We have two weekly sessions in the southeast Michigan area that I like to attend fairly regularly. One of them tends to be more fiddle-heavy than the other (cue all the G minor tunes before the flutes and pipes arrive).
Last weekend, we had three fiddles at the start and broke into a bit of 3-part harmony for one of our opening jig sets.
It was super fun, but it also got me thinking... this doesn't always work in the Irish traditional scene.
I remember taking a workshop with Liz Carroll about a decade ago, and she said that before you vary a tune you should really be comfortable with the bare bones and notes of that tune.
(My 1:1 students and I like to joke that a missed note in a lesson was just a variation, and I stand by letting that slide -- part of the joy of this music is its lightheartedness and not taking things too seriously!)
One of our fiddlers at the session has a gift for harmonizing tunes, and an extensive background both with accompaniment and melody. So I trust a lot of his choices, and always enjoy getting to play with him!
But I also notice he doesn't do it on every tune. And he especially doesn't do it if it's a tune he doesn't know.
He's not playing a harmony line in order to have something to do when he doesn't know the melody. He's playing a harmony line when he knows the melody inside and out and wants to play around with what's familiar to create something new.
I think that his approach to harmony is a great model for an approach to variation -- and models what Liz said in the workshop years ago.
But there is also a very valid question of "what are the actual notes of this tune? X player plays it this way but Y player plays a different set of notes in the second bar!"
If you're hearing two different versions of a tune, it can be really hard to decide which is "original" or "correct". I remember being in another workshop with a different fiddler a few years later and having him correct a couple of notes I was playing in Dr. Gilbert's reel, saying what I played was wrong.
And I also remember thinking "that's your feedback for me?! What source were you getting your version from? How do you know it's the "right" one?"
In retrospect, the better version of that feedback might have been "I play this section differently -- do you want to learn this pattern so you can interchange it with the one you know?"
(That fiddle player has since redeemed himself, so I'll leave the name anonymous.)
This could definitely be a discussion topic for another email... is a tune more "right" if you're going off the original source, or is it by playing it the way most people play it in your session? Tunes do tend to evolve over time!
We're less than a week away from our first workshop, Reader, and I'm excited to see you soon!
While I'll be giving you one version of the notes in our two tunes, we'll definitely look at multiple bowing and ornament options -- not because you need to do them all, but because there are multiple good ways to bow or ornament a tune and have it sound Irish! So I like to give options. :)
Lastly, in last week's email I finished up by saying I'd hopefully have the Blackwater Banks tune learned by this time next week -- and happy to say I did!
You can watch a video of it here as well as The Brosna Reel. I'd say that there is a 4-legged feline cameo included, but is it technically a cameo when he stretches himself across the entire lower half of the screen for the full recording? Watch til the end for Bewley's feedback!
Safe to say his feedback is always phrased in a way that makes me smile...
โ