Variations on tunes.

Whistle
1

Is there a strategy for varying how a tune is played? I’ve heard some versions of tunes, i.e. Cooley’s reel, that were varied only in a few places and others that were recognizable, but totally reworked. PJ Tinwhistler on youtube plays a lot of the tunes played by Lunasa or Michael McGoldrick, but he often changes them so that they don’t sound at all like the original.

I still tend to pick a version I like and learn it just as it is played, simplifying as required. I’m not very flexible. Also, if I learn a tune, it seems like learning a version that would be well known would be better for playing in a session, rather than playing some wonky version that has been uniquified, even though wonky might make it more interesting to listen to as a solo piece.

To clarify, I mean variation in both the “variation from how the tune is normally played” and the “variation from how you played it the first time around” sense.

2

It’s one of the recurring questions on forums like this and you pack rather a lot of facets, angles and even maybe different types of music into your question.

There’s no one magic recipe, it’s a nuts and bolts job: knowing what makes a tune work, what the important notes are, how the rhythm sits and how the phrases are held together and how the whole lot interacts. All of that and more, sprinkled with an insight into the aesthetics of the whole thing.

Listening and learning to identify what is going, what different means of variation are being utilised by different players and then slowly incorporating all that into your own playing, adding to it as you go along.

Time & dedication. ‘It’s dark and lonesome work’.

3

As I’ve said here many times before, my own playing is a product of how I was taught. My mentor/teacher (I don’t think he ever asked for any money for teaching, he just loved the music and was happy to pass it on) never played anything the same way twice, and would probably be hard-pressed to do so, because it would require him to remember to remember the way he played everything the first time!

He would say “better to learn 20 ways to play one tune, than to learn 20 tunes”. He would teach me a basic version, and then say “you have the tune, now let’s f**k with it” meaning it was now time to explore dozens of different ways of playing it.

So from the very beginning the malleability, the plasticity, of Irish dance music was ingrained in me.

He once heard me playing on the radio and later expressed disappointment that I was being too conservative, not pushing the tunes to the wild edge that was always part of his own playing.

What I gathered from him, and from my own anal overly-analytical study of top traditional players, was that Irish reels and jigs are created more or less on the fly by the player grabbing members of families of building-blocks. Each member of a building-block family equally suits a given rhythmic/harmonic situation (in other words no one member is any more “right” than any other). So it’s not like “theme and variations” but rather very much like how we grab words and assemble them into phrases when we speak. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of different ways we could express even very simple notions in English. There is no “one, correct way” but rather any way that does the job is as “right” as any other, though some ways are more elegant, some more clumsy.

“I’m heading off to the market now… is there anything you need?”
“I’m going to the market, can I pick you up anything?”
“I’m off to the market, did you want me to get you anything?”

Which is “the real phrase” and which are “the variations”? None, and none… language doesn’t work that way.

Irish reels and jigs are exactly like that.

There’s something gained, but also something lost, when sessions or performance groups iron out a consistent version of a tune and all play in homophonic lockstep… what is lost is the wonderful chaotic Dixieland-like heterophonic wildness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterophony

As far as strategies go, it comes from learning the building-blocks and getting them all “under the fingers” so that you can grab them as you go.

Not on whistle, but on pipes, here’s a little video I did a while back showing a large number of different “building blocks” which can be used in the opening phrase of The Earl’s Chair (and of course any other tune whatever that has a phrase like that in it somewhere)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6fmINqse5Y

I did a whistle video too but it disappeared…

4

Wish you’d find that whistle version. It is a very cool set of variations. Much the same as the pipe one of course (at least as I recall), but still nice to hear on the whistle. I’ve always hoped someone would break down the building blocks of ITM a bit more. Some of us learn best that way. I’m aware of how it works, just as I’m aware of the “tags” common in old timer and bluegrass music. but gathering an “encyclopedia” of those blocks would really help my playing progress. Obviously you can pick up some of this from listening, but having a collection of them would be of great use.

5

Some of the variations or ornamentation that I use I’ve picked up from recordings or listening to other players at sessions. Don’t forget to listen to other instruments than the whistle. Fiddle players seem to be very good at this sort of thing.
A lot of the ones I’ve come up with happened when I didn’t even have a whistle in my hands. Sometimes I get a new tune in my head and I tend to go around whistling it (with my lips, not a whistle) throughout the day. Often I’ve surprised myself by inserting a new variation spontaneously. If so, I keep going over that variation to get it fixed in my memory until I can try it out on a whistle or other instrument.

6

Freedom

7

Related discussion going on at https://forums.chiffandfipple.com/t/boundry-between-ornimentation-and-melody-variation/88251/1

Best wishes.

Steve

8

Good topic. This is something that I’ve wanted to get better at lately.

9

Funny you should mention that. There’s one part of the B section of Cooley’s that I don’t think I’ve ever heard any two people play the same way. But it does seem to be the only part of the tune that changes much.

In general, groups seem to move from heterophony towards homophony over time as people figure out which version of the tune they like best and gravitate towards it. Personally, I like to buck the trend a little, and figure out what fancy stuff I can do, which is sometimes just playing a different/ornamented version of the tune, and sometimes involves creating a whole new descant/harmony.

Also, that teacher of yours sounds like a great guy.

10

During a period in the nineteen eighties, when I was first figuring out variations and all that I entertained the whole ‘building block’ idea for a while. I came to realise though that when you’re using that approach you’re in serious danger of approaching music in a mechanistic way, take one component and change it with any number other bits and you’re fine. Painting by numbers almost. So I’d say I found that approach only helpful up to a point. In reality, there’s more going on.

I just found this little clip that I recorded for some other thread a while ago. I am not quite sure for what reason it was recorded and normally that sort of clips would get deleted after use. As I found it sitting on the little recording machine, it may be of some use here as an illustration how you can, should even, vary a simple tune to keep things interesting.

11

Nice wee clip Peter. I would say that the “building blocks” approach is very useful and that we all use it, consciously or unconsciously.

For example after you’ve been playing a while you realize that any time you come to a stock phrase such as

(K:D) (3FED AD BDAD

you could replace it with ~ F3A BFAF or FD ~D3 BDAD or FD D/D/D BDAD or FDDA BDAD etc. etc. if you wanted.

And in fact those kinds of substitutions are basically what you are doing with the recurrent E pedal phrase in Drowsy Maggie. (Lots of other nice touches that might not be quite so easy to make a formula of course.)

It’s just putting a label on the “building block” idea, and recommending it as an analytical approach - that seems to reduce it to a mechanistic process.

Having learned my way around the music without a teacher, just by listening, I used to find it very hard to understand why everybody can’t do things that way, intuitively, without labels or rules. And really some part of me does still find it hard to understand, in spite of my experience of teaching various instruments over a couple of decades.

So I will make one of my occasional but regular pleas for a right-brain approach. Listen, copy, listen, copy, listen, copy - but don’t make rules for yourself - and one day things will start happening that don’t seem to be conscious copies of anything - even if they may be unconscious restatements of principles you have absorbed. :slight_smile:

PS There’s nothing wrong with playing a tune without creative or stock variations. Just a note or a twiddle changed here and there is enough to show listeners you’re not asleep at the wheel and just churning the tune out by finger memory.

12

I would say that the “building blocks” approach is very useful and that we all use it, consciously or unconsciously.

I realise that but I think it’s something that’s useful up to a point but it’s a starting poinjt, you’ll have to take the broader view of a tune and what is going on. I don’t think you can go around and blindly replace bits by other bits and still have a musical pleasing outcome. You don’t want it to become formulaic and I think the ‘building block’ approach opens you up to just that.

I have listened an awful lot to Séamus Ennis and quickly noticed he approached every tune on it’s own merits and treated each to get the best out of it. Never really predictable, even for those of us who think they know his playing very well.

13

Here are a few things that are coming to mind from Mr. Gumby’s post(s) and others.

-Listen a lot.
-Approach each tune individually and put yourself into it, instead of just running through them all to remember them. (I’ve been guilty of that myself, especially when time is an issue and my memory is in regular need of refreshing.)

Recently my Mom thought that I was listening to some music on the computer when it was actually me playing. Granted, she’s not really into ITM, but for someone to hear some similarity is a nice return on all the effort. Other than the recent change in covering the holes closer to the first joint of the fingers, the two things listed above are mainly where the fun and variety has come from.

Oh, and I’ve worked really hard on slowing down the tunes a bit. It’s amazing the nuances one can bring to a tune when one has the time to do it. I’m not, or maybe never will be, at the point where I can play a tune at Mary Bergin-like speed and be able to have it sound like anything more than finger exercises.

14

I agree, it was a nice sounding clip,

15

I think we agree Peter. And I’m sure we’ve also agreed in the past on the fact that one of the most rewarding ways to come up with satisfying variations on a tune is to spend a lot of time with it - play one tune, play with that tune, for 30 minutes, or an hour, or more, and things will suggest themselves that suit that tune - things that we are not selecting from a bag of favourite tricks and bolting on, as it were.

16

That’s more or less how that clip came about (and I don’t remember why I recorded it, some discussion or other fairly recently). It’s not a tune I would play but it is one that I have known for an awful long time. I played around with it a bit before recording it, maybe ten, fifteen minutes to ‘rattle around’ the various elements so they’d settle in a place where they fit and then I made two recordings, this one was the second I think. I was happy enough I could beat a bit of life into one of the old worn ones.

17

I’m always jealous of PanCeltic Piper’s learning of variations.

I’ve got a few very basic ones, I can hold an note or roll it or bend it a bit but I struggle to rearrange notes.

My friend said he can do it because he sings complex harmony in a choir. Later I was trying to sing a tune to him and he was laughing so hard at my efforts. I think that says it all. I can’t hold a tune in a bucket

18

I agree. But a lot of us are somewhere along the road and find those building blocks useful. I suspect even the fine players are using that approach, but what makes them stand out is that they don’t “bolt on” the building block but rather it grows out of what they are doing with the tune. That’s what I hear in Mr.G’s nice little clip. My supposition is that the fine player has lots of the blocks available and is able to choose them on the fly to fit. Would that we were all that far along.

Of course, I have another reason for want to see a collection of the building blocks. To a musicologist they are fascinating…

19

Plenty written on the subject for musicologists (Cowdery’s ‘The Melodic Tradition of Ireland’ has some interesting comparisons of different players’ takes on various melodic elements for example).

I don’t object to the idea of building blocks as such. In fact I think that those who have learned this music the organic way, by ear and by immersion, have a radically different approach to tunes compared to those who come at it from a different angle. In my experience a traditional player hears a tune as a rhythmic and melodic structure that is held up by a number of important notes that can be approached and connected in various ways, similar to Richard’s building blocks. The part I am not comfortable with is approaching these elements/building blocks as elements that you can take out and replace by a number of set pieces as a means of instant variation. As I said: a road I have been on, have the t-shirt (and it didn’t fit comfortably so I have long since stopped wearing it).

So summarising (as the coffee is kicking in) it’s useful to look at a tune and be able to instantly recognise melodic elements, different ways of ornamenting a particular element (essentially what Richard’s Earls Chair clip does, several other takes on that note could be added by the way) but I think to have the full picture you need a more holistic approach to melody and rhythm.

That said, you have to start somewhere, only to find you keep on adding new layers (the old onion analogy) as you go along.

20

As far a cataloguing the “building blocks”, I wrote out, around 20 years ago, a full page, dozens, of possible things to do on a single beat in a jig.

These, and all the other possibilities I didn’t think of at the time, make up a building-block family, all members of which equally suit a specific rhythmic and harmonic situation.

The example I used was, I suppose it could be called, a “long roll situation” where the melody rests or parks on G in the low octave for a whole beat, a dotted quarternote.

In Breandan Breathnach’s notation this might appear as a dotted quarternote with the half-moon symbol above; in older books it might have the classical “turn” symbol above; or it might be written in any other of a hundred different ways.

Off the top of my head here are some

  1. play a long roll on G, that is, G(cut)G(pat)G
  2. play the “piper” long roll (cut)G(pat)G(pat)G
  3. play the lower neighbor-tone in the middle GF#G
  4. play some lower note in the middle GDG (implying a G Major chord) or GEG (implying an E minor chord)
  5. play the upper neighbor-tone in the middle GAG
  6. play some higher note in the middle GBG for example
  7. take a breath in the middle G(‘)G
    8 ) play an initial short roll with a breath after (cut)G(pat)G(’)
  8. play an initial short roll with some other note after (cut)G(pat)GA for example if leading upwards to B, the last note could be practically any note; or you can touch bottom D (cut)G(pat)GD
  9. play G with two notes after GDD for example
  10. postpone the short roll by playing another initial note F#(cut)G(pat)G for example but many other notes could be used
  11. play a long full-length dotted quarternote G, bending up to it


    So one could play the first beat of The Kesh Jig or any other jig which starts with this situation dozens of times playing it differently every time.

None of the above are “the tune” and none of the above are “variations on the tune”… the point is that they are all equivalent and any can be used at any time.