Learning Slow Airs!!??

[123454321]

Does anyone have any tips on learning slow air? I have tried with some sucsess to learn from uilleann pipe recordings with the sheet music as well.
How do you learn?

[djm]

This has come up many times on this forum. Did you do a search?

There are two schools of thought on learning and playing slow airs. One school says get as many recordings as possible of people actually singing these tunes in the sean-nós style and learn to play it like this. They consider an air played exactly as it would be sung to be the definitive style. The other school says it doesn't matter how the tune is sung, just learn the tune from some other instrumental version as you have been doing. The second school argues that not all the old airs have lyrics, so that you have no other examples to learn from than from existing instrumental versions.

If you are not Irish, don't speak the language, and wouldn't recognize the correct version of a slow air if it fell on you, I would suggest you copy from only the top notch Irish players who would be more likely to know what they were doing.

djm

[Cynth]

I tried a search for fun and there were over 600 posts to go through---that was with 3 words that had to be present. I did search all the music forums though. Maybe just searching this one would be better. And some of the discussions were saying basically "If it feels good do it."

Hi, 123454321---
I don't know much about this topic other than some reading I've done. I will give you some links I've bookmarked that you may or may not be interested in. They don't address your exact question but they might help you get closer to an answer. Some are recommendations for listening, which it sounds like you may not need, and others are discussions of slow airs themselves or of other types of songs.

http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php ... ir&start=0
http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php ... sc&start=0
http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?t=28563&start=0
http://www.irishflutes.net/mef/interpre.htm
http://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/sean-nos.htm
http://www.folkmusic.net/htmfiles/inart378.htm
http://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/clare.htm

If you click on the CD you can get the details. It has excellent literal translations of the Irish being sung so you can get an idea of why the phrasing is the way it is and what is happening in each phrase. The problem in many cases for me is knowing which notes are part of the basic song and which are contributed by the particular person singing it. I have listened to some many, many times and I still cannot hum the melody---I believe because my ears cannot find it. Others I am able to hum. If there were sheet music you could also find that was reliable (I know it would still be sort of a snapshot of the song) it seems like that would be helpful.


Edited to remove a link that was about singing in Scotland, not Ireland, sorry. And again to add a couple of links.

[KDMARTINKY]

Slow airs are all I played on Low Whistle and is all I wish to learn on the pipes. Clips and Snips has some slow airs on MP3.

Many have said that it harder to play a slow air than a Jig or a reel.

Best of Luck

[Cynth]

Slow airs are all I played on Low Whistle and is all I wish to learn on the pipes. Clips and Snips has some slow airs on MP3.

Many have said that it harder to play a slow air than a Jig or a reel.

Best of Luck

I believe that is true, KD. It seems to me that a great deal of study of a particular slow air would be required to play it in a way that was respectful.

I think one could play the airs of other songs which were not in the sean-nos repertoire. One would, I guess, just call them airs, not "slow airs", and one wouldn't play them in the special style of sean-nos singing. I could imagine doing that without being disrespectful to the music. I could also be wrong about this. I don't hear things like this on recordings so perhaps it just is not done.

[123454321]

thanks a lot, I think I'll try imersing myself in recordings

[Hans-Joerg]

I don´t know too much of sean nós, exept that I heard it beeing sung many times. Correct me please: I always was thinking that it has a typical structure: The melody making intense use of the groundnote´s overtone-row instead of changing the chords (much). Rita Conolly´s "The Spanish Armada" on "Granuaille" strongly reminds me of sean nós. However, the language seems to be very important, too?

Concerning airs: In class in Miltown the teacher said that you could play the air of any song. The only thing of importance is that you understand the text. Understandig influences one´s playing very much. For example: It makes no sense to play the air of a gealic song if the player doesn´t speak the language.

Hans

[BigDavy]

All this talk of styles and definitive versions of slow airs is giving me a headache.

The whole point of an air, in my opinion, is an emotional one. The singer/player expresses the emotion that the air engenders in her/him.

An air can be bent/stretched/embellished as the player feels appropriate at the moment.

A well played air transports both the player and any audience with it's emotion, an air badly played does nothing.

David

[djm]

BigDavy, you are correct, but this is the core of the problem. A sean-nós singer stretches the notes according to the words, not the melody. If you don't even speak the language, you will not have any appreciation of what, where or why to stretch one note versus another. As has been discussed here many many many times, if your listener knows the tune and the lyrics, they will know when you are destroying the tune, whereas you, the player without any appreciation for the language or lyrics, may be totally unaware of what a balls-up you are making of it.

The most direct example I can think of is listening to Japanese rock groups doing covers of Beatles tunes that they don't understand. Everything comes out cock-eyed. You would think it would be hard to screw up such simple tunes, but they manage it by skewing the rhythm, putting emphasis on the wrong notes and not following the lyrics. It sounds like sh*t. I expect that me torturing a sean-nós song must sound just as terrible to an Irish speaker who knows the tune and lyrics.

djm

[PJ]

Why is there so much fuss about interpreting the slow air. Many jigs and reels are based on songs, but you don't see pipers getting all tied up in knots trying to work out the best way to interpret them.

If you're a serious piper and there's a chance you will record a solo piping album, or play for the Queen or something, by all means, learn the Irish language and learn to interpret the airs from the songs.

Otherwise I say leave the serious interpretation to the serious pipers, play it the way it feels good to you and "enjoy yerselves". 99.9% of the time, no one will know the original version anyway, unless you're in Ireland, then it'll only be 98.9% of the time.

[Joseph E. Smith]

Why is there so much fuss about interpreting the slow air.

Because it isn't just an average piece of music, just like the piobreachd (sp?) isn't just an average tune.

The slow air is sean nos... on what ever instrument one plays, an air, is the melody of any particular song. There is a wide difference IMHO.

[billh]

...It makes no sense to play the air of a gealic song if the player doesn´t speak the language.
Hans

I think there's a middle ground here. Knowing the content, and the specific words, of an air can be very helpful to phrasing and ornament; if both player and listener know the words, then this adds whole other "layer" to the interpretation. But then again, there are many airs for which the old Irish words have been lost, changed, or for which other lyrics (including English ones) have been substituted. This suggests to me that one should not let the business of Irish language and airs become a hard and fast dictum.

I do think that it's important to approach airs with a certain level of scrupulousness, e.g. one shouldn't approach them too shallowly. Perhaps airs without words, or for which words have been lost (port na pucai, limerick's lamentation, etc.) or with commonly sung English language verses (Bonny Bunch of Roses, A Stor mo Chroi, etc.) are a good start.

Bill

[KDMARTINKY]

BigDavy:

I agree with you 100%. There are two slow airs I cureently play on Low D that I am trying to learn on the pipes which actually brings tears to my eyes (not because of my playing mid you), but because the tunes do something to me deep and emotional.

The "Immigrants Daughter" is one that comes to mind.

[BigDavy]

Hi JES

I would say that the ground of a piobroch,(be a touch phonetic here), and for that matter the variations, are airs. The strict interpretation of the technique required for competition is what kills the tunes for me, the playing may be technically good, but loses the whole meaning of the tune as far as I am concerned.

DJM

I think that we are basically in agreement here, but I have hears airs played badly (in a technical sense that is), but the player managed to convey the emotion of the tune, and that is what moves me. Technique may be nice to have, but celtic music is music of the heart and soul, if they are missing then the technique is nothing.

David

[NicoMoreno]

Why is there so much fuss about interpreting the slow air. Many jigs and reels are based on songs, but you don't see pipers getting all tied up in knots trying to work out the best way to interpret them.

Good point. Which brings up the point that we should be getting all tied up in knots trying to work out the best way to interpret jigs and reels.

This is why so many beginning (and intermediate, and I suppose advanced pipers), including myself, often sound like garbage playing certain tunes. We haven't worked out how they are supposed to be played.

Friends on this board have been pounding into me the absolute importance of listening. You simply will not sound good if you don't listen to the music. And part of reproducing the tune is working out the best way of interpretting it. Playing the basic notes off a sheet won't cut it.