Yeah, I play all my reels at air speed! Actually some of them do sound quite beautiful when played slowly.
cool! i'm gonna try that next time I practise
I think that the slow airs refect who you are and how your feeling at time. I dont think you can compare how one person plays it to another, or even how one person plays it at one time to another.
Yeah, I play all my reels at air speed! Actually some of them do sound quite beautiful when played slowly.
cool! i'm gonna try that next time I practise
I think that the slow airs refect who you are and how your feeling at time. I dont think you can compare how one person plays it to another, or even how one person plays it at one time to another.
I completely agree there. You can talk and talk and talk. But it's not a question of playing things right or wrong. Music's not in the head, it's in the heart. Therefore it's music. It has to be played
Yeah, I play all my reels at air speed! Actually some of them do sound quite beautiful when played slowly.
cool! i'm gonna try that next time I practise
I think that the slow airs refect who you are and how your feeling at time. I dont think you can compare how one person plays it to another, or even how one person plays it at one time to another.
I completely agree there. You can talk and talk and talk. But it's not a question of playing things right or wrong. Music's not in the head, it's in the heart. Therefore it's music. It has to be played
I agree in large extent with all this, but in the case of airs, I have to side with the "know the words, and if you can't, then know how it's sung" camp. The words set up the pulse of the tune. I've heard people play airs "their way" without the benefit of having listened, and the result was confusing.
I suppose I need to clarify what I mean: I don't think there should be a fixed, wooden way to play an air - there's no point to that, after all - but the words, if you have them, inform the ways that you can vary how you play an air. Having the words gives you a framework, yet you can be free to do lots of things with and within that framework, and the tune still remains recognisable for what it is.
"If you take music out of this world, you will have nothing but a ball of fire." - Balochi musician
A few years ago a clip of an air was posted here that quite a lot of people raved on about. To my ear the player broke up phrases, dwelt endlessly on passing notes, omitted important ones, inserted ornamentation in totally inappropriate places and kept on sliding in and out of notes that could not handle that treatment and in the process made a complete shambles of the tune.
You can completely ruin a good tune by not knowing what you're up to while thinking you're so wonderfully expressive you could make people cry.
Peter Laban wrote:You can completely ruin a good tune by not knowing what you're up to while thinking you're so wonderfully expressive you could make people cry.
Yes. If you're not careful, you could wind up like this poor fellow:
A-Musing wrote:Peter...
I would never play an air within earshot of you. Not only would it make you cry...but you'd probably chase after me and break my whistle.
You know, I can join on this... anyway, I'll put out a recording of Gile Mear here and you can kill it with your criticism =)
"If you set your mind to it, you can accomplish anything."
Doc Emmet Brown.
Oki, here's a recording. I admit that it's lousy and in a couple of places I myself feel I had to phrase things differently and make the ending less long, but because I don't know when I'll have the chance to make the next recording, here you go.
Louigi Verona wrote:Oki, here's a recording. I admit that it's lousy and in a couple of places I myself feel I had to phrase things differently and make the ending less long, but because I don't know when I'll have the chance to make the next recording, here you go.
Not lousy, IMHO; nicely and tastefully done. It's apparent, I think, that you've heard it sung. As to the issue that you "feel [you] had to phrase things differently etc.", I'm not quite sure if you mean you'd do it differently if you were to do it again, or that the result was unavoidably somewhat different from your sources...but whatever you meant, I think your version works in terms of the general tone of this discussion. Variance is part of the music, after all, although with airs it succeeds best if the framework is left intact. You did that.
It's true that you could certainly have taken an even more elastic, less mensural approach, but as Peter points out, that sort of thing can be overdone and to no good purpose. The pulse matters.
BTW, this is only my $0.02USD (a devalued currency these days )
"If you take music out of this world, you will have nothing but a ball of fire." - Balochi musician
Thx, you cheered me up, really.
What I meant by different phrasing was that in a couple of places I think I didn't have to make pauses.
Also, I am still feeling unconfident posting to this forum where people who really know how to play an instrument hang out =)
"If you set your mind to it, you can accomplish anything."
Doc Emmet Brown.
Louigi Verona wrote:
......
Also, I am still feeling unconfident posting to this forum where people who really know how to play an instrument hang out =)
It may be that those who can play or sing slow airs well
don't hang out for criticism from people who are good at hanging out at
internet forums.
Confidence begins by accepting one's present state
and promoting it.
Louigi Verona wrote:Oki, here's a recording. I admit that it's lousy and in a couple of places I myself feel I had to phrase things differently and make the ending less long, but because I don't know when I'll have the chance to make the next recording, here you go.
Louigi Verona wrote:Oki, here's a recording. I admit that it's lousy and in a couple of places I myself feel I had to phrase things differently and make the ending less long, but because I don't know when I'll have the chance to make the next recording, here you go.
Actually some of them do sound quite beautiful when played slowly.
You know, I can join on this... anyway, I'll put out a recording of Gile Mear here and you can kill it with your criticism =)
