The other night we were talking about Texas competition-style fiddling, and I see a correlation. Those guys have a repertoire of about 30 tunes, and the goal is to see who can play the heck out of each tune the best.
(Cowboy Paganinis, my friend called them.)
But anyway. Build a box like that to work in, and many people are bound to come up with some pretty creative solutions for decorating it! And to most audiences, all the colors and textures are dazzling at first. But eventually for some of us, all those shiny objects can take up too much mental real estate -- and me, I begin to hunger for a simpler, more restful place.
By the same token, after 10 years of playing at Irish flute (note "at"), I've only just begun to be able to stand listening to most solo flute playing. And as brilliant as he is, I STILL can't make it through more than 4 or 5 Molloy tracks at a time before I have to turn to players like the Mountain Road guys or Peter Horan or Marcas O Murchu or Patsy Hanly or Liam Kelly (I'm still enjoying Colm O Donnell, too) as an astringent. There comes a point where I feel assaulted by tortuous settings and technical brilliance -- I suppose this is my real issue -- by NOTHING BUT FLUTE SOUND. Argh! Please Lord, give me accompaniment!
(Then again, I've always figured I was just kind of simple that way.)
However, there's a place for everything, especially in Solo Land, where the goal is -- at least to a degree -- to dazzle. And where your audience probably contains more than a few technique nerds. And shoot, you need variety when it's just you playing for 10 or 20 minutes or an hour.
So even though I'm not a huge fan of the constant flow of bubbly (musical champagne!
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), I think it serves a purpose. But once again, in the right time and place.
I agree with Jeanie the others who've said the question is what serves the tune best. And I'd like to add another question: what serves the venue (i.e., the place/setting you're playing) the best?
If you're playing with others, you need to make the most of all the voices. If you're playing alone, I can see how you want to come up with different ways for making the most of your own.
Here we are again, horses for courses -- tho' I prefer the straight-ahead course myself. If it's a great tune, I like to get out of its way.
But you know what? The truly great players -- every last one of them -- know how to do that, too. (altho' usually I think it's when they're a bit older)
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Deja Fu: The sense that somewhere, somehow, you've been kicked in the head exactly like this before.