Improvising

[NoNaYet]

I wonder how many others do this....

 

I find lately that my greatest pleasure with my 'tina is not playing old or new songs that are written on paper or well known. I have a lot more fun just improvising melodies and chords.

 

I call this pourch music (or in the right season firefly music) since the best thing is to sit on the pourch, maybe with a candle and some Jameson nearby, and just make up mellow tunes.

 

NNY

[Anglo-Irishman]

I wonder how many others do this....

 

I find lately that my greatest pleasure with my 'tina is not playing old or new songs that are written on paper or well known. I have a lot more fun just improvising melodies and chords.

 

Hi, NNY,

I do this quite often, on several instruments. Actually, it's the first stage in what I choose to call "composition". When something decent emerges, I play it over and over again until it sticks in my short-term memory, and work it over at my next practice session. After a while, it "solidifies", and I've got a tune! Then I hack it into the program Capella, print it out, and export it as a midi file, just in case I forget it.

 

Mostly I do this when I've got a lyric (my own or someone else's) that needs to be set to music. The metre of the words and the mood they express guides my improvisation. But I've done a few instrumental pieces this way, too.

 

I find that the instrument I use influences the improvisations and the resulting "compositions". My main "composing tool" at the moment is the 5-string banjo in classic tuning gCGBD, which makes it easy to find the right chord for each note of the melody. But the autoharp is very useful for trying out neat chord sequences, which later form the basis of a melody.

 

There's something nice about doing the initial improvising on one instrument and completing the work on another. It's like taking advice from two experts who have different ideas.

Sometimes the results are vey instrument-specific, but sometimes they're transferrable. A friend once lent me his Greek bouzouki, which I tuned to one of the Irish tunings, ADAD. As I noodled with this, a nice little jig in D dorian emerged and quickly "solidified". Later I transferred it to the mandolin, where it works very well, and to the C/G Anglo, where it fits the C-row perfectly. The harmonisation of dorian-mode tunes is trivial (in D it's just Dm and C), so that wasn't much work.

 

I don't use either concertina much for this kind of original improvisation, for some reason. But I do enjoy arranging a known melody on them. Again, the instrument used influences the arrangement. The Anglo gives more guidance but ties you down somewhat, whereas the Crane leaves you greater freedom but gives little assistance. So the results for a given tune are similar, but not identical.

 

Cheers,

John

[Alan Day]

I follow the same path. I get a little tune in my head and slowly work through it like learning prose

A word, a sentence a paragraph etc. I play completely by ear (something I chose to do when I started the instrument).

I have had no musical training, so my chords are what, to me, sound the right ones. A classically trained musician may shudder at my arrangements, but I spend a considerable time on them and some are fairly complex and are a devil to play under pressure.

I am happy to take advice however and Will Fly may point me to a better chord than I am playing, but in general he likes the directions I take him. Most of my tunes, chords and bellows directions come from experimentation and what I learn with one tune may help me with another.

I am currently working on "Sweet Little Alice Blue Gown " what a fantastic tune that is and the possible runs and chord variations are just wonderful. I hope to post it in a few days, these feed backs are useful for a by experimental ear player.

Even the negative ones help.The next tune, wherever it comes from, just pushes me to continue along a winding, stimulating road.

Al

[Rod]

I wonder how many others do this....

 

I find lately that my greatest pleasure with my 'tina is not playing old or new songs that are written on paper or well known. I have a lot more fun just improvising melodies and chords.

 

I call this pourch music (or in the right season firefly music) since the best thing is to sit on the pourch, maybe with a candle and some Jameson nearby, and just make up mellow tunes.

 

NNY

 

NNY. I guess that we are far from alone. Much of my pleasure derives from playing (in isolation!) stuff that I consider to be 'improvised' or 'extemporaneous' arising from simple melodies and rhythms of all sorts which frequently appear in my head from I-know-not-where. No doubt such music is derivative to a certain extent but it is certainly good relaxing, satisfying, rewarding fun. The bottle of Jameson is not an essential part of the deal but it might be for any passing listener!

[michael sam wild]

I spend a lot of time playing melody as I love Irish music . Chords aren't such a big interest as I play in sessions with others who put them or harmony notes in. I also find some folk can't handle improvisation and think you are changing tunes so it throws them!

 

 

What I enjoy most is playing alone or with my mate Mike Lydyat who is a great guitarist and working out tunings for guitar or bouzouki and experimenting with chords that fire the tune or a song. Mike has set all the Carolan tunes in O Sullivan's book to his idea of the chords and given tabs

 

 

Just exploring a chord sequence often suggest a new tune or arrangemt.

 

 

Currently I'm exploring B minor on my 26 button C/G Jeffries Anglo and when we get together som elovely arrangemnts come up.

 

 

Mike invents appropriate tunings for the particular key or tune which is a great gift. Beyond standard guitar I find DADGAD a marvel. He even uses partial capos to get a drone behind the chord shapes.

 

 

So for a bloke who doesn't want to many chords in his Irish music I'm up for anything when it's not going to influence the traditional tunes to much when playing with others who love the tradition. So I'm a conservative and a libertarian at the same time I suppose

[Barry J]

I like Irish music, especially slow, haunting airs.

 

I've now discovered that I like to improvise with them to get the flourishes and melody sequences that I like.

 

Its very relaxing..