Tune Variations

[bradhurley]

One more thought...Peter touched on this as well, but I think it's worth saying more explicitly:

Many people (outside of Ireland, anyway) learn tunes with the goal of being able to play them in sessions. That usually means they learn a "standard" way of playing a tune and when they go to a session everyone plays it pretty much the same way. People learn tunes as fast as they can so they can build up a big repertoire and be able to play in sessions. But that's just one way of approaching Irish music and to me it's the least rewarding. I have a very small repertoire for someone who's been playing Irish music for 30 years. But I've spent a lot of time working on the tunes I've learned. I don't want to just get them down good enough for session playing and then move on; to me that's like half-learning them.

[Pete D]

At this point variation comes quite naturally to me. My method is an inherently natural one. Here’s the concept…”if the tune starts to sound boring and repetitive, play it differently.”

This can be as simple as changing from sluring everything to adding a fair amount of tonguing, or from playing smoothly to adding a huffing and puffing rhythm or other breathing techniques to add or delete notes or slightly change rhythm. Another method of variation I use is rolls, crans, trills etc. in place of a single note or series of notes. Obviously you’d need to learn these techniques before employing them (I learned through books and lessons). If I learn a tune with constant rolls, I may get bored of listening to all the rolls so I may vary the tune by omitting some of the rolls and play three distinct notes or visa versa. These variations are easy to employ and explain, more difficult is adding tones outside of the tune frame. On occasion I do this although I never make an active decision to so.

[RonKiley]

I think I have experienced something like you are talking about. I have learned tunes and played them exactly the same each time. Then when I play along with a CD though I tend to add ornamentation that I didn't learn with the tune. It just feels right to do it at that point in the tune. I also find that after I play a tune for awhile and get to know it well I begin to vary somewhat just to make it sound a little different but still the same tune.

Peter I find your comments most helpful. I loved the comment on the shrill B thread about shading the note. I had never heard of that and certainly wouldn't have thought of it on my own. It is not that easy to do though. Keep such helpful insight coming

Ron

[moxy]

You know, a lot of my initial question has to do with trying to please others.

I think I need to spend more time trying to please myself first, and gaining my own confidence and sense of comfort with my own playing.

And I know I have a long way to go as far as pleasing others goes, but I also know that I'm not exactly pleasing myself either, even though I picked up the whistle quite quickly and have learned loads of tunes in a short time.

I have work to do, and some of it will involve playing with others. Hopefully not everyone will get bored of hearing me place the same ornaments in the same place every time, at least until I make my own changes!!

[Roger O'Keeffe]

Legitimate drift:

If you go to a tionol, summer school etc., the greatest waste of an opportunity is to aim to learn as many tunes as possible. Much better to ask the teacher to concentrate on one tune and see how many different things he/she can think of doing with it. So if the teacher asks the class what they would like, speak out boldly in favour of developing a tune - ideally one that all the class already know.

This is one instance in which it can be particularly useful to have the black dots, ideally on a page with plenty of space between the staves, so that you can note all the possibilities for playing each passage and then play around with them afterwards, and try applying the same approach to other tunes. I once took part in a mixed-ability class given by Pat Mitchell in Paris, and he took Garret Barry's jig as the specimen tune. The class itself was an object lesson in how to teach trad music, but there was so much in what he suggested that even I am not sure that I remembered all the possibilities afterwards.

[colomon]

When I was starting out with this, I decided rolls were my friend. They're great because there are so many simple things that can be done to replace them, and so many ways to replace notes with a roll. They're the swiss army knife of simple ITM variation.

One thing it seems to me I've noticed in the last years is not all tunes get the same amount of variation, so to speak. I'm thinking of the recordings of Peter Horan's playing. It seems like some of his tunes -- "Boys of the Lough", "Devils of Dublin", and "Kiss the Maid Behind the Barrel" come to mind -- are just huge streams of melodic variations around a basic framework. Other tunes -- usually simpler tunes, like two-part single reels -- seem to have much more restrained variations.

Any notions if this is a common pattern, just a Peter Horan thing, or if I'm imagining the entire thing?

[StevieJ]

You know Kelly I think not being pleased with what you do is par for the course - for the next couple of decades, and maybe longer If you don't feel like this, you won't improve very fast.

I experienced chronic low-level (and often acute) dissatisfaction with my fiddle playing for the longest time. I think I started to feel happy with the way I sounded at about the time I reached a plateau where any more big leaps forward were unlikely to happen. Then you just accept who you are and what you sound like, and work on consolidating your own style and making the tunes you play your own.

Until you get to that (complacent?) spot, listening, yes. In your situation and mine that means records. An obsessive kind of listening though, giving your full attention to every detail. I remember at some early stage realizing I had recordings of about 8 different fiddle players doing Farewell to Ireland and about the same number playing Jenny's welcome to Charlie - and I knew almost every nuance of all of them by heart.

Also I think it's very important to listen obsessively to other instruments in the tradition, not just whistle players.

Anyway give yourself time, take the long-term view. If it takes 7 years of listening, 7 years of practising and 7 years of playing to make a piper, I don't think whistlers or players of any other instrument will get off much lighter. When you've been playing a tune for 10, 15 or 20 years, paradoxically enough you'll have no problem making it interesting.

Take heart, you're doing really well for someone who's been at it such a short time.
Steve

PS And don't forget, you don't have to vary like a virtuoso to play the music well. You're out to play the tunes, not to show how inventive you can be. If you make a good basic statement of the tune, then tiny little changes here and there are enough to show you're not asleep at the wheel - and keep the listener from falling asleep too.