"Noodling" at Sessions

[Simon DS]

Classical music and ITM are recitals.

[grassrootphilosopher]

I still can't grasp ...

I had to read the sentences 5 times to get the content right.
Concerning "Irish" stuff: Here (in Germany) people think you can get by with a lot in Old Time, Irish etc. because "everybody plays the melody together really loud and staying in rhythm is not really a thing". I can't tell you how many times this misconception almost drove me over the edge. But it is, what it is.

It is another thing when you have inexperienced musicians that you have to encourage to step into the limelight. Make their day. Let them have their spot even if they do not really know the tune, keep the tempo and what not. It will probably encourage them to get back to the drawing board and improve significantly. (It's a different thing when you're in a jam session with really (!) good musicians. But we're not talking about that).

Jamming as I understand it, is different than attending a ITM sessiun.

Jamming is the "low hanging fruit" or playing anything and calling it improv.

I don't get what ITM means... Otherwise...

No! Jamming/improvising is having an impromptu conversation in a highly artistic language that necessitates commitment of the highest order of your abilities to please not only yourself but also your communicating counterpart, i.e. the fellow musician.

If it's just "beer music" (I coined the phrase because on a now - unfortunately - defunct festival folks used to play at the beer stand, seven banjos, five guitars, three mandolins etc. each louder than the other, pounding it out... it may be fun for a while, but only as long as the beer lasts. It is just like an alcohol fueled conversation. It doesn't mean a thing) it shouldn't be what we're talking about here.

[Sue Rieter]

I feel like I might like to start with the "beer music". A tad less intimidating, and less worry about what other people are thinking.

[DougC]

ITM stands for Irish Traditional Music

And the term Jamming is as Olaf said, but many think that it is a 'low skill level' contribution to group playing. One could call it 'noodling in the spotlight'.

[foldedpath]

Classical music and ITM are recitals.

They're very different formats, unless your only criteria is "playing what's written without extended periods of improvisation."

And what's "written" is just the particular tune setting any local pub session is used to playing. It's not carved in stone like a Bach Classical piece. You'll never hear 100 different ways to play the actual notes in Bach's music, but you will hear that many different versions of a given Irish session standard if you travel around the world enough.

There is also individual improvisation on a micro scale with how each player decides to ornament a tune. Without ornaments, if you're just playing the bare skeleton notes of a tune it doesn't sound Irish. So there is plenty of room for expression. It's not just reading the notes on a page, or copying what you hear in a recording. This may not be apparent on a casual listening, you have to get deep into listening to what people are doing with this music.

[Simon DS]

Sorry FoldedPath, I was thinking about your friend who said he didn't like Irish trad because it was too much like Classical music.
Maybe he felt that the recitation part makes it less accessible to people for whatever reason? Maybe he saw noodling as a form of self-expression that’s repressed in the more recitative forms of music?

[Bertram Henze]

You'll never hear 100 different ways to play the actual notes in Bach's music...

Well, Jethro Tull took care of this
Some say, ITM is the disco dance version of Baroque, and people like O'Carolan built the bridge from one to the other. When I last heard the full Christmas Oratorio by Bach, I noticed the high percentage of re-used melody building blocks, just like ITM dance tunes have them. And it starts with a brisk waltz (the rest is a slow session, kind-of). Also, Baroque pieces are very robust against changes in instrumentation - you still hear it's Bach when it's played with a single recorder, just like ITM, but take one drum a way from Wagner and he'll run for his money.

[Simon DS]

Well, Jethro Tull took care of this

Yes, I went a concert at a music school in Brazil and they improvised Bach and Brahms. Trashed it in some ways. But they did it in a sort of rural style, played as though they didn’t know the pieces off by heart, just the feelings of the melodic phrases with extremely sensitive and nuanced rhythm.

It was AMAZING!

It was like reading a lost manuscript.

[Bertram Henze]

I still can't grasp how something as simple as expecting attendees ... to make an effort ... is "rigid"

I can:
- good players make it look effortless and easy
- the absence of conspicuous control mechanisms like conductors, drum sets, front superstars, fixed chord progressions creates the false impression that it works despite being disorganised
- the abundance of simple-looking instruments creates an illusion that the music is simple as well (what can possibly go wrong with just six holes on that little metal whistle thing or with one stick on that tambourine-whatever?)

[Ray(T)]

All this talk reminds me of a, once famous, British orchestra - the Portsmouth Sinfonia - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6piDRKOwh88

[Simon DS]

…what can possibly go wrong with just six holes on that little metal whistle thing or with one stick on that tambourine-whatever?…

One measure played with that whistley-thing, that’s six to the power of eight.
That’s 1,679,616 noodling possibilities just with one measure (assuming it’s Bluegrass -no rest notes).

-I’ve only calculated for one measure because if you noodle randomly like that at a session you may not make it past the first measure.

[Bertram Henze]

that’s six to the power of eight.

Actually, it's fourteen to the power of eight, because all holes open is the seventh note in the octave, and there's two octaves to the whistle. Seamus Tansey may have a different opinion on the difference an octave makes, though

[foldedpath]

Ah, but on a typical D whistle there are at least three more notes in two octaves. The cross-fingered C natural, half-holed G#, and half-holed F natural. Some players may be able to half-hole a Bb, I'm not sure about that. You're going to have to re-do the math on noodling potential.