Ec Player Tries An Irish Session: Strike One!

[Podzol]

Hello!

I play a Morse Baritone EC. I have played a couple years by myself using various texts like Concertina Workshop, Contemplating the Concertina, and also a copy of Regondi's studies that - for some reason - my library had. I read music just fine but have never even tried to memorize it until now.

 

After much encouragment from an established member, I was asked to join in on a session. I knew that I would sit out for most all of it since I only had one tune memorized, which I played at home over and over again with my eyes closed and no cheating.

 

Any way, at the session I managed to start my tune, which was a pretty easy one for me, so I thought (Sally Gardens), but with everyone else playing, I soon became completely lost and couldn't even come in for the dandy little endings of each line. I am not certain that I would have done much better even if I had the music in front of me, the music just completely blew any focus that I had. I was shaking, even!

 

When I went home, I got out my box an could play Sally Gardens without a hitch at tempo.

 

I just wondered, those of you who remember learning to play in a session, is this normal? Will I get used to it as I go more? I would really like to play my concertina with people. My dogs love it, and even sing, but sharing with hominids offers a less primal experience.

 

Thanks!

Blake

Edited August 9, 2013 by Podzol

[Steve Mansfield]

I think we've probably all been there - fine playing on your own, but the wheels fall off when you first start playing with other people.

 

It's just a matter of getting back in there and trying again, and carry on trying until you suddenly find that you can keep going (and then you'll fall off the tune that time as well, because the very act of realising that you're keeping up will interfere with the largely subconscious process that is allowing you to play fluently).

 

There are many factors at play in a session that you just don't get playing at home on your own - you maybe can't hear yourself as well as you're used to, other people around you may be playing subtlely diferent versions of the tune, you are not in sole control of the tempo, there's all sorts of visual and auditory distractions ... And also you're nervous because you so want to get it right, and that interferes with the playing too.

 

There is only one way to get better at it - and that's getting out there and doing it. One day you'll be sailing along on the crest of the wave of a favourite tune, and will look back on your first attempts and think 'Ha, now I've got it', ... And then, of course, you'll fall off again because that thought also got in the way.

[Geoff Wooff]

What Steve said !

 

Also, when playing in a session, do not try to play at, or impose on your playing, your own rhythm and pace but let the more experienced players, or the general throb, pull you along... and thus 'lock in' to what the rest are doing. So, it is like you are mostly listening to the other players and adding your bit in auto-pilot.Playing in a session is all about what your ears are doing.

 

Next, of course, is to start picking up the tunes as they are being played. Perhaps this is very difficult at the beginning but it is well worth trying. Start by identifying the framework notes of a melody... concertina is brilliant for this because you can noodle along quietly, or just 'air-play', and feel for the melody, Remember, of course, that the people sitting next to you will hear more of your concertina than you do yourself.

 

Good luck with the session playing, it is great fun.

[Podzol]

Thanks a bunch, Steve and Geoff. That is very encouraging. Steve's analogy of a wave seems like a very realistic description of what I can expect, and I should learn bob up and down with the experience. I also liked Geoff's observation about following your ears as they take in the music from the more experienced players and follow along. I never thought about it that way, but that's what I do in my community band (playing trumpet) and I do just fine there.

 

I'll post again in a month after the next session!

 

I should mention that the group is very warm. I brought my 14 year old son wil his guitar and they were delighted to have him strum along. He fared quite well and made me very proud.

Edited August 9, 2013 by Podzol

[Bill N]

Ditto to everything Geoff and Steve said, plus one bit of concertina specific advice. I've found that where one positions oneself can make a difference. I like to wedge myself in a corner if possible to get a bit of "bounce back" of my playing from the walls to my ears. I also try not to sit too close to another concertina or accordion. Being able to hear oneself amid the general din is very helpful.

 

I recall having the same experience as yours when I was invited to join a very friendly English session as a relative beginner. Much frustration and listening at first, but gradually I learned the repertoire and became very comfortable. Now I play about 90% of the tunes and usually lead a few. Interestingly, I spent a month in Newfoundland this summer and attended quite a few sessions. With the different repertoire and very speedy playing, I went back almost to square 1!

Edited September 13, 2013 by Bill N

[maki]

Have you considered finding a mentor from the session that you might do kitchen sessions with?

You know a two-some.

Or recording your local session and play with that.

[d.elliott]

What Steve said !

 

Also, when playing in a session, do not try to play at, or impose on your playing, your own rhythm and pace but let the more experienced players, or the general throb, pull you along... and thus 'lock in' to what the rest are doing. So, it is like you are mostly listening to the other players and adding your bit in auto-pilot.Playing in a session is all about what your ears are doing.

 

Next, of course, is to start picking up the tunes as they are being played. Perhaps this is very difficult at the beginning but it is well worth trying. Start by identifying the framework notes of a melody... concertina is brilliant for this because you can noodle along quietly, or just 'air-play', and feel for the melody, Remember, of course, that the people sitting next to you will hear more of your concertina than you do yourself.

 

Good luck with the session playing, it is great fun.

 

 

Bit like surfing, try to go to fast and the 'band' will wash all over you, go too slow and you can never catch up, especially if there are fiddlers in the group.

 

Dave

[Ken_Coles]

Blake, where in Pennsylvania (which session)?

 

Ken

who does sessions in Pennsylvania

[Podzol]

Great advice. I love the analogies. I would never have thought of surfing while playing my EC. It is a fine image, but being from the North, originally, visualizing snowboarding in waves of powdery snow while squeezing my EC comes more naturally.

 

Love the tip about sitting in a corner. There was an unused corner at the session, so hopefully it will be avaiable nexttime. My son had the forethought to record the session on a laptop with a decent mic. Havent had a chance to edit it yet, but I plan to play along quite a bit. When I get to know the group better, i will ask for a mentor. For now, I have the recordings and my son can strum the chords.

 

Ken, this session is in State College, PA. The venue alternates between a used bookshop and a pub that's styled after those in Ireland. Usually there are about a dozen people. A smaller group on Thursday of 10. 7 of whom knew all or nearly all of the tunes comfortably.

 

I am glad that I posted. So very helpful!

Blake

Edited August 10, 2013 by Podzol

[JimLucas]

I would like to expand on maki's excellent suggestions and add some more.

Have you considered finding a mentor from the session that you might do kitchen sessions with?
You know a two-some.

Going from playing in isolation to playing in a group is a huge jump. When that group is a session, there are additional complicating factors, such as difficulty hearing yourself or an unfamiliar tempo. (Well, if you started the tune, then the others should follow your tempo... but all too often they don't.)

Don't give up going to the session, but you should definitely be working on smaller steps, in between playing alone (with no one else to interfere or even hear) and playing in a session where other sounds intrude and you feel you're being judged (even if the judges are friendly). In particular, you should start by playing together with just one other (sympathetic and supportive) person. I would think that the person who has encouraged you to join the session ought to be willing to help in this way. Once you're able to play together (without "the dots") on several tunes, then try adding one or two other persons to your "training sessions". Once that's comfortable, from there to a full session shouldn't seem such a great difference.

Or recording your local session and play with that.

That's a small step along another path between alone and full session.

If the sessioners' style differs from your own solo style -- whether in tempo, "swing", or some other detail, -- you'll need to learn to adjust your style to theirs. Using a recording to practice "with" them repeatedly is a great help. (I agree with the old Russian saying, "Repetition is the mother of learning.") You can also slow a recording down (The Amazing Slow Downer is one of many apps/computer programs that can do this) until you can consistently "synch" with it, then gradually increase the speed until you can play along at the original session tempo.

But don't rely on a single recording for each tune. There will undoubtedly be subtle differences in the same tune played at different times. Being able to "feel" and follow these differences is what will eventually make your session playing comfortable rather than stressful.

Meanwhile, though, keep attending the sessions, with the aim of improving your listening. (You can also do this with recordings, but being able to do it "live" is important.) Tunes are built up of small pieces, short sequences of notes. Try to recognize such sequences individually -- e.g., a quick D-E-F# run up to a longer G, and then the equivalent in different keys -- as they appear in different tunes. Once you recognize such a sequence, try playing along wherever it appears, without worrying about playing along on the entire tune. As you become familiar with more and more of these "bricks", they will begin to fit together, and you should be able to gradually work your way up to playing entire tunes.

"Gradual" is a key concept here. It won't happen overnight. But if you can accept progressing and participating in gradually increasing bits, I'm sure you'll eventually become a full-fledged particpant, "flying" along with the rest.

One more suggestion for practicing (though maybe you're already doing this): Don't just work on playing your tune(s) through from start to finish. Whether alone or with a recording (or friend), practice starting your own playing suddenly at random points in the tune. Once you can do this, then if you get off track in the tune -- play a wrong note, maybe, or forget a particular short sequence, -- you'll be able to get back on track, rather than having to just quit.

[Tradewinds Ted]

One more suggestion for practicing (though maybe you're already doing this): Don't just work on playing your tune(s) through from start to finish. Whether alone or with a recording (or friend), practice starting your own playing suddenly at random points in the tune. Once you can do this, then if you get off track in the tune -- play a wrong note, maybe, or forget a particular short sequence, -- you'll be able to get back on track, rather than having to just quit.

 

This reminds me of another bit of advice I use for learning song lyrics. There are so many songs most of us (me included) only know the first verse for and just hope we will get through the later verses as we get to them. I picked up the trick of learning the last line of the last verse first, then next time I practice starting with the line before that and singing to the end, and so on. This way when I eventually know the whole song and I start to perform it, I know that it will be more familiar as I go through toward the end, instead of less. Same thing works when learning tunes, although I haven't tried it as often.

 

Edit: and even so my first experiences with playing in sessions have been very similar - even the few tunes I thought I knew were hard or impossible to stay in with.

Edited August 10, 2013 by Tradewinds Ted

[jggunn]

This is all so familiar, and the advice was wonderful -- but not advice i can utilize because I am not near any sessions. After several years of ;playing the English, I joined a folk orchestra. Although the members were very supportive, I simply could not get the hang of playing together. I stayed for a couple of months and dropped out. The advice was good, but it implied the opportunity to keep trying. In my case, I tend to think this is common, if one did not as a young person have the experience of playing in a school band or something similar, it is very difficult to do it in later life unless you start with a group of people who are in a similar situation. So I have rather given up on the hope of group playing but still hold out for the possibility of finding others in a similar situation.

[Paul Groff]

Another way to go is to take regular lessons with the right teacher. Especially if you can find one who has a few other students with whom you might play the same beginner's tunes at a suitable tempo, and who may lead a session or two. A lot of adults overestimate the success rate of DIY music learning. The right teacher can guide students to solve problems such as you are having, and can help students integrate into group playing, by noticing and assigning a practice routine to correct all the issues you have mentioned (and maybe others of which you are unaware). This kind of help -- sort of like teaching someone a language -- is a lot of work and takes a lot of experience on the part of the teacher. Similarly, integrating newcomers (although very rewarding) can demand a lot of patience on the part of more experienced players in a session, which can be one reason that pro musicians and teachers and session anchors earn their modest pay. There's nothing wrong with a bunch of friends having fun together, but when it isn't working for the group, or for a newcomer, or for the audience or the proprietor of the place where the session happens, then sometimes professional help may be needed.

 

PG

[Ken_Coles]

Hope to get over to the State College session, I've been meaning to drop by - things are quiet farther west in PA unless you can drive a long way on a weeknight, which I can't owing to work.

 

Keep plugging, many of us have been there.

 

Ken

[Podzol]

Hi again! I'm amazed at the wonderful support and great ideas!

 

A couple specific responses.

 

Re learning the end first---brilliant! I had forgotten this. I took cello from a fabulous cellist and he had us working through difficult classical passages with this method. I will certainly do this!

 

Re learning the "bricks" that are used within tunes, this is a great idea for facilitating the ability to learn by ear.

 

As an aside, i am a web developer and as I have been going over the tunebooks and recordings of the session that I went to, I noticed an abundance of patterns. I imagined a web tool called the "jig-O-matic" that accepts a few parameters of input and randomly generates a jig using algorithms to control variation, chord progression, and the use of arpeggiation, scale, ascention and descention. No doubt, this would be musically laughable, but might provide unexpected snippets that could be incorporated intelligently into new works- much in the way some authors warm up by freewriting on arbitrary subjects.

 

I also wondered if anyone has ever attempted a mathematical analysis of this genre of music. A fractal analysis or something like that that seeks patterns at a variety of scales time and pitch.

 

Re the Folk Orchestra. I ran into this problem when I learned cello. I ended up starting a beginners orchestra an was amazed at all the adult newcomers it drew. It was a lot of fun, but when I relocated, the orchestra faltered after a while. Organisations like that need driven leadership if they are to last in my experience.

 

As far as an instructor, I think I own the only EC in the county, so I am self taught. I have had a lot of classical music instruction, and am kind of an autodidact, but am new to music without paper. I ran into this local session in my search for instruction. The session's main organizer and flautist also plays anglo for the polkas. She has given me the clear impression that this group welcomes the musically inclined newbie.

 

Thanks again; I may be a solitary English concertinist, but I am no longer a lonely one.

Edited August 15, 2013 by Podzol

[Podzol]

To threadjack my own thread, I had a question about tempo and listening to reels and jigs.

 

While learning, I play them slower and pick up the tempo as my fingers develop the physical memory for the tune. During this process, I love the melodies: the patterns, turns and stutters along the scales within melodies, and accelerating arpeggiatic gestures that give a sense of weightlessness or emphatic resolution the tonic. I just love it. The music is delightful on so many levels to me.

 

But by the time it gets cranked up to the sometimes dizzyng tempo and when in session, there may be a couple different versions being played simultaneously, or the swing isn't strictly uniform, some of that expressive clarity that I initially found in the music seems to be lost to my ear. It isn't this session in particular, when I listen to other recordings/vids at tempo I have this issue also.

 

Will I get better at hearing the melodies at tempo? Maybe my processessing speed isn't up to snuff since I haven't become fluent in this language yet.

[Steve Mansfield]

Will I get better at hearing the melodies at tempo? Maybe my processessing speed isn't up to snuff since I haven't become fluent in this language yet.

Yes, and yes, basically. It's a matter of fluency, familiarity, and practice. Getting the overall shape of a tune will help putting the individual notes in the right places.

[Geoff Wooff]

To threadjack my own thread, I had a question about tempo and listening to reels and jigs.

 

While learning, I play them slower and pick up the tempo as my fingers develop the physical memory for the tune. During this process, I love the melodies: the patterns, turns and stutters along the scales within melodies, and accelerating arpeggiatic gestures that give a sense of weightlessness or emphatic resolution the tonic. I just love it. The music is delightful on so many levels to me.

 

But by the time it gets cranked up to the sometimes dizzyng tempo and when in session, there may be a couple different versions being played simultaneously, or the swing isn't strictly uniform, some of that expressive clarity that I initially found in the music seems to be lost to my ear. It isn't this session in particular, when I listen to other recordings/vids at tempo I have this issue also.

 

Will I get better at hearing the melodies at tempo? Maybe my processessing speed isn't up to snuff since I haven't become fluent in this language yet.

Perhaps your listening will improve but I have to say that much ITM is played too fast for my liking.

 

About 20 years ago My wife and I decided to learn a bit of Set Dancing and attended a workshop during one of the Summer Schools.. well the first day, the teacher was walking us through the figures of the first Set and then turned on his music machine. he said "this is the Tulla Ceilihi band recording from 1965... and this is the speed it was originally recorded at, and this was the speed that people danced at back then, but today people dance at this speed"..... he then cranked up the tempo by a fair chunk !

 

Ok, so that is playing for dancing. What I think is happening ,at times, is that people hear the great players playing quite quickly and it sounds fine, because those are great players, who do little else but play music............ then people think this is the speed we have to achieve in our session... Rubbish (rude word deleted)..... Ordinary musicians, like most of us, can play these tunes nicely and enjoy them at a much more leisurely pace... but if we try to Rush them... well, Rushed is how they will sound and to the listener it all sounds to be in a hurry and and is unsettling.

Find yourself some nice CD's of unhurried music... try Mary MacNamara, or Gearoid O'hAllmhurain and Patrick Ourceau... and see if you feel that their music is too fast....

 

I have been having a change of genre this summer, for music in my workshop, and tried some Jazz, (Brubeck, Grapelli and Reinhart ) well to start with it all sounded great and "how do they do that and all those tunes"... now I see the paterns emerging... as you will with ITM.

 

Great fun and discoveries,

Geoff.

Edited August 15, 2013 by Geoff Wooff