There's more to folk than Fairport

Just a short squeak on my practice chanter this evening as I was late back from work and then it's band night. The fan helped me with learning the second part of the Whistle. My main problem is that the high A sounds awful on the chanter - something not quite right with the reed - and it's very off-putting.

Anyway, I’m finally getting around to the promised post on my increased interest in traditional music. I suppose the general thrust of the first post was that this is nothing new: traditional music, in one form or another, has always been part of my life. Music has always been part of my life – both listening and playing. The general thrust of this post is about why traditional music bears exploration and re-listening, and also the change – or maybe just an addition to – the ways in which I listen to music.

Traditional music, like a lot of labels for things in the arts, is a very generic term covering a very large range. Such generic labels are often used by those who aren’t familiar with the genre and give rise to comments such as “I’m not interested in classical music” or “I don’t like modern art”. The term “classical music” isn’t actually very helpful. It covers everything from short, light, tinkly bits of piano (you can keep Chopin, as far as I am concerned) to endless hours of Wagnerian opera. Even if you narrow down to just opera there’s a world of difference between a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta and Wagner, or between Mozart and Verdi. Even within the single composer of opera it’s possible to love every second of La Traviata and yet to feel that it would be perfectly possible to live a full and happy life without ever hearing another note of Nabucco. And that’s before you even start on different singers, performances, conductors...

My family generally refer to traditional music as “hey nonny-nonny” or “plinky-plunk” music. I know what they mean and there are definitely bits that could be characterised in one way or another. To the casual listener – as to the casual listener for any genre – it may well “all sound the same”. The more I’ve listened to traditional music the more I have come to understand that it’s a very broad church. The simplest split is between Irish and Scots although plenty of tunes move between the two traditions (I’m ignoring English folk here, because I don’t generally listen to it). There’s the dance music end (Teada), right through to a more orchestral (Duncan Chisholm) or even chamber music (Ian Mcinnes, Deadly Buzz, Martin Hayes) sound, with a single instrument or a handful of carefully chosen instruments. As with the orchestral tradition there is a roughly defined group of instruments that are likely to be involved (pipes of various kinds, fiddles, various stringed instruments, boxes of all sorts, whistles) and instruments that you don’t expect, but which somehow work very well (harpsichord, harmonium, horns). Then there is all the crossover of traditions – Irish and Swedish, Irish and Galician, or folk rock or electric folk. Even a single instrument can be used in lots of different ways.

Traditional music, on other words, is not just River Dance or the Morris or the highland fling. It is a whole world of music and if you spent your whole life listening only to that you wouldn't lack musical variety. And as with any music the more you listen the more you hear the nuances, the differences.

 

Hm. So I think this was part two - "there's a lot more to folk music than Fairport". Part three, when I get round to it, will cover how I am learning to listen to music differently.

 

Rereading the blog recently I spotted my pledge to play every day in February, which I had totally forgotten! February starts soon, and I must try to record as often as I can. I will keep blogging to a minimum so that spare time goes on piping.

Whistle down the wind

I meant to start earlier today, but couldn't quite tear myself away from Peter May's The Blackhouse. Unusual crime story - the usual copper-with-complicated-private-life, pain in the neck superior officer and comic sidekick, but lots of very evocative writing about the Isle of Lewis, and really the mystery is all in the protagonist's past, hidden on the island, and the murder that sets everything in motion is almost a red herring.

I played the King, mostly. I've been trying to stick in all the gracenotes, which slows it down, but does make it sound richer and more as it should. So long since I played a half F doubling that I had to stop and work out what it was. The doubling on B is good - I'm pleased with it - just a chirrup. The double E is...well, a disgrace. Not so much a chirrup as a fat man with his foot stuck in a bucket tripping up a step. It's along time since I went through any of the exercise books I have, and I think I should revisit them, probably on the practice chanter. Still a long way from playing the darned thing dotless though, and I don't know why. I have played phrases over and over until you'd think they were burned in my brain, and two seconds later I can't play a single note of them.

The recording is the Eagle's Whistle. I had lost the tune, and asked the fan to remind me. He hummed the first couple of bars and there I was, playing it again. Need to listen to the various versions I have to get gracenotes. It's also still only the A part. The fan suggests it would sit nicely on the end of the Rowan Tree. I recorded twice. The first time I was distracted by reading the story of Andy's Australian defeat and the second by the thought that I needed to skip out and put petrol in my car before dark. This is the version I'm adding here.



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Not Bad

I think the last post was really just meant to say that I'm not new to folk music, but I also wanted to post about how I listen to music differently these days. However, it's not something I'm in the mood to write about today.

Not played much recently - we've had a visitor staying, The fan says I put obstacles in my way, but I'm aware that pipes aren't to everyone's taste, and somehow pipe playing is not what you'd want from the modern hostess. Morag came out briefly to demonstrate alleged progress I have made since the last time I saw the visitor, and I've tootled on the practice chanter briefly a couple of times when I've been home alone.

Today I've had the Eagle's Whistle in my head. The fan recommended I play it. The last time I tried I had the dots up on my laptop, and hadn't printed them, so I tried to pick it out. The fan identified the opening note and I managed to get the A part, sans much in the way of grace notes, but it's OK, and quite satisfying to play. Like the King it has a really rhythmic rocking beat to it.

The King is still defeating me. Other tunes I tussle with, but mostly manage. The Tree I manage twice through non-stop, with just one error. Not bad, I feel, not bad at all.

My life in folk tunes

The fan mentioned over dinner the other evening that he was curious as to why I am now so very much into traditional music. I've always been aware of traditional music, I think. I'm old enough to have done "music and movement" in school, which involved English folk dance, which I assume we did to English folk tunes, although I don't remember the music. My grandfather - who rather enjoyed teasing other people - had a record of Scottish pipe bands, which he mostly played to annoy. My father is fond of light opera and the tenor voice, and often listened to records as he was cooking Sunday lunch. This is where I first came across John McCormack and Robert White singing polite drawing-room version of Irish traditional songs: The Wearing of the Green, She Moved Through The Fair, The Mountains of Mourne, The Rose of Tralee, Danny Boy...

We had penny whistles for a while, and they all came with Irish tunes - the Minstrel Boy I remember the most. Then I bought (why?) a set of English, Scottish and Irish tune books for my recorder and had those for years. At University I did some musical exploration. Nothing a fan of real traditional music would accept, I think, but I lurked around the edges in many ways: Bob Dylan, the Furies (which I think I came to via the recommendation of a folk-loving aunt), the soundtrack to Cal (the book was on my reading list) which was probably my first introduction to  Irish pipes. Eventually I found the Pogues.

When I met the fan he handed me a pile of vinyl and I listened to the Bothy Band (I liked the songs best), De Dannan (The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba in Galway one of my all time favourites), some Ossian (which I didn't entirely take to).

And then we were busy setting up home and the fan sang in a choral society and I listened to a lot of opera and baroque, and we both occasionally twanged on the mandolin and sometimes went to the local folk club, but folk music wasn't a big part of our lives. I think it came back when the fan found a fellow mandolin player busking in our village. That chance encounter has led to going to various sessions, signing up to the Session and Trad Connect, meeting people, visits to Scotland and Ireland, discovering Foot Stompin, All Celtic Records, Coda Music, Custys', and a rapidly growing CD collection. It has also led to the spare room being home to the mandolin, a mandola, a bouzouki, two guitars, two bodhrans, a couple of whistles and Morag. It has led to the Monkey, and this blog. It's been a musical journey, with many side roads, diversions and breakdowns, but we feel - the fan and I - as though we're going in the right direction now.

Which is all background, really, and doesn't explain my current enthusiasm, which I'll cover in another post.

Winter warmer

I got home this morning and I was cold. I've been cold all day, but at least when I get home I expect to be warm. So I thought - I could throw on another layer, but as I'm wearing three already that seemed a bit much. I could turn up the heating, but high ceilings and large windows being what they are that may or may not make a difference. Then I thought about Morag...

I didn't play for long, but I did remember and play through my entire play list (except the Highlanders, which I didn't fancy today). I had to fight my fingers a bit as they were keen to keep on playing Teribus. The fan considered that I played the Rocks at a good speed. It was fun, but it was all over so fast. Still not getting anywhere with the King, either.

Water, water everywhere

Seems like weeks since I last played. Our dishwasher died on Saturday and they can't send an engineer until next Tuesday. Our new bathroom sprang a leak and we've had water just about everywhere and are still drying out. I've thought about some blog posts. The fan wondered on Friday at why I'd got so into traditional music, which I wanted to talk about here. The other things I've currently forgotten... The King has stopped going round my head and has been replaced by the Banks of Allen. I've just started on my second mitten. Work is taking up too much time. Work, scraping ice off my car and washing up - they've all eaten into piping time. Tomorrow, maybe.

Memory and desire

I've been trying to think how I remember all the pointless, facts, rhymes, poetry and quotation that my brain is full of. Much of it is quite short and just seeped into my brain through repeated reading. Some of it I know I memorised on purpose – large chunks of Shakespeare, for example, so that I could quote from it in exams. This second category I'm more likely to have difficulty remembering now. The rhymes (A Russian stood on Nevski bridge, chewing his beard for lack of food. It’s tough, this stuff, he said, to eat, but a darn sight better than  Shredded Wheat) I've known all my life and when I stopped reading the books they were in I used to recite them – I will still recite them from time to time. So simple repetition over time worked there, although the remembering was accidental: it was never particularly my intention to learn these things.  

The Shakespeare I read with the intention of memorising, and would have read it over and over, testing myself by trying to write it out, but this was done in short bursts before exams, and, not being much used since, has fallen away. I suppose this isn't surprising: we all know that we have short-term and long-term memory, and intensive exam cramming clearly goes in the short-term memory box. Things like the periodic table, never used since school days, vanished, but the Shakespeare occasionally seems apposite, and I will dredge it up, so it has clearly moved into long term memory. I chucked chemistry at A level, but spent three  more years on literature, so I spent more time reading Shakespeare than the periodic table.

With the King, I'm using the dots to play over and over – which is akin to the purposeful memorising of exam cramming. I am listening to the CD often, but I can’t listen to the one track over and over, and I don’t want to hear the CD every  single day, much as I like it. I am hoping this is more akin to reading those rhymes from time to time. The process of memorising might take longer, but when it finally sinks in it will be to long-term memory.

What I don’t know is whether stuff moves from short-term to long-term – so whether learning both ways reinforces memory – or whether actually if something is going in to long-term memory all efforts to stick it in to short-term are redundant. Does the short-term memory augment long-term, or block it, or do they not interact at all?

Either way, I am starting to remember the King. I've had the first stage, when I think I have heard the tune as I slept, but couldn't recall it in the day. I've been trying to hum it on purpose this week, but can only recall the opening and closing bars. This morning, walking from the car park to my desk, I realised that I was humming the whole thing. As soon as I stopped to listen to myself humming the tune got all shy and vanished. But clearly it is in some compartment of my memory, and now I just need to be patient and wait for it to move to the section of memory that is linked to my fingers so that I can play it.

Tune is Teribus, again. Dotless, complete with fluffs while I struggle to remember where the tune goes next. Shutting my eyes helps me avoid some distractions. Others (connector tube popping out, drones sounding irritating, although the fan says they are fine, tense shoulder) not so easily avoided.

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A name is not a tune

I mentioned yesterday that I had intended to post about tunes and their names. The fan says it’s within the (Byzantine) etiquette of sessions to take a little list of tunes you know, just to remind you what you might want to play. But the problem is that remembering the title of a tune doesn't necessarily mean you remember the tune. I find this when I practice: a tune comes to mind, and I play it. Sometimes another comes to mind, sometimes I just start playing and a tune appears (which I love!), and sometimes I stop and have to try to remember what tunes I know. But what comes to mind – what I am trying to think about – is not the tunes themselves, but their names, and sometimes when I have recalled the name I still can’t remember what the tune is.

I'm not sure what to do about this. I can’t not remember the tune titles, because they are at least a guide. I also think that the bit of my brain that remembers words and text is separate from the bit that remembers tunes. The fan often says that when you can hum a tune you know it well enough to play it. My humming tends not to be accurate. I listened to Seudan in the car on the way home yesterday, and to Allan MacDonald singing along with his pipes. I know that Canntaireachd was used to teach tunes, and I know that I don’t know Canntaireachd, but I did wonder if I could warble wordlessly to myself (is this what is called “diddling”?) and that might help with the tune. I tried this yesterday with the King, but it certainly didn't have instant results.

I now wonder if what I actually need is words for the tunes, because I remember words quite easily, and maybe they will remind me of the tune. Some tunes do have words, or course, and I find if  I Google a tune once I put the name in it will always add “lyrics” as part of a suggested search. I've often wondered why people want words to tunes, but perhaps it’s to help them remember. If words and music are remembered differently, or in different parts of the brain then possibly I can use the strength of my word-memory to improve my music-memory. On the other hand, maybe my word memory will just be used to patch gaps in my music memory, which won’t then flourish. Perhaps I should be trying to build up my ability to remember music, but I'm not sure how I train myself to do that other than as I am now – playing or listening to tunes over and over (but making sure that when I am “listening” I am concentrating and really noticing and not just tuning out with the music as a pleasant background).

No actual playing this evening. The temperature has dropped and I have mittens to knit.

Playlist update

I wish this showed an enormous improvement in the last list...but then I also wish for world peace, an acre of land and more time to knit and we can't always get what we want.


Pretty much totally dotless

• Atholl Highlanders (which I hardly ever play these days)

• Banks of Allen

• Barren Rocks

• My Home Town

• Castle Dangerous

• Bonnie Galloway

• The Rowan Tree

• Teribus

Stuff I am learning

• Leaving Barra (I almost knew this at one stage, but never seem to play it)

• The March of the King of Laoise

• Flett from Flotta (I think I half knew this, but haven't played it in an age)

Stuff I want to learn

• Heights of Casino

• A Boy's Lament for his Dragon

This last section is actually more accurately "stuff I want to learn, which I've got the dots for, and have probably tried once or twice, but don't seem to have got very far with." Some tunes seem very nice, but somehow the attraction wears off very quickly. Some tunes just seem, on the first run through, so fiendishly difficult that it doesn't seem worth trying. Other tunes I've heard and want to play one day, but haven't even looked for the dots, or have looked and not found.

Am also trying to add labels to this post. Hopefully can eventually get organised and label all posts to help me find a refer back to older items. Especially useful when I want to listen to a recording.

Never match my sweet imagination

Often during the day I will think of a concise,witty and informative blog post. By the time I get home either I have forgotten it entirely, or I start adding to it and spoiling its simplicity. This blog is rather like a conversation (albeit talking to myself...) and once I get started there's no stopping me!

Today I meant to post about tune titles and how knowing a tune title is not the same as knowing a tune. This is one of those lightbulb moments when I discover the blindingly obvious. It comes back to an earlier comment I made about knowing in a sort of general theoretical way and knowing through experience.

Anyway, I'm not doing that post, because the fan offered to cook tonight, so I got Morag out. Like the posts, my playing is never quite as elegant, measured, musical as I imagine when I think about it during the day. I managed to play a fair few tunes dotless - I need to update my playlist. I discovered that if I stare intently into the middle distance in a not-quite-focussed way that helps me get into the zone. I think this means that when I'm playing in front of people I will look totally brainless, but it can't be helped.

Unfortunately, whether I stare into the middle distance or not, the King will not come. I'm tripping over my fingers (as it were), playing non-existent notes, fluffing the few bits that I do know. It's a mess, even with dots  it's a mess. With chanter or full pipes it's a mess. With or without drones it's a mess. On the positive side pressure and pumping seem to be returning to normal. And one day, surely, the King will come...

Cooking with Morag

It was reasonably quiet at work today, and I was thinking about music, and wondering if I ought to have a sort of new year resolution to play more often - perhaps to says that I will play for at least 30 minutes each  day in February. February is nice and short, of course, and includes half term. It's also before the evenings draw out and the siren call of the allotment begins. And what are 30 minutes? It will just mean that dinner is late, or that we wear un-ironed clothes, or that I don't get much knitting done, or that I miss The Archers once in a while.

As I started on dinner this evening I thought how tired I felt and how nice it would be to lie down for 10 minutes..and then I thought perhaps I'd like to pipe for 10 minutes. So out came Morag. I played the Atholl Highlanders, which I've not played for so long I couldn't even remember what it was! Then the Rowan Tree and Teribus, and so on to the King. I tried to play dotless, I really did. I couldn't get past the first half of either part. I tried on the practice chanter, in case my fingers remembered that way. I tried listening to the recording several times over, but at that point the hob timer went off and I had to check things and re-time things...and generally didn't really listen to the recording. Once I'd moved dinner on to the next stage I whipped the dots out and played a few times through.

So I played - dinner will be about on time(ish), and nothing got (very) burnt in the process. Proof of concept, anyway!

Frustrated

I meant to play today, then got caught up in the usual Sunday routine of chores, and in the end found just 20 minutes or so before getting dinner ready.

Feel a little frustrated. The King of Laoise not as good as it might be. I actually do better on my practice chanter: gracing is better, cleaner, faster, my hands are more relaxed. As it's about the same size as the pipe chanter I'm not sure why it's different. The practice chanter perhaps lighter, but then I have to support it entirely while the pipes chanter is supported by the bag. I suppose it's that rest of everything: like a learner drive who can happily park up, depress clutch and run through the gears, but ask me to change gear, mirror, signal, manoeuvre all at the same time and it suddenly feels very complicated, and very tense.

The thing is I feel I ought not be be such a beginner. I've been playing these damned pipes for over a year. Surely I should not still be grappling with my thumb tensing, too much bellows action, lack of pressure on the bag. Surely I should just be working on speed, timing, gracing and memorising this tune.

I did think my recent bout of numptiness (tensing, bellows etc) was down to not playing for a while. But I've played a lot recently, and still like an A grade numpty. As I said, it's frustrating.

PS - according to the Urban Dictionary numpty is a Scottish term, which is appropriate, I suppose.

Marching on (March of the King of Laoise)

So I spent a happy hour listening to more versions on YouTube: Allan Macdonald, Allan MacDonald and St Laurence O'Toole, the Chieftans, French bagpipes, an electric folk band then I had lunch and tried again. Back on the practice chanter and pleasantly surprised at how long I can play for, considering how long it is since I played it. However, I've got a slight cold and the after effect of all that blowing feels as though the entire army of the King of Laoise has stamped on the top of my head.

Back with Morag and still not feeling comfortable to the pressure levels, and finding my hands tensing, especially my right hand, so that's hopeless for getting cleanly on to those lower notes. Starting to play from memory.

I have recorded. Minimal gracing, needs fixing. Could be a tad faster. Timing is poor, especially around the 7th and 8th bars of the A part. My fingering on the bottom half of the chanter very poor: those low Gs are abysmal, frankly, and the BGD, BGB, DGD complained about earlier also poor. Still - plenty of room for improvement and I'm not going to mind playing this lots more times, because I love it.


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Advancing armies

There is a fantastic part in the Pini di Roma by Respighi in the last section. Trumpets sound, and as the sun comes up the Roman Army swings down the Appian way in all its conquering glory. I've heard the piece live and it gets into your blood so much that swear I didn't just hear the music: I saw that army, glorious and vigorous, the sunlight glancing off its shields and swords, its banners flapping in the breeze.

I'm feeling much the same about the wonderful March of the King of Laoise, as played by the Sea Stallions. On the one hand it has a courtly, stately feel to it: I can imagine it being a lively but very formal dance. But when the guitar comes in (and I speak as someone who normally feels that guitarists, and accompanists of all sorts, have no place at all in folk music), it definitely becomes an army. This time it's green hills and valleys they are tramping, but the tune is relentless; I can imaging the march going on and on. The guitar gives a percussive sound which is perhaps the drummers, beating time, or the clank of arms (military history definitely isn't my thing, so I think it sounds like chain mail but have a feeling that Irish armies wouldn't have worn such a thing).

Anyway, last night that army marched through my brain. They marched on and on, and this morning I felt I had to play it. Dots courtesy of Mr Kinnear (who says I can go up to collect the monkey in person when he's ready). As with many tunes that sound effortlessly and elegantly simple it's not that easy. I've been trying it without gracing. Although marked as a slow march there is no dawdling here. Despite having the tune in my head - and listening to the Stallions a few times - the timing is problematic. In the end I dusted off my chanter and managed to sort it with that. Still not easy: that DGD, BGB means getting fingers down clean and tight on the chanter, and my hands got too tired to do it properly after a while.

I intend to try again later and hopefully will record.

Missed Opportunity

Some years ago I spent some time in Aberdeen. I hadn’t particularly chosen to go there, I didn’t enjoy it at all, and I left as soon as I could. Considering my recent enthusiasm for all things Scottish (knitting as well as the music, and I’ve always been fond of the national drink) that year now feels like a wasted opportunity. 

I don’t recall coming across any piping, but I do know that asked for, and was refused, the opportunity to learn Gaelic. I was told that it would be no use to me. I’m not keen on the idea that learning of any kind should have a direct practical application in order for it to have value, and it’s particularly galling considering that the linguistics I studied instead turned out to have no bearing on my life or any of my interests either then or now. It’s not even the kind of thing that occasionally helps with the answers to clues in general knowledge crosswords.

But I do wish I had learned Gaelic. It would have tied in with my (now mostly lapsed) interest in folklore and folk tales, and it would certainly tie in with the traditional music, especially in its links to pibroch, which is something I’d definitely like to learn more about. Mind you, if I start reading up on piping and Gaelic song (and all the other aspects of Scottish culture that interest me) I'd have even less time for piping...