# Music by Genre > Old-Time, Roots, Early Country, Cajun, Tex-Mex >  Mandolin playing style - Old Time vs. Celtic

## sixwatergrog

Besides the obvious rhythmic and time signature differences inherent in the melodies, what are the differences and/or similarities to playing mandolin on a tune considered an "old time" tune vs. one that is considered and "Irish" tune?  For instance, does Irish mandolin utilize more triplets while old time mandolin uses more hammer-ons?

----------


## danb

Well, lots of similarities as well as differences. Stylistically, old-timey tunes tend to have less "ornamentation" on the melody. Both have an element of being played for dance, Irish music probably has a tighter grip on this in modern times. The result of that tends to be a stronger rhythmic element in Irish tunes.

Then there are the ornamentation styles.. on mandolin the Irish ornaments are usually imitative of other instruments.. Uilleann pipes, fiddle, etc.

----------


## JeffD

The pattern of chords are different. Neither is harder or easier to "get" with time, but my experience is that learning one doesn't make the other easier to get.

----------


## sixwatergrog

What do you mean by the pattern of chords being different?

----------


## JeffD

> What do you mean by the pattern of chords being different?



Let me preface by saying that chords are not my strong point. What I mean is that in IT it seems that the chords are more unpredictable and all over the place, while in OT the chords are either this or this or that. 

Not always of course, but just my experience I get more lost finding the chords in IT than OT. 

Which is odd because I have spent a lot more time playing IT than OT.

So I guess there is a greater range of chords and chord progressions used in IT than in OT.  

Both are pretty melody-centric - IT perhaps a little more so.

----------


## sixwatergrog

Maybe it's that Irish has a wider range of chordal variations and less predictability?  Been playing IT and OT tunes about 50/50 for 5 years, and for all of that time I've relied on tab + chords.  Now, for the first time, I'm trying to play tunes partially by ear by not looking at the tab.  I'm still looking at the suggested chords, and therefore can make educated guesses to kinda mimic the melody. I'm also trying to associate the chord changes with melodic shifts in the tune that necessitate the chord change to help my ear make that connection.

----------


## Jim Nollman

The difference seems more about individual tune structures than between one varied and very deep musical genre versus another musical genre. One interesting thing that comes up for me, is that I can often identify a tunes origin by listening to the fiddle technique,  but almost never by listening closely to the mandolin techniques, and I'm a mandolin player, not a fiddle player. If you listen to a lot of Cape Breton fiddle tunes, or Sligo fiddle tunes, you may understand what i mean. 

The mandolin is an afterthought in Irish and Scottish music, meaning that whatever you play originated somewhere else. The players who follow these  traditions most devotedly, feel quite certain that the mandolin player shouldn't  play chords or counter-rhythms. Unison is what you do.

I play contra dances, where the dance is king. Our band strings 2 or 3 tunes together, and these segues have nothing to do with their country of origin, and everything to do with advancing the key. G to D to A is one obvious segue. The piano owns the rhythm, the guitar usually enhances the syncopation, the fiddle plays the melody, and I am like a free safety in football. I play whatever's needed to move the dance forward. 

For just one of many examples, on Kitchen Girl (an Irish tune in A major in the A part and A minor in the B part) I double the fiddle melody on the A part, but play counter-rhythms off the piano in the B part to firm up the groove. My counter-rhythm is something you might hear in New orleans Boogaloo. After we do Kitchen Girl 3 times, we segue smoothly into "Shove the Pigs Foot" which is decidedly old time.

----------


## JeffD

> Maybe it's that Irish has a wider range of chordal variations and less predictability? .


Bingo.

I read and I learn by ear, but I am very melody centered. I have almost no chord intuition. 

I'll pick up the tune after a few rounds, especially in IT. Hearing a new slip jig after umpty ump years of slip - not too hard to grab on to it. A crooked OT tune, maybe a few more rounds, but I will get it eventually.  The process is very non-intellectual, and seems to involve letting it happen more than trying to make it happen.

Then later, at home, I may check the tune from one a tunebook or collection to see how close I was, or whether there was any subtle little thingie I missed.

But the chords, wow, my brain tries to "figure it out", and, as they say, I think and nothing happens.

----------


## JeffD

> The mandolin is an afterthought in Irish and Scottish music, meaning that whatever you play originated somewhere else. .


True, but this is also the case in OT, where the fiddle and banjo predominate.

In neither case is the mandolin unwelcome - there just is not a predefined role for it, like there is for bluegrass.

----------


## JeffD

> Stylistically, old-timey tunes tend to have less "ornamentation" on the melody. Both have an element of being played for dance, Irish music probably has a tighter grip on this in modern times. The result of that tends to be a stronger rhythmic element in Irish tunes.
> 
> Then there are the ornamentation styles.. on mandolin the Irish ornaments are usually imitative of other instruments.. Uilleann pipes, fiddle, etc.


My experience and understanding as well.

----------


## sixwatergrog

In some ways it's comforting to think that the origin of a tune is not as recognizable when played on mandolin, and that mandolin is an afterthought in traditional music.  I play both OT and IT with equal aplomb...and hopefully am not doing a disservice to either tradition due to not being able to make out the distinctions that others seem to impose on them.

Even though I haven't played any contra dances, I think I approach it more from that standpoint...I will purposely segue two tunes I like regardless of their origin. I would like to know about more key segues such as G to D to A (that's obviously a 5th between each tune).  What other segues do you like?  Major to relative minor maybe?

----------


## Bob DeVellis

I'm certainly no expert and I think that there are many exceptions to every pattern, based on whose playing you're talking about.  But the difference I've noticed are:

1.  much less emphasis on chords in Irish traditional.  It's primarily a melodic musical style and accompaniment is sort of a new concept in this music in its most traditional forms.  Accompaniment tends toward simple intervals with open drone notes and the third is often omitted, creating ambiguity regarding whether a tune is major or minor sounding.

2.  More emphasis on the back-beat in OT.  2 and 4 get the emphasis more than 1 and 3, while the opposite may be true in Irish.  There's a lot of variation and regional inconsistency here, though.

3.  Ornamentation tends to be more fluid (for want of a better term) in Irish trad.  Unaccompanied sean nos singing is highly melismatic, with ornaments above and below the melody note sprinkled in liberally.  That ornamentation style influenced uillian pipers, who influenced fiddlers, who influenced most other instrumentalists and rolls and other approximation to vocal ornamentation give Irish traditional music its characteristic sound.  In old time, there are similar ornaments but they strike me as less fluid.

Again, these are just impressions and it's very easy to find exceptions to all of these.  But overall, I think they're some of the differences between the two musical styles.

----------


## Jim Nollman

Whether IT or OT, I don't often play full chords unless I'm woofing out the rhythm, in which case I stick to standard bar chords that don't leave any open strings. Open strings will kill the woof. 

One technical difference between OT and IT — best heard by listening to the fiddles — is the more common use of the double stop in OT. I had a pro fiddler visiting me last weekend, with wonderful mastery of the Scottish tradition. Her approach favored all the little upsweeps, snaps, and piper-emulating slides so common to the Cape Breton style. But we also played Swannanoa Waltz, and I noticed that she played it very playfully, but in that same bird-warble style. I asked her to add some double stops, to get that drawn-out OT edge into the melody. She confessed that  she hardly ever uses double stops in her own tradition, but is well aware of the playing of OT fiddlers  like Bruce Moesky or Rayna Gellart. 

Maybe to get closer to that edgy sound, I play the melodies of several OT tunes on mandolin entirely with double stops. Try it, you might like it.

----------


## JeffD

> Maybe to get closer to that edgy sound, I play the melodies of several OT tunes on mandolin entirely with double stops. Try it, you might like it.


That is a distinction that I hadn't thought of, but you are correct. I love double stop tremolo on OT tunes. Its so mandolinny.

----------


## ampyjoe

There's also a melodic fragment that I hear often in Irish tunes that I've not noticed in Old Timey. That's when the 1/8 notes bounce between a fixed note, say a C nat, and several higher notes. For example, the Chicago reel can often has a sequence like this - e, cnat, g, cnat, a, cnat, g (where e is open e, and cnat is the c natural on the 2nd string).

Irish music has these all over the place.

----------


## Jim Garber

> The result of that tends to be a stronger rhythmic element in Irish tunes.


I would not say stronger -- I would say different. OT rhythm is often dictated by the clawhammer banjo am=nd even with the absence of banjo the tunes are very often focus more on the rhythms than on the melodies, often opting for simplicity than notiness.




> The mandolin is an afterthought in Irish and Scottish music, meaning that whatever you play originated somewhere else.


Lots of afterthoughts in Irish and Scottish music: guitar, banjo, bouzouki are all releatively recent additions from other musics.

----------


## Marcelyn

I've been playing tunes with the Sogn of the Week Social Group here for around two years, and during that time, I've learned to pick out the stylistic differences pretty well. There are so many similarities between the two styles, after all, OT tunes are an offshoot of IT, and they both have a driving dance beat. Still, the difference is clear in just a note or two. 
Tripplets seem to be the most noticable ornament IT mandolin players adopt from fiddlers. They also make use of drones. I love IT, but haven't concentrated on perfecting this style, so I better leave it at that. 
OT mandolin players try to imitate many fiddling techniques such as shuffle bowing, double stops, slides, and drones. There's a distinct, "Boom chucka, boom chucka" rhythm in OT and you have to make this come through loud and clear in your melody. I think the first time I got the knack of incorporating this rhythm into the tune was the first time I felt I was on the road to an old timey mandolin sound. 
Also, and this isn't true across the board, but there seems to be a prefered sound for each group. Think about the different sound between a Sobell and a Gibson oval. I think in general, IT mandolin players like a brighter sound whereas OT players gravitate toward the more mellow, bassy sound.
There are so many expert players in that Song of the week group, and a treasure trove of videos. I know my involvment there helped me to clarify my own style.

----------


## Marcelyn

Oh, I just remembered one stylistic trick that can make mandolin playing sound a lot more OT. Often, when you're going up to the open D, A, or E string, instead of just hitting that string alone, slide up to the note on the lower string seventh fret and hit both that string and the open string of the same note together while sliding up. This sounds very fiddle-like.
Also, to get into a song, playing tatters like fiddlers do helps to get that "Boom chucka, boom chucka" rhythm going.
I know this is a hot topic,but a little toe tapping on the down beat helped me bring a more driving rhythm to my playing. It took a while after that though to be able to play as well again without tapping, so start at your own parrel.
There are a lot of great mandolin players with an OT style, but two that jump out at me are Skip Goreman, and the cafe's own Don Grieser. The cool thing about these two is that they usually play solo so it's easy to pick out the things they do to get that sound. Don's CD, Hillbilly Chamber Music, is such a bargain too.
Hope that helps a little.

----------


## fatt-dad

I think you have to know more off chords to play Irish music.

f-d

----------


## Capt. E

I come at this from playing a button accordion where there seems to be little tolerance for improvisation in Irish sessions. The accordion is of course a major lead instrument. I more often play cajun where improvisation is  just about the norm.

----------


## JeffD

> I come at this from playing a button accordion where there seems to be little tolerance for improvisation in Irish sessions. The accordion is of course a major lead instrument. I more often play cajun where improvisation is  just about the norm.



In the more hard core OT is like IT in this, not much improv. We like the tune itself, see no need to improve it and in OT want to play it 3574168716 times just as it is.

----------


## Jim Yates

OT seems to have standard sets of chords for backing tunes.  There seem to be many "correct" sets of chords for backing Irish fiddle tunes, making it very confusing when there is more than one chording instrument at a session.
Some of the tunes (jigs) in IT do not lend themselves to down-up picking.
Some of the ornamentations in IT force the player out of the down-up pattern.  There is the quick play the note, the note above, the note below and back to the note (What do they call that?).  There are also many triplet embelishments added by mandolin and tenor banjo players (often the same musician)

----------


## Jim Nollman

I had a visit last weekend from a master fiddler in the Southern Appalachian tradition. He pointed out something essential, that I had gleaned from listening to recordings of the fiddle playing this music, but had never considered for mandolin. 

We played Sandy Boys. Whereas i started out accompanying him by playing the downward spiraling melody as it appears in any of the books of fiddle tunes, he never seemed to alight on any particular note for more than a moment, constantly slurring between note centers, both up and down, occasionally landing on a quarter tone,  and relying on double stops  to play some eye-opening moving lines such as (GDDG... GDC#G... GDDF#). 

The rhythm was also in constant motion, slipping behind the beat and then speeding up with a bunch of slurs to regain the one beat by the time we hit a necessary tune balance. 

On a certain level, he had converted this exceedingly simple modal tune into a chromatic tune, which also employed hints of an Indian raga quarter tone scale. And yet the distinctive melody always remained front and center in my ear.

Maybe because we never took it up to contra dance speed, I was able  to emulate and eventually embellish his sliding double stops  and semi-dissonant passing notes on mandolin, and to much the same effect. At one point, I even recall adding a ninth chord, although i must emphasize that we had not slipped into a jazz interpretation.

The main point I wish to convey here is that the art of playing modal OT music, insists we keep our rhythm and our note choices constantly in motion. You can hear something vaguely similar by listening to a master player like Bruce Moesky playing Shove the Pig's Foot. Except hearing and watching it unfold right in my living room, and getting to play along with it, is a much more direct experience than what you get on any record. 

We also played a few hornpipes of Cape Breton and Scottish origin. He demonstrated the rather playful dynamic swells, the note-ending vibrato, the insistent triplets that drive the constant syncopation, and the note clarity that clearly distinguishes this music from OT. When he "swelled" I found myself adding tremolo embellishment in response. Otherwise, the mandolin seemed much more of an after thought that it did playing along with Sandy Boys. 

My friend sincerely believes that a fiddler who aspires to master level, (whatever that means) eventually has to choose one tradition, and learn it from a master. Certainly not to imply that you can't play other styles. But keep aware that all tunes are just a combination of notes, while the playing of a different tradition is not unlike a person with a French accent speaking English.  

That should also explain another point of his, that there's a "danger" of relying on tune books to learn songs from any tradition, instead of learning them by ear, and direct to memory. Books must "freeze" the melodies, while the traditions defy such freezing.

----------


## JeffD

> We played Sandy Boys. Whereas i started out accompanying him by playing the downward spiraling melody as it appears in any of the books of fiddle tunes, he never seemed to alight on any particular note for more than a moment, constantly slurring between note centers, both up and down, occasionally landing on a quarter tone,  and relying on double stops  to play some eye-opening moving lines such as (GDDG... GDC#G... GDDF#).


Cool opportunity to really dig in and hear it all.




> The rhythm was also in constant motion, slipping behind the beat and then speeding up with a bunch of slurs to regain the one beat by the time we hit a necessary tune balance.


The amount of this may depend on whether its solo playing or with a banjo or whatever.




> We also played a few hornpipes of Cape Breton and Scottish origin. He demonstrated the rather playful dynamic swells, the note-ending vibrato, the insistent triplets that drive the constant syncopation, and the note clarity that clearly distinguishes this music from OT.


Yes. Great opportunity to get the A-B comparison and really ferret out the differences, obvious and subte.




> My friend sincerely believes that a fiddler who aspires to master level, (whatever that means) eventually has to choose one tradition, and learn it from a master.


There is probably a level of play beyond which one has to chose one tradition to go any deeper. But I think that level is so stratispheric that are many wonderful authentic multi-genre fiddlers who can pull this off. But even they would probably agree that to get any better at one they would have to pick a groov and dig. 

And certainly there is a lot of awesome life changing fun to be had at our level, in being able to play many traditions.




> That should also explain another point of his, that there's a "danger" of relying on tune books to learn songs from any tradition, instead of learning them by ear, and direct to memory. Books must "freeze" the melodies, while the traditions defy such freezing.


I would disagree, I think. I believe both are needed. Books without the ear and you are right, things get preserved and stagnant, and you may not get the real feeling of the tune. Ear without the books and you are limited to the tunes that are recorded or that you have heard someone play, (limited to where you live and where you jam) and miss out on the 93309485 other fantastic tunes that are perhaps unrecorded and not popular at the exact moment you have entered the stream. 

If one can read, and has enough real time playing and listening experience with the genre, one could pick unheard tunes from a book and do a very creditable job with them. And especially when you find a gem and bring it back out into circulation, while it might not be exactly as it once was played, it will be alive again and will be played as it is now played. I think of all those Irish  and Scottish bands and players of the 50s 60s, 70s and 80s who mined Kerr's Collection Merry Melodies (collected in the 1880s), and other old tune books and collections, for great tunes that became standards for the next generation of players. The folk tradition still works, but has that much more grist for the mill.

Books without ear - steril and ossified
Ear without books - limits you to what you have heard.

Both - ya got it all.


I think these comments go for both OT and Celtic, and other genre's as well.


A tradition of regional OT tunes of Western PA, with unique influences and sound, was lost, for many reasons, including better communications with the outside world, but lost nonetheless. Much of the music was collected by Samuel P. Bayard, and published in a couple of his books. Sam could "see the hand writing on the wall" and managed to preserve as much as possible of a now extict musical community.

New players and performers are mining Bayards books and many of those tunes are being played and enjoyed once again. Without recordings its impossible to know if the tunes are being played exactly as they were. But, subjected to the folk process they wouldn't be anyway, and at least they are being played, because someone collected them, and others are able to read them.


Just my thoughts on the matter.

----------


## Jim Nollman

I didn't mean to infer that tune books weren't useful. To the contrary, for those who wish to learn the tunes of any tradition, referring to a tune book is always a helpful  first step for simply learning the melody lines. 

I have referred to it as a "danger" because that specific word was used by another, and i was simply quoting a conversation. It is, perhaps, too strong a word, so let me rephrase it as, "not so useful for a player who is finally progressing beyond the intermediate player's arena."  

I think we agree that learning a tune is different than learning an idiom. A poor player can master 100s of tunes, while a master of any idiom is usually regarded as a fine player. The latter master undertakes to learn the subtleties that increase the depth of a performance. On a learning level, it includes many mandolin techniques including slurs, double stops, hammers-ons, counter-rhythms, snaps, moving chords, and all the other nuances that distinguish a traditional style. 

The proper playing of a personal songbook is a wonderful gift  to share. It only shows its ragged edges only to those not content to stay put as an intermediate level player. For those who wish to both know and express the nuances, tune books are (at the very least) not much help. My friend was commenting on the fact that playing with a bunch of people with their noses stuck in tune books, mostly serves to drown out the subtleties. So what's the point, unless perhaps one is striving for the community of an Irish session, where group expression trumps individual expression. Ironically, videos I've seen of sessions in Irish pubs, doesn't show many people staring at tune books. 

Jeff, our discussion gets more interesting if we consider using the nuances of one tradition, to play a tune outside that tradition. One example, easy to swallow by many, is  Bill Monroe playing old time music as bluegrass. Or another example, the very idea of translating fiddle tunes to mandolin. Is that any different than translating fiddle tunes to a tuba, or a MIDI sampler? Which harkens to another more personal example. On my last CD I arranged tunes from Scotland, Ireland, Cape Breton, and Appalachia, to include musical elements of techno and piano jazz. 

Somewhere in the niches of these 3 examples, you're going to find music lovers expressing strong opinions about what's acceptable and what is abomination. I'm an aesthetic modernist. I learned music composition from John Cage, and went on to make a career playing music with whales, so I tend to believe (to quote Cage) that music is "anything you can get away with".

----------


## Marcelyn

Jim, I wish you'd have recorded that living room session. from your discription, it sounds like a really fun thing to hear.
And I have no problems with pushing musical boundaries, but from a more traditional perspective I'd say translating old time fiddle tunes to the mandolin is a little more natural than translating them to the tuba or midi sampler. First off, you've got the strings tuned to the same notes so that slides, drones, and double stops are reminiscent of one another. More importantly, mandolin does have a presence in old time music--even if it is a small one. So, when I hear a mandolin, it seems to fit in a string band context. A tuba would be about as incongruous as a mandolin in a marching band.

----------


## abuteague

Timing

I know less about old time, but I'd add that all eighth notes are not created equal in Irish music. It is exaggerated in hornpipes, but it isn't exactly dotted either. It also depends on the speed so it applies to reels too. The music had an aural culture or origin. It wasn't written down. Because of this, the musicians didn't get the message that notes were divided into equal halves. They cut notes into the pieces that fit the tune or dance. I think this is where some of the disdain for books of ITM tunes comes from. Written down, it is missing the emphasis and timing that you can hear from a good player or recording. When I see sheet music where they try to nail this timing thing down explicitly in the notation, it looks so complicated and covered with ink as to be unreadable for me. I'll cut it back with a machete to the bare minimum eighth notes again and add the timing myself.

When it comes to Irish music, I like both books and recordings. Lots of times I wait to start learning a tune I have the notes for until I've heard others play it. It is very helpful. In fact, I'll read the notes and play them flat and decide a tune is worthless only to hear someone else play it and decide it is brilliant. The timing intricacies of Irish music are that important.

The air is an Irish piece where you recite/sing in your head the words of a piece in Gaelic but express the sounds through playing your instrument. You will find sheet music for airs, but the timing is based on the recitation and speech with the syllables and other speech elements driving the timing which do not really conform to notes dotted or otherwise. That makes sheet music for airs kind of impossible. Not that they shouldn't be written down, of course, for if they are not, they may well be lost forever. Musical poetry unconfined by the staff. I once heard that airs, like bathing, should be performed daily, but seldom shared.

A fully capable classically trained violin player with excellent and precise timing joined our group. After the month she exclaimed, "this is hard" and she quit. We love our fiddle players so it was a hard loss.

The melody isn't really negotiable in Irish music, but you can put ornaments anywhere when you are playing solo. You can play them the first time and let them go the second. Anywhere you want to fit it in, go for it. That is an improvisational element. In groups, it is often agreed which ornaments are played where, but we usually don't talk about it. I'll opt out of some of the fiddle ornaments in reels, but count me in on jig ornaments. Love them. Very fun.

That is my take.

----------


## sixwatergrog

I agree that music is anything you can get away with.  I'll use the notes in a book as an aid to making the tune sound like it's supposed to.  But I usually know what it's supposed to sound like first by hearing others play it.  Full disclosure: I don't actually play a mandolin per say, but I play GDAE tuned tenor banjo so what I'm doing is basically playing mandolin, just one with only 4 strings, a slightly longer scale, and a banjo head instead of a wooden mandolin head. Maybe *Octave Banjolin* is the correct term?  The 4-string banjo is now common in Irish music, but it's virtually absent in old-time, save for a few players who dabble like Josh Bearman of the Hot Seats, Clyde Curley, Enda Schahill, Mick Moloney, Christine Langille and Sam Bartlett.  Those are the only tenor banjo players I've heard who do Appalachian tunes.  But Old Time fiddle tunes are easily translatable with the strings tuned to the same notes.  

I've started to attend some really good local Old Time and Irish sessions, both with my tenor banjo, and I co-host a session where we jump around through tunes from both countries of origin.  All I'm trying to do is make the tune sound like the way I want it to, or make it fit into the group dynamic of the session, and I don't really care whether it's Irish or old-time for that matter.  I think if you use your ear and pick up on the nuances of each individual tune you'll already be doing what you're supposed to, regardless of which category the tune falls into (breakdown, jig, reel, hornpipe, and so on).

----------


## Nigel Gatherer

This has been a great discussion. I have my tuppenceworth (50cents), but I'll refrain at the moment because I have been basking in a wonderful, good-natured, knowledgable, friendly discussion - thanks for that, guys.

----------


## JeffD

I think there is music, and there is playing music, and there is a distinction. I am going to botch this up but let me try. 

I don't want to make music, I want to play music. I hear OT, IT and various other genres, Klezmer, Ragtime, Tango, even Classical, and I say that music over there, it exists and I want to play it. And one measure of my success is, of course, the resemblence of what I hear on my instrument to what I hear in the music. Not just the notes in the right order but the whole vibe, the whole feeling. 

Now making music, that is something else entirely, and perhaps it is what you can get away with. But I have to say I have no music in me. No music to make. Nothing interesting to express. 

I just love playing the tunes.

----------


## Jim Nollman

> I don't want to make music, I want to play music. — JeffD


Once you describe what that means, you make a good point. 

In this thread we've been covering a lot of ground on the subject of  nuance, attempting to pinpoint the distinctions between intermediate and advanced playing, and also between OT and IT. To that mix, it's not a big leap to add one more distinction: between what you call playing and what you call making music (maybe also known as mastering tunes and composing tunes. 

Hmmm...That doesn't quite nail it down either, but I do know what you mean.

----------


## Jim Garber

> Now making music, that is something else entirely, and perhaps it is what you can get away with. But I have to say I have no music in me. No music to make. Nothing interesting to express. 
> 
> I just love playing the tunes.


This is extremely interesting to me -- this distinction. My feeling tho is that it is not quite a distinction, at least as i interpret it. I highly doubt that you have nothing interesting to express -- what you are is the interpretation of the tunes thru your love of them. I certainly understand the connection between making music and composing but in my mind, they are not the same thing. Take a look at  the many musicians out there, esp classical ones. Rarely are they composers -- they just love playing the tunes.

I hope that I am understanding what you are saying, Jeff. LMK if i am off the mark.

----------


## JeffD

Well in my mind making music, even if its traditional music, is making something new in the world. Creating.

While I might inadvertently create something new as I cannot avoid whatever influences I bring to the game, my goal is to play the tune and bring out all that is in the tune. I see it more as music in the tune, in the genre, in the tradition, that I am bringing out, by playing it. I try to express the tune. 

Making music would be more adventurous - if want to compose say, or perhaps I could take the tune as it is, but in a different direction not thought of, break it up or make it jazzy, but make it something different, outside of its tradition. Play it as a jazz number or whatever. Making something distinctly new and at loosely teathered, if at all, to the tunes "natural" roots. I would be interested in deliberately putting my stamp on it, making the tune my own. Making something new. Thats making music.

I am really not the one to make something new.

Classical music is a hard one, but for the most part I would say, with a few exceptions, they are playing music, not making music. They are playing the music the composer made.

OK I am going to get flak for this one. I think in the traditional realm, Bill Monroe made music. Those who play Bill Monroe's tunes more or less his way are playing music.

Both are valid. Both are awesome. Both can be a lifetime of effort. I imply nothing pejoritive in either case. I just am more comfortable where I stand.

----------


## JeffD

Its probably not either/or black/white. LOts of grey.

----------


## Jim Garber

As you say, shades of gray... all the sides of the same coin. Frankly, playing a fiddle tune with a reggae rhythm or jazzing it up to me is no more creative than playing the tune well in an old time or bluegrass way. It may be subtle but you instill the tune with your own voice no matter what. I highly doubt that you could truly sound like Dock Roberts no matter how hard you try and neither can traditional masters like Bruce Molsky. No matter what, as you say, you bring to the table influences and sounds that you hear. 

Ironically, you say that Bill Monroe _made_ music, however, how often we hear that he learned from the sounds of old black musicians who lived near him as well as his Uncle Pen. He did not live in a vacuum did not rise out of nowhere to play hjis style of music.

----------


## billkilpatrick

> We played Sandy Boys. Whereas i started out accompanying him by playing the downward spiraling melody as it appears in any of the books of fiddle tunes, he never seemed to alight on any particular note for more than a moment, constantly slurring between note centers, both up and down, occasionally landing on a quarter tone,  and relying on double stops  to play some eye-opening moving lines such as (GDDG... GDC#G... GDDF#) .... The rhythm was also in constant motion, slipping behind the beat and then speeding up with a bunch of slurs to regain the one beat by the time we hit a necessary tune balance .... On a certain level, he had converted this exceedingly simple modal tune into a chromatic tune, which also employed hints of an Indian raga quarter tone scale. And yet the distinctive melody always remained front and center in my ear ... That should also explain another point of his, that there's a "danger" of relying on tune books to learn songs from any tradition, instead of learning them by ear, and direct to memory. Books must "freeze" the melodies, while the traditions defy such freezing.


i've noticed this in european medieval/renaissance dance music as well - providing someone is sticking more or less to the melody, ornamentation and rhythmic variations in accompaniment can be all over the place and still sound good.

i also take your point about the dangers of tab or notation "freezing" a tune - approaching a genre with pre-conceived ideas and never straying from them.  same choke-hold attitude exists in early music between those who want to recreate it and those who vainly try to re-enact it.

... of course, anyone who teams up with a pack of wolves or 300 turkeys to make a record is just jake in my book.

----------


## Jim Nollman

> same choke-hold attitude exists in early music between those who want to recreate it and those who vainly try to re-enact it.


Very well said.

----------

