Individual Style

[Whistlin'Dixie]

Well, I know I'm still struggling along at this point in time, but a recent posting made me think. It was about not copying other folk's style of playing but developing your own. (Thanks, Harry)

So now I'm wondering. What, and how.

I guess it is just a small frustration. I play by myself along with CD's ~ and I have a bunch that I really like. I especially like playing along with fiddling CD's since I like the sound of flute and fiddle better than anything...But I guess at this point I am still going along trying to learn tunes, play them "correctly" and get a little bit up to speed.

I am making slow but steady progress, I think.
But as far as "style", what is it and how would you say you develop it? Have you developed it? Are you conscious of it? Don't worry about it? Don't care?


Or is this a totally crazy question for a Sunday morning?

M

(FWIW, I usually don't care)

[Denny]

Style! waddaya thinkin!

nebulous thoughts...kinda like personality, ain't it? Ya got one or ya don't!

*vague attempt at seriousness*
I think that it is a function of developing your chops (the 1st time). Once you get good enough to mimic a few others playing you will either develop your own style or not.

[crookedtune]

I've tangled with a mess of instruments in my life, and still play a bunch. (I'm relatively new to flute). The only one I can really say I have developed "my own sound" on is fingerstyle country blues/ragtime guitar, and that was over decades of playing, listening and living with the instrument.

My feeling is that it's pretty hard to deliberately conceive of "your own sound" and proceed to master it. It happens over time and through experience, much of it on the subconscious level. Just like "you are what you eat", you eventually become the product of all that you have taken in. And when it really has had a chance to simmer and settle, your sound emerges as a byproduct of your personality and experience. At least that's how I have always viewed it...... Listen and play, listen and play. Wax on, wax off.....

[peeplj]

I agree with crookedtune; I think you get your own style (and your own sound) by living with the instrument and the tunes day by day for years and years. Over time, you develop your own ways of doing things which can be subtly different from other musicians...and that begins to become your own style.

Just my $.02. Since I live in Arkansas, not Ireland, I woudn't recommend you put too much faith into my opinions on such things.

--James

[eilam]

Mary, i think that if you learn tunes of CD, but then just play them alone (not with the CD playing).....
over time you will give the tune your own take, which will keep changing over time.
once i learn a tune of a CD, i very rarely go back to playing it with the CD, and i know we change the tunes, many times we play them slower or faster with different energy all together.
i don't know if it qualifies for style or just making it your own? but we do have style

[fearfaoin]

One's own style often comes after a thorough background study of the
music. You play things the same way as a recording for a long time,
and eventually, you start saying things like, "I don't like the tonguing in
this section, I'll try cuts instead," or, "I wonder what this sounds like if
you swing it more." The trick is to occasionally play without the recording
and see what comes out. Often, whatever combination of styles you've
listened to and practiced with will combine in your brain to form a new
style without you even knowing it. On that note, try not to play along
with only one version of a tune. Get 2, or 3, or several and play with
them all. That's how you figure out what you like about each version
and incorporate those things into your version.

[BoneQuint]

My feeling is that it's pretty hard to deliberately conceive of "your own sound" and proceed to master it. It happens over time and through experience, much of it on the subconscious level.

I have a pretty high level of ability, and certainly my own style playing the bones, and I think what you say is pretty true. The conscious brain isn't subtle and "organic" enough to work out the details of musical style. To a large degree, you have to have enough facility with your instrument to get out of your own way. For example, sometimes you'll develop new techniqes, and shoehorn them into your playing (because it's fun, or to show off), but eventually those techniques will find their place to serve the music, if you let them.

But you can develop further if sometimes you ask yourself, "what would I hear here if I could imagine the tune being played exactly as I'd like it to sound?" And maybe you can't do that right away, but you can take baby steps towards it, and the fruits of those efforts show up in your playing in general. And of course, it's a moving target. That's how you can end up in uncharted territory...and that's fun!

[Chiffed]

But you can develop further if sometimes you ask yourself, "what would I hear here if I could imagine the tune being played exactly as I'd like it to sound?" And maybe you can't do that right away, but you can take baby steps towards it, and the fruits of those efforts show up in your playing in general. And of course, it's a moving target. That's how you can end up in uncharted territory...and that's fun!

Write a tune! Let it evolve, make changes, add sections, throw it away and start again... when it feels really good, then that's your style. For now.

[fearfaoin]

... certainly my own style playing the bones

You sure do, Jeff! I love watching the solos on your website... the
rhythm is so on, that I can almost hear the tune coming from the bones.
Speaking of the website, are you planning on adding anything to that?

[jim stone]

I think it helps to record oneself occasionally.
You can hear what sounds good and what doesn't.
Eliminate the latter, naturally.

Ornamentation is sort of idiosyncratic, personal,
and a lot of it becomes automatic. Often, recording
myself, I hear that I'm ornamenting too much,
diminishing the force of the music, cluttering
musical lines. Often I'm not aware I'm ornamenting
when I'm playing.

This is, I suppose, a dimension in which you
can make some detailed decisions about
how you wish to sound.

[cocusflute]

It's generally harder in the US to have your own style. I think this is because you are not surrounded by a regional style that you key into early on and from which you individuate as you become more accomplished. When you are firmly rooted in the tradition you don't make a decision to sound as if you are within that tradtion. The point is that you don't have a choice.
Harry has his own style and that emerges from the context of northern music. You can hear Sligo (and New York by extension) in the fiddling of Brian Conway. Au fond Tommy plays like a Donegal fiddler. East Clare is in the music of Martin Hayes.
Although you'd recognise any of these musicians as soon as you heard them, I doubt that any of them thought about developing his own style.
My advice is that to develop your own style you immerse yourself not just in Irish music, but in the musical dialect of one particular region.
To which I add, sadly, that even in Ireland the music is becoming homogenized.
But that's just my take on it all.

[chas]

Remember that having your own sound doesn't mean that you don't have any elements from any other players. I love Chris Norman, Dee Havlin, Jack Coen, Catherine McEvoy, and Harry Bradley (among others). I try to incorporate bits of their playing in my own. They have vastly different styles, so I may sound either very creative, like a mishmash of different styles, or like crap.

I like digging up tunes from old books -- Playford, Neal, Joyce -- and I don't have recordings of people playing most of them. So while I play my own clones of people playing tunes, I'm largely on my own to create my own style.

[BoneQuint]

... certainly my own style playing the bones

You sure do, Jeff! I love watching the solos on your website... the rhythm is so on, that I can almost hear the tune coming from the bones.Speaking of the website, are you planning on adding anything to that?

Thanks! Yes, I'm planning on (finally) adding some stuff very soon. And I'm in the beginning planning stages of making a DVD, about half performance (with different groups) and half instructional.

Thinking back, another good way to develop a unique style is to play with friends who know nothing about how your instrument works. They'll ask one day, "hey, can you do something like this?", and you'll say, "no, that's impossible on the xxx." But you'll start thinking...and maybe something will come to you...

[jim stone]

There is, interestingly, a regional style here in the USA, although
it's a pretty wide region. Namely, country, bluegrass, old timey
music, Appalachian music, fiddle music, banjo music. For some
reason flutes and whistles weren't used much
but they work fine, IMO. A lot of this stuff is Irish
that got transformed into something American--it's
probably less complex and interesting than ITM,
especially as we don't have a great tradition of
flutes and whistle playing in it. Still it's worth developing,
I think. I play with these people when I can.

tunes like Cold, Frosty Morning.

[peeplj]

When you are firmly rooted in the tradition you don't make a decision to sound as if you are within that tradtion. The point is that you don't have a choice.

I don't buy this. If it were true, every flutist from one area in Ireland would sound like every other flutist from the same area, and that's obviously not the case, even to my American ears.

--James