Violin strings respond far better than mandolin strings. I play both instruments, and the difference is so great I hardly ever do ornaments on a mandolin. Picked ornaments are louder than pull offs and hammer-on's, so it seems that the right hand ends up doing the ornaments on mandolin.
Jeff and I should play some tunes using his resonator mandolin and my Stroh fiddle. Now that would be quite a noise. Ha, ha.
Decipit exemplar vitiis imitabile
As an aside, I have been interested in acquiring a Stroh fiddle, for many years. I have several old black and white pictures of Irish Pub sessions of 50 and more years ago, and there in the mix are one or two Strohs. So darn cool.
I've often wondered when and where the notion of DUD DUD for jigs started.
It seems to be fairly widespread, but I can honestly say that I had never heard of it until I read it here on the Cafe, by which time I had been playing jigs (and everything else) for many years.
I find it difficult to believe that when you are playing a jig up to speed, you are able to know exactly which way you are picking. When you are first learning a tune and playing it through slowly, then maybe.
I would like to extend this discussion to other types of tune which I personally think can be tougher. For example the Harvest Home Hornpipe, which many people learn quite early on, has a pretty difficult run in the fourth bar (and again in the second half). Similarly, the strathspey Stirling Castle - also in the fourth bar, as it happens. Do people always play DUDU etc for these, or do you use some combination of hammer on/ pull offs? In fact playing strathspeys can be quite difficult anyway. Jigs are generally much easier, I think.
I was self taught, so I just had to figure this kind of thing out for myself.
David A. Gordon
Hi Doug, a question: Are you still discussing Irish music per se, or mandolin playing in general? I've left my own voice out of this ornamentation thing since the question was about ITM vs. Bluegrass practices, but if you're discussing mandolin in general, I'd have to disagree. I think Niles would disagree as well, he's posted about his preference of HO/PO and slides here before, so would Sam Bush and countless others. I do use HO/PO in ITM playing but I'm not into it like others here who know better. At any rate, those type of ornaments work well on mandolin but definitely take plenty of practice and technique development to be useful.
To be able to know exactly which way you are picking ... You're overthinking this. In actual usage, you don't have to think about this while you're playing, it flows naturally once you've mastered the use of it, just like keeping time with DUDU flows naturally once you've internalized it and you feel the groove.I find it difficult to believe that when you are playing a jig up to speed, you are able to know exactly which way you are picking. When you are first learning a tune and playing it through slowly, then maybe.
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I am for the most part self taught as well, only recently getting regular "coaching" on classical music techniques. Harvest Home Hornpipe is something I feel like I have known for ever, having learned it probably among the first ten tunes I ever learned; way back in the way back.
The run to which you refer is where the melody goes from straight hornpiping to triplets, I believe. I just took out a mandolin and payed attention to how I do it, and the run is all straight DUD UDU DUD UDU. I have memories of flubbing the particular run quite a few times, and I even invented a cute but not too subtle single high note tremolo alternative to play in a jam while the fiddles do that run.
I did eventually get the run, and it is only by having done it for a million years now that I get it smooth and clean.
As a general rule I do not pick a steady unchanging rhythm with my right hand, but pick what is needed. So the triplets part I do the alternating DUDU faster than the DUDU I would have been doing from the beginning of the tune. To be clear am not recommending this, or recommending against this, just saying the habit I have. My right hand has always been a slave to the melody and not to the beat. What I mean is that if you watch my right hand, it is not a metronome going back and forth with the beat and picking as needed, as some recommend. I don't do a false or empty stroke to keep the beat.
I remember many (many many) years ago at a concert/work shop that someone recommended that that it is much less confusing to do that particular run UDU DUD UDU DUD, just the reverse of what I am used to, which if done right makes it easier to get into from the hornpiping before. I tried this at the time and it did remove the awkwardness of the run, but it put awkwardness in transition to the hornpiping bits that follow. So I just got in the habit of powering through the awkwardness with regular DUD UDU DUD UDU.
Regarding right hand picking the melody or the beat - I just checked how I do Strathspey. And yea my right hand follows the melody, doing a DU D UD DUDU / DU D UD DUDU or whatever, depending on the tune.
I generally haven't been a slave to a picking style, and the result is that in my classical coaching I am having to revisit all this again, and learn a rest stroke and false strokes and all kinds of confusing things, in order to milk the beauty out of particular passages. I do it for the passage I am working on, but I don't generalize the techniques to everything and I have a very hard time recognizing on my own that doing something different than my default DUDUDUDU might be advisable. Hence a coach.
And a thank you to Dagger for making me think about this. It actually was fun.
Last edited by JeffD; Apr-15-2021 at 11:44am.
Another tune with that same problem is Poppy Leaf Rag.
Yes I get this. I long ago stopped thinking about it and have had to watch myself play to respond to threads like this.
I have discovered in my life that any kind of competence involves getting techniques and procedures to be unthinkingly routine. But it is also true that this has bit me in the tailpiece more than once, in life and in mandolinning, where I fail to recognize that the specific situation in front of me may call for something outside my routine.
It is that constant struggle between comfort and growth. Getting good requires that we eventually get comfortable, and don't deliberately think about every tiny detail - and that by its very nature reduces flexibility required for future growth.
Vis a vis the "picking hand," a vital element of competency is independence - the hands and feet in drumming; the fingers in classical guitar; bowing in stringed instruments... For the mandolinist, this amounts to being able to execute any type of pick stroke at any given time - any syncopation or accent - as per the musical requirement. Flexibility is the reason we practice it - to be comfortable with any technical requirement; to have the technical ability to execute the music as required. It's part and parcel of competency on the instrument.
Self taught here as well. I would venture to guess that most mandolinists play that Harvest Home run with alternate (DUDUDU) picking if they're playing at session tempos. Maybe you could do it with DUDDUD if you're playing slowly at home.
Strathspey runs are another example where I would think almost everyone uses alternate picking on those quick little 16th note runs within the tune. I can manage most of them, but there are a few tunes like the King George IV strathspey where the runs still defeat me and I can't play fully up to speed.
I play most of the Irish stuff on fiddle and playing the same triplets and rolls on a mandolin requires a bit of adjustment. I think this is because mandolin has two strings for each course. I often simplify the ornament or run for mandolin.
Decipit exemplar vitiis imitabile
DUDDUD just felt natural for me - I think it that it works that way for some people, just as for others a more free approach seems natural. I'm self-taught and never worked on picking patterns, but found myself using DUDDUD for jigs. So much so, that after I'd learned a few tunes and got a book on Irish banjo playing that suggested a different picking pattern, I ignored that and just continued with what felt natural to me.
Regarding hornpipes, I find they're played at two different tempos. Slow, with a very definite hornpipy feel (I've played them like this for dancers exhibiting their fancy steps), and quite fast (as played in most sessions). For the former, I find I can just about do strings of DUDDUDDUD, and that's what I do, and it helps me make them sound like triplets. For the latter, I absolutely cannot use DUDDUD, and I switch to plain old DUDUDUDU. For this reason, I agree with a previous poster who suggested that DUDDUD was a speed limitation for jigs. It definitely is, but at the speeds they're usually played in sessions or for dancers I've only rarely felt pushed.
Here's a pretty rough example of a slowly played hornpipe (with DUDDUD for the triplet run) and a far too fast hornpipe (with DUDUDUDU for the triplet run).
hornpipeTriplets.mp3
Last edited by ampyjoe; Apr-16-2021 at 12:08am.
Looking at a bunch of the above posts, it strikes me that quite a lot of players here seem to go with whatever mechanics are easiest to play and make musical sense. To me, playing DD anywhere other than a) down across two strings or b) to get the picking back to where you want it, looks like making life hard for yourself. Once you've played a D, the shortest path back to picking that same string is U. Say we define the length of one pick stroke as the distance from starting one side of a course to finishing the movement in that direction, on the other side of that course (assuming we're not split picking). DD on the same string then requires two half pick stroke distances more than DU (same with UU rather than UD). And we're meant to play DD and DU with the same time gap between the notes, right? That implies your hand has to move twice as far and ergo twice fast when preparing the second D, if you play DD rather than than DU, and then you may also have to accent the second D more heavily than the first - respect!
Of course, music isn't strictly about mechanics, so let's have a look at examples from a couple of well known instructor books - they happen to both be classical, 'cos that's what is to hand. 'A Comprehensive Method' (Marilynn Mair) appears to recommend D for any accented stroke where it's possible, because Marilynn says D and U sound different (sounds reasonable, but can you hear it, and do they have to?). 'Exploring Classical Mandolin' (August Watters) starts with DU exercises, but within the first dozen exercises he progresses to pick directions that appear to be chosen for picking convenience, rather than for accents or sound quality - including three different ways of picking 6/8 in one exercise (which is not an Irish jig). Am I looking at something like the difference between 'traditional' style classical picking designed to be able to taught consistently, and a kind of modern 'do it any way it works best' style? I ask because I've come across this sort of difference from violin teachers. Here's August's take on an excerpt from Bach Prelude #1 from the solo Cello suites (click to enlarge)...
He uses a DD near the end of the 1st bar to turn the picking direction round, apparently to make it more convenient from there on. That also moves any 'even beat' accents from D to U. It appears he's prioritising picking for ease of movement, on the assumption that we can learn to make near enough the same sound D and U, and also to accent D or U at will. Sounds good to me, what do you think?
We had the big discussion on this in the Celtic branch about 2007, which I remember as the year I broke my leg. While in plaster and otherwise grounded, I went to SCAT classes in Aberdeen led by Tim Jones, who's related to Kevin Macleod, and Tim helped me get on top of the DUD DUD style which I understand Kevin was adamant about too.
But I don't remember where i first heard of it - probably here on the Cafe. I just thought it might help or be a useful technique to master. For me, I think it has been.
True. If I start a tune I'm pretty sure I stick to DUD DUD on jigs, but if I'm playing along with someone fast, then it's all a blur. Even when I look at my hand, I'm not sure what I'm doing.
I think I play DUD DUD in the triplets of Harvest Home.
Belfast Hornpipe, no way. That is a tune where the first two parts are easy enough at any speed but you can get into real trouble on the triplet-laden third bit if you've started too fast.
This isn't such a problem for legato type instrument such as whistle and flute but a challenge on mandolin or banjo to keep up with them. I (try to) pick every note in sessions or ceilidh settings - the hammer-ons and pull-offs tend to get lost.
Laird of Drumblair is another, especially since the band I occasionally play with has it at the end of a dance set where they've been speeding up. The triplets at the end are just a blur to me.
Bren
Indeed. Same here! You can have a look here if you like. Seems mostly to be alternate picking, I think. Works for me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR4M22Vrfrg
David A. Gordon
Using YouTube's slowdown facility to 50% of actual speed, (click the gearwheel there for Settings, guys), it looks to me like you're mostly doing alternative picking Dagger, with glide strokes across the strings whenever they save movement. Single notes on the E string seem to often get a single Up, 'cos that takes you back in the direction of whatever the next note is. Whatever, it's nice economical playing - thanks!
At least with you and Bren the blurred directions happen at speed, Dagger. With me it happens even on the slower stuff! I have been putting it down to age for the past forty-odd years (since my thirties)!
I'm playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order. - Eric Morecambe
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheOldBores
I'm self taught as well and play some jigs DUDDUD and some DUDUDU. Sometimes both in the same jig.
I tend to play the run of Triplets in Harvest Home hornpipe with a combo of hammers and pulls. D-H U, D-P U, D-H U, D-P U. This allows the right hand to continue playing basically the same
Thanks for posting! How to play jigs (or anything else) is always an interesting topic to discuss, but I enjoy the discussion more if there are examples to listen to also.
You're going pretty fast there, and it sounds great. For me, that'd be close to top speed for jigs. So if I were regularly playing in sessions or for dancers that required that tempo, I'd probably start using alternating and not DUDDUD above a certain tempo. Assuming I'd be able to! DUDDUD is pretty ingrained by now, and picked trebles might be near impossible for a while. (I suppose in jigs they're really picked quadruplets, but I'm sure you know what I mean).
Of course, I might be comprehensive but wrong
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