including yourself. If you play a tune hundreds and hundreds of hours (and you work on those ornaments separately), you'll probably see more ornaments creeping into the tunes you feel confident with.
If your ornaments seem to overwhelm your tune, it's probably too much. Only your personal taste can be a guideline there.
I think the tasteful use of variations is one of the best things about good Irish music. The true masters do this without destroying the tune or the tradition, and keep the listener mesmirized. Even the lucky mistakes of some master players sound better and fit better than many people's well-practiced, purposeful ornaments. But then, you know some famous writers can rip out novels completely drunk, and somehow are blessed with a better handle on the language than the rest of us. They have the gift of persuasive eloquance, while I'm just proof that my parents spent too much money on my college education.
Whoops. I hit "enter" too fast. I'm not done. I don't even know if I spelled eveything right. Anyway, mistakes can be quite nice if they fit. It's just that they usually don't until you manage to fit them into the language of the music in just the right way. When I got my first lesson feedback back from Scoiltrad, Eoin said something like - "I think you did what could have been a nice ornamentation, but I think it was actually a mistake. " And it was a mistake, but he helped me develop that into an ornament that fit quite nicely in that spot after all.
hey, I dumped my tv 2 years ago, shortly before I took up fiddling, (hmm, might be a connection there). which is why I have enough playing time to get those nasty red sores on my neck. Used to be the tv shows were the dull and boorring noise around my house, now it comes from my fiddle (improvement or not?)...
Anything is an improvement over the TV - agreed. - And if your neck needs a rest, hey - what a great excuse to spend more of the practice time listening to tunes you want to learn. (I had a nasty piping rash that told me I needed to use a smaller bag, and back off the practice schedule a bit.)
yah tv-free is the Way (but if anyone has taped any Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes from this season, email me please haha)
Anyone read 'Goedel, Escher, Bach?' ie linking math, music & art? so lately what I'm hearing in my head (esp at night before bed & I just got Cooley's under my fingers) is the kooky relationship between ITM & mathematics. I'm sort of imagining what the graphic representation of the notes would look like as art, plus or minus ornamentations. Does that qualify me as a total dork? rhetorically speaking, of course
As I sit here listening to Matt Molloy, rolling like crazy, dropping octaves at will, I also realize I'm still also just aiming for the darn downbeat half the time.
What I hear in my head when I play usually goes like this:
"Oops, oh #$@*!! ummm, howzatgo? Whoops, %&#*@! Ahhhh...pisser."
Not sure if you can tell, but that's in time to a slip jig. The beat's a little different for a reel.
Seriously, this one's a puzzlement to me because even as a solidly mediocre player, interesting stuff comes out that I don't anticipate. I think it's a matter of attaining musical fluency, like speaking a language.
Sure, a lot of the variations I do are just things I've done a thousand times before and I know they work and where they go and I like what they bring to the tune. My head's accustomed to them, so they show up, invited or not. They're my "stock in trade." And that's fine. I hear even the top tier players repeat familiar variations, sometimes over many years, but it's not always easy to recognize them because those hot shot players have so many possible variations to choose from. They have a bigger bag of chops to pull from and to mix in new ways. As listeners we lose track, so it sounds fresh. Yet part of what gives top players their individual styles is that they each favor certain motifs or themes in their playing...the variations, no matter how innovative or off the wall, are hung on that player's fairly consistent framework of basic skills, techniques, and tastes.
Most top players have also put in countless more hours than I ever will, noodling through all those possibilities. So the ideas are available to them later, playing in a session or on stage. And the possibilities are endless. To wit:
I've trotted Gallagher's Frolics out on other threads, but I think it can be useful again to demonstrate the range of ideas you can put into a simple 2-bar jig phrase. The basic tune here is easy to play on most instruments, and it's a common session tune.
So....let's assume the basic melody line at the start of Gallagher's (6/8, E dorian, that is, 2 sharps) goes like this:
|E3 GFE|B3 dBA|
Here's a few possible variations for just those two bars, tinkering with ornamentation (cuts, rolls, and triplets), melody, rhythm, and where the accent falls. Bear in mind that you can also effectively vary all of these by altering volume, tone, and attack too.
|E2 E GFE|B2 B dBA|
|E2 F GFE|Bec dBA|
|[EB,]3 GFE|[BE]2 B dBA|
|~E3 GFE|~B3 dBA|
|~E3 ~G3|~B3 dBA|
|EB,E GFE|BAB dBA|
|EE/E/E GFE|Bcd dBA|
|GFE B,EF|GAB dBA|
|EDB, GFE|B/B/AB dBA|
|EDB, EFG|GAB dBA|
|B,DE EFG|GA/A/B dBA|
This is just a start. I'm certain you can come up with your own variations, combine the above ideas in different permutations, and the list could go on and on. And then imagine the same exercise applied to the next two bars of the tune, and the next, and so on. And to a different tune, and another, and so on.
In my experience, when I do spend time noodling on a tune like this, some of these possibilities catch my ear more than others and they tend to linger. I might run through them a few times till they start to feel comfortable. Then they might pop out the next time I play the tune. Sometimes this is conscious--"Oh I should try to play that cool little riff with the triplet onto the B in the second bar."
But sometimes they "just happen." One second I'm launching into the same old setting of Staten Island Hornpipe I've played since I learned it 15 years ago. And bang, there's a moving triplet where I've never played one before--never even *thought* of playing one before.
I notice that this kind of thing "just happens" more freely when my mind is relaxed--when I'm just playing for myself, or when I'm zoned out on the melody (and have conveniently forgotten that my session mates are even in the room), and when we've played the tune 10 times in a row and I've used up all my "familiar" variations and my mind is no longer paying attention but the melody is still bouncing along, or I've had a few pints.
I think it takes a few years of playing so that your basic technique, coordination, and relaxation is complete enough to pull the variation off on the spur of the moment. The notes enter your mind and your bow and fingers almost instantaneously do what they need to to make it so. If you're not quite at this stage yet (and I am at this stage only 2-3 nights out of the year), simply slow down to help that
"instantaneous" moment stretch out a bit longer and give yourself more time to let your fingers catch up to your mind.
I'm fairly sure that most of my "fresh" ideas are acutally borrowings from other tunes with similar phrases, or something I heard another player do a month ago. If you're good at playing by ear, you can also just try to immeidatley reproduce the musical ideas your session mates are tossing at you. I find it particularly interesting to try to echo the sounds of a different instrument--using a few quick double stops on the back beat, for instance, to mimic the concertina's vamping, or throwing in a string of slurred triplets because the whistle did that the last time through this part.
But all of this is a long-winded way of saying what Kevin Burke told Zina: the music is always out there and you just have to tap into it to let it come through you. Sounds airy fairy intangible new age Zen (at least to my ear), but that is in fact what it feels like when everything clicks.
In short, it's like talking out loud in a language you're absolutely fluent in. Most of us don't script out every phrase, choose our words ahead of time, and plan when to change our inflection or use a gesture to make a point. It just happens. But we do rely on habit and stylistic conventions (raising the pitch of your voice when asking a question, for example), etc. Try to do the same with the music, and then seek out ways to change your habits and stylisitic conventions, to keep it interesting.
I guess when it finally feels like you've been playing your instrument as long as you've been able to talk, then this will all "just happen."
Whew! I think I used up my posting quota for the month!
The best music usually comes to me when I'm not playing - walking down the street, in the kitchen chopping onions, on the bus home after a session. Like Zina says, as your repertoire grows, you develop a fuller sense of the tradition, and begin to notice, consciously or unconsciously, similarities and relationships between tunes or parts of tunes. You build up a stock of phrase elements and ornaments and learn which is appropriate in which situation, which can be substituted for which, and so on. That's how it works for me, anyway. This eventually (although this has yet to happen in my case) all becomes second nature.
Something which I have noticed about some of the best of Irish Trad musicians is the fine balance they stike between creative freedom and restraint - they can play what seems to be a passage of free improvisation, yet is still instantly recogniseable as a particular tune. Personally, I feel I am at a stage where musical ideas come to me, but I don't quite have the ear-brain-hand co-ordination to come up with them and play them all at once. Sometimes they are only half developed, so I find myself led off at a tangent and have to bodge my way back into the tune. What I get away with on the mandolin - If I were a box player, I'd have been crucified long ago!
I agree with David...the best music happens when my instrument is in the case (no riddle there, eh?! LoL).
I can't help but to day dream through tunes, and those dreams are far more fluent and interesting and soulful than what I actually play. My hunch is that most musicians experience this. Even Martin Hayes says he still has a ways to go to play the music the way he hears it in his head.
What's fun is when snippets of that soundtrack in the mind later fall out and land on the strings. You day dream something one day, and a week later it manifests itself on the fiddle. This happens for me more often now than it used to, however clumsy and amateurish the execution is. It's so startling (to me, not that much of anyone else would notice, unless it causes me to train wreck , that it usually sticks permanently--I can pull out the same idea the next time I play the tune. And eventually my technique catches up to it and it works its way into my bag of chops.
After my previous post, it occurred to me that this spoken language metaphor ties in to the thread we had going about the difference between violin and fiddle.
Playing classical violin is like preparing a speech for a formal presentation. You script everything, even your inflection (like Mark Twain, who used ALL CAPITALS and underlines and italics and lots of white space for pauses to notate his comic essays for delivering live to an audience). And you put on your best clothes and stick to the written version.
But fiddle is unscripted--it's conversational. You "speak" as the mood hits you. The tune provides the general topic, but you're free to wander a bit, even choose different "words."
Violin is reciting a poem. Fiddle is telling a really good joke.
I've used 3 approaches: mechanical, copying others and Noodling in my head.
I usually learn a bare bones structure of a tune unless Ive been bowled over by a certain version, then I'll learn that by ear. Then I take my list of ornaments. I take the first one and play it everywhere I can think of and I take note of how it sounds and where I'd like to use it. I go through my list in the same way. It was a good way to learn them and see how they sound.
Listen to music a lot and try to listen to the tune from as many musicians as you can find, first with your own instrument then with other instruments. I copy what I like from each and come up with my own semicopied version.
I also sing the tunes in my head with as many variations as [possible. After a while the music just pops in your head and the trouble (not really) is getting it to stop.
What do you hear in your head?
What do you hear in your head?
I've been thinking about the skill of being able to play a tune in different ways, even if it is just doing a triplet in one spot the first time, a roll there the next. This is an area where I am floundering. Maybe it's one of those thing that can't be taught and you just have to struggle until something clicks. But, there are these nagging questions that I would love to know the answer to ...
When you play a tune that you know well, how do the differences, the ornamentations, the things that help give a tune life, come about? Do you work out versions over time and then hear one of them in your head and play that? Or do you have bits of the tune, ornamented a particular way floating around in there and you sort of randomly pull them out? Perhaps, you hear just the melody? If so, then while you are playing the tune are you thinking things like, ok, I can do a roll on the next long b, a triplet as the next pickup,etc.? Or are you going for a certain feel to the tune and you pick the ornamentations because they give that feel? Like, maybe you do cuts and spitting triplets because you want the tune to have a sharper feel... Or do you focus on the melody and let your fingers do whatever they want? Maybe you use a particular ornamentation because it is possible at a spot? For example, in a reel where there are 2 notes the same in a row and the only thing that is fast enough is a cut between them, or, it is an off day, and you know you won't be hitting that long roll with the 4th finger, so you use a grace note instead. And how do you know how much is too much? Do you fill in a note with extra stuff because it sounds empty in a spot? But, isn't empty sometimes a good thing? When does the ornamentation cross the line between spicing a tune up and overwhelming the tune?
Also, when you are playing a part double, do you do the same ornamentations the first time through the 2 repetitions (AA) and then do a different set the next time through those 2? Or do you do it one way the first time through the part (A) and the 2nd time through you change it (A)? It seems like the first way would emphasis the part, making it sound more solid, and the second way would loosen the tune up a bit, making the A part sound longer and less substantial.
I'm sure there is no set formula for any of this, so do you have guidelines that you use?
Thanks!
Sosiadh
# Posted on April 19th 2002 by chicagofiddler
Re: What do you hear in your head?
I'm afraid i'm mostly trying to hit the downbeats in the right place, but the things you mention usually come to me if i play a tune a lot, by meself.
# Posted on April 19th 2002 by glauber
Rolls
Oh, rolls, mostly fall in place automatically (on the flute). Stuff like triplets or long notes that are in multiples of 3s, they get rolled. Sometimes i'll replace a roll with a long note (sometimes with vibrato) in the repeat, to emphasize it. Lots of little things like this we do without really thinking. Like when you really hit a note strong, and put a lot of finger vibrato in it (you don't want to do it more than once or twice in the tune, or else it starts sounding stoopid).
# Posted on April 19th 2002 by glauber
Ornamentation
I think what i'm trying to say is that ornamentation (even Baroque ornamentation, as far as i'm concerned) is a lot like Zen archery, if you know what i'm talking about. You do it a million times, then your fingers start doing it without requiring too much from the brain. It comes from a lifelong quest to grok the tradition.
Dig?
# Posted on April 19th 2002 by glauber
Re: What do you hear in your head?
Well, remembering the usual disclaimer that I'm still pretty much a beginner myself, I'll give you my two cents, Sosiadh. All statements herein are only my opinion and not set in stone!
First off, I think that what you're talking about is really a matter of taste and will vary widely from player to player (which I know you know, but thought I'd start from the beginning and work my way through to the end). The more music you listen to, the more you know what "sounds Irish" -- and what sounds, ornamentation and phrasing works or is close to the sounds of the particular area of Ireland that you like best.
Because so much of the music recycles bits and pieces from other tunes, it's possible to cut and paste bits and pieces of the way a favorite player plays certain things into the tune you're working on. When you're first starting out, this is a good way to go, as most beginners usually don't have a whole lot of discernment developed as regards phrasing and how ornamentation works within any given tune. Of course there's all the bits that go into making someone's sound that you might love but don't really work for your style of playing as it evolves or even for a particular tune -- but again, that comes with developing taste and discernment.
As you grow into the music and your own style a bit more, you start paying more attention to the phrase of the tune, the parabolae that arcs through each phrase, part, and the tune itself, that make it a whole tune. A player might not be the sort to analyze a tune, sit down and draw the parabolae of the phrases and such, but they sort of automatically do this if they play with any kind of grace whatsoever.
And that in turn tells you how the tune should be ornamented, varied upon, and otherwise decorated, according to your own taste and style and music, which can't really be codified into a guideline system, really.
There's not a whole lot wrong with just playing the tune, you know. While expert players might be famous for never repeating a part the same way twice, they'll be the first to tell you that the tunes will stand up all on their own, and often do.
All of which probably doesn't help you at all, does it? *grin*
Zina
# Posted on April 19th 2002 by Zina Lee
Re: What do you hear in your head?
They kicked me out of Zen class, you know. They asked 'what is the sound of one hand clapping' - my answer? 'swish, swish, swish' *snort*... So, after a lifetime, the swirls will come tripping off the fingers and bow without thought? not thinking is really hard...
# Posted on April 19th 2002 by chicagofiddler
Addendum
I believe that you shouldn't try to go too fast as you move through the process of learning the music and tradition. It is always a process, there's hardly anyone I have ever talked to who considers that they've learned all there is to learn about this stuff, so my own feeling is that we might as well enjoy the process as much as the results!
Being a beginner myself, needing to learn lots of new tunes and craving practice time that never seems to materialize, I always have to remind myself that there's a lot to be said for giving myself the grace to not have to be expert right away, or even two years from now.
We all want to be much better than we are, even the expert players I talk to. But the journey IS the goal, really, and nowhere is it better to remember that then in Irish trad music.
Zina
# Posted on April 19th 2002 by Zina Lee
Don't you hate it when we're all on at once?
zls
# Posted on April 19th 2002 by Zina Lee
Re: What do you hear in your head?
Usually, I hear music in my head that my fingers have a snowball's change in hell of playing
However, when I add ornamentation to a tune, it's usually based on a compromise of what i felt was right, and what sounds like it works....but I think it changes slightly every time I play. This is also true for pauses, phrasing and breaks between tunes.
This is worse (more pronounced) for me with the guitar than the mandolin for some bizarre reason.
# Posted on April 19th 2002 by Mcbear365
Re: What do you hear in your head?
Different styles of music are a kind of language. If you were playing bebop jazz, then the trick is learning how to improvise the entire melody line in a rythmically interesting way, playing in the right chords at the right moments, and fitting in with the tradition of bebop musicians. How do jazz players do it? They learn the whole language of jazz. Most of that is intense listening to the well-known traditional players. Then the musicians must listen to themselves as they play, until they get it.
The process isn't any different for learning the language of Irish traditional music. They key is to listen to all the great recordings out there, and listen at your local sessions, and go to concerts to listen. Also, spend time internalizing the music in your mind. Take a walk and sing the tunes to yourself instead of watching TV. Sing all the ornaments that you can remember - after all, the ornamentation is part of the language, and understanding it is vital.
Hoewver, sometimes I don't notice things very well myself when I listen, so having a teacher to point out things I miss is helpful. So, that's one reason I like to take lessons from good musicians. Often times, it's a good idea to take lessons from someone who plays a different instrument from you. It may just help you listen better to them. The other thing I always try to get from a teacher is a good list of recordings they like. Soon after the lesson, I make a trip to the CD store or Amazon.
# Posted on April 19th 2002 by dirk
Re: What do you hear in your head?
Well, sometimes I make a mistake, and think "Wow--that sounded cool," and then I turn it into an ornament. This does not sound very erudite, does it?
When I am just learning a tune, I do the same ornament all the time. I have found that I prefer to learn tunes with some ornaments in place. As I get more comfortable with the tune, I can change or improvise ornaments. Sometimes I model after what I have heard someone else do, and sometimes I plod around and make my dogs howl and find some things that work for myself. Sometimes my teacher tells me to do a particualar thing, and I am very obedient and practice until it is just so. (Sometimes he tells me to do a particular thing, and I just roll my eyes and snort.)
If I have two tunes that I get confused in my head because they are similar, (some days, this would be all of them) I might use ornamentation to keep them straight.
However, I just have to admit that some of my ornaments are just lucky mistakes...
As for what do I hear in my head...when a tune gets hopelessly trapped on the circular tape in my head and I can hear each note, then I know I am ready to learn how to play it.
# Posted on April 19th 2002 by woman of the house
Re: What do you hear in your head?
Dirk,
'spend time internalizing the music...instead of watching TV.'
Boy you said it! Kill your Television! Best thing you can do!
The 'never-repeated' ornamentaion appears to me to be an extention of one's mastery of the instrument and genre and tune. If you play a tune over and over and over again (like you would in a ceili dance), adding variation simply keeps everybody interested in the tune, including yourself. If you play a tune hundreds and hundreds of hours (and you work on those ornaments separately), you'll probably see more ornaments creeping into the tunes you feel confident with.
If your ornaments seem to overwhelm your tune, it's probably too much. Only your personal taste can be a guideline there.
# Posted on April 19th 2002 by Caoimghgin
Re: What do you hear in your head?
I think the tasteful use of variations is one of the best things about good Irish music. The true masters do this without destroying the tune or the tradition, and keep the listener mesmirized. Even the lucky mistakes of some master players sound better and fit better than many people's well-practiced, purposeful ornaments. But then, you know some famous writers can rip out novels completely drunk, and somehow are blessed with a better handle on the language than the rest of us. They have the gift of persuasive eloquance, while I'm just proof that my parents spent too much money on my college education.
# Posted on April 19th 2002 by dirk
Whoops. I hit "enter" too fast. I'm not done. I don't even know if I spelled eveything right. Anyway, mistakes can be quite nice if they fit. It's just that they usually don't until you manage to fit them into the language of the music in just the right way. When I got my first lesson feedback back from Scoiltrad, Eoin said something like - "I think you did what could have been a nice ornamentation, but I think it was actually a mistake. " And it was a mistake, but he helped me develop that into an ornament that fit quite nicely in that spot after all.
# Posted on April 19th 2002 by dirk
Yeah, kill your TV. Get your CRT fix from thesession.org instead!
# Posted on April 19th 2002 by dirk
Re: What do you hear in your head?
hey, I dumped my tv 2 years ago, shortly before I took up fiddling, (hmm, might be a connection there). which is why I have enough playing time to get those nasty red sores on my neck. Used to be the tv shows were the dull and boorring noise around my house, now it comes from my fiddle (improvement or not?)...
# Posted on April 19th 2002 by chicagofiddler
Re: What do you hear in your head?
Any sound other than the constant chatter of a glowing TV is a big improvement!
# Posted on April 19th 2002 by Caoimghgin
Re: What do you hear in your head?
Anything is an improvement over the TV - agreed. - And if your neck needs a rest, hey - what a great excuse to spend more of the practice time listening to tunes you want to learn.
(I had a nasty piping rash that told me I needed to use a smaller bag, and back off the practice schedule a bit.)
# Posted on April 19th 2002 by dirk
Re: What do you hear in your head?
yah tv-free is the Way (but if anyone has taped any Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes from this season, email me please haha)
Anyone read 'Goedel, Escher, Bach?' ie linking math, music & art? so lately what I'm hearing in my head (esp at night before bed & I just got Cooley's under my fingers) is the kooky relationship between ITM & mathematics. I'm sort of imagining what the graphic representation of the notes would look like as art, plus or minus ornamentations. Does that qualify me as a total dork? rhetorically speaking, of course
As I sit here listening to Matt Molloy, rolling like crazy, dropping octaves at will, I also realize I'm still also just aiming for the darn downbeat half the time.
# Posted on April 19th 2002 by emily_bmore
Re: What do you hear in your head?
What I hear in my head when I play usually goes like this:
"Oops, oh #$@*!! ummm, howzatgo? Whoops, %&#*@! Ahhhh...pisser."
Not sure if you can tell, but that's in time to a slip jig. The beat's a little different for a reel.
Seriously, this one's a puzzlement to me because even as a solidly mediocre player, interesting stuff comes out that I don't anticipate. I think it's a matter of attaining musical fluency, like speaking a language.
Sure, a lot of the variations I do are just things I've done a thousand times before and I know they work and where they go and I like what they bring to the tune. My head's accustomed to them, so they show up, invited or not. They're my "stock in trade." And that's fine. I hear even the top tier players repeat familiar variations, sometimes over many years, but it's not always easy to recognize them because those hot shot players have so many possible variations to choose from. They have a bigger bag of chops to pull from and to mix in new ways. As listeners we lose track, so it sounds fresh. Yet part of what gives top players their individual styles is that they each favor certain motifs or themes in their playing...the variations, no matter how innovative or off the wall, are hung on that player's fairly consistent framework of basic skills, techniques, and tastes.
Most top players have also put in countless more hours than I ever will, noodling through all those possibilities. So the ideas are available to them later, playing in a session or on stage. And the possibilities are endless. To wit:
I've trotted Gallagher's Frolics out on other threads, but I think it can be useful again to demonstrate the range of ideas you can put into a simple 2-bar jig phrase. The basic tune here is easy to play on most instruments, and it's a common session tune.
So....let's assume the basic melody line at the start of Gallagher's (6/8, E dorian, that is, 2 sharps) goes like this:
|E3 GFE|B3 dBA|
Here's a few possible variations for just those two bars, tinkering with ornamentation (cuts, rolls, and triplets), melody, rhythm, and where the accent falls. Bear in mind that you can also effectively vary all of these by altering volume, tone, and attack too.
|E2 E GFE|B2 B dBA|
|E2 F GFE|Bec dBA|
|[EB,]3 GFE|[BE]2 B dBA|
|~E3 GFE|~B3 dBA|
|~E3 ~G3|~B3 dBA|
|EB,E GFE|BAB dBA|
|EE/E/E GFE|Bcd dBA|
|GFE B,EF|GAB dBA|
|EDB, GFE|B/B/AB dBA|
|EDB, EFG|GAB dBA|
|B,DE EFG|GA/A/B dBA|
This is just a start. I'm certain you can come up with your own variations, combine the above ideas in different permutations, and the list could go on and on. And then imagine the same exercise applied to the next two bars of the tune, and the next, and so on. And to a different tune, and another, and so on.
In my experience, when I do spend time noodling on a tune like this, some of these possibilities catch my ear more than others and they tend to linger. I might run through them a few times till they start to feel comfortable. Then they might pop out the next time I play the tune. Sometimes this is conscious--"Oh I should try to play that cool little riff with the triplet onto the B in the second bar."
But sometimes they "just happen." One second I'm launching into the same old setting of Staten Island Hornpipe I've played since I learned it 15 years ago. And bang, there's a moving triplet where I've never played one before--never even *thought* of playing one before.
I notice that this kind of thing "just happens" more freely when my mind is relaxed--when I'm just playing for myself, or when I'm zoned out on the melody (and have conveniently forgotten that my session mates are even in the room), and when we've played the tune 10 times in a row and I've used up all my "familiar" variations and my mind is no longer paying attention but the melody is still bouncing along, or I've had a few pints.
I think it takes a few years of playing so that your basic technique, coordination, and relaxation is complete enough to pull the variation off on the spur of the moment. The notes enter your mind and your bow and fingers almost instantaneously do what they need to to make it so. If you're not quite at this stage yet (and I am at this stage only 2-3 nights out of the year), simply slow down to help that
"instantaneous" moment stretch out a bit longer and give yourself more time to let your fingers catch up to your mind.
I'm fairly sure that most of my "fresh" ideas are acutally borrowings from other tunes with similar phrases, or something I heard another player do a month ago. If you're good at playing by ear, you can also just try to immeidatley reproduce the musical ideas your session mates are tossing at you. I find it particularly interesting to try to echo the sounds of a different instrument--using a few quick double stops on the back beat, for instance, to mimic the concertina's vamping, or throwing in a string of slurred triplets because the whistle did that the last time through this part.
But all of this is a long-winded way of saying what Kevin Burke told Zina: the music is always out there and you just have to tap into it to let it come through you. Sounds airy fairy intangible new age Zen (at least to my ear), but that is in fact what it feels like when everything clicks.
In short, it's like talking out loud in a language you're absolutely fluent in. Most of us don't script out every phrase, choose our words ahead of time, and plan when to change our inflection or use a gesture to make a point. It just happens. But we do rely on habit and stylistic conventions (raising the pitch of your voice when asking a question, for example), etc. Try to do the same with the music, and then seek out ways to change your habits and stylisitic conventions, to keep it interesting.
I guess when it finally feels like you've been playing your instrument as long as you've been able to talk, then this will all "just happen."
Whew! I think I used up my posting quota for the month!
# Posted on April 19th 2002 by Will CPT
Re: What do you hear in your head?
The best music usually comes to me when I'm not playing - walking down the street, in the kitchen chopping onions, on the bus home after a session. Like Zina says, as your repertoire grows, you develop a fuller sense of the tradition, and begin to notice, consciously or unconsciously, similarities and relationships between tunes or parts of tunes. You build up a stock of phrase elements and ornaments and learn which is appropriate in which situation, which can be substituted for which, and so on. That's how it works for me, anyway. This eventually (although this has yet to happen in my case) all becomes second nature.
Something which I have noticed about some of the best of Irish Trad musicians is the fine balance they stike between creative freedom and restraint - they can play what seems to be a passage of free improvisation, yet is still instantly recogniseable as a particular tune. Personally, I feel I am at a stage where musical ideas come to me, but I don't quite have the ear-brain-hand co-ordination to come up with them and play them all at once. Sometimes they are only half developed, so I find myself led off at a tangent and have to bodge my way back into the tune. What I get away with on the mandolin - If I were a box player, I'd have been crucified long ago!
# Posted on April 20th 2002 by granama
Re: What do you hear in your head?
I agree with David...the best music happens when my instrument is in the case (no riddle there, eh?! LoL).
I can't help but to day dream through tunes, and those dreams are far more fluent and interesting and soulful than what I actually play. My hunch is that most musicians experience this. Even Martin Hayes says he still has a ways to go to play the music the way he hears it in his head.
What's fun is when snippets of that soundtrack in the mind later fall out and land on the strings. You day dream something one day, and a week later it manifests itself on the fiddle. This happens for me more often now than it used to, however clumsy and amateurish the execution is. It's so startling (to me, not that much of anyone else would notice, unless it causes me to train wreck
, that it usually sticks permanently--I can pull out the same idea the next time I play the tune. And eventually my technique catches up to it and it works its way into my bag of chops.
After my previous post, it occurred to me that this spoken language metaphor ties in to the thread we had going about the difference between violin and fiddle.
Playing classical violin is like preparing a speech for a formal presentation. You script everything, even your inflection (like Mark Twain, who used ALL CAPITALS and underlines and italics and lots of white space for pauses to notate his comic essays for delivering live to an audience). And you put on your best clothes and stick to the written version.
But fiddle is unscripted--it's conversational. You "speak" as the mood hits you. The tune provides the general topic, but you're free to wander a bit, even choose different "words."
Violin is reciting a poem. Fiddle is telling a really good joke.
# Posted on April 20th 2002 by Will CPT
Re: What do you hear in your head?
I've used 3 approaches: mechanical, copying others and Noodling in my head.
I usually learn a bare bones structure of a tune unless Ive been bowled over by a certain version, then I'll learn that by ear. Then I take my list of ornaments. I take the first one and play it everywhere I can think of and I take note of how it sounds and where I'd like to use it. I go through my list in the same way. It was a good way to learn them and see how they sound.
Listen to music a lot and try to listen to the tune from as many musicians as you can find, first with your own instrument then with other instruments. I copy what I like from each and come up with my own semicopied version.
I also sing the tunes in my head with as many variations as [possible. After a while the music just pops in your head and the trouble (not really) is getting it to stop.
Hope this helps.
# Posted on April 21st 2002 by Fiddlingsally