Reel Speed

[susnfx]

(sorry - just noticed this was duplicating what Lorenzo posted earlier)
Jerry -
If you like Martin Hayes, he has a couple of CDs on the Green Linnet site where you can listen to the entire album.
www.greenlinnet.com

Susan

[Jerry Freeman]

Thanks, Susan!

[janice]

Everyone should dance.

[OutOfBreath]

Everyone should dance.

Anybody ever notice that Snoopy danced like a step dancer?

[Nanohedron]

Everyone should dance.

Anybody ever notice that Snoopy danced like a step dancer?

Well, he sticks his arms out, though. Must've been inspired by some of those bits in Riverdance.

[Caj]

Actually, I'm not sure what is worse. Learning from sheet music or learning tunes from commercial CDs. I guess sheet music is worse, but closely followed by commercial tunes learning.

Sheet music is worse, because you can at least practice ear skills when learning a tune from a recording, which will help you pick up other tunes in a session.

Azalin, que veut tu dire? No commercial recordings? No sheet music?

Now, he didn't say none, he just said these things are worse. Nothing beats contact with people when learning to play (or learning anything else,) and this isn't really a matter of traditionalism or whatnot.

Caj

[Caj]

The other thing with learning from CDs is that, unless you've got all the irish music CDs in the world, your repertoire might be limited.

Ayuh. When I expound on the virtues of metronomes, someone will always pipe in (NPI) that it's better instead to buy good recordings and play with them rather than playing against a metronome. I think, wow, that sounds like an awful lot of money! Either that, or you're practicing a handful of tunes at a single, unhealthy speed.

Plus, of course, you're not going to find a CD of Altan playing major scales for 15 minutes.

PS: I don't have any respect for learning from sheet music, though, unless you already understand some of the swing that needs to be added in the tunes. So unless someone really, really wants to sound like elevator music, sheet music is almost evil

Sheet music is merely unnecessary for such short, melodic tunes. It is not evil, just utterly unnecessary. I've taken classes from people who don't use sheet music and some who hand it out; virtually everyone agrees that you don't need it and shouldn't need it, but I never find anyone (except online) who really hates the stuff like it was musical kryptonite.

Caj

[Jerry Freeman]

I'm no authority on learning tunes, since virtually all my whistle playing time is spent going through piles of whistles and testing them with the same three or four tunes over and over again.

I'm isolated from opportunities to learn directly from other players, so this is what I try to do:

1. If possible, find several recordings or clips of a tune I want to learn so I can hear different ways of playing it and not get stuck imitating something by rote, and ...

2. Find sheet music for the tune so I can figure out what the basic melody is underneath the ornamentation. This helps me understand that here's a roll, here's a slide, here's a cut, etc., on top of a simple melody. Without the sheet music, I may have trouble figuring out the basic melody at all, but with the sheet music, I can understand what ornamentation a particular player is putting in, which gives me more information about different treatments for the tune.

The ornaments I can do are basic, slides and cuts mainly. I'm not ready for rolls yet, but it helps me a lot to hear how an advanced player (or three) approaches a tune I'm learning. It gives me ideas about how I might ornament it using the few I have at my disposal.

Best wishes,
Jerry

[Azalin]

like it was musical kryptonite

Musical kryptonite! Wow, that's a great term for sheet music and I have to remember it

Okay, calling sheet music evil is strong, but don't forget I meant for irish music learning context. I agree with everything you've said, I would just think sheet music is a little more than just unecessary. It might be "hurtful" for someone when the person has a choice between learning by ear or fro sheet music. If that persons think it's easier to learn from sheet, and choses the easy way and learns from sheet, then I would call sheet music damaging.

Gotta go now and get rid of the kryptonite that's all over my appartment

[Bloomfield]

Plus, of course, you're not going to find a CD of Altan playing major scales for 15 minutes.

You make it sound like that's a bad thing...

[TonyHiggins]

Azalin, (I'm back.) I agree with your ideas. Good points. Just to stir it up some more, yes, sheet music can give a false sense of knowing what you're doing. It's a crayon box with black, white, and gray. If you don't know what you're missing, you think you've got it.

No getting around listening to cd's. To me, they're extremely valuable. Ultimately, you've got to bring something to the music playing/learning, yourself- like some talent or something. If you can only memorize and can't pick up the actual feel, then, that's all you can do. Another person will get the general idea from listening (cd or live) and run with it.

Irish Traditional Music as a culture or phenomenon: It's all opinion. Some people live in Clare and do that scene. Other people are handed the tradition outside the country as emmigrants, others pick up the music in a non-traditional method of sheet music or cd's or concerts or foreign country sessions by non-Irish players. Whatever. You get what you get. It sounds different. Do you want to call it 'traditional music?' Whatever, who cares? There's no trad police with any authority, just opinion and mouth. If people have a bad opinion of what you're doing, you don't listen to them unless you want to allow them to make you feel bad.

Same as most everyone else around here who wants to play 'trad,' I'm having a great time and working on making the music sound as authentic as I can just because that's fun for me. If I preferred to play Irish music on a recorder in a more Rennaissance fashion, that's what I'd do. (I wouldn't admit it on this board, for sure.) Maybe I'll start a new Clips page just for Irish music on recorder in the Ren style just to goad people. I'll only post your clip if you swear you learned the tune from sheet music.
Tony

[Bloomfield]

Irish Traditional Music as a culture or phenomenon: It's all opinion. Some people live in Clare and do that scene. Other people are handed the tradition outside the country as emmigrants, others pick up the music in a non-traditional method of sheet music or cd's or concerts or foreign country sessions by non-Irish players. Whatever. You get what you get. It sounds different. Do you want to call it 'traditional music?' Whatever, who cares? There's no trad police with any authority, just opinion and mouth. If people have a bad opinion of what you're doing, you don't listen to them unless you want to allow them to make you feel bad.

Same as most everyone else around here who wants to play 'trad,' I'm having a great time and working on making the music sound as authentic as I can just because that's fun for me. If I preferred to play Irish music on a recorder in a more Rennaissance fashion, that's what I'd do. (I wouldn't admit it on this board, for sure.) Maybe I'll start a new Clips page just for Irish music on recorder in the Ren style just to goad people. I'll only post your clip if you swear you learned the tune from sheet music.
Tony

Right. Like Az is advocating the Trad Police.

What do you do when you sit in a session and Beginner A walks up to musician B and says, "I want to play IrTrad, likie Bobby Casey and Seamus Ennis. What do I do?" and musician B replies, "First buy lots of sheet music, and learn midi files from your abc software by ear. Once you can do that, get a lots of Lunasa CDs and play along with those." Are you going to sit there and think to yourself:

Some people live in Clare and do that scene. Other people are handed the tradition outside the country as emmigrants, others pick up the music in a non-traditional method of sheet music or cd's or concerts or foreign country sessions by non-Irish players. Whatever. You get what you get. It sounds different."

[Cayden]

Irish Traditional Music as a culture or phenomenon: It's all opinion. Some people live in Clare and do that scene. Other people are handed the tradition outside the country as emmigrants, others pick up the music in a non-traditional method of sheet music or cd's or concerts or foreign country sessions by non-Irish players. Whatever. You get what you get. It sounds different. Do you want to call it 'traditional music?' Whatever, who cares? There's no trad police with any authority, just opinion and mouth. If people have a bad opinion of what you're doing, you don't listen to them unless you want to allow them to make you feel bad.

I think Tony is very much over simplifying things here. I think among tradional musicians there is pretty much a consensus of what traditional music is, how it works, what it's place is and what is good and bad about it.

RTE is running a series called the Raw Bar at the moment, it looks at the present state of traditional music in Ireland. Some episodes manage to raise more questions than they makes points but this week's episode though did very much get to the core of the issue it raised, it confirmed some of my darkest thoughts and it happened to deal with some of the issues under discussion here. People wandering into the music at a relatively high age hearing something and wanting to play just that instead of growing up with it, the talk, meeting the people, picking up bits as they go along, learning the music in an organic fashion, bit by bit, layer by layer. The use of the internet to swap ABCs without ever getting to the core, the intricacies or styles was mentioned. Being bombarded by commercial products, group playing, modern production values imposed upon the playing and all that was raised. The misguided thought that everybody who can play a few tunes on the whistle must go out and record, you're nobody without a CD; Ciaran Carson had a good giggle about it. The fact you can't cut it loose from where it came from, the people, the life the stories are all part and parcel of the music and you cannot really get it with out it all.
Opinions all I wonder, maybe so, but informed, considered and extremely valid ones and if you can get a video of this program I recommend that you do so and consider the issues raised by it and especially listen to the opinions of the musicians talking about the music and it's workings, because by the end of the day it's the opinion of the 'tradition', the group of musical peers that decides what is 'good music' and what is not.

[burnsbyrne]

Musical kryptonite! Wow, that's a great term for sheet music and I have to remember it

Okay, calling sheet music evil is strong, but don't forget I meant for irish music learning context. I agree with everything you've said, I would just think sheet music is a little more than just unecessary. It might be "hurtful" for someone when the person has a choice between learning by ear or fro sheet music. If that persons think it's easier to learn from sheet, and choses the easy way and learns from sheet, then I would call sheet music damaging.

Gotta go now and get rid of the kryptonite that's all over my appartment

Azalin,
I quoted you above only because your quote was near at hand, not because I have issues with you specifically.

It seems to me that the sheet music or not sheet music argument is based on a false premise, i.e. that musicians in other types of music, especially, but not limited to, classical and jazz, use music notation exclusively and never listen to recordings or live performances of the music they are trying to learn. This is simply not the case. All the classical and jazz musicians I know recognize that the notes on the paper are only an approximation of how the piece should sound. Sure, classical sheetmusic is much more specific about giving directions for loudness, tempo, etc. but there is still lots of room for interpretation by the musician. I am a strong supporter of getting lessons from a live teacher who knows the tradition. I am not against using notation, whether dots or ABC, as a learning aid. I use the dots until I have learned a tune, then I don't look at them any more. I did the same thing when I played classical guitar. But I also listened to recordings of the masters to learn the nuances.

Mike

[Wombat]

It seems to me that the sheet music or not sheet music argument is based on a false premise, i.e. that musicians in other types of music, especially, but not limited to, classical and jazz, use music notation exclusively and never listen to recordings or live performances of the music they are trying to learn. This is simply not the case. All the classical and jazz musicians I know recognize that the notes on the paper are only an approximation of how the piece should sound.

At last someone's opened the window to let in the fresh air. There is absolutely nothing about folk music of any kind to make listening less important to learning than it is in any other kind of music. A jazz or classical musician wouldn't play muzak properly from sheet music unless they were familar with the style and were directed to play in it. Every style of music requires attentive listening if you are going to play it idiomatically. The issue about sheet music is just silly when it becomes a matter of right or wrong rather than just a matter of emphasis. Sheet music is as good a way as any to learn where the notes are. Why wouldn't it be? (Even blues songs can be learnt this way if you already know how to phrase, but no sheet music can tell you the difference between playing guitar in a delta style and playing in a Texas style.) Written music is a hopeless medium to impart a sense of swing or lilt.

At best there is a very slight and subtle difference of emphasis between the relative importance of listening to learning classical music and learning folk styles generally, but I frankly doubt even that. I think that the strongest claim with any chance of being true is that listening is slightly more important in folk music than in classical music. I actually think that immersing yourself in the music through listening is just taken for granted in classical music, no one would ever be bothered stressing its importance because it is just too obvious. I actually think that people think that, because learning by ear is possible in Irish music but nearly impossible in classical music and modern jazz, then listening must be correspondingly less important to playing well in those fields than it is in Irish music. This argument is simply invalid. Once you see this, the prejudice against sheet music just blows out the window.