How much ornamentation is enough?

[riverman]

These are all good, rather profound replies!

For myself, I noticed that when I hear slow airs on discs, almost every note is ornamented in some way. I try to aim for that, so that boredom doesn't creep in.
For me, at least, the fast tunes are entertaining with no ornaments at all--but cuts and some rolls even make them sweeter. I don't use a lot, I don't have the skill. I am, however, nothing like an experienced player of ITM.

[MikeS]

To my taste at least, the first three an a half minutes of this video provides all the answers required about ornamentation while playing airs. I might add that when I was growing up my Mother had a salt shaker by the stove inscribed, "Salt to season, never to spoil." That advice seems to hold far beyond cooking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQDPenBUC68

[Denny]

lovely

bit odd at 4:02-4:04 innit.....
Looks like no one was willing to turn up the mike fer the flute
but how did she switch back to whistle?

[Tia]

So I haven't really had the opportunity to play my whislte much, in the pass month or so and apparntly haven't listend to alot of whistling recently either...and that video just made me fall in love with the whistle again and realize how much I miss that thing
...so thank you!

[fearfaoin]

bit odd at 4:02-4:04 innit.....
Looks like no one was willing to turn up the mike fer the flute
but how did she switch back to whistle?

Tesseract effects pedal. Very expensive.

[s1m0n]

The goal you're presumably working towards is to have a full palette of ornaments at your fingertips, which you can fluidly drop in or out of suitable phrases/locations in any of the tunes you know when the spirit moves you. Common motives for throwing in an ornament include accentuating the beginning or end of a phrase, disguising (or at least enabling) a breath, doing it differently the second time you play a repeat, and showing off.



(either straight, or turned into a roll)

breath

glottal stop

All of the above options can be freely substituted, as can some ornaments (a triplet, a slide, etc) not noted. Unless you're showing off, you probably won't use more than one of the more obvious ornaments per 8 bar section, but if you know how to do 'em all, you can play one the first time and something (or nothing) else the second time through.

In general, ornamentation tends to be denser after the repeat than before.

[m31]

bit odd at 4:02-4:04 innit.....
Looks like no one was willing to turn up the mike fer the flute
but how did she switch back to whistle?

Tesseract effects pedal. Very expensive.

It's a glitch in the Matrix.









I hope you know kung-fu.

[highland-piper]

It seems there are two types of "ornamentation" -- the first type is really articulation and expression. Cuts and strikes to separate notes or emphasize them. You need some minimal amount of that to clearly express the tune, and you can't really go much beyond that before you start putting emphasis where it doesn't go. So you really wouldn't want to cut and/or strike every single note in a melody.

The other type is melodic ornamentation. That one is simply a matter of taste.

[Blazer]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQDPenBUC68

What is the opening tune in this video?

[DrPhill]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQDPenBUC68

What is the opening tune in this video?

Its listed as The Dimming of the Day, which I don't know well enough to identify.
I thought I heard bits of John of the Glen in it, but if so its not a straight forward rendition. There are fragments in the first minute, then a reasonably clear rendition of several bars starting at about 0:54. Whatever it is, it is a lovely bit of playing, though the video is a bit mauve for my tastes.

EDIT: AKA Sean O Duibhir a Ghleanna, though there seem to be other tunes with this name as well (eg a hornpipe).
EDIT AGAIN: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQKoOm9g ... re=related

It seems there are two types of "ornamentation" -- the first type is really articulation and expression. Cuts and strikes to separate notes or emphasize them. You need some minimal amount of that to clearly express the tune, and you can't really go much beyond that before you start putting emphasis where it doesn't go. So you really wouldn't want to cut and/or strike every single note in a melody.

The other type is melodic ornamentation. That one is simply a matter of taste.

Is there another reason for 'ornamentation'?, - changing the 'attack' of the note. I see some of the actions as changing the 'shape' of the note. I dont know what this is in physics (d volume)/(d time)?. Or would you see this as one of the other two?

Also, some notes in some contexts seem (to my ears) to sound a lot 'richer' if next to certain other notes. Not so much to do with the melody as with tonal appreciation.

Or I may be talking blox.

[peeplj]

My own thoughts on this: the melody must always be present and recognizable, and it must be played in correct rhythm and steadily.

To me, when parts of the melody are "covered up" by ornamentation, that's too much. Ornamentation should enhance the melody and rhythm, never weaken them.

I've heard some players use ornamentation as a cheat, such as introducing long rolls into a tune to "cover over" part that they find too difficult to play. This is blatantly obvious and is always a bad idea; it never sounds like anything except someone that hasn't really learned to play the tune correctly.

If you are playing with other players and the way you are ornamenting stops your playing from blending, or makes it difficult for the other players to play the tune, then that's way too much.

Finally, there are times that "how much" is answered by "how many players?" In my own experience, a level of ornamentation (and melodic variation) that's appropriate for a session of three or four players is only going to make everything sound muddy when there are ten folks trying to blend and play a tune well.

As others have said--probably better than I have--it's a taste issue, but it's can also become an issue if it stops your listeners or your fellow musicians from recognizing or enjoying the tune.


--James

[scheky]

I'm one of the sparse ornamentation crowd. I'm not saying I don't ornament, but I certainly don't do much. I've been listening to a lot of old flute and concertina music lately, and I find myself drawn more and more to the music that has very little (to even a complete lack of) ornamentation. The Russell's are a perfect example of this.

Now, that's not saying that Kevin Crawford or Noel Hill aren't amazing players who sound great. They certainly are. I enjoy listening to them very much. I just don't enjoy playing like them.

Yeah, that's a non-answer.

[highland-piper]

Is there another reason for 'ornamentation'?, - changing the 'attack' of the note. I see some of the actions as changing the 'shape' of the note. I dont know what this is in physics (d volume)/(d time)?. Or would you see this as one of the other two?

I'd say that changing the attack (or any other part of the envelope of a note) is part of emphasis -- phrasing might be a better term -- that is, ornamentation can help create phrasing.

There's a lot of gray area. I'm learning some tunes from Cathal McConnell's tapes, and he uses a lot of rolls. He opens Morrison's jig with an E roll and a B roll, where a lot of people seem to play an E roll followed by BCB or something. Same thing in the third measure. The E roll seems to be pretty universally accepted as being part of the tune. So it's not really an ornament in that case. Mr. McConnell's B roll seems a pretty good example of a melodic ornament.

In the B part of the tune you have those triplets with two E's. You either have to tongue them or cut them. So they're part of the tune (not really ornaments). The high-a's you might want to tongue to give a sharper attack -- especially on some whistles where 2nd register notes are tricky -- which would be more the case of overcoming a difficutly of the instrument than necessarily wanting to do anything with the A.

[pancelticpiper]

It's my opinion that there is very little ornamentation present in the playing of most Irish traditional whistle and flute players, and they can with no difficulty play traditional jigs and reels etc with no ornamentation whatsover, and do so on a regular basis.

By definition, an ornament is something that is not part of the tune, that the tune can do just fine without, that is added for decorative effect.

There's little of that in traditional whistle and flute playing, aside from trills and crans, both of which are often thought of as being stylistic devices borrowed from the uilleann pipes.

The seperation of notes of the same pitch by using fleeting gracenotes is, to me, a form of articulation. Traditionally most Irish whistle and flute players chose to articulate repeated notes with their digits rather than their tongue.

Now, if a tune has three G's in a row and you seperate them with gracenotes, forming a "roll", how is that any more "ornamentational" than if the three notes were seperated by the tongue? The gracenotes are of such short duration that they're not heard as notes but as articulations upon the note G, and have little ornamentational impact. Moreover, these "rolls" are not superfluous to the tune but are essential to it. So, being neither decorative nor superfluous, I don't consider single gracenotes and the rolls constructed out of them to be "ornaments".

Now single gracenotes which form the initial attack of a note on the beat are another matter. I'm not sure how "decorative" they are but they do give a different character to the attack of the note. What to me are definately "ornaments" are "short rolls" because, at least to me, it seems like they're never actually necessary for the progression of the melody, and they are quite decorative.

Now about crans, yes they're "ornaments" I would say, but on the other hand if you play three Bottom D's in the normal timing of the tune (not shoving four notes into the space of three like a cran) and these three Bottom D's are seperated by single gracenotes, then that's not really an "ornament" but simply a way to articulate those D's.

So anyhow to flip the question around from "how much ornamentation is enough?" to "how many gracenotes are enough?" I would say that enough gracenotes are required to articulate the repeated notes of the tune and keep the tune flowing along on the breath. Without these gracenotes you have Irish tunes in which all the articulation is done by the tongue, which to me doesn't fit the traditional style on the flute or whistle. No "ornaments" are needed at all.

[DrPhill]

Interesting posts, thanks to all.

An interesting distinction between 'ornaments' and 'grace notes' PanCelticPiper. Maybe I was not being as exact in my terminology as I should have been, though I do seem to recall some cavil against the term 'grace note' too. Maybe because of its classical music heritage and the baggage that came with it (apologies if my memory is playing up). Be that as it may I like your definition. I would just have to pose another "how many gracenotes are required to [articulate the repeated notes of the tune and] keep the tune flowing along on the breath?". I am not sure there is one answer.

When I posed this question I knew it would ultimately come down to a matter of taste and situation. The goal of a whistler playing a jig in a session is different from that of a solo whistler playing a slow tune, maybe. I think the latter needs to do more to keep the attention/interest of the audience and ornamentation or grace notes seem to be the key. And I am asking more from the point of view of the slow whistler.

Just my (unlearned) opinion . Reasoned disagreement is always welcome

(Just wait until I start asking about melodic variation, that should be fun.....)