Learning a tune: When to add in ornamentation

[LHMark]

Fellow boxmashers, I have a quandary.

 

I'm learning a set of tunes from scratch, painstaikingly going over each section bar-by-bar, trying to get things automatic. As I work, I'm noticing places in the melody where complimentary tones, little blips, and other forms of ornamantition I don't know the terms for fit in and play easily.

 

My worry is, if I build these ornamentations into the tune as I am learning, they will become rote, played by muscle memory. They sound good, but I worry about stuff becoming predictable over multiple plays. Do you guys think it better to learn the ornamentation as one learns the tune, or to add it in after the tune has been mastered?

[Dieppe]

Fellow boxmashers, I have a quandary.

 

I'm learning a set of tunes from scratch, painstaikingly going over each section bar-by-bar, trying to get things automatic. As I work, I'm noticing places in the melody where complimentary tones, little blips, and other forms of ornamantition I don't know the terms for fit in and play easily.

 

My worry is, if I build these ornamentations into the tune as I am learning, they will become rote, played by muscle memory. They sound good, but I worry about stuff becoming predictable over multiple plays. Do you guys think it better to learn the ornamentation as one learns the tune, or to add it in after the tune has been mastered?

 

 

Yes.

[Larry Stout]

Do you guys think it better to learn the ornamentation as one learns the tune, or to add it in after the tune has been mastered?

 

Yes.

 

I assume that means both, which is what my advice would be. Some ornaments are almost part of the tune (Mrs. McLeod doesn't sound right to me without its grace note, for instance). Recognizing where you might want harmony might affect how you do the fingering. My own playing is rather unornamented, perhaps because I don't tend to think about ornament options as I'm learning the tune.

[Azalin]

My worry is, if I build these ornamentations into the tune as I am learning, they will become rote, played by muscle memory. They sound good, but I worry about stuff becoming predictable over multiple plays. Do you guys think it better to learn the ornamentation as one learns the tune, or to add it in after the tune has been mastered?

 

Just the fact that you're wondering about this means you're going to end up doing the right thing, in my opinion. Yeah, variations and ornaments are very important to make the music more interesting and less predictible (the death of a good tune!) so you could simply practice using some ornaments at different places. The first time you play the tune, you could play some ornament in the first phrase, the second time, you play it in the second phrase instead... etc etc... little details like this will make the music much more interesting.

 

I don't know about other type of music, but in irish music I don't think you want any ornament/variation to be part of your basic tune, I think you should be able to play any tune without any ornament if you wanted to, and a variation is called 'variation' for a reason...

[JimLucas]

I'm learning a set of tunes from scratch, painstaikingly going over each section bar-by-bar, trying to get things automatic. As I work, I'm noticing places in the melody where complimentary tones, little blips, and other forms of ornamantition I don't know the terms for fit in and play easily.

 

My worry is, if I build these ornamentations into the tune as I am learning, they will become rote, played by muscle memory. They sound good, but I worry about stuff becoming predictable over multiple plays. Do you guys think it better to learn the ornamentation as one learns the tune, or to add it in after the tune has been mastered?

These ornaments you're playing, are they things you've learned from other tunes, or something of your own invention?

 

In any case, my advice is, I think, similar to Azalin's (also Larry's and Dieppe's?): Practice doing it different ways. Practice with ornaments, but not just one particular fixed set of ornaments always in the same places. But also definitely learn to play it without any ornamentation at all. If you can't do that, then you haven't really mastered the tune. ... But I'm sure you can.

 

Oh, and also find others -- recorded or live, and not necessarily only concertina players -- who are playing the same tunes, and note what they do.

[michael sam wild]

All good advice!

 

Listen to lots of players and regional styles.

 

Some play fairly straight e.g. for dancing and rely on rhythm and lift, others play fast and ornmaeneted for listening or sessions.

 

You will gradually find your own style but I believe in getting the basic tune down first, whether from listening or the dots or ABc or all three - and adding ornaments, grace notes or embellishments or twiddles and blarts down as you go on and speed up your playing

 

There is a big difference say, between Mary MacNamara and Neill Valelly to name but two but they are both great players

[tombilly]

Traditional music is traditionally learnt by ear, mostly. If you learn by ear, you'll tend to play the twiddly bits, because that's what you hear. You might simplify them a bit, here & there, to get the gist of a tune but sooner or later you start adding them in, otherwise it doesn't sound 'right', 'cos you have a version in your head, not on a page.

[JimLucas]

Traditional music is traditionally learnt by ear, mostly. If you learn by ear, you'll tend to play the twiddly bits, because that's what you hear.

Not necessarily. Not everyone can easily learn a tune simply by hearing it played up to speed and dusted over with ornamentation. In my experience, the person "teaching" a tune will invariably start by slowing it down and removing the ornamentation. And when tunes are written down, ornaments are rarely included in the notation, unless it's written specifically for a tutor which teaches ornamentation.

 

Also in my experience, traditional players don't play exactly the same ornaments in exactly the same places on every repetition of a tune, much less all the players doing them exactly the same. So while you may feel that it's not really "the tune" unless it has twiddly bits in it, there is likely no such thing as "the" twiddly bits.

[Dieppe]

Hehe... Sorry I wasn't more verbose, but "Yes" definitely on both those things! Sometimes ornamentation is part of the song. A grace note that is just supposed to always be there, and sometimes it's just something you do to give it a little more oomph. And sometimes you learn a song frontwards and backwards and somehow an extra trill, or 3rd or 4th note added at a point just feels right.

 

So yeah you can learn it with adding ornamentation, and you can learn it without and add it once you've mastered it. It's all performance anyway, right?

[JimLucas]

Sometimes ornamentation is part of the song. A grace note that is just supposed to always be there, and sometimes it's just something you do to give it a little more oomph. And sometimes you learn a song frontwards and backwards and somehow an extra trill, or 3rd or 4th note added at a point just feels right.

All true, but the opposite can also be true. Sometimes removing someone else's ornament or note here and there "just feels right".

 

"...supposed to always be there" can be very much a matter of personal taste, even within a "tradition".

[CaryK]

Also in my experience, traditional players don't play exactly the same ornaments in exactly the same places on every repetition of a tune, much less all the players doing them exactly the same.

 

This has been my experience as well; and the more versions of a tune you get to hear from the same musician, or other musicians, the greater the variations you'll have to draw on for adding ornamentation. I usually try to learn the tune first, as that, I find, is difficult enough. I then add ornamentation used by others I've heard or based on what just sounds right. Unfortunately, my repertoire of ornaments is still rather limited.

[David Levine]

I think most players - especially those of modest accomplishment - worry way too much about ornamentation. Having a beat, a solid rhythm, is much more important. Having a clear melody, with every note where it should be and nothing rushed or forced, is much more important than having twiddly bits. A friend of mine has only been playing for a couple of years. When he comes to Ireland he takes lessons with extremely accomplished, well know players. I have heard some tapes of these lessons, which regrettably have focused on ornamentation. My friend struggles to fit in the ornaments and thereby struggles to find a solid rhythm.

 

Most important is to play slowly, with good rhythm. Fit in the ornaments when you can, after you have a solid grasp of the melody, and when the ornaments fit naturally. Eamonn Cotter (http://www.firescribble.net/flute/cotter.html) stresses the importance of practicing the ornaments separately. Martin O'Brien and Larry Kinsella play with little ornamentation and the music is lovely. You don't always need to play with Noel's (et al) brilliant flash - nor should that be a goal. If you don't have a solid grasp of the beat and melody then trying to fit in ornaments will only make your playing that much more difficult and less pleasing.

[Azalin]

I'd like to add a last thing to everything that's been said, there's lot of different opinions and I guess we all approach trad. music differently... but through the years I came to view irish music (could apply to other type of musics I'm sure) as a language that can only be understood through years and years of listening. I remember when a beginner fiddle player friend of mine learned a tune from a flute player, and the flute player was playing a high B somewhere in the tune, which was in fact a low B (composed that way). I learned the same tune from the same flute player, and I instinctively played the low B, because it simply made sense to me. We tried to explain to my fiddle player friend why she should be playing a low B there, but this is not something she could grasp at that stage, like the many things I can't grasp yet but I might grasp in a few years...

 

So my point is, like David is saying, I would not worry too much about ornaments and such, because at the end of the day, with time, by listening to a lot of music, you will instinctively start doing things. You could sit and try to put some variations in your music, but it will probably won't feel/sound right until it's part of you and comes from within. Chances are, you will probably be making nicer music by keeping it simple for now and adding stuff through the years gradually...

 

PS: One fo the things that really, really bugs me when I listen to irish music is when someone plays the same variation/ornaments always at the same place in the tune, everytime. Try to avoid at all cost!

Edited August 8, 2009 by Azalin

[Rod]

I'd like to add a last thing to everything that's been said, there's lot of different opinions and I guess we all approach trad. music differently... but through the years I came to view irish music (could apply to other type of musics I'm sure) as a language that can only be understood through years and years of listening. I remember when a beginner fiddle player friend of mine learned a tune from a flute player, and the flute player was playing a high B somewhere in the tune, which was in fact a low B (composed that way). I learned the same tune from the same flute player, and I instinctively played the low B, because it simply made sense to me. We tried to explain to my fiddle player friend why she should be playing a low B there, but this is not something she could grasp at that stage, like the many things I can't grasp yet but I might grasp in a few years...

 

So my point is, like David is saying, I would not worry too much about ornaments and such, because at the end of the day, with time, by listening to a lot of music, you will instinctively start doing things. You could sit and try to put some variations in your music, but it will probably won't feel/sound right until it's part of you and comes from within. Chances are, you will probably be making nicer music by keeping it simple for now and adding stuff through the years gradually...

 

PS: One fo the things that really, really bugs me when I listen to irish music is when someone plays the same variation/ornaments always at the same place in the tune, everytime. Try to avoid at all cost!

 

I would guess that appropriate ornamentions to a melody are strictly personal things which evolve instinctively over time. Any attempt to replicate someone else's is probably an inappropriate and ineffective approach to the matter and best avoided ?

[JimLucas]

I would guess that appropriate ornamentions to a melody are strictly personal things which evolve instinctively over time. Any attempt to replicate someone else's is probably an inappropriate and ineffective approach to the matter and best avoided ?

Aye, but I don't think that's what LHMark (who started this thread) was suggesting. Seemed to me that he personally felt that certain ornaments "fit" and wondered if it was wrong to include them from the very start, without learning to play the tune in an un-ornamented form.

[Anglo-Irishman]

Fellow boxmashers, I have a quandary.

 

I'm learning a set of tunes from scratch, painstaikingly going over each section bar-by-bar, trying to get things automatic. As I work, I'm noticing places in the melody where complimentary tones, little blips, and other forms of ornamantition I don't know the terms for fit in and play easily.

 

My worry is, if I build these ornamentations into the tune as I am learning, they will become rote, played by muscle memory. They sound good, but I worry about stuff becoming predictable over multiple plays. Do you guys think it better to learn the ornamentation as one learns the tune, or to add it in after the tune has been mastered?

 

The word "predictable" puzzles me a bit.

Predictable by whom? If you can predict what's coming up, you'll be able to play it all the better for that, so why worry? If you're worried about listeners finding the piece repetitive because you always have the same decorations in the same place, forget it - how many times would a person have to listen to your rendering to realise that this is the case?

And if you've found the optimal decorations (for you), changing them from performance to performance would mean that some performances would be sub-optimal! (Of course, if something better occurs to you on the spur of the moment, do it!)

 

What are decorations for?

They occur in styles of music, like Irish and Scottish dance tunes and songs, that stem from a purely melodic, unaccompanied tradition. Bare, unaccompanied melodies played on fiddle or flute, or sung, sound very one-dimensional. The decorations add a dimension, as does harmony in classical music.

I used to play a bit of fiddle, and I still play some whistle, and I've noticed that certain decorations come naturally on one instrument, others on the other, and some are common to both.

I listened extensively to Scottish country dance music on the radio as a child, and I must say, what has stuck in my memory are the bare melodies. When I play these familiar tunes, the instrument suggests the decorations for me. It's a bit like a Scot, an Irishman and American reading a text in standard English - the words will be the same in each case, but the accent will give it a regional dimension.

In traditional music, the bare melody is analogue to the words of the text - the decorations are part of the fiddle or flute "dialect".

Scots, Irishmen and Americans don't think about their accent when reading aloud - they concentrate on the words of the text.

So I say, a musician should concentrate on the bare melody, and let the decorations come naturally. It's good to know what roll, crans, etc. are - once you know them, you'll find places to use them!

With dance music in particular, remember ist's the beat of the bare melody that people dance to. The decorations can be added when you're confident with the tune.

 

Cheers,

John

[Tootler]

So I say, a musician should concentrate on the bare melody, and let the decorations come naturally. It's good to know what roll, crans, etc. are - once you know them, you'll find places to use them!

With dance music in particular, remember ist's the beat of the bare melody that people dance to. The decorations can be added when you're confident with the tune.

 

Cheers,

John

 

Well said!

 

It's the rhythm that really matters with dance music. I have a friend who recently complained about the tendency of too many whistle players not to keep time. I think it's partly because in whistle tutors and teaching whistle too much is made of decoration and not enough of ensuring you keep a good steady beat. I believe it is important to concentrate on playing rhythmically. If, when you're playing someone gets up and spontaneously starts dancing, as happened to me recently, then you are getting it right. If decoration fits naturally into that, then fine. I find I use very little decoration, then mainly in slower tunes, but only where it feels right to me.

 

Another important aspect of playing, IMHO, is phrasing - sensing where the musical phrases begin and end and using them to give shape to the melody. This is very important in slow airs where rhythm is less important. If you can phrase your playing effectively, then you can give a pleasing performance with very little decoration.

 

Geoff

[david_boveri]

Traditional music is traditionally learnt by ear, mostly. If you learn by ear, you'll tend to play the twiddly bits, because that's what you hear.

Not necessarily. Not everyone can easily learn a tune simply by hearing it played up to speed and dusted over with ornamentation.

 

they make software to slow it down, and no it's not easy, but it works....