"Here’s what’s on my mind: People sometimes ask me advice on how to play music (first mistake!) Here’s what I SHOULD say to them, but am usually too shy or distracted to: Don’t aspire to play shi* just because it is the flavour of the month. Lavish your attention on the music, learn to hear it: Learning to hear it is the key to learning to do it. Learning tunes by ear at normal speed from recordings - no safety net - is a start. Don’t always assume you can hear everything that is going on in a piece of great playing (take it from someone who has a pretty good ear that discovered an awful lot from listening to the master pipers slowed down to below 20% speed for the purposes of detailed transcription). Aspire to be an artist, who attends to the processes of practice, learning, listening… not just a performer beloved of people who cannot hear like musicians (with a few exceptions… maybe). If you don’t engage closely to the slow processes of learning to listen, copy, emulate whatever music to you contains greatness, then it’s quite unlikely that you will develop your own unique voice. You’ll probably just get stuck at the ‘getting by’ or ‘a reasonable copy’ stage that is the norm.
It’s not for everyone, Brian. I quite accept that people just play music for enjoyment, as a hobby etc… Sessions are fine sometimes, often they are a pain in the hole if I want to play well. I see thier social function and all that, but I can’t always say they are good for my or other people’s playing. Just being good enough to scrape by in a session without annoying too many people (and, let’s face it, there are some very lazy-arsed musicians out there in this regard) might be lowering the bar which, as far as I can see, is worse than raising it for people who are up to the jump.
Well, it’s just a fact, albeit not a popular one maybe, that some people put more effort into their process and, just maybe, are entitled to enjoy a civilised tune that engages their abilities now and then (that’s bollocks in the real world actually; the session is more generally seen as a free-for-all where everybody can muck in for better and worse… and there is merit in that, but not always, and sometimes it’s clearly contrary to the playing of and promotion of good music). I don’t give a shite what other people think really, never did (well, maybe a few certain people at times). That’s part of going for it: Keep your head down and your eye on the ball. If I did give a shite then I probably wouldn’t be playing in the way that I do which, if not particularly accomplished, is at least a bit distinctive. But I’ve really not got the fire in my belly like I used to. I do on the pipes (in terms of being a student of them and their music) but not to the same level of commitment as in the heady days of my misspent youth, alas."
Typical initial response on this forum as of late, I’m afraid.
I, for one, appreciate the quote. I’m not completely up-to-date one intellectual property rights issues, but I don’t believe a Facebook posting qualifies as published material where consent may be required. Again, thanks for the post.
Firstly, I don’t see how you can defend such a sweeping statement. Secondly, you’re focusing on something that has nothing to do with anything. Thirdly, it’s a fair enough question. While I too enjoyed reading his thoughts, they are addressed to a particular individual elsewhere and not a reply in a thread here, and that plus the personal nature of it made me feel a bit like I was eavesdropping on material I may not have been intended to be privy to.
Harry’s a member here. If he objects, we can take it down.
(Regarding the OP): Points taken. But if I hadn’t gotten involved in sessions, I would almost certainly have never played with another ITM-focused musician. Bad outcome there.
I think the point is to keep your ears open, your wits sharp, and be discriminating about what you do. And there’s nothing so wrong with enjoying the social aspects of the session. Not all of us are as serious, musically ambitious or naturally gifted as Harry Bradley.
I am so grateful to be living in a small enough Irish music community that a duffer like me can be in a band and play regular pub gigs and occasional concerts. The kind of care, attention and nurturing that we lavish on a tune we are developing for performance never happens in a seisiun. Sure, there is no reason I couldn’t do this on my own; but I don’t think I would - at least not to the same depth. I am driven and inspired by my band mates to play at my very best most of the time. Even though my very best only reaches the dizzying heights of “not bad” I know it is really my best (I’m realistic and sanguine about my raw talent vs. tenacious practice quotient).
The seisiun experience for me is something else. The regular pub seisiun out here is friendly but musically rather sad with tunes often played too slowly and sloppily. With most of the participants never having been to seisiun anywhere else - and many not even listening much to the music (reading music and playing the notes that are written for Christ sake); it stays right there and doesn’t seem to progress. I get introduced to new tunes alright, but they don’t become mine till I go home and find out how the tune really wants to be played. I keep going for social reasons…plus the free Guinness.
There is an occasional ad-hoc house seisiun/party that pops up where all the best Irish musicians in town get together (hardly any ever go to the regular pub seisiun). These are usually rip roaring affairs that result in some really special creative moments. These moments are surprising and exciting and a nice compliment to the kind of meticulous work we do in the band. I think both are needed.
Not sure it quite applies, Kevin. As far as I can see, the argument concerning this current thread is about whether or not it’s right to quote Harry’s Facebook post. But surely that can’t be classed as “copyrighted material” can it? Well, not unless we’re talking about Facebook’s own rights in the material …
Nano has said it: if Harry raises an objection, we’ll respond.
Why would Harry mind being quoted? He’s just saying that attention to the music – and to your own playing – is more important than only going to sessions. When he said “Learning tunes by ear at normal speed from recordings - no safety net - is a start.” I assume he meant that this is just the start of the learning process. He follows this by saying "Don’t always assume you can hear everything that is going on in a piece of great playing … discovered an awful lot from listening to the master pipers slowed down to below 20% speed…"
Playing in sessions with a bunch of people who just mash the tunes isn’t always a lot of fun for somebody who has carefully worked at learning the tune with some sensitivity, and wants to play with that same sensitivity with other people. Sessions are fun, in a way. Even large sessions. It’s a social function, though, rather than a purely musical function. The music sounds best to me played solo or with one or two other players who are on the same page as you.
I spend about ten hours playing on my own to one hour playing with my pals. The ratio will vary from week to week. This week I played at a festival for about ten hours – but the point is that I spend many more hours alone with The Amazing Slow Downer than I do in a session. I used to think that playing gigs made me a better musician. Looking back I see that the drive to make beautiful music was subsumed in the hustle for gigs.
Not necessarily. There’s a ton of people out there recording ITM albums… it’s hard to keep up with them all. I do highly recommend you get his album “Bad Turns & Horse-Shoe Bends” ASAP, however. Great flute playing there.
If you’ve any interest in Irish traditional music at all, yes, you should have heard of him. You’d be very lucky to find a copy of “Bad Turns & Horseshoe Bends” as it was released on the now demised Outlet label. It can be downloaded through iTunes, though. All of Harry’s other recordings are readily available from various sources.
Interesting views from Harry there - not really anything I’d disagree with, although I’d be sorry if he was playing less flute in order to concentrate more on the pipes.
I don’t believe Clark is necessarily coming from the speed-over-all camp, here. This being dance music, there is a point where a tempo appropriate to the tune’s intended function should apply in general (the offenses of stage-act artistic license aside, of course ). For example, if you have ever heard a polka played around 96 bpm, you will know beyond doubt that this does not fulfill its dance function in any wise, and an insistence on always playing in such a fashion is IMO outside the spirit of the tradition when one has been playing that way, by preference, for years. Practice is one thing; a rut is another.
That said, I love a well-played slow reel; but I expect that the player will be able to do the conventional thing, too.
Yep. It seems fashionable to pronounce that “speed kills”, as if that were some kind of panacea. True, fast and sloppy sessions may be part of what Harry criticizes. And beginners may take the virtuosic speeds in evidence on some recordings as the norm to aspire to long before they’re ready for that.
But there’s nothing more deadly and soul-numbing than lively dance tunes played constantly and only as funeral dirges, especially when read mechanically from sheet music. And perpetual beginners sessions of the kind Clark describes can be like that. Instead of serving as comfort zones for players to ease into session skills, they end up as death traps with one forward gear.
As Nano hints at, there are qualities of phrasing, articulation, expression and lift which require some forward momentum to execute, with different tempos bringing out different qualities. And from the rest of Clark’s post, it’s clear that it’s a deficiency in that regard that he’s referring to.
My locale actually ended up in a philosophical schism over that. There were those of us who wanted our more advanced sessions to remain as such, aside from the occasional courtesy extended to the odd beginner sitting in, and for that we became known as the “bad guys”. But the name was a matter of pots and kettles: we dissolved and relocated one session because the slow camp - some of whom even told me they preferred to keep themselves that way - descended on it and tried to take over (but they already had their own session!), and some even became unpleasant to the leading advanced players who were good people and never deserved it. Pretty topsy-turvy, right?
This is just another example of why sessions shouldn’t be taken as the be-all and end-all. They’re simply social events, with all that that can imply.
). For example, if you have ever heard a polka played around 96 bpm, you will know beyond doubt that this does not fulfill its dance function in any wise, and an insistence on always playing in such a fashion is IMO outside the spirit of the tradition when one has been playing that way, by preference, for years. Practice is one thing; a rut is another.