What about crunchy bits? Can we still mention crunchy bits?

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/Bloomfield

Dittos to everything jomac said. That has been my experience exactly. Besides, I've never heard anyone say "D#@%! I wish I didn't know how to read music!"

No, but I've heard (among Bluegrass types): "Well, I read music a little, but not enough to interfere with my pickin' ..."

<P>Just to add another $0.02 into the discussion...

<P>As someone who was classically trained to read sheet music as opposed to playing by ear, I also cannot bend my mind around the reasoning of the people who are dead set against reading music.

<P>Obviously, transcriptions of traditional music cannot convey the "feel" of the tune, but it seems to me that lovers of Irish music who read music would also tend to <I>listen</I> to a lot of Irish music, and therefore should know how to add the feel to what's on the page, even if they've never heard the particular tune in question. Therefore, the complaint that sheet music can't convey the feeling of the tune seems to me to be a moot point. Even if you can't actively learn tunes by ear, that doesn't necessarily prevent you from listening to, and learning how a jig, reel, etc. <I>should</I> sound, and then applying that to whatever particular piece you're sight reading.

<P>That being said, I actually in some ways <I>prefer</I> learning tunes from the written notation. When I learn a tune by ear, I tend to learn it as if it were set in stone, that is, the ornamentation, phrasing, and interpretation of the person I'm learning from becomes <I>the</I> tune for me, and I can't really conceive of new variations for it. When I'm learning from the page, OTOH, I have the "bare bones" before me, and it's much easier, looking at these, to alter bits of the tune around by way of ornamentation.

<P>So, if I hear a tune I like, I find that I do much better to look at sheet music first, hammer out some ornamentations from that, and <I>then</I> go and learn, aurally, the player's version.

<P>~Firefly

A 100 years ago there were no chords in IrTrad, because there was no accompanyment, except on the harp.


Bloomfield, what about the regulators on the pipes? And were there any traditional harps left 100 years ago?

A point that is coming up all the time are recordings and lp s you can't find and 'professional' musicians.

Could I make the point that the music recorded commercially by professional musicians is not necessarily a true reflection of traditional music but music arranged to suit an audience/record company and that when I and others say that you should listen to the real traditional musicianers this means go out and play with the people that have the music, even some of the very great were never commercially recorded or just weren't interested in doing so. The real style is out there in the kitchen of the old guys, not on the paper or in downloadable files.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Peter Laban on 2002-01-19 10:45 ]</font>

You're right again Peter - but what you suggest is a good deal easier for someone living in Co. Clare than for many of the people looking for help on the board. In North America, yes you can still find some old guys in some of the major cities, and at some festivals, but over vast tracts of the continent there just are none.

But if you're a student in, say, Singapore, what else are you going to do but study recordings? (The less commercial kind, of course.)

Save up for a trip to the "Holy Land", I suppose, but unless you actually live there for a while and get to know the old guys, or people who can introduce you, getting those kitchen moments is going to be hard.

They're worth waiting for, though.

I know the problem and know it well, still the only way to get it right is to go and seek out the real musicianers, talk, play, listen. There's no other way if you want to have a serious stab at the music. Going to summerschools is a solution, I served my time at Week Willie when starting to learn, it was the densest concentration of good music at the time (and still is these days, only you have to find the good players who are often forced out of town by the crowds.
But you're right it can't beat being here full time.

I know a lady who is a piano player. Her ability to read music is amazing to me. A gentleman who sang in opera style handed her some sheet music a few minutes before he was to sing before a group of people. She looked over the first page and began to play the song.
After hesitating on or replaying a couple of notes she had it from the first page. Not being able to read music well, I thought that was amazing! When the song was played for the gentleman to sing to it seemed flawless to me.
Her husband plays mostly by ear. He can read music, but at nowhere near the ability his wife has. The improvisation in his playing usually gets the crowd jumping while her playing is more formal.
I've read that those who are extremely versed in reading music can tell what will come next in a song because music follows strict patterns. That there is a limited amount of variability in an established song as to the core of it. But when improvising, one's opportunity for variability is increased exponentially.
I would like to be able to read music as well as the lady piano player, and have the improvisational ability of her husband. That, to me, seems like a good balance--No extremes, no right, no wrong, just balance.
However, since I can't really read music I don't think it is wrong for me to learn by mostly listening to examples. I also don't think it is wrong to learn by reading music only. As a matter of fact I think that there isn't any wrong in music. I think it is human expression of emotion.
I like the fact that music can be recorded for posterity on paper with those funny little dots, and that it can be embellished by someone a thousand years from now to make it his or her own expression.

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Professional artist. Amateur everything else.

Cody, I think you are missing the point, your woman can no doubt read like any well trained classical player, the point is though that while she is likely to be able to play each and every Irish tune, but she won't have the music. The music is what should be learned by ear. Famous example is ofcourse the duet recorded by Frankie Gavin and Sir Yehudi Menuhin for Bringing it all back home. Menuhin could offcourse play the tune beautifully from notes as to be expected. It sounded nowhere like Irish music as he hadn't a feckin clue what the music was about; he was trained to a different system with different values etc.

Cody, I think you are missing the point, your woman can no doubt read like any well trained classical player, the point is though that while she is likely to be able to play each and every Irish tune, but she won't have the music. The music is what should be learned by ear. Famous example is ofcourse the duet recorded by Frankie Gavin and Sir Yehudi Menuhin for Bringing it all back home. Menuhin could offcourse play the tune beautifully from notes as to be expected. It sounded nowhere like Irish music as he hadn't a feckin clue what the music was about; he was trained to a different system with different values etc.

Possibly you didn't read my entire post or misunderstood my intent?

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Professional artist. Amateur everything else.

"A 100 years ago there were no chords in IrTrad, because there was no accompanyment, except on the harp."

"Bloomfield, what about the regulators on the pipes? And were there any traditional harps left 100 years ago?"

Thanks for the bit of support on my "historical" comment, Peter. My point wasn't really about "orchestration" (e.g. what specific instruments like guitar or harp were used for accompaniment), I was pointing out that harmony and rhythmic accompaniment have been a part of the music which was handed down aurally and never notated until very recently - your example of regulators on the pipes is a great example. A note qualifies as harmony if it is different than the melody.

As Cinead points out: "I do believe that if tape recorders and video recorders had always been around, this would have dramatically affected the way music would be documented and passed down..."

We certainly need some sort of "hard copy" over the centuries if we want future generations to have exact details of our music. When changes are made in the process of aural transference, they are almost imperceptibly absorbed into the endless chain. The only way to maintain an accurate record of the original interpretation has historically been the universally understood written symbols of western notation.

Robert

Was I in support?

About the regulators, they represent the only harmonic/rhtythmic accompaniment from inside the tradition, I would look on the harping tradition as something different in many ways from the present repertoire of dancemusic. Harps would certainly not have been used to accompany 'session' like music (if that existed at the time harps were still being played in the old style)

The use of pianos as I suppose started in the 19th century is certainly not considered 'traditional' and would most likely not have taken place outside urban areas and the drawing rooms of the Gaelic revivalists.


On the matter of 'hard copy', the point is ofcourse that the notation does not at all represent the way the tune is played. You will get your notes down and roughly where the ornamentation sits, how the variations in the melody and rhythm go. So far so good. But what sets the traditional player apart from those trained in Western art music is never conveyed accurately in the notation so in that sense it is not a valid record of the particular performance it tries to transcribe unless it is read by a person who knows the tradition from the inside (i.e. someone who acquired the music by ear)and is able so to interpret the notation correctly. Even then it is extremely hard to deternime what the actual performance could have sounded like without hearing the actual player and having at least soem insight in his/her tone, style and rhytmic approach.

Years ago in Ireland most of the musicians playing jigs and Reels just did not know how to read and the music was passed down from one to another. But the current situation for alot of people playing Irish Traditional music is such that they are not around others who they could learn from. I rarely go to sessions, they are pretty much nonexistent in my are area. I guess I could learn fron CD's but I think that would be to tiresome.
I learn virtually all my tunes thru tunebooks and really enjoy it. I would be surprized if anyone could actually tell the difference between a tune learned by someone from a tunebook vs learned from someone else. This style of music is rapidly changing, one has only to look at the number of tunebooks on the market and how many are sold.....It's all academic, the music is being played regardless of how it's learned,