🎻 Another win for the slow but steady progress books

Hi Reader!

Last week I mentioned how I hit a goal of being asked to play onstage at one of my dream venues/events, and how there was a 12 year gap in between first wanting that goal and then seeing it come to fruition.

The topic seemed to hit a chord with you, so I wanted to share another similar circumstance I noticed during the Swannanoa Gathering Celtic Week of slow but steady progress over time.

Staff musicians at Swannanoa get to take one class as part of the week (which I definitely see as a perk -- usually when I teach at other events, it's at the same time as other classes I'd love to sit in on).

I chose to take Eimear Arkins' song class As Gaeilge (in Irish), because I find I retain lyrics in Irish better when I spend concentrated time working on them with a native Irish speaker.

Eimear did not disappoint!

She patiently went through each line of the songs we were working on and paid very detailed attention to pronunciation and meaning. I picked up new tips that I can bring back to improve repertoire I already sing (ie. "go" is more of a soft o like "guh" instead of "goh". Same for mo and do).

And I also very distinctly remember (and have the pages to prove it) when I had to write the pronunciation over every single word when studying Sean Nós singing with Máire ní Chéilleachair 10 years ago during my Masters studies at UCC.

Now skip to two weeks ago, and my page of lyrics looks much cleaner. Still a few words that need notes, but I just counted my notes on one of the songs and there are only 8 pronunciations written there -- the rest are words I now know how to say in Irish.

And no, I am nowhere near being able to speak conversational Irish (another goal for another day).

But the markings on the page are showing me progress that feels painfully slow when you're in the moment, but marks a huge degree of progress in continuing to learn about this other language.

Weekly Tune Library Update

​Martin Wynne's No. 3 and Trip to Durrow are now live in the Library as well as your first of four slip jig tutorials this month!

Martin Wynne's No. 5 is a beautiful reel in F major (not a ton of those circling around) that I'll be adding next. For some advance listening, you can check out Track 9 in my latest album At the Core).

Per request, I'm also adding Pigeon on the Gate, which is a great E minor reel to have in your rotation as well! It's one that comes up fairly regularly in the Detroit and Ann Arbor sessions if you're ever visiting my area! 😁

To parallel this example with something that I work with a lot of students on, let's talk about picking up tunes by ear for a minute. I am a big proponent of zooming out and looking for patterns (much like Irish grammar rules).

As you learn more tunes and spend more time trying to remember which note goes where:

You might start to notice that you keep playing the same notes in certain places.

You might start to notice an interval pattern that comes up across multiple tunes.

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And then you may notice that you like to bow certain intervals a similar way.

And then you may notice that it’s getting easier to pick up tunes by ear more quickly.

You might also have noticed that those last four sentences were structured the way you may see an A and B part in a tune — each sentence started with the same phrase, then concluded with something slightly different!

See what I did there? That’s the type of pattern you’re looking for!

Recognizing phrases and picking tunes up more quickly by ear is also one of those "long term" skill builds. Some tunes come more quickly than others -- and while I tend to gravitate towards polkas or marches being the easiest to start picking up by ear, there's a pretty good perhaps lesser known case for slip jigs too!

The slip jig section in the Tune Library can use some rounding out, so for the entire month of August I'm adding in a new slip jig tutorial every week. This week it's the Whinny Hills of Leitrim.

If learning by ear has been feeling daunting or like a skill you want to brush up on from the comfort and safety of your own practice room, the Tune Library slip jigs section isn't a bad place to start. :)

Happy playing!

~Hannah