Hey all, it’s hard for me to explain this but I’ve hit a sort of wall in my playing. When I play my tunes, by myself or with others, I learn them (either by ear or ABC or whatever) and in the time that I practice, the notes and patterns get ingrained in my muscle memory which enables me to play the tune faster, better, etc. until its up to par.
However, what I’m having trouble with is when I learn a tune, I tend to play it the exact same way every time because my fingers have gotten so used to doing the same motions in practice. Whenever I watch the more experienced guys play, they vary their tunes so they don’t just play the exact same thing 2 or 3 times in a set, but there’s subtle nuances that they add/change to vary it up and make it more interesting. How do I go about learning how to do this?
There is nothing at all wrong with playing a tune the same way every time you play it. That’s part of the learning process as you have observed. I am assuming that you are playing Irish traditional dance music too. Am I right? So I suspect that you are not interested in “improvising” either but perhaps in playing “variations” of the tune or using melodic “substitutions” in a tune. Improvising, as in a jazz-ish context would mean starting with a melody and then proceeding on a melodic journey not entirely related to the original melody or rhythm even. That’s not part of the Irish tradition and it can make playing with others difficult. You can search around the board and find a lot of posts about variations and substitutions. Variations preserve the shape of the melody and the rhythm of the tune and there are well known variations to many, many tunes. You can learn to do these by listening to many recordings of the same tune or listening to/recording players live who have the variations under their fingers. Then you transcribe and practice the variations (some are well documented at the usual websites - the Session and JC’s, for instance). Substitutions have to do with replacing common elements say a long roll with another element that preserves the tempo of the original element in the tune. really it all just comes over time and with experience. I have no idea how to explain when it happens but one day you just find yourself hearing a tune a little differently and your hands follow your thinking. It’s a magical moment when it happens. In the end, just listen, listen some more and then some more. Play and practice what you hear. It all comes together in time. Yes, some people need teachers.
I don’t know about everyone else, but when I’m going thru tunes in my head or whistling them, I find that variations are super-easy to come by compared to when I’m playing. What I try to do is remember some of those I come up with in my head and later practice them to see how well I can make them work under the fingers.
That’s the way it started for me, anyway; practicing a prearranged variation gave me a better result than trying one on the fly. Plus, the more you do this, the more variations you can have in your “holster”, and you have a good chance of plugging those in to other tunes without prior rehearsal.
Every now and then I think about these sort of things, and more and more I’m finding that I don’t know any really great musicians that didn’t have a teacher (of some sort). I can’t think of anyone that’s really good that learned completely on their own.
So I’ll reiterate, get a teacher. I’m just up the road from you and I’ve spent loads of time around Toronto and Hamilton, so PM me for suggestions.
Nano’s got a good suggestion, too. Start by learning different variations and trying them. It’s a good idea to start by working out some things first, and then just try putting them in randomly. Eventually you can start varying the melody on the fly, but don’t expect this to come easily. At nearly 10 years in on the whistle, and 6 on the pipes, I’m just starting to find these things happening randomly and naturally. And it’s not like I haven’t been trying! Of course, this is for bigger variations. The micro stuff (different rolls, cuts, or whathaveyou) has been happening for a while longer than that. It definitely helped to have a teacher to show me that stuff.
I never had a whistle teacher, but I’m convinced I could have saved myself a huge amount of work and trouble if I had, and avoided many pitfalls and blind alleys. If you go it alone, you need to be structured, and keep your ears wide open! It’s very easy to repeat your mistakes until they become deeply ingrained. And learning wrong is worse than not learning at all, (assuming you want to play well).
A few things I do when trying to improve my approach to a familiar tune:
— Play very slowly
— Think about where I might insert a roll, cut, tap, etc., and try it out. If it works, play it a bunch of times to drive it home
— Try to alter the spot at which I take air
— Try inserting pauses for emphasis or to allow a change to the way the next phrase is played
I’m finding that I’ve started to develop a little “arsenal” of signature tricks that can be inserted and removed, like building blocks, from many of my tunes. This is not improvisation in the jazz-sense, (where you play a “head” and then freestyle off of that), but more like a set of “plug-and-play” variations, or “licks” that don’t alter the melody. The better I get at it, the more improvisational I hope I can be, while staying within the tradition.
This is sort of how LE McCullough presents it in his tin whistle tutorial, though he does not use the concept of purposeful overuse the way I do:
Do the following sllooowwwllly:
Find everywhere in the tune where there are 3 repeated notes or 3 consecutive notes where the 2 outer notes are the same and substitute a long roll. Also substitute long rolls for arpeggios, and anything else you can think of. i.e. Make up a variation where you purposely overuse long rolls.
Find everywhere in the tune where there are 2 repeated eighth notes and substitute a short roll. Same with all quarter notes. i.e. Purposely overuse short rolls.
Practice another version (slowly) where you cut every 2nd and 4th beat. Purposely overuse cuts. Practice another version where you cut every 1st and 3rd beat. Practice another version where you cut every 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th beats. We’re talking overuse of the technique to a ridiculous extent.
Find everywhere in the tune where you have 3 notes descending stepwise. Switch around the first two notes. Overuse this.
Change every quarter note to 2 eights, where the first is one step below that of the quarter. Same with repeated eighth note sequences; change the first one to one step below. Throw this in everywhere you can in this version.
Practice the above versions until they are clean, as fast as you want them to be, and “automated”. DO NOT play them in public, because you will be accused (rightfully so) of tastelessness.
NOW: When you got them all down, start working on the tune, mixing and matching the stuff above in a tasteful manner. As you do this more and more, you’ll find you can do it on the fly.
All the things that oakuss lists are things that good players do, but learning to do them in this kind of conscious, formulaic fashion is totally at odds with the way I learned to play Irish music.
I know people who have set about analyzing and attacking certain issues in their playing in this sort of way, but I could never have hacked it. I would have found it too mechanical, too far removed from the inspiring reality of the music I heard and wanted to emulate. But by all means try this kind of approach and if it works for you, all well and good.
To my mind, the key to doing these kinds of things naturally is to know the music - to listen to so much of it that these things just start happening naturally. Where to stick in rolls or any other device will not be a problem. And as you become familiar with different things that different players do with the same tune, you’ll want to copy the variations that tickle your fancy. And that’s the start of knowing how to play around with the tune - copying what others do. Soon enough where and how to vary the melody will not be a problem.
I’d always recommend learners spend more time listening (to good solo players on a variety of traditional instruments, not just whistle) than they do practising. And let things happen when they will.
But different approaches suit different people. Follow your own temperament!
While I agree with what SteveJ says about his way of approaching Irish Trad music I have to disagree with his feeling that the suggestions of oakuss are artificial. The substitutions oakuss suggests are actually part of the common ways good players “alter” tunes as they play. So what you are practicing is not artificial but rather inserting appropriate ornaments in "right places. It is just overkill because of the repetition. I once saw a version of Rolling in the Rye Grass which has been reduced to nothing but long rolls. Appropriate to the name I suppose, but clearly done as a learning experience. Once you’ve done that sort of thing you can pick and choose where to put rolls or whatever. The same sort of practice based on scales instead of tunes would, in my estimation be artificial.
That was actually the first thing that I said. I just question whether drills like that are the best way, or indeed any way at all, to achieve a musical result. We are talking about making music, after all, playing tunes, not working out competitive ice-skating or gymnastic routines.
The learning process you describe, where a tune is conceived of as a fixed string of specific notes which is practiced repeatedly, is completely different from the way I was originally taught Irish music, and the way that I learn a new tune still.
I was taught in a way that thought of tunes as general notions, and the specific notes are up to the whim of the player. It’s rather unlikely that the same exact notes will be repeated as the tune goes along.
It’s not like jazz improvisation, where you’re playing anything that fits with the chords, but more like other old music traditions where the player is selecting from a stable of traditional motifs. The motifs exist in families, any member of a motif-family filling the purpose just as well as any other. Thus all of the members of a given motif-family are interchangable, and the “improvisation” or “variation” is in reality the musician selecting different members of the motif family every time a certain phrase comes along.
I am self taught and I am considered an awesome whistle player. It would help to have someone to show you the basics but over the years, you will come across many players with subtle variations of a tune. After the session just ask the newbie to show you his or her variation. Once you get a bunch of these from a bunch of players you will find that you will be able to throw these variations into tunes. I am not a natural “improv " player, but after learning so many different variation, I have an arsenal and I can easily put them anywhere. Keep in mind that it does not have to be a whistle player. Variations on a variety of instruments certainly helps. Over time it will come naturally. Keep listening and asking questions and you will be there before you know it! I love it when someone says " I love what you did in that 2nd B part " or whatever. " where did you get it” ? I’ll explain that it came from so and so on such and such an instrument. That’s the best part of learning tunes, sharing our own styles!
I think this is one of those areas where, if you have to ask the question, you’re already signaling the answer. Some people “get it”, naturally and holistically. You listen a lot, imitate, experiment, and the variations flow. Others need to approach it more analytically and bottom-up, and exercises can help. Different roads to the same destination.
I think Pancelticpiper put it quite well (as usual). To supplement (or reiterate) his comment, the more tunes you learn the more “bits” you’ll have to pull at when changing up tunes on the fly. Short of being a genius of music theory and quick on your feet, I don’t know that there’s any way to achieve your goal other than continuing with learning tunes (or trad motifs, rather).
To repeat another point, getting a good teacher will also be a good step towards just about any musical goal. I know for me personally, learning a tune by ear (especially phrase by phrase from a teacher) makes it much less like a mental construct of specific notes and more like a living notion of a tune.
good on you guru! you always have such sound advice. I follow this site and I am always impressed with your posts I and have great respect for your advice. that being said, on this topic although i have a great ear and can mess with the tunes a little, i am truly impressed with those out there who have the skill and dicipline to practice what oakuss has written or any such " structured " practice. honestly, i am so left or right brain ( i always confuse the two ) that i can barely make sense of it. there lots of amazing players that possess both skills. thats an extra tool that i can’t use and i am truly envious. i wonder what percentage they would both merit. whatever, i am certainly down a few percentage points. lets face it the two certainly go hand in hand and now i feel like a one handed whistle player.
Improvisation is not monopolised by jazz. there are diffreent ways of improvising or creating your own impromptu musical input and the word is not limited in its meaning by some people’s limited appreciation of how improvisation works in jazz and other traditions/styles.
I really like the motif family thrust of this poster’s explanations and the “stable” metaphor is nice. I would have used “meadow” or “field”.
And the thing being described here is not unique to ITM but is there in ONE of the many elements that comprise improvisation in the indic and other melodic and improvisatory traditions.
When I looked back at this I realised that there’s a big hypocrisy or conundrum in what I said!
I said that learning a tune by practicing the same fixed string of notes over and over and getting them ingrained into my fingers is not how I was taught, but in reality that’s exactly how I was taught. The difference is that it was these motifs, or building blocks, that got ingrained in me through repetition, rather than tunes.
It’s how traditional players can pick up a new tune so quickly. They don’t need to remember a string of notes, any more than someone recalling a sentence does so by remembering a sequence of disembodied letters. Rather, we remember the words, or in some cases the general intent of the sentence. The word-order can be changed, or equivalent words substituted, as long as the intent is clear.
Please set that box by that tan car.
Can you put this package beside the beige Ford there?
Almost none of the words are the same, but the same basic intent is conveyed.
Likewise in a reel you might have two phrases, musically equivalent and interchangable, which share almost no specific notes.
Humbly put and well said. Indeed it is the " Kibbles and Bits" that we draw from. You can and will practice a tune over and over .etc… until it is engrained but you could have 20 or more versions of a tune and each dfifference becomes a unifying part in how a certain individual would interpret it. Putting it all together to suit yourself is the fun part!
