Need session etiquette advice

[Nanohedron]

In the egalitarian self governed session community clear leadership is not always evident especially to the newby.

You may regard sessions as egalitarian, BL, but I do not. Experience and ability ought always to be deferred to. I practice this. I also make the mistake of expecting people in general to find this yardstick to be obvious.

See? The leadership question is solved.

Just don't ask me to lead sessions.

[ChrisA]

It occurs to me that it helps a lot to know all the other sessions in your area, especially any slow-sessions or Comhaltas hosted leaning sessions or such.

It's much easier to tell someone to go somewhere else than to tell them to just go away. It's the gentlest way I've ever seen anyone told that they weren't fit for a session (not myself... at that time I was only going to sessions to listen and still trying to get 'wild rover' up to speed Then I later already knew where the slow session was... Always learn from someone -else's- embarassment if at all possible, it's much easier on the ego. )

[Nanohedron]

By the way, whatever ideas I may espouse per the rights of rank, I think it also behooves me to be helpful and supportive to those who are still finding their legs as compared to my own situation (which isn't much). I would hope that my own superiors would do the same for me. A relative beginner is one thing. Willful ignorance astride an unreined ego is something else altogether. But I'm still nice, usually, until the point where something finally breaks in cases such as that. Only a couple of friends ever know when I reach that point. I do indeed try to be as constructive as my pain permits.

[Eldarion]

Finally, on timing, you say it's a simple thing but I've heard so many 20 year players get it wrong too, so I'm not so sure you're correct there either. Sure they can hold a basic beat, but to get it consistently right on every beat all the time is a whole different ball game and so many people get it wrong (I even come unstuck on the odd occassion). Can a 1 year muso do this consistently, no, but they pick up that beat by sitting in a session and then listening to CD's and so forth. If you're saying that you got perfect timing after one year, then you're the exception not the rule. Most have to work hard at it and it starts to come after several years of playing.

Firstly the number of years one has been playing can only be taken as the roughest guides of ability. I have heard people who have claimed to play for 10 years play and they can still sound worse than someone who has been playing for 2. What matters is not the number of years, but what they have been doing with them. Have they been actively listening to great musicians, have they spent alone time with their music, do they have a right mindset, do they practice often? Have the years been spent horning skill and ability or reenforcing bad habbits and poor playing?

I'm also not sure if you're talking about slipping up or not being able to keep a steady beat. If someone who plays for 20 years cannot generate an independently steady beat, and their rhythm is still poor, there is clearly something terribly gone wrong there. There's no need to make keeping a steady beat sound so illusive and mystical almost, its clearly possible if the learner prioritises it and listen to themselves with a critical ear.

[Azalin]

Many folks in my city are just doing the private session thing to solve the problems. A few friends of mine are having Bb sessions sometimes on tuesdays, I'm having private sessions with a fiddler friend of mine (and sometimes another great piper). To me it's the only way I can make sure not being frustrated coming out of a session. There's a "public" session on mondays, but it's so crowded we often end up in a small room in the same pub and have a 4-5 people session. That's another thing, I can't stand big sessions anymore. If there's more then 6-7 musicians, I tend to want to find something smaller, with no more than a whistle and one guitar (no bodhran if possible).

Any public session I've known, even one I was running myself, I had to stop because some musicians I didnt want to play with started going. You just can't avoid it. It's great for Eskin that he can just tell them, but some of the folks who show up are nice people, and even friends, and you just can't tell them they're not welcome, cancelling the session is sometimes the only way.

[GaryKelly]

I don't advise players to play in a session until at least 3 years experience in anycase. I've heard two theories, the traditional piping theory where one doesn't enter sessions full stop

Excellent advice where the agony-bags are concerned Now if only we can pursuade the goat-beaters to follow suit

As for the miscreants screwing up the sessions, why not offer them a solo spot and let the audience express their opinion?

[colomon]

The problem with all these proposed "rules" is they are very clumsy attempts to replace having good soical sense. Because really, what hurts sessions is not inexperienced players -- it's inconsiderate players.

Some of you may remember seeing posts about an amazing session involving people named Steph and Brock (and Grey Larson and Mary Bergin, I believe) the St. Louis Tionol last spring. Well, at the time, the Steph in question had only been playing fiddle for two-and-a-half years. I wasn't there, but I do play regularly with her, and let me tell you -- during that third year of her playing (ie before she had a full three years' experience) she was a pure joy to play with in session.

But even before that -- back when she only had six months' experience on fiddle, and had a scratchy tone and tuning and rhythm issues -- we welcomed her into our sessions. She respected the session, she was eager to learn, and she was good company. People like that should always be welcome, no matter how much experience they have. And they shouldn't avoid sessions, because learning to play with others is an important component of learning to play -- as is learning how to behave in sessions.

On the other hand, our main local session is dying because its most experienced player, our ostensible leader half the time, has atrociously bad session manners. He's the sort of fiddler who, seeing he's playing with whistle and flute, will start a bunch of tunes that heavily use the G string, or are in A major or G minor, or are so obscure the second-most-experienced player (not me!) doesn't know them. He's managed to chase away some of our best players, and frankly, the only reason I show up on his nights is for that magical moment when he gets sick of playing and goes to have a drink in the corner.

I would trade him for Steph at six months every time...

[mikk]

what hurts sessions is not inexperienced players -- it's inconsiderate players.

Good post colomon I could not agree more !!!

[Wanderer]

He's the sort of fiddler who, seeing he's playing with whistle and flute, will start a bunch of tunes that heavily use the G string, or are in A major or G minor, or are so obscure the second-most-experienced player (not me!) doesn't know them. He's managed to chase away some of our best players, and frankly, the only reason I show up on his nights is for that magical moment when he gets sick of playing and goes to have a drink in the corner.

I have had dealings with exactly this sort of fiddler myself, and it's always aggravating. Our guy wasn't the session leader, but he sure acted like he was...starting 2/3 of the tunes when he came to session, usually obscure tunes in some odd key, always at a blistering pace. And then he'd put on this sheepish, false obsequious face, and go "Oh, you guys didn't know that one...gee I'm so sorry" and then repeat the performance with another similar tune.

Maybe it's just me, but I think making music is a lot like making love: The goal isn't necessarily to see how novel you can make it, or how fast you can get to the end. Though I suppose sometimes that sort of thing can be fun in moderation.

Last I heard, he went off to try to start his own session with a drummer and hand-picked musicians that could "keep up with him". I haven't heard that it's gone anywhere, though. Can't say I'm much surprised. I think with the way he wants to play, he'd be better off forming a band (since he is a rather good fiddler), rather than inflicting himself onto sessions.

[SteveShaw]

Maybe it's just me, but I think making music is a lot like making love...

Now you know why I don't like telling people I play the mouth organ....moving swiftly on....

Steve

[colomon]

And then he'd put on this sheepish, false obsequious face, and go "Oh, you guys didn't know that one...gee I'm so sorry" and then repeat the performance with another similar tune.

Exactly! That routine is very familiar.

[Pat Cannady]

But the problem with these rules and the anti-guitarist thing is that it really starts to become 'musical facism'.

Communist Rubbish! Where are my jackboots and sidearm?

[Baglady]

Experience and ability ought always to be deferred to.

In a perfect world. But as you and I recently experienced, there are many 'experienced' sessioners who can't tell a world class musician from their own arse and don't care even when it is explained to them. In the end you just gotta relax and enjoy the ride. :roll:

[Cathy Wilde]

The quiet, en masse "getting up and drifting to the bar" or "Wow, it's hot. Let's walk outside for a minute" ruse -- thus eventually leaving the hackers playing alone -- usually wakes miscreants up in a few weeks or so. Then they either a) ask what's wrong, or b) drift away thinking the session's died on its own. Then, to be safe, you ask the bar owner about moving the session to another night.

(speaking as one who's been on both sides of the fence)

[Nanohedron]

Experience and ability ought always to be deferred to.

In a perfect world. But as you and I recently experienced, there are many 'experienced' sessioners who can't tell a world class musician from their own arse and don't care even when it is explained to them. In the end you just gotta relax and enjoy the ride. :roll:

To put "experience" in quote marks as you did is a good compression in what you had to say in reply, for it echoed what I have already posted previously. But just to clarify, by my use of the word "experience" I mean specifically within the tradition proper, including not necessarily only technique and usually years of performance but lore as well, and in particular having grown up in the lap of the tradition into the bargain. For newcomers to the tradition, experience comes by default in close and long association with the tradition and its proponents, and applying oneself to that tradition with love, care, and diligence, and knowing the eventual positive regard of one's "elders", if you will, within that tradition. I do not count myself experienced, as I have much to learn and probably always will, having come to the music only in my adulthood. Just because someone's a steady session-goer and has been even for years, or is a skilled musician outside of the tradition or at its edges, does not confer the aegis of experience on him or her, at least not the kind of experience I had in mind when I used the word. A stubbornly elusive dustball in the corner of the session's pub has just as much "experience" to offer as far as I'm concerned.

You can relax and enjoy the ride if it works for you. As for me, well...enjoying the ride is problematic when you get carsick.

By the way, last night's farewell-to-T.D.-on-his-trip-back-to-Ireland session was a remarkably good one for a change. That young banjo player from Winnipeg contributed mightily. Truckload of tunes. He's the only other person I know who plays Kitty in the Lane, and I had to dust it off from years of forced neglect.