Yesterday i had this thought that for someone not born in the tradition, the process of learning ITM is similar to learning a foreign language.
I grew up speaking Portuguese, but took English lessons for many years, and now i can speak passable American, though still with an accent.
The process of learning a foreign language involves learning some vocabulary and grammar (like we have to learn ornamentation and style), but mostly speaking the language, by repeating and learning mind-numbing phrases like "Jean always drinks grapefruit juice for breakfast"! My Dad never got past "Robert's house is green" (which he playfully corrupted to "The Robert's house is green"). After a long time of doing this stuff, you start developing the ability to create your own conversation and "use" the language more naturally.
Anyway, i realized that i'm at the "parroting" stage right now with ITM, trying to memorize as many tunes as i can, and playing them always the same way, note for note. Hopefully, after some time this stuff will begin to "click" and then it will be more like using a language, and the variations will start coming out naturally instead of having to memorize them too. I also realize that i may always have an accent, but maybe people won't mind that too much.
Anyway, i thought this was an interesting parallel.
I think it is a very good parallel. Last night, after session (in Illinois), a woman who is from Ireland talked to me about how the group sounds--she said that we don't sound quite like groups in Ireland, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. She drops in once in awhile to listen, and likes our music. I commented that it was our "American accent" and she laughed and agreed. It was interesting timing on your part, glauber, to post this today. Slan.
Glauber, 'American without an accent' is an oxymoron.
Anyway, English arrogance aside, I have often thought along similar lines. The are many parallels between music and language. Just as each country has its own language, and each region or locality has its own dialect and accent, so it has its own kind of music, with different regional styles. A fiddler from Antrim and a fiddler from Clare certainly sound as different in their fiddle styles as they do in their speech. I think music and language are very closely linked both in the nature of their evolution and in their relationship to ethnography and political history.
Western Art Music might be regarded as a kind of Musica Franca of Europe and North America, much as English is a Lingua Franca, whilst popular music is a kind of Patois. Much as those of us who speak only English often find it hard to grasp that there are possible sounds other than those found in our own language, so the same might be true of those musicians who have been raised and trained solely in the Western Art Music tradition (although those who have never been exposed to any other style of music, such as the numerous non-localised dialects of popular music, must be a very small minority).
It is a common belief that children who have been brought up to be bilingual or multi-lingual, find it much easier to learn foreign languages in later childhood and adulthood than somebody who has grown up speaking only one language. I wonder if it is also the case that a child who is taught, say, both classical violin and Irish fiddle, would then find it easier later in life to learn to play Swedish, Hungarian or Bluegrass fiddle than one who has been taught only one style.
There's loads more to say on this, but I've got too many thoughts buzzing round my head to write them all down. Anyway, we're all the same species, so somebody else will undoubtedly think of them - and some more - and formulate them better than I could.
One thing I was going to say, but then passed off as egotism - but thinking about it, it is sort of relevant to Glauber's post:
During a two-year stay in Latvia, I picked up the Latvian language. although I lacked the fluency and breadth of vocabulary of a native speaker, I was often complemented on my lack of 'accent' and correct grammar. I would like to think that the same is true of my playing - whilst I may need to think more about what I play than a 'native player' (whether they be born in ireland, England, America or elsewhere), and I may not know as many tunes or have as many variations or forms of ornamentation up my sleeve, what I do play sounds 'authentic'. But that's probably wishful thinking.
The same happened to me. People would try to place my accent and sometimes they thought i was from "Boston". I live in the Midwest (Chicago), and i guess Boston is seen as closer to England. As a foreigner, i'm more careful with my spelyng and pronunciation than a native would care to be.
Especially in my earlier English-speaking days, where i learned a lot from reading the King James Bible with the Oxford dictionary. And i'm not making this up...
Olá Glauber também achei seu parelelo interessante! portuguese is also my native language, and I do as much as I can to write(speak) right, though I always make mistakes(but you´re understanding me, arent you? .
Referring to David's point. I've been brought up "in the tradition", not just irish, but the folk tradition. However, I also take classical lessons, which helps with some aspects of technique that you can use throughout any type of music. We don't just play British/Irish folk music, but have tied in Scandinavian, French and Turkish music aswell without having to force the sound.
Although the many kinds of folk music can be quite different there must advantages to all of them in blending their sounds and creating new ones from it.
Woah, that makes so little sense.
About Celtic Metal:Spinal Tap is quite funny ..but actualy theres serious bands now lol..like Skyclad,Cruachan(they play a lot of Irish tradicional songs "metalized") and in fact the the number of "headbangers" that listen to celtic music is growing up,there are bands that mix scandinavian trad folk and heavy metal like Otyg and even bulagarian folk with metal like Balcandji..I will send link to these bands sites later
for Cait:It makes a lot of sense for me ..even tradicional musical got to change, get "richer", course always keeping the credits for the "rooted" ones .
sorry for the grammar mistakes ))
Side note, I'm sure most of you know Asian languages are tonal, & basically you could tune an Asian orchestra by having the audience utter the same word in unison, such is the relationship with tonal languages to pitch. I picked up the Thai language (5 tones--high, common, low, rising & falling) so easily I think largely b/c of my musical background, as opposed to many non-Thai speakers who desite their best intentions & efforts inevitably ended up calling their waiter 'pubic hair' instead of 'older sibling.' Some neurolinguistic studies show language, music & sounds of nature overlapping in various regions of the brain depending on culture, ie you hear running water in a stream & it registers in your language or music sector depending on your upbringing. (!)
I think the idea of ITM being played in different world localities having a local "accent" or dialect is very important. I have long felt that people need to recognize that their local session outside of Ireland has a unique sound and that it is not only "OK" to sound a little different than a session in Ireland, but it is only natural to have a local accent. I look forward to when the teenagers in our session have grown up and carried on the music in the next generation and have developed a particular local accent that people will recognize. All a part of the process.
I learned English as a second language as well. I was born and grew up in Texas.
I have used the language of music as an anology with my students. Great players "speak" music as fluently as we speak our native tongues.
Definately agree with the neurolinguistic studies that emily mentions. I think everyone can hear the sounds of freight trains in the playing of traditional blues, and the beeps/clicks/whirs of digital devices in modern dance music. The comparisons could go on. Irish trad seems more like birds, rivers and such.
Well: I think that music is indeed another language, ( and a great one). And that's why I've also been thinking that great music (by which I mean soulful music that comes from the heart) can be a conversation between musicians.
Here's another one: have you ever played outdoors in a natural setting and had the birds join in? They respond especially well to whistles, but like to sing along with the fiddle as well. I always figured that they were talking to me..probably telling me that I haven't got that tune "quite right". But they do have a lot of patience with repeating phrases over and over and over again.
Yes! it is a language, does have accents, does have some rules, and does evolve over time. I too have been wondering what Irish music will evolve into in the coming generations. ( And isn't that how a lot of American folk music evolved once before, esp Appalachian music?)
Hello all.. Yes lees...I had a fine session in new zealand which involved some geese in the field next to our campground. I was sorry when i had to stop playing. They had a little trouble with the rhythm though. Also the very first time that I ever saw a stellar's
jay (magnificent bird) was while playing mandolin in a forest in BC and one flew in and landed on a tree just in front of me. Semi-religious experience. I'm always delighted at the local variations in ornamentation , swing and also how tunes are grouped.
Moving, as I have done and am still doing, from classical cello to Irish fiddle may not be quite like moving from one language to another, but I think you could make the valid analogy that you are learning a significantly different dialect of the language you already have, with the same grammar but with lots of new words and phrases and sentence structures. The same analogy would apply to a fiddler who takes up the whistle or the box, as many do.
For me, learning Irish fiddle is rather like being totally immersed in a foreign country where you have to learn the language (which you may already have studied in a textbook) by listening and repeating what you have heard, without reading the language. In other words, I'm having to learn to play by ear after a lifetime's cello playing of looking at the dots, having my brain translate them into appropriate arm, hand and finger movements, and then forgetting the dots as soon as I've played them! I'm gradually getting there.
A philologist I know told me that once you have learnt a second language it becomes progressively easier to learn further languages because your brain has developed the technique of language learning and automatically sees the similarities between languages and their basic structures. The same principle, I imagine, would apply to music.
Yup! I agree, agree, agree. It works the other way around, too. I teach language, and, the students who come to me with a music background far outshine the kids who have no experience with an instrument. It's like night and day. So, there's something to the theory that music and language are strongly related.
It kinda puts learning ITM in perspective when you relate the tedium of music practice to practicing the use of the words and phrases of one's second language. That's nice and helpful.
I've heard over and over again that knowing more that one language makes acquisition of another much easier. I believe it, except my experience was quite different. I speak Spanish as a second language. When I took a class in Italian one time, I had a divil of a time. The grammar and word and sentence structures were no problem, but, when the instructor would speak to me in Italian I would respond without knowing it in Spanish quite often. I never got very far in that class. Hope that doesn't happen in music. I play the bodhran now and I want to pick up whistle.
OK to extend the metaphor, which I have always found fascinating, mathematics can also be considered a language--code for computers, communication to extraterrestrials via the universality of primes a la Contact haha. Until recently, I had thought of ITM more in terms of mathematics than language, like a code that had to be cracked--the symmetry, the patterns & motifs, the resolutions, etc, as mentioned in a previous post both simple & elegant, but throw in ornamentations & settings etc, & it begins to look more like a blossoming fractal haha
Anyway, I recently had my first experience with ITM as a 'language,' & this is how I explained it to friends who couldn't understand why I'd travel 2,000 miles to my hometown & spend a Monday night in a mostly deserted smokey pub with a group of *strangers*-- Unlike any other classical ensemble or band I've played with, with this small group of strangers without my head buried in dots, I experienced something transcendent, like a key turning in a lock, I felt like we were talking, or singing, or dancing, or all of the above at once, but certainly *communicating* with some sort of motion-- it was like hearing a dead language you've studied finally spoken out loud. I'm sure everyone here knows that thrill, & that's what must at least partially keep this tradition alive.
Which totally got me off my original point which was going to discuss right-brain vs left-brain fuction in ITM if music is one side & math the other & whether geeks or supermodels should rightfully excel at ITM, but I'm about spent. Think this is bad, hear me rant after a few pints. Oy. I'm going to pipe down now.
Wow! This stuff is fascinating! Emily--playing in a session like "hearing a dead language you've studied finally spoken aloud" I love that description!! And the post from Caoimghgin about hearing trains in the blues and how you can kind of hear birds and streams etc. in Irish music. That's very druidic! and I agree.
This music as a language reminds me of something I wanted to post a while ago; (about learning a second instument in ITM, and how your knowledge on one informs you on the other and also on the music in general.) I will enter that as a separate post right now.
Linda
Going from one stringed instrument to another is like going from one indo-european language to another. I wonder if going from bodhran to whistle can be compared to going from indo-european to an oriental language such as Chinese, unless, of course, you've had experience of playing tunes on another instrument such as keyboard, fiddle, flute, etc. Keep us posted on your progress on this one.
On another tack, I've noticed over the years that scientists, especially physicists and mathematicians, are often performing musicians, as are medics. This observation is purely anecdotal - I have no statistical data to back it up. My own career was in chemistry, then physics, before I took early retirement, and I noticed these things, both in my colleagues and in the orchestras I play in.
Trying to play bodhran with the whistle is not recommended - it damages the goatskin
Macsheoinin--I have heard that before about math and music being from the same part of the brain. I, on the other hand was never any good at math. Although I did do very well in geometry, which is more visual and less abstract than, say, algebra. Maybe that explains why it is good for me to see what my teacher is doing as well as hear it. Also, I need to have a visual record of the tune filed away--dots or abc--just as a security blanket in case I forget it in the future. I went to college for painting, and sometimes when my teacher tells me "it should be a G chord there" (as an example) I may say oh, but such and such a chord makes it sound like a different color--I'll use that one on the second time around the tune. I bet the color/music thing has been covered before in previous discussions...
Gosh I love this post, Andee stop encouraging me LOL
Remember in Close Encounters when they used that 5-tone motif to say hello to the mother ship & then the mother ship went all Seamus Egan on 'em? hahaha that's how I feel, a little like glauber's father, I can say 'hello, how are you? what is your name? do you have the time & where is the bathroom?' The phrase 'do they have Guinness on tap here?' is coming along nicely haha... I expect to go to Willie Week & be overwhelmed by hearing the players elaborating on the ancient history & myths of Ireland using poetic phrases, elaborate descriptors, hyperbolic superlatives & not catching most of it but just existing in the joy of hearing it as a story, not so much a conversation, but hopefully picking up a few more vocabulary words along the way.
Per the scientist idea, yes mac I agree-- not so much back East where ppl I know were raised in the tradition, but here where the ITM is a second or found language, yes, all members of my immediate session are physicians or midwives, & in Flagstaff they manipulate macromolecules & research exotic fungi & analyze arial landscapes for drought effects, AND the biggest mystery to me, a *financial advisor*. Not to say all, but yes, anecdotally, the majority. Huh.
Well, regarding the indo-european analogy, I can say that I know several i-e languages, just as I can manage to play many woodwinds - but I'm failing equally in learning bass guitar and Wolof! When you're moving within one group like that, it's all variations on a theme, but to jump systems... well you have to relearn the basics, I think.
Then again, with ITM you have something of a metalanguage that helps you out regardless of what instrument you're on... I think I lost my point. sigh.
I will, macsheoinin. My age makes me worry about whether I'll be able to learn very well, also. The old memory and speed aren't what they used to be. We'll see.
Interesting that you bring up scientists and music, just what I've been thinking about with this discussion. I used to do European folkdancing at Fermilab--big nuclear research plant--and it has always been a curiosity to me that there, and at many other labs as well, physicists would be Big participants in the dancing and performing and teaching of dances during their off hours.
We seem to all agree the similarities between music and language in this discussion, but what about the differences.
While you can create art with langauge as your medium, language itself is a pragmatic, practical thing. The very nature of language as the medium of communication calls for it to be precise. There is no confusion or doubt in well executed language.
Music on the other hand is an abstract thing. Great music has to be riddled with confusuion and doubt. Its meaning is always shrowded in the subcocious of the producer. Its quallity will for ever be unexplained by the complex relationships between the subjective and objective. The whole point about music is that it has no meaning.
What is it for?
Every one of you will have a different answer.
And you can't all be right.
Or can you?
Interesting! This could lead into a musical Tower of Babel deconstruction, the etymology of music lol... but I haven't been drinking, so we (or I) shall not go there.
I guess I think of it this way. You are saying language implies a discrete or 'precise' means of communication. I disagree. I think communication involves a simple or even basic concurrence between 2 (or more) parties. "Do you want the dog biscuit?" "Yes I want the dog biscuit." In ITM, it could be similar. "Mountain Road?" "Yes Mountain Road." I think this is communication. It's a confirmation of mutual knowledge & intent.
To extend that, if every tune has a core melody that is agreed upon (I expect that to open up loopholes), that could be considered the skeleton or the spine of the tune. I would consider this the musical equivalent of simple prose. Anything extra one could consider artistic embellishment, & not entirely free of meaning as you may suggest, I think that's probably where most of the meaning lies. Like when we play 'Miller's Maggot' from the Solas set that we totally lifted from the CD & we play the A part on the second go round the same way as the CD, we always grin & there is meaning in that derivation from the dots, or the prose, thus poetry?
I think language does imply discrete and precise means of communication. To create art out of language, one bends these rules (for example, with the use of subcociouse simmilies), but, what you are saying is that there is more to communication than being precice.
I agree of course, but to be precice is the essence of language. Language was invented to convey specifics such as, "You go to the head of that ravine and set up an ambush while we chase the mammoth towards you. And make sure you sharpened your spears." Extra meaning can be added with inflections of the voice or body language such as "And get it right this time", but the intent is the same, Accurate communication.
Music on the other hand is a different form of communication. "Mountain road?" is a good place to start.
You could say "how about the mountain road, in D, 4 times through, followed by ........ etc?" But even this doesn't say how loud or how fast. And we all know that this is a redundent question anyway. All you need to do is play the first half a bar, in what ever key, at what ever speed, dynamic ect. and everyone knows where your going. Comfirmation of mutual knowedge and intent as you say. But there is a lot more to it than that. "Let's ambush a mammoth" is clear. "Let's eat".
But "Let's play the mountain road"?
Why?
What do we get out of it?
Why is that particular collection of notes, ordered in a western established scale, inflected with decoration we are familiar with, so important to us?
We know that it is communication, But what is it's intent?
Does it have intent?
Does this ever so sophisticated form of communication need intent?
Maybe that the communication itself is intent enough?
Very interesting points, Michael! I'm going to be pondering this all day...
I was thinking that while a tune might have a broadly general atmosphere - of wistfulness, or tragedy, or good humour, or mischief - everyone will have their own particular experience of it. Just by example, there was a tune which Kevin O'Reilly played at Willie Week, which reduced me to tears, in spite of being not at all a tragic tune... I thought about it alot, and I concluded that it represented - to me - a quality of hopefulness, uncrushable optimism, and perseverence against every setback, which I found very moving. Why that tune (and the way Kevin plays it) should mean those things, to me or to anyone else, I have no idea at all. You might hear the tune and conclude that I'm insane... (it was Behind the Haystack, or the Munster Buttermilk - hope I got that right... and thanks to Kenny for letting me hear it again.)
I think Kevin's beautiful double-stopping had a lot to do with it. But how all this works on a neurological level - I wonder if we'll ever know even the basics of it?
I prefer to let the effects of a tune burrow their own way into my subconcious without the help of allotted emotions. Describing a tune as having feelings is a bit like anthropomorphism.
A tune you know well is abit like your pet cat. You can comunicate with it on many levels including the mundane (feeding it/playing the notes). But there is also a stranger connection that some would describe as knowing its moods. I'm not comfortable with this description
I should point out that I don't usually make any attempt to define what the feel of a tune means to me - just occasionally, something comes to me in a concious or verbal form that helps to describe what the tune is triggering in me emotionally.
I'm not trying to state what the tune *is* or *means* - just what the feelings are, that it arouses, in me. I'm not claiming that the tune 'has feelings' - just that it conveys those particular feelings, when played by that person, in that way - and it's certainly subjective - I'm not making any assumptions about how another person would experience that tune. Um, I'm getting repetitive, but this is really hard to explain clearly...
It is hard to explain isn't it. But maybe thats the point I'm making. That language is redundent in describing music. All you need is the music itself.
Helen, I think we pretty much agree on this one. You've certainly said nothing I disagree with
hmm, so is this about just ITM or all music? or are you making a distinction?
I ask b/c obviously I've had 20+ years of classical training on multiple instruments, & less than 2 years 'real' exposure to ITM. As a beginner, I will obviously defer to those with more experience, but I can also approach the subject with a fresh view point. If we were to compare classical to ITM using the metaphor of language, I would say classical is like a stage play, with everyone reading their parts & everyone knowing how it will end. ITM feels much more like a language to me in that, like jazz, it's participative & improvisational, not a script but a conversation. Guess you are right that I don't know if that qualifies it as a language, but it feels just as precise, if not more so, than classical, & yet infinitely more interactive.
As for meaning, you're also right. I can only know what meaning ITM brings to me, whether it reminds me of family Christmases, conjures images of a land I've never seen or simply proposes the challenge of conquering another genre of music. I think despite all the possibilities of what meaning *could* be there, the one that probably means the most to us is the community, the sharing of this music with other living, breathing players. If not for that, why play it?
Very interesting points michael, like Helen, I shall be musing on them.
Were you being sarcastic when you said 'ever so sophisticated?' Seriously, I couldn't tell. I also agree that tunes don't have moods until a player bestows one upon it.
No sarcasm. Just that music (of any kind) is sophisticated behaviour.
Do you mean that a pice of music becomes "sad" whan someone plays it sadly? Can a piece of music be "sad" any more than a cat can be "sad"? To a cat, the concept of "sad" is a complete misnoma and I view music the same. We know that minor keys only sound sad because our Western ears have been conditioned to think so. I think it was Stravinsky who said, (and I might be paraphrasing) "Music, by its very nature, is powerless to express anything at all." While I disagree with Igor in that music must express something, other wise why would we play it, I think the point he was making was that it cannot express anything tangible.
And yes, I think this applies to all music, All music that hasn't had words put to it that is. This is one of the reasons I can't stand Opera.
I like your classical/stage play analogy. But if we look at it that way, Irish music is more like a nursery rhyme, or maybe stringing a few nursery rhymes together.
I think there are neurological reasons for minor keys sounding sad, I don't think it's learned. I don't know if we'll ever understand the brain in enough detail to know *why* or how that is the case, though..
I don't think anyone is suggesting that the tune itself experiences emotion, that would be mad wouldn't it? Saying that it's a sad tune is surely just shorthand for saying that it engages or draws out sad feelings in the player and the listeners.
Interesting stuff. Michael, can you steer us toward any web sites or other resources about the research on music modes and human emotional response--that would be interesting reading.
It's fun to talk about music (else why would be all log on here), but I agree with the notions above that music *is* its own experience. If it could be captured in words, it wouldn't be music.
How we experience it is up to us. Each of us brings a personal and aculturated sensibility to the tunes, so each of us expresses and recieves the music in different ways and emphasizing different aspects of the music.
What is remarkable to me is how sophisticated and ubiquitous music is, far more so in most cultures than the other arts. Imagine if painters or poets had as many highly developed and idiosyncratic tools to choose from as musicians have instruments. Clearly as a species we spend a lot of time and energy focused on some aspect of music--listening to it, playing it, designing and making instruments, composing. All for no other apparent reason except the sheer joy of it.
Continuing my thought above, another way of looking at the significance of music versus language is to consider the evolution of writing tools against the evolution and diversification of musical instruments. In 100,000 years we've gone from scratching charcoal on cave walls, to mineral-based paint, to quill and ink, to pencil, to ballpoint, to word processor. In that same time, the urge to make music has generated how many hundreds or thousands of different instruments, from gourd drums and bone whistles to lutes, cellos, oboes, harmonicas, pianos, sitars, horns, Chapman sticks, electric guitars, and synthesizers.
I'm not sure what this all means, except that music must rank right up there with food and shelter when it comes to basic human needs. For me, music and language are not analogous. They meet very different needs--language is for communication, and music is for communion.
Excellent points. I was thinking of starting a post called 'why play?' but figured it's already been done, & probably getting a bit stale for those who think we are pontificating too much..
Michael, lol you are not the first musician I've heard liken ITM to nursery rhymes. I first heard that from my cousin Eliot Grasso who is a accomplished pipes player. When I first heard him say that, it gave me courage but also intimidated me. I know you think we 'lot' have issues with fear, but for an infant learning to talk, nursery rhymes are a bit of a leap. At least we're trying. I remember asking him, 'how many nursery rhymes do you carry around in that little head of yours?' & he paused & answered, 'between 1200-1500.'
Per the mood idea, I forget what Greek philosopher said, 'if horses had gods, they'd look like horses.' I think this applies to the mood of tunes across cultures as well, tempo for an example-- fast makes you want to dance joyfully, slow conjures introspection, perhaps even suffering or death. Perhaps a correspondance to universal human anatomy such as heartbeat & breathing? I still think the player can bestow any mood she wants on a tune & have a pretty good idea of the 'mood' she is trying to express to her listeners. Otherwise, why is ITM such a worldwide phenomenon these days if the message wasn't getting through across cultures?
Doesn't it seem that the music communicates more about the musician than the tune? As if no matter how hard the player tries, a portion of their life-view is broadcasted to the audience for all the world to see and you know who they are before you've even met them.
If they play bravely, you'll generally find that person is couragous. If they play with precision, you'll likely find a very precise person. If they play timidly, you're likely to find that person to be somewhat meek.
Caoimghgin, no, this is not true at all. A competent musician will convey whatever mood she wants to convey (whatever mood is appropriate for the musical piece). I can play with precision, or bravely, or timidly, and many other ways whenever i want to.
Hmmm....so Caoimghgin, if I play a lively set of major-key jigs and then swoon through a minor-key slow air, I'm manic-depressive? I don't think we can simplify (sorry Michael, heh) what goes into or comes out of music down to such levels. Music is as simple as it gets when we're playing and responding to it. And I wouldn't call that communicating.
Not exactly what I'm getting at guys, but all good points just the same.
Consider if you may that each musician has a predominate style of his/her own (aside from regional). You know who is playing at the pub even before you opened the door. You recognize the individual (not regional) style of the players.
Have you not found a similariy between a persons personality and how they play their music? I've seen it so often, I'm shocked there wasn't an immediate consensus!
Not at all.
I know quiet introspective shy people who can play like deamons. I know bossy loudmouths who you have to strain to hear them. I play precicely, but I'm a messy git. I think this just emphasises the absract nature of music that I'm trying to get accross.
Time for another comparrison.
I was staring at a large Jackson Pollock last week, following its curves, deciphering the order of its layers etc. and terrific it was too. A stranger saw me looking at it for 20 mins or so and asked me what I saw in it. I said I didn't understand the question and they replied with what they saw, "there's a face of an old man down in the corner, a cat, a profile of a woman" etc etc. Of course, when the stranger pointed out these coincidences, I could see them too.
But Hold On A Minute!!!! Talk about missing the point.
I think it is this same mistake people in this discussion are making with tunes.
Michael, just b/c you look for layers & someone else looks for recognizable images & perhaps I would be musing on shifts in hue, doesn't credibly demonstrate your point. It merely demonstrates how each person approaches the painting/tune/art form differently. Perhaps b/c I was raised to see music as a visual notation based on the Greco-Roman alphabet doesn't preclude the aural intangibility that many, perhaps most & probably including yourself, ITM players either bring to the music or hope to, ie learning by ear the way it was meant to be. Perhaps that's your basic point, that to compare it to a language is demeaning since it should transcend those boundaries. In defence of my position, why, then, do we use a program called ABC to trade tunes if it has nothing to do with language at all? I think it's reductionist & snobby to think that ppl who do see ITM as related to language as absolutely incorrect. There are enough of us out here that use that metaphor to help us learn it, so how misguided could we all be? Well I can guess your answer anyway. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the dialogue, I'm just surprised to see such an absolutist stance when you yourself are arguing for the ability to see differing viewpoints.
language: 1. the body of words & systems for their use common to a people who are of the same community or nation, the same geographical area or the same cultural tradition 2. communication by voice in the distinctively human manner, using arbitrary, auditory symbols in conventional ways with conventional meanings 3. the system of linguistic signs or symbols considered in the abstract (as opposed to speech) 4. any set or system of such symbols as used in a more or less uniform fashion by a number of people, who are thus enabled to communicate intelligibly with one another 5. any system of formalized symbols, signs, gestures or the like, used or conceived as a means of communicating thought, emotion, etc, 'the language of mathematics, the language of love' 6. the means of communication used by animals ' the language of birds' 7. communication of meaning in any way 'the language of flowers, the language of art' 8. linguistics 9. the speech or phraseology peculiar to a class, profession, etc 10. a particular manner of verbal expression 'in his own language, flowery language, formal language' 11. diction or style of writing 'the language of poetry, the stilted language of official documents' 12. archaic, faculty or power of speech 13. a nation or people considered in terms of their speech.
communicate: 1. to impart knowledge of; make known 'to communicate information, to communicate one's happiness' 2. to give to another; impart, transmit 'to communicate a disease' 3. to administer the Eucharist to 4. archaic, to share in or partake of 5. to to give or interchange thoughts, feelings, information, or the like, by writing, speaking, etc. 'they communicate with each other every day' 6. to have or form a connecting passage 'the rooms communicated by means of a hallway' 7. to partake of the Eucharist 8. to take part or participate... 'denotes giving to a person or thing a part or share of something, now usually something immaterial, as knowledge, thoughts, hopes, qualities or properties'
communion: 1. the act of sharing, or holding in common, participation 2. the state of things so held 3. association, fellowship 4. interchange or sharing of thoughts or emotions; intimate communication 'communion with nature' 5. a group of persons having a common religious faith; a religious denomination 6. (lengthy subdivided definition of Holy Eucharist, not necessarily applicable, see p. 298 of Webster's Unabridged Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language should you require those)
phew, hope I don't lose this, was seriously just looking up the terms for my own clarification & thought I'd share, dunno whose side it shall fall on *click*
Emily,
Of course music is communication, and language is also communication and Music passes all the obove definitions of language. But do you agree that music is more than mere language? I think it is, because its intent is obscure.
Jackson Pollock.
The reason thought of Pollock for a comparison is that he realised that art is at its best when the intent is abscure. Because of this, he attemted to strip out any intent completely, concentrating only on the production process. It was this production process I was looking at (eg. deciphering the layers meant no more than working out which bits he painted first). I'm not saying the stranger I met was wrong to look for recognizable images, they just missed the point. They were looking for intent where there was non.
And this is one of the reasons I just adore diddly music, Its all in the process. It's the process of playing it that makes it. Not analysing it, or searching for reasons, or wondering what is being communicated. Just the process. And what a glorious process it is.
If you'll go back to one of my original postings in this thread, I described something intangible I likened to singing, or dancing or talking all at once when I played at my first public session recently. What you call a process, what I call a transcendence, what Will calls a communion, yes, this is what we strive for, & I completely agree that music can ultimately be more than a language, a sort of 'je ne sais quoi' that transports us beyond ourselves. However, the intent of the post was to discuss similarities of ITM to language, even minimal requirements, which I think I have effectively done. When someone reads eeg/eeg in ABC or whatever, they're reading a language. When someone reads little black dots, that's a form of language as much as hyrogliphics, yes? It's a standardized system of communication. Now it appears what we are debating is the content of the message, or even if that message has a meaning, or whether simply the transmission of the message & subsequent response is enough. Seriously, what do you hear in the message, Michael? Can you describe how you are feeling during the process of playing ITM, whether alone or with others? As a longtime player, I would be very interested to hear if your experience has changed over time with your level of playing.
PS my apologies if I am being too cerebral, I don't generally bring this amount of overthinking to my playing, but when you think about ITM a lot, tunes running through your head etc, yeah you kind of want to know why & I guess this thread is a bit of a vent. Would be much more pleasant to have in person over a pint, & I promise not to throw any chairs.
Verbal communication also has its abstract side. Some modernist poetry is as abstract as Pollock's paintings. One of theories among practioners of that craft is that, through the abstract, we say more, not less, than we can say through the more traditional types of verbal communication. Our inability to re-translate those poems -- or Pollock's paintings, or ITM -- into easily defined words like "sad" and "happy," or to say in so many words, "This poem means such-and-such," doesn't mean the poem has no meaning, only that its meaning is more abstract than concrete.
Someone searching for recognizable images in a Pollock painting could indeed be missing the point, but I'd suggest that doing so is part of the process that Pollock intended: you grope for literal translation, and, failing that, you settle into an abstract and therefore greater understanding. That's the theory, anyway, I think.
In any case, another way to consider the music-as-language notion is as a practical matter. Music teachers frequently try to get their students to think in terms of words, phrases and clauses as a way to breathe life into their musical phrases. And I remember hearing a critic describe Kevin Burke's fiddling as being eloquent and clever, like light, witty dinner conversation. Whether there's any real link between music and language, it's probably a useful analogy in many ways.
OK, middle of the night 'ah-ha' moment which may look sublimely ridiculous in the light of day.
So I'm thinking, how could Michael & Will actually agree about music not being a language? Then I was musing about concrete vs abstract (thanks cuchulain!), & for some reason child psychologist Piaget jumped to mind. If I remember correctly, Piaget's theory of child development involved an early stage called 'concrete operational' & then one later called 'abstract reasoning' or something. Like in concrete operational, children don't understand to look for missing objects or don't have correct insights as to volumes of fluid or whatever, whereas after a certain maturity, they can reason their way out of new problems based on past experience. (Somebody with a psych background, help!)
So, here comes the leap of faith perhaps, & maybe this has already been thought of in some obscure doctoral thesis somewhere. (if not, you're welcome to it, it's most likely a load of sh*te, heh) We could propose an ITM learning curve based on Piaget's theory. Obviously, Will & Michael are very experienced players & are able to leave the concrete tune behind to transcend into the abstract. While myself, still new to ITM, cling desperately to the concreteness of each tune, & possess monstrous pride as I add tunes to my check off list. Over the weekend, I hosted a jam session at my house b/c one of my friends' sisters came into town & she's a semi-professional fiddler, so of course we were polishing up our small repertoire of memorized tunes heh (including Banish Misfortune which we cooked on!). Anyway, so here comes my second 'abstract' experience with ITM. This woman was *amazing*-- for example, we do a nice rendition of Sonny Broghan's Mazurka (don't laugh!), but she didn't know it. I played it for her 2 times through while she picked along on pizzicatto. By the third time through, she not only mastered the tune & played with us in unison, by the fifth time through, she was playing harmonies, probably just a third up, but so gorgeous & unexpected, it took my breath away. To be playing this tune, with my fiddler on my left & this new harmony on fiddle to my right, plus an extra guitar or two fingerpicking nicely, well heck, I was again transported beyond myself, b/c I *knew* this tune concretely but then could understand & hear what another person was doing & playing to enhance it, that intangible process & communion that Michael & Will describe.
OK yeah, so that's the ticket, a learning continuum. Ha! Can't wait to see what this looks like in the a.m.
Ermily, to me, it looks pretty fine in the light of day.I wonder, though, whether it really comes as a learning "continuum" or if it's more like Saul of Tarsus being knocked from his horse.
Once, in an abortive attempt to learn to draw, I was going through the early chapters in that old book "Drawing From the Right Side of the Brain" by Betty Somebody-or-Other. She had a little exercise in there: Remember those little optical illusions, where you see the line drawing and you try to determine whether it's a pedestal or two human faces looking at each other in profile? Draw a human profile; then, by following every nook and bump in the profile you've just drawn, draw the mirror image of it, as if you were trying to draw one of those optical illusions. As Betty explained it, you should feel your left brain try to take over the task in a logical way, but then that half of the brain becomes frustrated at its inability to deal with it, and it gets out of the way and lets the right brain take over, because it's the right brain that deals with proportion and shape and all kinds of other intangibles.
I tried the exercise and felt exactly what she described. I could almost feel a wobble in my head as two brain hemispheres struggled for ascendency, and then the better-suited half took over.
I suspect that we practice music -- practice anything, really -- in part to give our hands the strength and grace to do what they need to do, but more to give our brains the chance to learn to get the hell out of the way.
How do I feel when I play?
I think I touched on this in another thread. Remember when Boris Becker talked about "the Zone". When he's playing well, all thought goes out the window and he's kind of on automatic pilot. That's not to say he's not concentrating, it's that his concentration is so all consuming that the game just takes over. The second you think about it, you lose it
Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Yesterday i had this thought that for someone not born in the tradition, the process of learning ITM is similar to learning a foreign language.
I grew up speaking Portuguese, but took English lessons for many years, and now i can speak passable American, though still with an accent.
The process of learning a foreign language involves learning some vocabulary and grammar (like we have to learn ornamentation and style), but mostly speaking the language, by repeating and learning mind-numbing phrases like "Jean always drinks grapefruit juice for breakfast"! My Dad never got past "Robert's house is green" (which he playfully corrupted to "The Robert's house is green").
After a long time of doing this stuff, you start developing the ability to create your own conversation and "use" the language more naturally.
Anyway, i realized that i'm at the "parroting" stage right now with ITM, trying to memorize as many tunes as i can, and playing them always the same way, note for note. Hopefully, after some time this stuff will begin to "click" and then it will be more like using a language, and the variations will start coming out naturally instead of having to memorize them too. I also realize that i may always have an accent, but maybe people won't mind that too much.
Anyway, i thought this was an interesting parallel.
g
# Posted on October 17th 2002 by glauber
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
I think it is a very good parallel. Last night, after session (in Illinois), a woman who is from Ireland talked to me about how the group sounds--she said that we don't sound quite like groups in Ireland, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. She drops in once in awhile to listen, and likes our music. I commented that it was our "American accent" and she laughed and agreed. It was interesting timing on your part, glauber, to post this today. Slan.
# Posted on October 18th 2002 by woman of the house
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Glauber, 'American without an accent' is an oxymoron.
Anyway, English arrogance aside, I have often thought along similar lines. The are many parallels between music and language. Just as each country has its own language, and each region or locality has its own dialect and accent, so it has its own kind of music, with different regional styles. A fiddler from Antrim and a fiddler from Clare certainly sound as different in their fiddle styles as they do in their speech. I think music and language are very closely linked both in the nature of their evolution and in their relationship to ethnography and political history.
Western Art Music might be regarded as a kind of Musica Franca of Europe and North America, much as English is a Lingua Franca, whilst popular music is a kind of Patois. Much as those of us who speak only English often find it hard to grasp that there are possible sounds other than those found in our own language, so the same might be true of those musicians who have been raised and trained solely in the Western Art Music tradition (although those who have never been exposed to any other style of music, such as the numerous non-localised dialects of popular music, must be a very small minority).
It is a common belief that children who have been brought up to be bilingual or multi-lingual, find it much easier to learn foreign languages in later childhood and adulthood than somebody who has grown up speaking only one language. I wonder if it is also the case that a child who is taught, say, both classical violin and Irish fiddle, would then find it easier later in life to learn to play Swedish, Hungarian or Bluegrass fiddle than one who has been taught only one style.
There's loads more to say on this, but I've got too many thoughts buzzing round my head to write them all down. Anyway, we're all the same species, so somebody else will undoubtedly think of them - and some more - and formulate them better than I could.
# Posted on October 18th 2002 by ragaman
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
One thing I was going to say, but then passed off as egotism - but thinking about it, it is sort of relevant to Glauber's post:
During a two-year stay in Latvia, I picked up the Latvian language. although I lacked the fluency and breadth of vocabulary of a native speaker, I was often complemented on my lack of 'accent' and correct grammar. I would like to think that the same is true of my playing - whilst I may need to think more about what I play than a 'native player' (whether they be born in ireland, England, America or elsewhere), and I may not know as many tunes or have as many variations or forms of ornamentation up my sleeve, what I do play sounds 'authentic'. But that's probably wishful thinking.
# Posted on October 18th 2002 by ragaman
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
The same happened to me. People would try to place my accent and sometimes they thought i was from "Boston". I live in the Midwest (Chicago), and i guess Boston is seen as closer to England. As a foreigner, i'm more careful with my spelyng and pronunciation than a native would care to be.
Especially in my earlier English-speaking days, where i learned a lot from reading the King James Bible with the Oxford dictionary. And i'm not making this up...
# Posted on October 18th 2002 by glauber
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Olá Glauber também achei seu parelelo interessante!
portuguese is also my native language, and I do as much as I can to write(speak) right, though I always make mistakes(but you´re understanding me, arent you? 
.
# Posted on October 18th 2002 by CelticMetalFiddler
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Olá metaleiro! I just had this vision of a Spinal Tap band dressed in kilts, with hairy legs on display, dry-ice smoke, lights, Stonehenge, etc.
I'm an expatriate carioca, but my family now lives in São Paulo. I'm hoping to go see them sometime next year.
# Posted on October 18th 2002 by glauber
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Referring to David's point. I've been brought up "in the tradition", not just irish, but the folk tradition. However, I also take classical lessons, which helps with some aspects of technique that you can use throughout any type of music. We don't just play British/Irish folk music, but have tied in Scandinavian, French and Turkish music aswell without having to force the sound.
Although the many kinds of folk music can be quite different there must advantages to all of them in blending their sounds and creating new ones from it.
Woah, that makes so little sense.
# Posted on October 18th 2002 by Caitriona
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
About Celtic Metal:Spinal Tap is quite funny
..but actualy theres serious bands now lol..like Skyclad,Cruachan(they play a lot of Irish tradicional songs "metalized") and in fact the the number of "headbangers" that listen to celtic music is growing up,there are bands that mix scandinavian trad folk and heavy metal like Otyg and even bulagarian folk with metal like Balcandji..I will send link to these bands sites later 
..even tradicional musical got to change, get "richer", course always keeping the credits for the "rooted" ones 
.
))
for Cait:It makes a lot of sense for me
sorry for the grammar mistakes
# Posted on October 18th 2002 by CelticMetalFiddler
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Wow re: Metall-i-ceili
Side note, I'm sure most of you know Asian languages are tonal, & basically you could tune an Asian orchestra by having the audience utter the same word in unison, such is the relationship with tonal languages to pitch. I picked up the Thai language (5 tones--high, common, low, rising & falling) so easily I think largely b/c of my musical background, as opposed to many non-Thai speakers who desite their best intentions & efforts inevitably ended up calling their waiter 'pubic hair' instead of 'older sibling.' Some neurolinguistic studies show language, music & sounds of nature overlapping in various regions of the brain depending on culture, ie you hear running water in a stream & it registers in your language or music sector depending on your upbringing. (!)
# Posted on October 18th 2002 by emily_bmore
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
I think the idea of ITM being played in different world localities having a local "accent" or dialect is very important. I have long felt that people need to recognize that their local session outside of Ireland has a unique sound and that it is not only "OK" to sound a little different than a session in Ireland, but it is only natural to have a local accent. I look forward to when the teenagers in our session have grown up and carried on the music in the next generation and have developed a particular local accent that people will recognize. All a part of the process.
# Posted on October 18th 2002 by aliceflynn
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
I learned English as a second language as well. I was born and grew up in Texas.
I have used the language of music as an anology with my students. Great players "speak" music as fluently as we speak our native tongues.
Joe
# Posted on October 18th 2002 by Carrmuse
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Definately agree with the neurolinguistic studies that emily mentions. I think everyone can hear the sounds of freight trains in the playing of traditional blues, and the beeps/clicks/whirs of digital devices in modern dance music. The comparisons could go on. Irish trad seems more like birds, rivers and such.
# Posted on October 18th 2002 by Caoimghgin
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Well: I think that music is indeed another language, ( and a great one). And that's why I've also been thinking that great music (by which I mean soulful music that comes from the heart) can be a conversation between musicians.
Here's another one: have you ever played outdoors in a natural setting and had the birds join in? They respond especially well to whistles, but like to sing along with the fiddle as well. I always figured that they were talking to me..probably telling me that I haven't got that tune "quite right". But they do have a lot of patience with repeating phrases over and over and over again.
Yes! it is a language, does have accents, does have some rules, and does evolve over time. I too have been wondering what Irish music will evolve into in the coming generations. ( And isn't that how a lot of American folk music evolved once before, esp Appalachian music?)
# Posted on October 18th 2002 by lees
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
My old dog used to sing along whenever i played piccolo.
# Posted on October 18th 2002 by glauber
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Hello all.. Yes lees...I had a fine session in new zealand which involved some geese in the field next to our campground. I was sorry when i had to stop playing. They had a little trouble with the rhythm though. Also the very first time that I ever saw a stellar's
jay (magnificent bird) was while playing mandolin in a forest in BC and one flew in and landed on a tree just in front of me. Semi-religious experience. I'm always delighted at the local variations in ornamentation , swing and also how tunes are grouped.
# Posted on October 18th 2002 by bmcivor
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Moving, as I have done and am still doing, from classical cello to Irish fiddle may not be quite like moving from one language to another, but I think you could make the valid analogy that you are learning a significantly different dialect of the language you already have, with the same grammar but with lots of new words and phrases and sentence structures. The same analogy would apply to a fiddler who takes up the whistle or the box, as many do.
For me, learning Irish fiddle is rather like being totally immersed in a foreign country where you have to learn the language (which you may already have studied in a textbook) by listening and repeating what you have heard, without reading the language. In other words, I'm having to learn to play by ear after a lifetime's cello playing of looking at the dots, having my brain translate them into appropriate arm, hand and finger movements, and then forgetting the dots as soon as I've played them! I'm gradually getting there.
A philologist I know told me that once you have learnt a second language it becomes progressively easier to learn further languages because your brain has developed the technique of language learning and automatically sees the similarities between languages and their basic structures. The same principle, I imagine, would apply to music.
m
# Posted on October 18th 2002 by lazyhound
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Yup! I agree, agree, agree. It works the other way around, too. I teach language, and, the students who come to me with a music background far outshine the kids who have no experience with an instrument. It's like night and day. So, there's something to the theory that music and language are strongly related.
It kinda puts learning ITM in perspective when you relate the tedium of music practice to practicing the use of the words and phrases of one's second language. That's nice and helpful.
I've heard over and over again that knowing more that one language makes acquisition of another much easier. I believe it, except my experience was quite different. I speak Spanish as a second language. When I took a class in Italian one time, I had a divil of a time. The grammar and word and sentence structures were no problem, but, when the instructor would speak to me in Italian I would respond without knowing it in Spanish quite often. I never got very far in that class. Hope that doesn't happen in music. I play the bodhran now and I want to pick up whistle.
# Posted on October 18th 2002 by linda
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
OK to extend the metaphor, which I have always found fascinating, mathematics can also be considered a language--code for computers, communication to extraterrestrials via the universality of primes a la Contact haha. Until recently, I had thought of ITM more in terms of mathematics than language, like a code that had to be cracked--the symmetry, the patterns & motifs, the resolutions, etc, as mentioned in a previous post both simple & elegant, but throw in ornamentations & settings etc, & it begins to look more like a blossoming fractal haha
Anyway, I recently had my first experience with ITM as a 'language,' & this is how I explained it to friends who couldn't understand why I'd travel 2,000 miles to my hometown & spend a Monday night in a mostly deserted smokey pub with a group of *strangers*-- Unlike any other classical ensemble or band I've played with, with this small group of strangers without my head buried in dots, I experienced something transcendent, like a key turning in a lock, I felt like we were talking, or singing, or dancing, or all of the above at once, but certainly *communicating* with some sort of motion-- it was like hearing a dead language you've studied finally spoken out loud. I'm sure everyone here knows that thrill, & that's what must at least partially keep this tradition alive.
Which totally got me off my original point which was going to discuss right-brain vs left-brain fuction in ITM if music is one side & math the other & whether geeks or supermodels should rightfully excel at ITM, but I'm about spent. Think this is bad, hear me rant after a few pints. Oy. I'm going to pipe down now.
# Posted on October 18th 2002 by emily_bmore
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Wow! This stuff is fascinating! Emily--playing in a session like "hearing a dead language you've studied finally spoken aloud" I love that description!! And the post from Caoimghgin about hearing trains in the blues and how you can kind of hear birds and streams etc. in Irish music. That's very druidic! and I agree.
This music as a language reminds me of something I wanted to post a while ago; (about learning a second instument in ITM, and how your knowledge on one informs you on the other and also on the music in general.) I will enter that as a separate post right now.
# Posted on October 18th 2002 by Andee
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Linda
Going from one stringed instrument to another is like going from one indo-european language to another. I wonder if going from bodhran to whistle can be compared to going from indo-european to an oriental language such as Chinese, unless, of course, you've had experience of playing tunes on another instrument such as keyboard, fiddle, flute, etc. Keep us posted on your progress on this one.
On another tack, I've noticed over the years that scientists, especially physicists and mathematicians, are often performing musicians, as are medics. This observation is purely anecdotal - I have no statistical data to back it up. My own career was in chemistry, then physics, before I took early retirement, and I noticed these things, both in my colleagues and in the orchestras I play in.
Trying to play bodhran with the whistle is not recommended - it damages the goatskin
m
# Posted on October 18th 2002 by lazyhound
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Macsheoinin--I have heard that before about math and music being from the same part of the brain. I, on the other hand was never any good at math. Although I did do very well in geometry, which is more visual and less abstract than, say, algebra. Maybe that explains why it is good for me to see what my teacher is doing as well as hear it. Also, I need to have a visual record of the tune filed away--dots or abc--just as a security blanket in case I forget it in the future. I went to college for painting, and sometimes when my teacher tells me "it should be a G chord there" (as an example) I may say oh, but such and such a chord makes it sound like a different color--I'll use that one on the second time around the tune. I bet the color/music thing has been covered before in previous discussions...
# Posted on October 18th 2002 by Andee
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Gosh I love this post, Andee stop encouraging me LOL
Remember in Close Encounters when they used that 5-tone motif to say hello to the mother ship & then the mother ship went all Seamus Egan on 'em? hahaha that's how I feel, a little like glauber's father, I can say 'hello, how are you? what is your name? do you have the time & where is the bathroom?' The phrase 'do they have Guinness on tap here?' is coming along nicely haha... I expect to go to Willie Week & be overwhelmed by hearing the players elaborating on the ancient history & myths of Ireland using poetic phrases, elaborate descriptors, hyperbolic superlatives & not catching most of it but just existing in the joy of hearing it as a story, not so much a conversation, but hopefully picking up a few more vocabulary words along the way.
Per the scientist idea, yes mac I agree-- not so much back East where ppl I know were raised in the tradition, but here where the ITM is a second or found language, yes, all members of my immediate session are physicians or midwives, & in Flagstaff they manipulate macromolecules & research exotic fungi & analyze arial landscapes for drought effects, AND the biggest mystery to me, a *financial advisor*. Not to say all, but yes, anecdotally, the majority. Huh.
# Posted on October 19th 2002 by emily_bmore
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Well, regarding the indo-european analogy, I can say that I know several i-e languages, just as I can manage to play many woodwinds - but I'm failing equally in learning bass guitar and Wolof! When you're moving within one group like that, it's all variations on a theme, but to jump systems... well you have to relearn the basics, I think.
Then again, with ITM you have something of a metalanguage that helps you out regardless of what instrument you're on... I think I lost my point. sigh.
# Posted on October 19th 2002 by Trinil
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
I will, macsheoinin. My age makes me worry about whether I'll be able to learn very well, also. The old memory and speed aren't what they used to be. We'll see.
Interesting that you bring up scientists and music, just what I've been thinking about with this discussion. I used to do European folkdancing at Fermilab--big nuclear research plant--and it has always been a curiosity to me that there, and at many other labs as well, physicists would be Big participants in the dancing and performing and teaching of dances during their off hours.
# Posted on October 20th 2002 by linda
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
We seem to all agree the similarities between music and language in this discussion, but what about the differences.
While you can create art with langauge as your medium, language itself is a pragmatic, practical thing. The very nature of language as the medium of communication calls for it to be precise. There is no confusion or doubt in well executed language.
Music on the other hand is an abstract thing. Great music has to be riddled with confusuion and doubt. Its meaning is always shrowded in the subcocious of the producer. Its quallity will for ever be unexplained by the complex relationships between the subjective and objective. The whole point about music is that it has no meaning.
What is it for?
Every one of you will have a different answer.
And you can't all be right.
Or can you?
# Posted on October 23rd 2002 by llig leahcim
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Interesting! This could lead into a musical Tower of Babel deconstruction, the etymology of music lol... but I haven't been drinking, so we (or I) shall not go there.
I guess I think of it this way. You are saying language implies a discrete or 'precise' means of communication. I disagree. I think communication involves a simple or even basic concurrence between 2 (or more) parties. "Do you want the dog biscuit?" "Yes I want the dog biscuit." In ITM, it could be similar. "Mountain Road?" "Yes Mountain Road." I think this is communication. It's a confirmation of mutual knowledge & intent.
To extend that, if every tune has a core melody that is agreed upon (I expect that to open up loopholes), that could be considered the skeleton or the spine of the tune. I would consider this the musical equivalent of simple prose. Anything extra one could consider artistic embellishment, & not entirely free of meaning as you may suggest, I think that's probably where most of the meaning lies. Like when we play 'Miller's Maggot' from the Solas set that we totally lifted from the CD & we play the A part on the second go round the same way as the CD, we always grin & there is meaning in that derivation from the dots, or the prose, thus poetry?
Ok that's a stretch. You may fire when ready.
# Posted on October 23rd 2002 by emily_bmore
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
I think language does imply discrete and precise means of communication. To create art out of language, one bends these rules (for example, with the use of subcociouse simmilies), but, what you are saying is that there is more to communication than being precice.
I agree of course, but to be precice is the essence of language. Language was invented to convey specifics such as, "You go to the head of that ravine and set up an ambush while we chase the mammoth towards you. And make sure you sharpened your spears." Extra meaning can be added with inflections of the voice or body language such as "And get it right this time", but the intent is the same, Accurate communication.
Music on the other hand is a different form of communication. "Mountain road?" is a good place to start.
You could say "how about the mountain road, in D, 4 times through, followed by ........ etc?" But even this doesn't say how loud or how fast. And we all know that this is a redundent question anyway. All you need to do is play the first half a bar, in what ever key, at what ever speed, dynamic ect. and everyone knows where your going. Comfirmation of mutual knowedge and intent as you say. But there is a lot more to it than that. "Let's ambush a mammoth" is clear. "Let's eat".
But "Let's play the mountain road"?
Why?
What do we get out of it?
Why is that particular collection of notes, ordered in a western established scale, inflected with decoration we are familiar with, so important to us?
We know that it is communication, But what is it's intent?
Does it have intent?
Does this ever so sophisticated form of communication need intent?
Maybe that the communication itself is intent enough?
# Posted on October 23rd 2002 by llig leahcim
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Very interesting points, Michael! I'm going to be pondering this all day...
I was thinking that while a tune might have a broadly general atmosphere - of wistfulness, or tragedy, or good humour, or mischief - everyone will have their own particular experience of it. Just by example, there was a tune which Kevin O'Reilly played at Willie Week, which reduced me to tears, in spite of being not at all a tragic tune... I thought about it alot, and I concluded that it represented - to me - a quality of hopefulness, uncrushable optimism, and perseverence against every setback, which I found very moving. Why that tune (and the way Kevin plays it) should mean those things, to me or to anyone else, I have no idea at all. You might hear the tune and conclude that I'm insane... (it was Behind the Haystack, or the Munster Buttermilk - hope I got that right... and thanks to Kenny for letting me hear it again.)
I think Kevin's beautiful double-stopping had a lot to do with it. But how all this works on a neurological level - I wonder if we'll ever know even the basics of it?
# Posted on October 23rd 2002 by Nell
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
I prefer to let the effects of a tune burrow their own way into my subconcious without the help of allotted emotions. Describing a tune as having feelings is a bit like anthropomorphism.
A tune you know well is abit like your pet cat. You can comunicate with it on many levels including the mundane (feeding it/playing the notes). But there is also a stranger connection that some would describe as knowing its moods. I'm not comfortable with this description
# Posted on October 24th 2002 by llig leahcim
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
I should point out that I don't usually make any attempt to define what the feel of a tune means to me - just occasionally, something comes to me in a concious or verbal form that helps to describe what the tune is triggering in me emotionally.
I'm not trying to state what the tune *is* or *means* - just what the feelings are, that it arouses, in me. I'm not claiming that the tune 'has feelings' - just that it conveys those particular feelings, when played by that person, in that way - and it's certainly subjective - I'm not making any assumptions about how another person would experience that tune. Um, I'm getting repetitive, but this is really hard to explain clearly...
# Posted on October 24th 2002 by Nell
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
It is hard to explain isn't it. But maybe thats the point I'm making. That language is redundent in describing music. All you need is the music itself.
Helen, I think we pretty much agree on this one. You've certainly said nothing I disagree with
# Posted on October 24th 2002 by llig leahcim
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
hmm, so is this about just ITM or all music? or are you making a distinction?
I ask b/c obviously I've had 20+ years of classical training on multiple instruments, & less than 2 years 'real' exposure to ITM. As a beginner, I will obviously defer to those with more experience, but I can also approach the subject with a fresh view point. If we were to compare classical to ITM using the metaphor of language, I would say classical is like a stage play, with everyone reading their parts & everyone knowing how it will end. ITM feels much more like a language to me in that, like jazz, it's participative & improvisational, not a script but a conversation. Guess you are right that I don't know if that qualifies it as a language, but it feels just as precise, if not more so, than classical, & yet infinitely more interactive.
As for meaning, you're also right. I can only know what meaning ITM brings to me, whether it reminds me of family Christmases, conjures images of a land I've never seen or simply proposes the challenge of conquering another genre of music. I think despite all the possibilities of what meaning *could* be there, the one that probably means the most to us is the community, the sharing of this music with other living, breathing players. If not for that, why play it?
Very interesting points michael, like Helen, I shall be musing on them.
# Posted on October 24th 2002 by emily_bmore
Ps
Were you being sarcastic when you said 'ever so sophisticated?' Seriously, I couldn't tell. I also agree that tunes don't have moods until a player bestows one upon it.
# Posted on October 24th 2002 by emily_bmore
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
No sarcasm. Just that music (of any kind) is sophisticated behaviour.
Do you mean that a pice of music becomes "sad" whan someone plays it sadly? Can a piece of music be "sad" any more than a cat can be "sad"? To a cat, the concept of "sad" is a complete misnoma and I view music the same. We know that minor keys only sound sad because our Western ears have been conditioned to think so. I think it was Stravinsky who said, (and I might be paraphrasing) "Music, by its very nature, is powerless to express anything at all." While I disagree with Igor in that music must express something, other wise why would we play it, I think the point he was making was that it cannot express anything tangible.
And yes, I think this applies to all music, All music that hasn't had words put to it that is. This is one of the reasons I can't stand Opera.
I like your classical/stage play analogy. But if we look at it that way, Irish music is more like a nursery rhyme, or maybe stringing a few nursery rhymes together.
# Posted on October 26th 2002 by llig leahcim
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
I think there are neurological reasons for minor keys sounding sad, I don't think it's learned. I don't know if we'll ever understand the brain in enough detail to know *why* or how that is the case, though..
I don't think anyone is suggesting that the tune itself experiences emotion, that would be mad wouldn't it? Saying that it's a sad tune is surely just shorthand for saying that it engages or draws out sad feelings in the player and the listeners.
# Posted on October 27th 2002 by Nell
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Helen
Psycologists have prooved the minor/major key thing by testing people from other cultures
# Posted on October 28th 2002 by llig leahcim
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Interesting stuff. Michael, can you steer us toward any web sites or other resources about the research on music modes and human emotional response--that would be interesting reading.
It's fun to talk about music (else why would be all log on here), but I agree with the notions above that music *is* its own experience. If it could be captured in words, it wouldn't be music.
How we experience it is up to us. Each of us brings a personal and aculturated sensibility to the tunes, so each of us expresses and recieves the music in different ways and emphasizing different aspects of the music.
What is remarkable to me is how sophisticated and ubiquitous music is, far more so in most cultures than the other arts. Imagine if painters or poets had as many highly developed and idiosyncratic tools to choose from as musicians have instruments. Clearly as a species we spend a lot of time and energy focused on some aspect of music--listening to it, playing it, designing and making instruments, composing. All for no other apparent reason except the sheer joy of it.
# Posted on October 28th 2002 by Will CPT
Continuing my thought above, another way of looking at the significance of music versus language is to consider the evolution of writing tools against the evolution and diversification of musical instruments. In 100,000 years we've gone from scratching charcoal on cave walls, to mineral-based paint, to quill and ink, to pencil, to ballpoint, to word processor. In that same time, the urge to make music has generated how many hundreds or thousands of different instruments, from gourd drums and bone whistles to lutes, cellos, oboes, harmonicas, pianos, sitars, horns, Chapman sticks, electric guitars, and synthesizers.
I'm not sure what this all means, except that music must rank right up there with food and shelter when it comes to basic human needs. For me, music and language are not analogous. They meet very different needs--language is for communication, and music is for communion.
# Posted on October 28th 2002 by Will CPT
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Excellent points. I was thinking of starting a post called 'why play?' but figured it's already been done, & probably getting a bit stale for those who think we are pontificating too much..
Michael, lol you are not the first musician I've heard liken ITM to nursery rhymes. I first heard that from my cousin Eliot Grasso who is a accomplished pipes player. When I first heard him say that, it gave me courage but also intimidated me. I know you think we 'lot' have issues with fear, but for an infant learning to talk, nursery rhymes are a bit of a leap. At least we're trying. I remember asking him, 'how many nursery rhymes do you carry around in that little head of yours?' & he paused & answered, 'between 1200-1500.'
Per the mood idea, I forget what Greek philosopher said, 'if horses had gods, they'd look like horses.' I think this applies to the mood of tunes across cultures as well, tempo for an example-- fast makes you want to dance joyfully, slow conjures introspection, perhaps even suffering or death. Perhaps a correspondance to universal human anatomy such as heartbeat & breathing? I still think the player can bestow any mood she wants on a tune & have a pretty good idea of the 'mood' she is trying to express to her listeners. Otherwise, why is ITM such a worldwide phenomenon these days if the message wasn't getting through across cultures?
# Posted on October 28th 2002 by emily_bmore
heh Will we were posting at the same time. Let us invoke Maslow's hierarchy of self-actualization & place music on the bottom tier!
Communion, what a glorious sentiment. I concur wholeheartedly.
# Posted on October 28th 2002 by emily_bmore
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Doesn't it seem that the music communicates more about the musician than the tune? As if no matter how hard the player tries, a portion of their life-view is broadcasted to the audience for all the world to see and you know who they are before you've even met them.
If they play bravely, you'll generally find that person is couragous. If they play with precision, you'll likely find a very precise person. If they play timidly, you're likely to find that person to be somewhat meek.
One could go on.
# Posted on October 28th 2002 by Caoimghgin
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Now we're getting down to it.
Music is not like language at all
# Posted on October 28th 2002 by llig leahcim
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Caoimghgin, no, this is not true at all. A competent musician will convey whatever mood she wants to convey (whatever mood is appropriate for the musical piece). I can play with precision, or bravely, or timidly, and many other ways whenever i want to.
# Posted on October 28th 2002 by glauber
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Hmmm....so Caoimghgin, if I play a lively set of major-key jigs and then swoon through a minor-key slow air, I'm manic-depressive?
I don't think we can simplify (sorry Michael, heh) what goes into or comes out of music down to such levels. Music is as simple as it gets when we're playing and responding to it. And I wouldn't call that communicating.
# Posted on October 28th 2002 by Will CPT
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Will/Glauber
Not exactly what I'm getting at guys, but all good points just the same.
Consider if you may that each musician has a predominate style of his/her own (aside from regional). You know who is playing at the pub even before you opened the door. You recognize the individual (not regional) style of the players.
Have you not found a similariy between a persons personality and how they play their music? I've seen it so often, I'm shocked there wasn't an immediate consensus!
# Posted on October 28th 2002 by Caoimghgin
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Not at all.
I know quiet introspective shy people who can play like deamons. I know bossy loudmouths who you have to strain to hear them. I play precicely, but I'm a messy git. I think this just emphasises the absract nature of music that I'm trying to get accross.
Time for another comparrison.
I was staring at a large Jackson Pollock last week, following its curves, deciphering the order of its layers etc. and terrific it was too. A stranger saw me looking at it for 20 mins or so and asked me what I saw in it. I said I didn't understand the question and they replied with what they saw, "there's a face of an old man down in the corner, a cat, a profile of a woman" etc etc. Of course, when the stranger pointed out these coincidences, I could see them too.
But Hold On A Minute!!!! Talk about missing the point.
I think it is this same mistake people in this discussion are making with tunes.
# Posted on October 28th 2002 by llig leahcim
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Fantastic! Thanks for the feedback guys! Loved it.
# Posted on October 29th 2002 by Caoimghgin
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Michael, just b/c you look for layers & someone else looks for recognizable images & perhaps I would be musing on shifts in hue, doesn't credibly demonstrate your point. It merely demonstrates how each person approaches the painting/tune/art form differently. Perhaps b/c I was raised to see music as a visual notation based on the Greco-Roman alphabet doesn't preclude the aural intangibility that many, perhaps most & probably including yourself, ITM players either bring to the music or hope to, ie learning by ear the way it was meant to be. Perhaps that's your basic point, that to compare it to a language is demeaning since it should transcend those boundaries. In defence of my position, why, then, do we use a program called ABC to trade tunes if it has nothing to do with language at all? I think it's reductionist & snobby to think that ppl who do see ITM as related to language as absolutely incorrect. There are enough of us out here that use that metaphor to help us learn it, so how misguided could we all be? Well I can guess your answer anyway. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the dialogue, I'm just surprised to see such an absolutist stance when you yourself are arguing for the ability to see differing viewpoints.
# Posted on October 30th 2002 by emily_bmore
language: 1. the body of words & systems for their use common to a people who are of the same community or nation, the same geographical area or the same cultural tradition 2. communication by voice in the distinctively human manner, using arbitrary, auditory symbols in conventional ways with conventional meanings 3. the system of linguistic signs or symbols considered in the abstract (as opposed to speech) 4. any set or system of such symbols as used in a more or less uniform fashion by a number of people, who are thus enabled to communicate intelligibly with one another 5. any system of formalized symbols, signs, gestures or the like, used or conceived as a means of communicating thought, emotion, etc, 'the language of mathematics, the language of love' 6. the means of communication used by animals ' the language of birds' 7. communication of meaning in any way 'the language of flowers, the language of art' 8. linguistics 9. the speech or phraseology peculiar to a class, profession, etc 10. a particular manner of verbal expression 'in his own language, flowery language, formal language' 11. diction or style of writing 'the language of poetry, the stilted language of official documents' 12. archaic, faculty or power of speech 13. a nation or people considered in terms of their speech.
communicate: 1. to impart knowledge of; make known 'to communicate information, to communicate one's happiness' 2. to give to another; impart, transmit 'to communicate a disease' 3. to administer the Eucharist to 4. archaic, to share in or partake of 5. to to give or interchange thoughts, feelings, information, or the like, by writing, speaking, etc. 'they communicate with each other every day' 6. to have or form a connecting passage 'the rooms communicated by means of a hallway' 7. to partake of the Eucharist 8. to take part or participate... 'denotes giving to a person or thing a part or share of something, now usually something immaterial, as knowledge, thoughts, hopes, qualities or properties'
communion: 1. the act of sharing, or holding in common, participation 2. the state of things so held 3. association, fellowship 4. interchange or sharing of thoughts or emotions; intimate communication 'communion with nature' 5. a group of persons having a common religious faith; a religious denomination 6. (lengthy subdivided definition of Holy Eucharist, not necessarily applicable, see p. 298 of Webster's Unabridged Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language should you require those)
phew, hope I don't lose this, was seriously just looking up the terms for my own clarification & thought I'd share, dunno whose side it shall fall on *click*
# Posted on October 30th 2002 by emily_bmore
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Emily,
Of course music is communication, and language is also communication and Music passes all the obove definitions of language. But do you agree that music is more than mere language? I think it is, because its intent is obscure.
Jackson Pollock.
The reason thought of Pollock for a comparison is that he realised that art is at its best when the intent is abscure. Because of this, he attemted to strip out any intent completely, concentrating only on the production process. It was this production process I was looking at (eg. deciphering the layers meant no more than working out which bits he painted first). I'm not saying the stranger I met was wrong to look for recognizable images, they just missed the point. They were looking for intent where there was non.
And this is one of the reasons I just adore diddly music, Its all in the process. It's the process of playing it that makes it. Not analysing it, or searching for reasons, or wondering what is being communicated. Just the process. And what a glorious process it is.
# Posted on October 30th 2002 by llig leahcim
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Ahh, now we're getting down to it.
If you'll go back to one of my original postings in this thread, I described something intangible I likened to singing, or dancing or talking all at once when I played at my first public session recently. What you call a process, what I call a transcendence, what Will calls a communion, yes, this is what we strive for, & I completely agree that music can ultimately be more than a language, a sort of 'je ne sais quoi' that transports us beyond ourselves. However, the intent of the post was to discuss similarities of ITM to language, even minimal requirements, which I think I have effectively done. When someone reads eeg/eeg in ABC or whatever, they're reading a language. When someone reads little black dots, that's a form of language as much as hyrogliphics, yes? It's a standardized system of communication. Now it appears what we are debating is the content of the message, or even if that message has a meaning, or whether simply the transmission of the message & subsequent response is enough. Seriously, what do you hear in the message, Michael? Can you describe how you are feeling during the process of playing ITM, whether alone or with others? As a longtime player, I would be very interested to hear if your experience has changed over time with your level of playing.
PS my apologies if I am being too cerebral, I don't generally bring this amount of overthinking to my playing, but when you think about ITM a lot, tunes running through your head etc, yeah you kind of want to know why & I guess this thread is a bit of a vent. Would be much more pleasant to have in person over a pint, & I promise not to throw any chairs.
# Posted on October 31st 2002 by emily_bmore
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Verbal communication also has its abstract side. Some modernist poetry is as abstract as Pollock's paintings. One of theories among practioners of that craft is that, through the abstract, we say more, not less, than we can say through the more traditional types of verbal communication. Our inability to re-translate those poems -- or Pollock's paintings, or ITM -- into easily defined words like "sad" and "happy," or to say in so many words, "This poem means such-and-such," doesn't mean the poem has no meaning, only that its meaning is more abstract than concrete.
Someone searching for recognizable images in a Pollock painting could indeed be missing the point, but I'd suggest that doing so is part of the process that Pollock intended: you grope for literal translation, and, failing that, you settle into an abstract and therefore greater understanding. That's the theory, anyway, I think.
In any case, another way to consider the music-as-language notion is as a practical matter. Music teachers frequently try to get their students to think in terms of words, phrases and clauses as a way to breathe life into their musical phrases. And I remember hearing a critic describe Kevin Burke's fiddling as being eloquent and clever, like light, witty dinner conversation. Whether there's any real link between music and language, it's probably a useful analogy in many ways.
# Posted on October 31st 2002 by cuchulain54
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Wonderfully put, cuchulain, thank you for saying several things I could not, plus some really great insights!
# Posted on October 31st 2002 by emily_bmore
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
OK, middle of the night 'ah-ha' moment which may look sublimely ridiculous in the light of day.
So I'm thinking, how could Michael & Will actually agree about music not being a language? Then I was musing about concrete vs abstract (thanks cuchulain!), & for some reason child psychologist Piaget jumped to mind. If I remember correctly, Piaget's theory of child development involved an early stage called 'concrete operational' & then one later called 'abstract reasoning' or something. Like in concrete operational, children don't understand to look for missing objects or don't have correct insights as to volumes of fluid or whatever, whereas after a certain maturity, they can reason their way out of new problems based on past experience. (Somebody with a psych background, help!)
So, here comes the leap of faith perhaps, & maybe this has already been thought of in some obscure doctoral thesis somewhere. (if not, you're welcome to it, it's most likely a load of sh*te, heh) We could propose an ITM learning curve based on Piaget's theory. Obviously, Will & Michael are very experienced players & are able to leave the concrete tune behind to transcend into the abstract. While myself, still new to ITM, cling desperately to the concreteness of each tune, & possess monstrous pride as I add tunes to my check off list. Over the weekend, I hosted a jam session at my house b/c one of my friends' sisters came into town & she's a semi-professional fiddler, so of course we were polishing up our small repertoire of memorized tunes heh (including Banish Misfortune which we cooked on!). Anyway, so here comes my second 'abstract' experience with ITM. This woman was *amazing*-- for example, we do a nice rendition of Sonny Broghan's Mazurka (don't laugh!), but she didn't know it. I played it for her 2 times through while she picked along on pizzicatto. By the third time through, she not only mastered the tune & played with us in unison, by the fifth time through, she was playing harmonies, probably just a third up, but so gorgeous & unexpected, it took my breath away. To be playing this tune, with my fiddler on my left & this new harmony on fiddle to my right, plus an extra guitar or two fingerpicking nicely, well heck, I was again transported beyond myself, b/c I *knew* this tune concretely but then could understand & hear what another person was doing & playing to enhance it, that intangible process & communion that Michael & Will describe.
OK yeah, so that's the ticket, a learning continuum. Ha! Can't wait to see what this looks like in the a.m.
# Posted on October 31st 2002 by emily_bmore
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Ermily, to me, it looks pretty fine in the light of day.I wonder, though, whether it really comes as a learning "continuum" or if it's more like Saul of Tarsus being knocked from his horse.
Once, in an abortive attempt to learn to draw, I was going through the early chapters in that old book "Drawing From the Right Side of the Brain" by Betty Somebody-or-Other. She had a little exercise in there: Remember those little optical illusions, where you see the line drawing and you try to determine whether it's a pedestal or two human faces looking at each other in profile? Draw a human profile; then, by following every nook and bump in the profile you've just drawn, draw the mirror image of it, as if you were trying to draw one of those optical illusions. As Betty explained it, you should feel your left brain try to take over the task in a logical way, but then that half of the brain becomes frustrated at its inability to deal with it, and it gets out of the way and lets the right brain take over, because it's the right brain that deals with proportion and shape and all kinds of other intangibles.
I tried the exercise and felt exactly what she described. I could almost feel a wobble in my head as two brain hemispheres struggled for ascendency, and then the better-suited half took over.
I suspect that we practice music -- practice anything, really -- in part to give our hands the strength and grace to do what they need to do, but more to give our brains the chance to learn to get the hell out of the way.
# Posted on November 1st 2002 by cuchulain54
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
Of course, I meant "Emily." Typing out of the wrong side of my brain...
# Posted on November 1st 2002 by cuchulain54
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
LOL my monitor is so crappy I couldn't even tell
What a fascinating exercise, I shall have to look it up! thanks cuchulain!
# Posted on November 1st 2002 by emily_bmore
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
How do I feel when I play?
I think I touched on this in another thread. Remember when Boris Becker talked about "the Zone". When he's playing well, all thought goes out the window and he's kind of on automatic pilot. That's not to say he's not concentrating, it's that his concentration is so all consuming that the game just takes over. The second you think about it, you lose it
# Posted on November 3rd 2002 by llig leahcim
Re: Learning Irish (music) as a second language
I must have missed that post. Too bad about the tax evasion scandal. :(
# Posted on November 3rd 2002 by emily_bmore