birlibirdie
Hi,
I've come all the way from a place where the crack was scarce but all the more magic and valued.
Music and traditional musicians have given me much -and more! I try to give something back.
I play French and increasingly Irish and Highland pipes and the wooden flute. I busk a lot. I busk for food and fun in the now thinning shade of Eyjafjallajökull's ash cloud and under the ever growing yet hopefully partly reversible menace of global ecologic-o-economico-political collapse (who fears to be grave).
I listen to all sorts, but my repertoire is made up of mostly Irish, Scottish, Breton and French dance tunes with Mongolian melodies and Mu Araean airs thrown in for good measure. Beauty knows no borders.
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I'm listening 'in' to the vacuum cleaner: its eery sound seems to coincide with the disappearance of my ma: This warrants intervention. I can remember calling (i.e.; tentatively if instinctively edging my lungs and mouth muscles against the mysterious sound: I have no memory of hearing my own voice). By the time she is by my cot, the white noise has stopped.
Here is my second earliest 'musical' memory, at about the same tender age;
I'm watching snow flakes streaming through the sky, pouring down the heavens. While the endless, apparently source-less flow is a puzzle to me, I take its soft, high melodious jingle for granted. The flakes are dancing to their own music and I'm listening.
Well. It didn't happen quite like that. It felt more like "I looked at a sound": And it couldn't be heard. The fast flock of free-falling flakes's tremendous silence together with the incomprehensible genesis of thick snow born out of that unfathomable sky flung bright open the doors of utter mystery.
And that's not it either. For from that moment I knew. I knew I had eyes that couldn't see, and ears that couldn't hear. I reached out inside my mind and it felt empty: truth had vanished from this nest. And I knew from now on I would have to adopt, and compose with other people's own adoptive answers. Their yarns and guesses. My mind -its own thing still- saw the soul: unstick: turning willfully, and slowly, into an echo chamber for those other voices; the educators' refrains, the epoch's beliefs, the milieu's mood... I didn't feel cheated by this separation: Only baffled.
Y fue a esa edad... Llegó la música ...
From then on, music, for the first time fully 'heard' around the time of this epiphany (in the form of a Baroque concerto played on the family gramophone), only music, like love, food or the heat of sunshine, like Lance Hanson's long lost lute finally found, would and could, could and would fill and fulfill me.
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I've always much preferred acoustic to electric, ie; amplified, gigs. This may be due to the fact that 90% of the sound-check 'professionals', that 'officiate' unquestioned, have never actually had their ears checked...
If bad sex is a bit of a private, taboo subject, what qualifies the systematic public ear-rape that's going on and the non-consensual, conformist denial that accompanies it? (Forget about dubious reproduction, we're talking criminal levels of decibels here) Does the Dick at the desk knows he's deaf?
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My favourite instrument has got to be the voice, with the violin a close second (both have an incomparable potential for non-tempered scales). I've been happily practicing the fiddle for the last five years now, avoiding frustration, at last, by following the simple advice: "practice often, a little at a time", focusing on only a few tunes or technical details at a go. Discovering, like so many a one before, that the so called 'learning curve' in music more often than not resembles a featureless plateau which must be crossed until things mysteriously 'click' and you're flying!
In other words: Relax, since practice and patience pay. Give up reasoning and you will know (-how).
'The short cut to playing fast: practice slowly' is the other wise advice (acquired mistakes and bad habits are notoriously hard to get rid of). Heed these words if you're a beginner, and remember that 'the ear is the mother of the hand' ('of the voice', if you're a singer), and that socialising, including musical interaction, is to human beings what photosynthesis is to plants; the growing factor. Here's to all life-long learners: Keep your eyes on the ball. And let it flow!
'Éist le fuaim na habhann agus gheobhfaidh tú breac'. Listen to the river and you'll catch a trout.
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*Help needed and given;
I'm interested in mouth-music, lilting, canntaireachd, port-a-beul, turlutte, you name it. Songs for dancing (the 'tongue in feet stuff' as I call it) as well as nonsense lilts, mnemonic tune names & 'wee rhymes' (the ones used for teaching steps or drumming for instance). If you have any specific or general reference on the subject, please drop me a line. I have a fully referenced list of such lilts and ditties in the making for anyone interested.
I'm presently working on 'The Trad Trump Book': A compilation of mostly Irish tunes which can be comfortably played in the overtone modes, using the scale natural to the jaw's harp and similar instruments.
I give 'hedge music' and diphonic singing workshops (sygyt, khöömei, etc) in the Belfast-Dublin area and beyond.
I'm available for concerts (throat-singing... Irish style! and French ballads and pipering).
Give me a shout if you're interested.
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ABC notation reminder:
Tune-search:
http://tunepal.org/tunepal/index.php
http://abctunesearch.com/
http://www.folktunefinder.com/
Score and sound test: http://www.concertina.net/tunes_convert.html
Transpose: http://www.8ung.at/abctransposer/
Teach yourself at: http://abcnotation.com/
& http://www.lesession.co.uk/abc/abc_notation.htm
& http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/music/abc/ABC-FAQ.html
Headers;
X: T: C: O: S: B: A: M: L: Q: P: Z: N: G: H: K:
T(itle) C(omposer) O(rigin) S(ource) B(ook) A(uthor of lyrics) M(eter) default L(ength) Q: tempo (^/min.), P(arts), Z: transcriber, N(otes -max. 6lines), G(group), H(istory)... http://abc.sourceforge.net/standard/abc2-draft.html#Other%20fields
X: 1
M: (4/4...) & Meter Change eg: | [M:4/4] dB...|
L(unit note): 1/8,
R(hythm): (Reel)
K(ey): (Gmaj) & mid-tune change [K:] (see /tunes/display/65..)
Score;
flat/natural/sharp: _ = ^ + ‘J’: ‘slide up’ (ABCMus2.0)
'bowing'*: (nN) + vA uA: !paradoxically to the tip and from the tip + 'hold': Hn
slur*: n-n (after the note regardless of what follows)
grace: {n}, disgrace: ~n ;-)
chord: [nN] + guitar chord: "before the note", see: http://abcplus.sourceforge.net.
"text" & X: 2/K: part harmony:/V: 1/|...||/V: 2/|...||
Lyrics: W (in block) http://www.lesession.co.uk/abc/abc_extensions.htm#words
rest: z http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/21694
'pointy-semi': n>n (rather than n3/2n) + 'semi': n/ + snap: n<n
dotted {(2 in compound time}: n3/n3/ (cf4344)
triplets: (3 or (3SnnnS (not needed?)
triplets? (cfNo10): *B3 <SP>:http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/1919
Other Divisions: cf1113.,
'paragraph’: ‘!’ vs. ‘\’ (keeps two lines together) + mid-bar repeats: [ :|
text: "above stave"
international characters: Irish: áÁ, éÉ, íÍ, óÓ, úÚ & Gàidhlig; àÀ, èÈ , ìÌ, òÒ, Ùù. ©
Max lines: 13 (? cf; tune 404)
[Gal: /0=>/567][Lilt: /0=>/][HP:/0=>/][å: /0=>/]
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http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/2399 Η σιγή κόσμον φέρει.
Tunes in birlibirdie's tunebook: 515