Reel Speed

[Nanohedron]

By the way, Nico, I totally get what you are saying about good sheet music and its relationship to classical playing. The thing about ITM is that the music is best written in its "bones" form, leaving room for variation.

[NicoMoreno]

I understand

But one thing that has been said is that beginner's should start with the basic tune.

I think sheet music can do that.

I just don't think that sheet music limits everyone....

although come to think of it, I don't know any good musicians who don't listen...
myself included (under listening...)

hmm...

[spittin_in_the_wind]

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

I played "O, Mio Babbino Caro" on the piano tonight, in the style of "The Magic Flute", would that make it onto the new page? I swear, it was from sheet music!

Robin

[colomon]

I believe, (and I am backed up by historical facts) that sheet music is there to tell you what to play, and good sheet music HOW as well. This applies specifically to "classical" music, yes, but since any music can be written down as "sheet" music, in the end it applies to everything. Provided the written music is "good".

I think you're wrong twice here. First, good sheet music tells you how to play, yes, but it is never anything like exact. Given only sheet music, you cannot make good music in any style -- you need the experience of knowing what the style is supposed to sound like to make sense of it. This is why there are scholars out there arguing over exactly how, say, a given Beethoven piece would have sounded in the composer's day. Lots of nuances are not in the score.

Second, the idea that any music can be written down as sheet music is pretty dubious, at least in any exacting sense. Exactly notating just one playing of a reel (say three times through) is exhausting, awful work. When you're done, you still won't be able to convey the swing of the tune very clearly. The end results tend to be to complicated to be easily playable. And all you will have captured is one particular playing of a tune -- odds are it will never be played exactly the same way again. It's rather like taking a lo-res picture of a single sunset and claiming you have captured the concept of all sunsets.

On the other hand if it is in 2/2 time, says speed at 120~140 bpm (I don't actually know the bpm for a reel, so sorry...) All eights played straight, gives you phrase markings, etc, you are going to have a good idea of what it is supposed to sound like. And a good musician can turn that into music.

True enough -- I'm fairly certain I could do it. But I'd be relying more on my knowledge of how Irish music is supposed to sound, and probably ignoring most of the phrase markings. Odds are good I wouldn't even be playing all the notes on the page -- I'd be freely substituting equivalent phrases that fell easily to my fingers.

But even then, I wouldn't be giving a very good performance of the piece. Not like if I knew what it was supposed to sound like from listening.

And the situation you describe is an ideal rarely met in practice. Most transcriptions of Irish tunes leave a lot to be desired. You're lucky if all the notes are right. I'm not sure if I've ever seen phrasing or ornamentation I would consider useful as a playing guide, beyond the most obvious points.

Sheet music is a great tool -- it's wonderful for figuring out those tricky little passages that elude your ear. It just cannot be a substitute for listening.

[Azalin]

Couldnt agree more with you, colomon.

[janice]

Amen to that Colomon. Here's some current academic thought on the topic-

Musicologist and social critic Christopher Small asserts that "the total dependence on the notation of performers in the Western concert tradition is a curious and ambiguous practice, unique among the world's cultures" (Small, 1998, p. 110). Due to its prescriptive nature, notation is enabling, yet simultaneously limiting. Compositions from earlier centuries are preserved and, because of the written notation, are learned by modern performers in a quick and efficient manner. What the player can perform, however, is restricted by the parameters of the printed music. The player's power of "self-directed performance is liable to atrophy, especially when, as in the modern Western concert tradition, nonliterate performance is judged in some way to be inferior to literate"(p. 110). To European musicians of an earler period this attitude towards nonliterate performance would have seemed absurd, as the inability to perform music outside of the confines of the written page was an unknown concept. The primary function of a score was to disseminate a performance and not to preserve the written text.

None of the "Great Composers" were completely text dependent, either for performance or compositional purposes. Fluency in both literate and nonliterate musical practices thus enabled them to move freely between both practices with ease. According to one contemporary account, "their frequent nonliterate performances were, to judge from wildly enthusiastic contemporary accounts, more exciting and moving, even inspired, than any performance could be of those notated works of theirs which have come down to us and which today we treasure" (p. 110). Further, Small contends that, "a healthy tradition of literate composition and performance depends on the parallel existence of a healthy nonliterate tradition" (p. 110), and that this nonliterate tradition has completely disappeared in contemporary concert music practice. No performance takes place without a score, either before the performance if it was memorized, or during the performance if it was not.

Extending this idea, Irish musicologist/teacher Andrew Robinson argues that "staff notation is good at clarifying counterpoint, but not good at showing the details of phrasing and rhythm that constitute the living communication of music" (Vallely, 1999, p. 396), and he compares reading staff notation in music to painting by numbers in art. Further, he argues, "all music is learned by ear, yet some teachers still use 'playing by ear' as a discouraging phrase." In Irish traditional music, "the graphic representation of music on paper, accompianed by education in that, has made it possible to pass music on to people in a remote place or time. However, particularly in the case of traditional music, this can only indicate the notes to be played; it can not communicate rhythmc subtlely" (p. 403). Neither can notated music accurately document the ornamentation which is expected of Irish players. Irish traditional music depends "largely on individual creativity; thus a single player may never play a given tune twice in the same way, and two players will rarely play a tune indentically" (Valleley, 1999, p. 290).

[DanD]

This reminds me of hearing "Music for a Found Harmonium" (Patrick Street, Irish Times) played by a classical guitar quartet from LA. It was one of those "I know this tune, but summthin' ain't quite right..." moments. It wasn't the change in instrumentation - something about the style just didn't sound right.

(Yes, I know Patrick Street isn't hardcore IRTrad, but the point is still valid.)

[Nanohedron]

I understand

But one thing that has been said is that beginner's should start with the basic tune.

I think sheet music can do that.

I just don't think that sheet music limits everyone....

although come to think of it, I don't know any good musicians who don't listen...
myself included (under listening...)

hmm...

Nico, you and I are not in any disagreement on this, at all, at all. I wouldn't discourage any beginner from utilizing notation to help in learning tunes if that's what it takes! I still do, as I just mentioned. Admittedly, for trad, my goal is to do as little of that as possible, as I consider it to be a good exercise for me to learn as much by ear as I can when it comes to ITM. Yet however I go about it, I want to have a sturdy framework of a tune burnt into in my memory around which I can construct variations. We have the options of memorizing either by ear or by notation, but memorization of the basics of the tune -by whatever device- is the goal. After all, you can't put together sets spontaneously any other way.

It's not about decrying notation; it's about knowing the tune, and about context.

[Caj]

Extending this idea, Irish musicologist/teacher Andrew Robinson argues that "staff notation is good at clarifying counterpoint, but not good at showing the details of phrasing and rhythm that constitute the living communication of music" (Vallely, 1999, p. 396), and he compares reading staff notation in music to painting by numbers in art.

This, I think, is the main reason written music is necessary: for polyphonic music of sufficient complexity, transmission by ear is practically impossible.

Furthermore, for music that is not-so-complex, written music allows professional musicians to perform on deadlines.

And again, anyone who claims that learning from written music deprives said music of soul is discarding hundreds of years of classical music. Maybe to people who never listen to the stuff it all sounds the same, but it is ridiculous to say that Vladimir Ashkenazy's playing of Rachmaninoff's 3rd piano concerto lacked "soul." Holy crap!

Caj

[colomon]

I don't think I've heard Ashkenazy's Rach 3, but I'm sure it's great. And I'm equally sure that he was deeply immersed in the playing of that sort of music before he sat down to learn that piece. He'd heard other people play it, studied other Rachmaninoff, etc, etc.

And I wouldn't want to deny that you could make interesting music from the sheet music of, say, "Out on the Ocean," without understanding Irish music. Hand the sheet music to Paul Desmond (he is still alive, right?) and he'll make something exciting and beautiful from it. It just won't be Irish traditional music anymore.

Percy Grainger made utterly brilliant music by coming up with sophisticated arrangments of traditional tunes. And he took pains not to "fix" the traditional musicians' music -- leading sometimes to constantly shifting time signatures and weird things like bars with extra half-beats in them and the like. He did his best to be faithful to the original. And his music notation is some of the most expressive ever.

But listen to a typical recording of his "Molly on the Shore", and you'll hear two reels played as no ever Irish traditional musician would ever play them. They're way too straight, the phrasing is all wrong, there's no variation in the melody. The arrangements are great, musically quite interesting -- but the first step of making them was taking the Irish trad out of the tunes, and it's just not there anymore. (In fact, I believe he arranged the piece based on printed sheet music collecting the tunes, probably without ever hearing them played by a traditional musician.)

Actually, Janice, this might make for an interesting project if no one's ever done it -- do "Molly on the Shore" using people deeply immersed in Irish trad to do the melody parts. 'Twould be interesting...

[janice]

Actually, it's funny that you mention that Coloman, because I was discussing the possibility of that very topic last week with my conducting prof at MSU!

[Bloomfield]

Colomon that reminds me: If you want to hear what sheetmusic without understanding IrTrad does to a tune, listen to the Boston Pops doing Toss the Feathers, and they're all professionals. (And I won't even mention tuning.)

I think Peter L was right two pages back (and many times before): Once you have the music, of course you can use a transcription to pick up a tune or an interesting setting and so forth. The sheet music is not going to poison the mind of an experienced IrTrad player. But observe the fact that in these internet discussions, the use of sheetmusic is always defended by (relative) beginners and newcomers to the tradition, not by experienced IrTrad players.

PS.:
I am not telling anyone what music to play, and I realize that the whistle can be used for music other than IrTrad, too. I have no problem with anyone learning Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star or Joy to the World from sheetmusic. Right on, I say.

[Steven]

colomon, I must say I'm a bit confused. You make a very impassioned, and I believe correct, argument, but you seem to be arguing against someone. However, as far as I can tell, nobody has been disagreeing with you. The people advocating or defending the use of sheet music on this thread have said, several times, that it can't be used in isolation, but that one would need to be familiar with the musical style, or even have recordings of the tune in question, and that this would apply to ITM at least as much as to classical music. Again, I'm agreeing with you here, but I just feel like I'm missing something.


Steven

[chas]

This reminds me of hearing "Music for a Found Harmonium" (Patrick Street, Irish Times) played by a classical guitar quartet from LA. It was one of those "I know this tune, but summthin' ain't quite right..." moments. It wasn't the change in instrumentation - something about the style just didn't sound right.

(Yes, I know Patrick Street isn't hardcore IRTrad, but the point is still valid.)

I felt the same way the first time I heard Patrick Street play it. IIRC, they don't even play it on a harmonium. It was written by Simon Jeffes, and originally done (with a harmonium) by the Penguin Cafe Orchestra. It's on the same album (Broadcasting from Home) as the classic "Telephone and Rubber Band."

[colomon]

Actually, it's funny that you mention that Coloman, because I was discussing the possibility of that very topic last week with my conducting prof at MSU!

That'd be worth a drive to Lansing, especially if we could call out the local musicians and have some tunes after.... (And if you need a bassoon player who knows tunes...)