Irish Blarney

Every so often I clean my desk. When I say “every so often” I mean only when we’re having folks come over to the house is a more-or-less social way…very rare occasion around here. Heck, that means I need to put away (or at least put them in their cases) all the gear and instruments…the spare computers…and then there is the actual desk…piles of papers.

But in those piles are gems. I found tunes that I forgot that I have wanted to learn and out they popped…reminding me of just how beautiful and cool they are. So that part of the cleaning is a good thing…well and finding the seeds that I’m looking for so that I can start planning the garden is always a good thing.

Besides the finding of actual tunes, I found notes on sets that I wanted to take a look at…and the ones that I found today are still hot (to me)…but of course I exasperate my problem of too many tunes and way not enough time by listening to tunes as I work…oh please…somebody stop me.

This last week I was reminded of the Kevin Burke slide set: Dan O’Keefe’s, If I Had A Wife and Leave Well Alone…good grief…another great group of tunes.

I said it before but it’s worth repeating…the Burke set is yet another example of working on tunes months ago and being stymied by them (and in this case on the tenor guitar) and when I picked them up the other day…what do you know, I think I can win this battle. I can put the notes in the head and know where I should be going…of course I’m not going where I should be going quite yet, but the tunes are making sense. Once again re-enforcing the idea that practice pays off…maybe not this very moment…but definitely over time…practice is a good thing.

I’m behind in my tune learning goal for the year…here it is January and I’m behind already…the birth of Odin the Grandchild last week, really put me behind…and it’s worth every tune I fall behind on just to sit there and hold him…so there.

Enough of the Grandbaby blathering…

This weekend I hope to re-order the tunes I want to work on and get a grip of what’s what, who’s who and which is which…wish me luck.

It really is so much easier to learn to play a tune when the tune is in your head. I know this. I believe this…and I find out just how right I am when I don’t know a tune well enough to lilt along…it’s embarrassing when I only know the A part…the B part then takes a horrendous effort to pick up.

The second or third rule of learning Irish music should be to learn the tune in one’s head before starting to apply fingers to the instrument.

Actually there should be a list of 10 rules that which one must adhere too in order to learn Irish music…one rule is don’t start if you’re an inflexible person…another…don’t start if you’re a negative sourpuss…don’t start if you don’t like people…having a mediocre instrument is not an excuse for playing mediocre music…there are no bad tunes just bad players…don’t make Irish music sound like all generic Celtic music…

All these sorts of “rules” could be applied to learning Irish music at some point…but someone should come up with a standardized list of 10 rules…and it shouldn’t be me…I don’t think I could stop with 10.

Practicing should be on the list someplace but because most folks don’t have fun practicing it might be a bit odd to have on the list…but certainly practicing is important. I also think practicing can and should be fun. I, unlike more than a few others, like to practice.

Right now I’m listening to “The Rising Sun” and trying to type while listening to the bass part in particular. I love the left hand backbeat…lovely stuff. Makes me want to pick up the box and give is a bit of a spin around the room…of course my wife sitting on the other side of the office would probably kill me. What I should do is take out the ear buds and let her listen…she’d yawn I’m sure. She likes the music but I think she’s heard some of the tunes so many times the excitement wanes…although she will perk up every so often with a dynamic new tune or a crazy twist on one she has heard a lot. She and I have talked about the need to listen to the music to be able to “get it.” So while I say she might yawn…she herself “gets it.” Thank you for that.

Listening is such an important part of Irish music…perhaps rule number one should be to make sure the ear are cleared of wax so that one could listen well.

In among all the wild and crazy things I have going on, our eldest daughter, Sarah, has given birth to our first Grandchild…Odin Alexander Refvem…9 pounds 3 ounces…22 inches long and a set of lungs that work well. He has red hair which pleases his mama to no end. I think he has the hands of a piper.

So while I am glad that it’s raining…I could do with some dry roads as I have been driving back and forth from the house to Marin and the airport to pick up Grandma A…and back to Marin…and I missed the first day of practice with my button box in four months. But of course he’s the best baby ever…aren’t they all…so missing a box practice is worth it…and I’ve listened to CDs for hours now on the drives…tunes via the iphone.

I’m learning that even a short amount of time can produce some pretty significant advances on a tune. So what do I do when I only have a 10 or 15 minute block of time to practice? I use this mini-practice to run through a particular set. I then turn to the weakest tune in the set and play the weakest part several times…then shift focus to the B-A transitions between the tunes in the set and then run through the set again. If I’m pressed for time I run the first set just two times through each tune…and the last one is usually three time through.

I suppose that some folks could run the set with only one time through the tunes but I am still trying to master the B-A transitions between tunes and within the tune…so in order to do that I have to play a tune a minimum of two times through. I like to play a set at least once the three times through method so that I can build up the stamina to complete the set with energy at the end. Nothing like a set with a waning end…dropping off into the abyss.

Last summer when I was up in Montana I was sure that it would take a lifetime before I could play three tunes back to back in a set and not collapse someplace along the way. It was all I could do to get through a tune…let alone three times through…and then to pack two more tunes onto the set was just laughable. About that time I was only able to practice about an hour before I needed to take a nap…just exhausted. Now I like to practice a minimum of an hour…and 2 or more is pretty common (whenever Brenda is gone I can sneak in that kind of time)…I’m not sure that the stamina is all physical however…there still is a lapse of concentration from time to time (sometimes it’s more frequent…sort of a time AFTER time). So maybe the longer practices help to increase the mental stamina also.

But the last few days I have had more opportunities to fit the 10-15 minutes in between other things (see new Grand above)..the landscaping and of course I do work…so I suppose if life gives you 10 minutes…learn to work with it and enjoy it.

Most tunes are pretty repetitious. There are measures that are duplicates of other riddled through most tunes. In a typical 16 bar tune, 10-12 of those are new and the other 4-6 are repeated someplace. So in essence you are learning just 10-12 new measures…if you memorized (or simply learn) one measure a day it would only take about 2 weeks to bang out a tune (that would be 2 dozen tunes in a year!)…and memorized at that. So applying that 10 minutes here and there can be a pretty significant tool it you think about it.

Just don’t think about it while you’re playing in a session…or that lapse of concentration will come back and bite you in the…well…you get it.

Today I’ve been working on my latest tune…another one I wrote. This is number three. Thought it was a little too nimno for my current taste so dropped the F# from the B section and what a difference a half step can make in the “color” of the tune. I’m thinking that I might try that with some other D Major tunes and see what happens…there is nothing that says that once I try a tune without the F# that I always have to play it that way…I can always go back to the original.

This brings up the notion of experimentation…of course most of the experimentation we would undertake in Irish music would involve the ornamentation and triplets…with an occasional change in the meter (applying swing perhaps)…but I think we should probably be trying more things and not be too hung up with new stuff. Remembering that the tune should stay true to itself, there is still a lot of room for interpretation and experimentation.

Last night I was working on Jig of Slurs…and that was without drinking anything stronger than Diet Coke…I had never really wanted to tackle the tune before…it’s got four parts for heaven’s sake. Until recently those four parts were intimidating. For whatever reason I looked at it yesterday and thought that it was really two tunes schmooshed together (I’m sure that I read someplace that schmoosh is an ancient Irish fairy word)…so it’s two normal sized tunes hooked up. Of course it doesn’t play that way, but it helped with my head games. Parts one and four are doing well…I should have 2 and 3 under control later this evening…then committing it to the type of memory where one would start the tune with others and carry the thing through with some degree of confidence (and of course style).

Also am working on a tune that comes from the Starry Plough…I have no idea what the name of the jig is…it’s in D…but I’m learning it from the recordings I have made. I can play along pretty well…well at least last night…so that’s working it’s way through the process.

I’d sort of like to add 5-6 tunes to my book over the next week. Brenda is out of town, so unless I’m on the road or really feel compelled to watch TV I can practice all I want. Give me a break…do you really think I’m going to tackle the housework until the day she comes home? Get real…well maybe a little here and there.

I really should stop going anywhere and playing. It would be so much easier if I didn’t have to do that…think about it. I could be the King of the Kastle…Dominator of the Domain…Ham of the House…Leader of the Lack…

It seems that whenever I do go out (this was a four stop week) I have a few more tunes thrown at me that are “cool” and I then start to think that they (the tunes) should be put into the “must learn” binder…oh come on Jim…show just a little restraint. If all the tunes that I had suggested to me or sounded fun to me were put on the list I would need to learn an additional 11 tunes (or so)…now the average going out week is 3 events…so that would bring an additional 8 tunes (or so) EVERY week…are you kidding me?! Eight…8 every week? Dear Lord…does this never end?

I’m beginning to think that the green that the Irish are so famous for runs more deeply than just the Guinness once a year in March…they were the original green people…it seems that they learnt the tunes by ear…not so much because they didn’t read dots but because that way they didn’t need to cut down more trees to print the dots onto. It was all about saving paper…nothing to do with just sharing a tune…when I figured this out I was slightly embarrassed by my obscene use of paper…paperless office my arse.

Who in their right mind would/could learn 8 tunes every week…and some of those tunes are four parters! That’s like learning an additional tune with each one of those beasts.

The sad thing is that I really do hear that many cool tunes or not so cool tunes with uber cool twist to them…or sets that crank it up…Bohola 4…now there’s an album that will do it too ya…so on top of what you might find at sessions etc…there are those damn able CDs and albums (yeah some folks still listen to black discs going round and round)…so add a couple of tunes from those sources to the eight…easily it’s now TEN tunes a week…geeze…that’s like 520 a year…and if you travel much and listen to more CDs…it’s more than that! But still that would be 5200 over the next decade…if you tell a 20 year old that by the time their 70 they will need to find time to learn 26,000 tunes they will quit right there…are there 26,000 tunes to even learn?

So there you have it…proof of sorts that getting out of the house just increases your chances of giving up and quitting the Irish music thing…the numbers just don’t make sense…it can’t be real. So staying at home would be much more realistic than going out and learning that I can’t possibly keep up with myself…and then there is that issue of being environmentally responsible and not printing any more music…sure…whatever…the paperless office drivel lives on through Irish music.

Every so often I find myself in a situation where I have a bunch of tunes “in progress” and nothing coming out at the end of the production line…something gets jammed up in the workings of the brain…the inner workings of the little pea sized organ (I’m being generous I know) is just amazing sometimes.

The result, when it does occur, is that the bunch of tunes come out the chute at the same time…more-or-less. Then I have to polish them and play them until the confidence is high enough to spring them on my fans (well, really it’s a fan…my dog loves this stuff). But as I polish them out…nothing goes into the production line to rough out.

The cycle continues…tune binging.

Sittin’ in a slow session this last week someone announced with complete authority that such and such as tune was commonly play with another such and such…well tune two is on the Marin Ceoltas list…Wind That Shakes the Barley…tune one however…never heard it or of it before. Of course I had met the authority at another uber-slow session a few months ago…never seen him at the session I attend regularly. Not sure if I would use the gentleman as a source of good info. Ever happen to you before? Sure it has.

Was in Berkeley at “The Show” at the Starry Plough…eleven fiddles fiddling…wow. Of course the bow close to the side of the head could be expected…but I’m considering safety glasses for situations like that. Only a handful of guitars…and a gaggle of drums…they should name themselves “Rhythm Thunder”…

Once upon a time friend Doug told me that watching my tipper hand on the bodhran helped him with his guitar rhythm…thank you…but usually I like to sit within ear-shot and with great vision of the guitar in a session because I pick up a lot of clues for the groove they are setting from listening to the groove (duh) and by watching their pick hand. In a large session the hands of all drummers and guitars should be going up and down at the same time…now they may be skipping the skin or the strings from time to create their additions to the music, but the hands should be moving together…if not, someone is either ahead or behind the group.

So in Berkeley I take the opportunity to sit with the box on my lap and watch and listen…one notoriously nasty drummer…sticks her head into the skin and taps away…noticeably off the beat (way WAY behind)…every tune…every time…when the tune ends, there is always a measure or so of additional drumming with the “is it over?” approach…the never ending tune. Very sad.

Once, I was in a large mass workshop for handbells with noted conductor/composer Jim Merideth…oh, and never stand in the front row with him conducting unless you have buns of steel…it was nerve wracking and intimidating…but Mr. Merideth told the group not to wait until his baton came down on “one” to think about “one”…we needed to anticipate the beat and if we didn’t we would be behind. He’s right.

A lot of the Irishness we love about our music is about playing together and a lot of playing together is to anticipate…together. Watching, listening and playing…together…I hope.

Every other week I spend some time down at the local bookstore, Railroad Depot Bookstore, in Pittsburg and if folks show up we learn a tune or two together. Some weeks nobody with an instrument shows up and I end up practicing tunes by myself.

On the days when instrumentalists don’t show up I usually end up playing for shoppers or lately, for people who want to listen to Irish music.

Strangely, I over looked the audience aspect of playing in a more public space. I should not have been able to over look this aspect of the event as I regularly play in sessions and there are folks sitting just a few feet away just for the pure joy of listening…but somehow with this ceoltas that I’ve started I over looked this listening detail.

Recently I played a tune in a session and received a few compliments about the playing. While I do try to play the humble card, inside I was smiling. Not beaming mind you…just a smaller smile. There were a few glitches in the play that perhaps folks didn’t hear, so I know that there is a whole lot of improvement possibilities with that tune…but I was rather pleased myself. But that somebody else was listening too and appreciating the play puts the whole music thing in a new realm.

I’d probably play the tunes for myself without anyone ever hearing them…but I have to admit that playing with and for others is a more complete joy.

Once upon a time…many moons ago…in a land far far away…in a distant galaxy…I was a potter. Yeah, I know, who would have thunk it…but maker of pots I was. It is a complete gas for me to sit down and throw pots. I like it…more correctly…I LOVE it. When I would look around the studio and see all those pots sitting there I was pretty satisfied. I enjoyed the glazing process…I liked the decorating…come to think about it there weren’t too many aspects of the studio that I didn’t like…but it wasn’t until folks stopped by the booth at a crafts fair and expressed their joy over the pots, that my own joy was complete.

I have heard of artists doing their art for the simple joy of doing it…audience not required. But somehow I don’t believe it…it certainly doesn’t work that way for me. I mean I like playing at home for myself…but it isn’t until the work is shared that all the pieces of the puzzle come together and the art is complete.

One of the luxuries that I have afforded myself over the last few weeks is to listen to more material…some tunes I “play” and some I want to play…of course there are a lot of them that don’t interest me (at this time). But with the Holiday Season nearly behind us, it’s time to get serious. Play or shut up!

Brenda and I talked about my choices for the tune goals for this next year and she had one question that I was comfortably able to answer. She asked me why the goal was 50 tunes in the next 12 months when I already know I have done 50 in 9 months…why not set a higher goal? I told her that I was setting a more lofty goal by wanting to “perfect” some of the tunes I think I know and to learn the new ones better. She thought that was good…so life is fine around here once again.

I explained my rationale for choosing tunes in advance of learning them…my list is almost complete as we speak…the learning part has just barely started but the list is nearly finished. Of course in the process of fleshing out the lists of tunes I found that I needed to pare some of the lists down a bit and lengthen a couple at the same time. I didn’t give myself enough room for reels and had too many jigs…that sort of thing. I also took the time to put the key signature next to each tune I was considering so that I can make sure that I learn a wider variety of keys…an example is a tune in E Major…geeze…a long way from D for sure.

Now with a tune list more-or-less approaching completion…or at least well on it’s way for the first part of the year, I can concentrate on putting my listening time into the tune(s) I’ve tasked myself with learning. Also, by having a list to work from I know that some tunes are not in my library so I need to go out and find them so that I can listen to them.

So the functional side of learning all these tunes is to be prepared a bit (maybe more than most) and to rough them out here and there…polishing the little bits while Brenda is out of the house…counting on her four 10 day trips a year and the five 4 day ones to be able to go over (over and over and once more…over) the tunes to shine them up. I mean really…if 60 days of “alone” isn’t enough to pull this off there is no hope.

So with “hope” I will start this new year, but I’m sad to see the “Season of Chex Mix” slide away for another year…sort of slips right by..polka dotting the season with goodness and then vanishes reel quick like…just about the time we’re all jigged up and ready for more, we end the puns and wonder why nothing really goes with hornpipe.

I don’t really reset my clock on New Years Day…my calendar growing up was a “school year”…with vast amounts of time not on any clock…summer…no time lost…Christmas break…no time lost…and Spring Break…same thing. Every wonder why one holiday is named in a liturgical way and the other very secular? Who thunk of those names…but anyway…my calendar still is based on when school used to start and stop…I think it has something to do with my parents both being school teachers…it’s how the family clocked in and out of vacations (which we enjoyed to the max)…

…all that said, I still take part of the Christmas season to re-direct some of the goals I set for myself. I am a goal driven person…without them, I flounder around aimlessly. I don’t really do the “new year’s resolution thing”…but I do re-direct goals and set new ones.

This past year my primary musical goal was to “learn” 50 tunes on the button box. Well…let’s call that done and not be too awfully happy with the results of “learning”…seems that one can forget a tune also. So out of the 50 that I felt bold enough to put onto the list, there will end up being a net gain of about 30. Fine…be that way. Four tunes a month or about one a week seemed to be a good number (I actually did 50 in 39 weeks +/-)…but one a week keeps it interesting…I’m able to more-or-less pull that off…so for this next year I’m going to stay with a 50 tune goal.

But I’m going to modify that goal a bit by thinking of where the learned tunes might be played…so I’ll break the goal down into 30 tunes for the sessions I frequent and 20 tunes for me…maybe “my” tunes will be session-able and maybe not…but 30 for sessions and 20 of my choice. Of course I can cheat a bit by removing tunes already on the list from 2011 and putting new material into those slots…but by the end of 2012 I want 100 tunes on the list…50 of those (or more) learned in 2012.

The mix of tunes…it’s important to look at what types of tunes I might want to have this new list look like…it would be possible to learn 50 polkas…of course that would screw up the 30 session tune part of the goal…but even 20 polkas would be a bit much so we’ll limit those to 5 new ones…and slips and slides…same sort of limits of say, two sets each…then limiting the jigs to five sets…”art” tunes to 7 tunes…leaving 12 tunes called reels…cool…50! Of course I don’t have any hornpipes in this mix so things will probably change a bit through the year…but this is a good start.

I call waltzes and aires “art” songs and really want to put more effort into playing slowly…all the bellow changes and fingering has to be played even more cleanly when you play slowly as all the little screwiness is out there for all to hear. The box I acquired recently was purchased with playing these types of tunes in mind.

I notice that I’m writing the goal in terms of sets…hmmmm…subconsciously I think I’m telling myself that part of the goal is to learn sets and not just one-off tunes. Okay…that will be part of the goal…all the tunes (except the “art” tunes) are to be playable in sets.

What I don’t want to do is to become a tune-wonk. I really want to take a musical approach to these tunes…with some amount of focus, by the end of 2012, I should be able to play 50-60 tunes off the list comfortably and enjoy each of them…in sets…and mostly with other players. Now that would be scary…lets be honest, learning the 12 new reels is a tad scary…hopefully not scary sounding.

How can one justify getting a better instrument…I know I just did…I know friend Robyn is shopping. It was rather easy for me…I’ll share some thoughts.

This decision is sometimes a big one. Good instruments are not “cheap”…entry level Steinway’s are in the $30K range and that’s rebuilt. New is mid-50K…great button boxes (a whole lot more Irish) push the 4K mark…flutes 2x that…guitars sameish…fiddles…hahaha…that’s more like the Steinway…so the money one puts into a new a bigger/badder instrument is going to pinch all but that 1% crowd…and I’m sure that they’re all over the Irish Music thing right? You might not see yourself with a “great” instrument…but still my concept for choosing one is the same…

When I was a newly inducted teenager my parents decided to invest in a new piano for me. I had been playing for 6 years or so on a 50 year old upright…nice enough piano but not great (still have the old upright). So we went shopping with the purpose of finding an instrument that would be more appropriate for the skills that I had…and get this…for the skills I was wanting to develop! The new instrument thing is an investment of money…sure…but it’s an investment in the skills you want to develop. So the new piano (which I also still have) was not just a brag toy to tinker on and look good in the living room…it was a tool. It was not easy for my school teacher parents to purchase that monster but it really did help me tremendously and I’m still very thankful for that stretch.

The button box investment was made with that same forward thinking process in mind. I’m not good enough to really do the new box justice…I know that but, the little twiddly bits between the notes needed some help and the old box just wasn’t going to be fast enough to take me where I want to go…not that my fingers are all that fast, but the action on the old box was slow to respond…the new one has extremely fast action. The new box has 3 banks of reeds…hand made reeds with a very mellow flavor…the new bellows are smooth on the transitions…so some of the tunes I want to learn (working on it) will be fine on the new box and would have never been worth the effort on the old one. The old box is not a bad one but she and I could not make the trip together…she was an anchor and I want to sail.

What it really comes down too is where you want to go…not where you’re at. Don’t buy an instrument that just suits your current needs…look to the future…buy one to stretch you…something you can grow into and then go there…grow there.