How to introduce ornamentation?

Whistle
1

I have a newbie question (I’ve posted a couple of others, but just recently changed my username for reasons of no import whatsoever):

I started playing about 12 weeks ago. I have Bill Ochs book and Grey Larsen’s, and have found Larsen’s to be very helpful (especially the first couple of weeks–to get inspired and learn some of the basic basics. Since then, I’ve been trying to toodle around independent of the book).

I started off learning Rights of Man (hornpipe), because it’s been a favorite tune of mine for 20 years. Then I learned Rakes of Mallow and Peg Ryan’s (slow reels), because they were easy and I could enjoy playing them with the recorded sessions at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/r2music/folk/sessions/ . Recently, I learned Kesh (tho I know it’s much maligned), because I heard that it’s easy, and I wanted to start learning some of the most common jigs.

So that’s what I have thus far–4 songs after 12 weeks. But, actually, I’m quite pleased with that. I mean, 13 weeks ago, I couldn’t play any! And I’ve been playing a lot, every day, and enjoying the heck out of it. Anyhow, I now find that I can play the first three songs I learned quite fluidly, and quickly if I want. (And, while I’ve heard some advise to get the feel of the song before worrying about playing it, I’ve found it much easier to get the feel once I could play it).

But, thus far, I’m playing without ornamentation. I’ve learned some basics of cuts and strikes from Larsen’s book, but when I try putting some into one of the tunes I’ve learned, I get total brain-freeze, my fingers stop playing, and it’s like I never learned the tune in the first place. Also, I have to admit that I don’t really feel much of a sense of where to put the ornamentation.

Any tips for how to introduce ornamentation? I often thought, “Maybe I should be ornamenting from the very first time I try to play a tune, and learn it that way, so that I don’t have to relearn it with ornamentation,” but judging from some other threads I’ve learned here, that’s not generally recommended. Or, should I not even be concerned about ornamentation yet?

All suggestions appreciated.

2

I’ve got Bill Och’s book which is very good. In it he says that all the tunes contained within will sound just fine without ornamentation. In His section on ornamentation he says, and I quote: “All but advanced players would be wise to avoid the more complex ornaments for a few years (YEARS!!!) and instead concentrate on developing a solid foundation of good rhythm and phrasing.”

I’m only too happy to take his advice.!!! I’ve been playing for close to two years now and have yet to manage a simple cut. I have the same problem you do. I know the tune like the back of my hand but the minute I try to add the simplest ornament my fingers go all spastic on me! It has dawned on me that these are the tunes I know by heart, the ones that I don’t even think about where the fingers are going next. I wonder if this could be the problem? I wonder if I would be better off to look at the written music when attempting them.

In any case, I personally think you are really jumping the gun. Sort of putting the cart before the horse. You say you have 4 tunes under your belt..maybe it might serve you better to get 10 more under there before you try to sort ornamentation out. I admire your enthusiasm tho, you couldn’t have tempted me to even consider cuts, taps, or whatever after I had only been playing for a month or so.

Where the heck in Buffalo are you? I’m in Niagara Falls! I was sure I was the only whistler in a three state radius!!

Best!!!

3

I had toodled on the whistle for a few months before taking a lesson, so I kinda knew the notes and could play simple tunes in a simple way. I’m no prodigy.

The first tune my teacher gave me was Ballydesmond #2 polka which has a double cut in it. He showed it to me and had me do it right off. The next tune was Dawning of the Day, which starts off with cuts and taps but at a really slow speed.

My point is, he started with the ornamentation right off, but made sure he picked tunes that didn['t have a lot in them. I did my first rolls in Come West Along the Road a few weeks later.

I recommend that you incorporate cuts at any place where you have the same note repeated where you would normally tongue (except Kesh jig has it three times in a row and a roll should go there so try another tune). Then do some some cuts on some non-sequential G’s here and there to get a feel.

4

Another take on ornamentation …

Whilst I was fiddling about with a tune recently, trying to get ornamentation into it without having my brain forget it immediately – yep, I know that brain freeze thing! – it suddenly struck me, that ornamentation could be a help to memorising a tune.

I’m not exactly a seasoned session player (replacing “not exactly” with “not at all” would be more accurate) and only have a repertoire of about 50-odd tunes, but I have had more than a few problems in keeping them all fresh and also separate in my head: i.e. beginning Kesh Jig and wandering off into Donnybrook Fair by mistake.

Anyway, in the last few days I have been trying out a bit of ornamentation as “aide memoire” on more than one tune and, although I am not throwing ornamentation into every bar, I find that a judicious cut or tap (I can’t really manage snappy rolls yet) here and there seems to help one find one’s way around a tune, especially ones which are long (Strayaway Child e.g.) or “self-similar” (Jim Ward’s e.g.).

Just my € 0.02

:wink:


Az

5

Yer already playing Kesh, so substitute the first figure with a roll on G, then the second bar A with an A roll. Then on the B part, play a cut on the first strong beat. that’ll keep ya busy.

6

Play slow Airs.

Being slow there’s plenty of time to try ornaments, and being fairt free rhythm, it doesn’t matter so much if you linger on them. That’ll help get your fingers to do the motions and start building finger memory.

7

Kesh is not an easy jig IMHO. I struggled to learn it. I struggled to improve it. For me at least, it seemed counterintuitive. On cuts and taps, I’d listen to lots of music and avoid overdoing it.

8

Hey AndreaZ-- I’m in the same state, although at the entire opposite end… Take the Erie canal East, and when it reaches the Hudson, that’s where I am!
I’ll second the Bill Ochs book recommendation. Start from the beginning and work your way through lesson by lesson. When you get to the ornamentation, go very slowly. Practice each one along with the CD without using it in a tune until you can play the ornament fairly convincingly, even if it’s pretty slow. Then, introduce them into the tunes Bill gives you. His teaching system is very logical and sequential and will get you going very nicely. Note as Andrea mentions that a simple tune played unornamented is much preferable to one played with badly executed ornaments.

9

I live in Clarence. You know, a couple of months ago there was a session at Nietchzes, and I thought I heard they were doing them every Sunday afternoon. Several whistle players there, including one who I heard also does a Celtic music show on one of the local PBS radio stations. You may want to check into it. I bet there are tons of whistle players around.

I appreciate all the advice about ornamentation, and will take it to heart. I still think there’s a question of, “Do you learn stepwise, and get comfortable playing without ornamentation first–or do you experiment with ornamentation early on, so that you don’t have to re-learn with ornamentation later?” Perhaps I will revisit Bill Ochs book. Thus far, I haven’t really found it very inspiring. At this point in my life, I’m afraid I just don’t have the patience to be learning songs like Muffin Man and Go Tell Aunt Rhody. Also, it gets confusing because Ochs teaches a different method of fingering cuts compared to Larsen. In fact, Larsen criticizes a number of things that appear in Ochs book (not by name), including the cut fingering. On the other hand, I often get a sense that Ochs book was especially intended for people like me who just want to have fun playing an instrument, whereas Larsen is a bit higher-brow and more geared toward people who hope to become great musicians.

Thanks, again, for the suggestions. I’ll chew on all of 'em for a while.

10

OMG!!! Clarence!!! That is like 30 minutes away!! Wow! I guess I am living in my own deluded little world. I’ll check out this place you mention that I have never heard of. Where is it?? I just know you will tell me and I’ll be going “oh duh”. Probably driven past it a dozen times!

Brewer Paul..of course you are right. You are here in NY and so is Slowair…in Albany. But Buffalo is like 30 minutes away from me so that is like…wow!!! I sometimes tend to get rather dramatic!

I’m chuckling over the post about one tune turning into another. I keep doing that and it drives me nuts. I’ll decide to play a certain tune and halfway thru it I realize that it is not THAT tune but another. I was playing The Blackthorn Stick yesterday and somehow it turned into the Tenpenny Jig. It must be a malady that strikes us all!

11

I’ve changed my position on this one. When i first started out playing the whistle (self-taught) I learned tunes and tried to add in the fiddly stuff afterwards. As several people have mentioned, this is tricky! And it’s not all that surprising really - you’ve spent time building up a strong kinaesthetic memory, and only to have to change it when you put ornaments in.

Just over a year ago I started playing the pipes, with lessons at the London pipers club. All the teachers there are very keen to get new players to ornament properly before learning any tunes. The reason, i think, is that on the pipes you don’t have any alternative to ornaments - you can’t pause for breath, tongue, breath pulse, glottal stop, play louder or softer and so on - the only way to introduce phrasing and variation into a tune is by ornamenting. On the pipes you literally can’t get through a tune properly without using cuts, at the minimum (sure you could stop the chanter completely evey time you need to articulate, but this would pretty much prohibit fast playing and would sound crap).

Anyway, what I’ve found is that taking this ‘ornaments first’ approach to learning has vastly improved my whistle playing. When you’re fingers are used to making the movement involved, it’s amazing how quickly it becomes second nature and you find yourself ornamenting fluidly without thinking about it, even as you learn new tunes.

I don’t much like the term ‘ornaments’, because it implies that they are something extra or added-on. This isn’t the case - even if only used sparingly, they are an intrinsic part of the style. By contrast, I like the way Gary Larsen emphasises thinking of them not as embellishment but as articulation (although I’m not sold on his rigid approach to fingerings - having sat up close to some good players, it seems that they often vary the cutting and striking fingers to get different effects).

So, the solution is clearly to take up the pipes!

.. or, if this seems a bit extreme, spend time practising ornaments on their own, NOT in tunes. It’s boring, sure, but it really works. You want to get to a stage where the movements involved are automatic and fast.

If anything, I now tend to over-ornament when I play the whistle, which is as much a problem as under-ornamenting but definitely easier to fix..

Sam

12

Hi Neighbour,

I agree with most of what you say, though I’m a fiddler not a piper.

My only caveat is to mention that learning ornaments IN the tunes is that in a way this can cement the tune into just one time and place, and of course ornamentation or variation changes with each playing, once you are comfortable with the tune & the instrument. I’m gaining confidence on the fiddle to throw in my own ornamentation, both rhythmic and melodic, and the teachers do notice the improvement.

Practising ornaments outside a tune is a great way to have a palette to colour & shade tunes as and when you want.

13

When I first learned, it was sort of like completely learning the same tune 3 times.

  1. I had to get the skeleton of the tune under my fingers (individual notes)

  2. Add cuts (especially on the downbeat) and double cuts (especially in slower tunes) and experiment with where rolls will fit (GAG or GBG, replace with a G roll for example).

  3. Then I had to work on figuring out variations to "surprise the ear with the same but different)

At this stage, I learned from the dots (had to learn to read music) and had to know the name of a tune (and remember the starting note to play it. If someone would play it, I would know I could play it, but I couldn’t get started or join in.

After about 7-14 years (if you are a slow learner like me), your ears hear a tune enough, and suddenly it will jump underneath your fingers, complete with ornaments and variations. Then you can make a tune “your” version of the tune, but you probably won’t know the name of it. :astonished:

14

Well, I will say this much anyway… do yourself the favor of learning your individual cuts, taps, rolls, etc. “properly” and then do what you wish as far as variations on a theme.

I am also self taught like many others, but with one major “bad” … I never knew anything asofar as that cool fluttery sounds they were making on the CDs and soundtracks I heard in the movies, so I did my best to make them up myself as i went along.

Honestly… I didn’t do to awfully bad, but I could never quite get some of those “really cool ‘Irishy sounding’ effects” to come out. Thus, I finally came accross… a couple of YEARS later, a website showing and talking about all of these cuts and rolls and taps and crans oh my!! :smiley:

So… learn them right, because UNlearning and trying to retrain your fingers… oh yeah, it’s tough. I still slip back, and I’m still learning overall anyway, but overall… I’m finally trained up proper to where I can play around with it how I like for the most part.

Take care,
John

15

Most of my ornaments still come about as a result of attempting to quickly correct a mistake. They even sound good on some occasions. As far as intentional ornamentation goes, I try to learn it along with the tune, because some tunes are actually easier to play with the ornaments than without them.

16

IMHO you should at least learn tunes with cuts and taps in the right places – if not, you’ll find yourself having to tongue instead of cutting, which could lead to bad habits. I’m for the learning-the-ornaments-with-the-tunes approach myself. It’s a question of developing style – by which I mean, if you’re playing with no cuts or taps or rolls whatsoever, that’s still a style. You might as well develop a style which involves using ornaments correctly as a matter of course.