Tool kits

When we make music there are many different mechanisms all going on at once, many different skills we need. Since I've been teaching I've been thinking about these as "tool kits", I want to give my pupils the tools to make music for themselves as well as see what I am missing. This is as far as I've got with identifying the different elements and what you can use to develop those skills. This is unashamedly biased towards learning traditional music.





Musical toolkit
immersing yourself and becoming incredibly familiar with the music you wish to make


Learn how the music you want to play works by immersing yourself:

Sources:

• Recordings
• Score
• Live music (gigs, sessions, playing with friends)

Passive learning / absorption

• Listen listen listen - on in the background
  
• Mp3 player for convenience
• Carefully managed set lists

Active Involvement

• Active listening - observe details
• Diddle along with it
  
• Clapping rhythm of it
  
• Dance to it (ceilidhs, your living room, the session)
• Practise

Mental toolkit
attitudes, hearing and reading clearly, recall,

Hearing music in detail and clarity:

• Practising listening and identifying elements by ear
• Listening to slowed down audio files to hear more detail, then listening at full speed again
• Recalling the music in great detail
• Transcription - make yourself notate all the detail
• Imagining how you want pieces to sound
• Being able to tell where the home note is and what note in a scale is being played at any given time
  

Retaining music and being able to recall it at will:

• memorising
• practise starting sets
• learn it more than one way - by ear, then in hands
• categorise what you know - mental filing

For any improvised art form:

Pre-set ideas

• Rhythms
• Harmonic sequences
• Melodic fragments
• Hand shapes

Knowing where the notes map on your instrument - i.e. scales, arpeggios

Performance:

• sense of drama
• presence
• communication with audience
  

Understand the mechanics of playing your instrument intimately - as much a mental skill as a physical one

• Fingering patterns
• How your hands work
• Ergonomic postures!!!
• Know the potential injury trouble spots and what to do
  

Attitudes:

Focus

• Being able to play under pressure
• Paying attention to other people
• Focusing on the music, blocking anxieties

Expectations

• Find out and set realistic expectations

If it's not fun then have a rethink - music has no other purpose than for us to enjoy it.


Physical toolkit

Condition

• Warm ups
• Relaxation exercises (so you recover from all the playing!)
• Stretches
• General exercise, rest, food - be generally well

Coordination

• Practise
• Mental practise
• Always look for unknown / unexplored shapes
• Improvisation
• Rhythm and accent practise
  

Mental interface - ears to fingers

• Improvisation

Hand shapes

• practising hand shapes, learning feel of each
• chunked practise - practising within placement groups

Touch

• Physical feedback
• Contact with harp
• Slow still practise
• Improvising with dynamics
  

Speed

• Clarity of movements (mental practice, aiming for beautiful movements at a slow pace first)
• Gradually building up speed 2bpm at a time
• Remember: the fastest safe speed is determined by how relaxed you can remain whilst playing

Anymore ideas are very welcome! This is just a start.

Tunes...

I've been starting to think about what tunes I like. This is part of my plan to get my repertoire together and ordered. I have a little notebook in which I am collecting the name, key and notes about any tune I play (or at least want to retain). It'll get edited I'm sure, but for now it's just a catch all. I find if I don't know the tune name, I don't have a concsious tag by which to recall the tune.

I find I don't just like specific tunes, I enjoy tunes at a particular pace invoking a particular mood. This changes over time. Now I'm really drawn to slow-mid tempo slinky tunes, so a lot of Breton, some early English and early Scots. Hopefully I'll get on to wanting lots of elaborate intricate Irish tunes in a while too.

I also find that I'm drawn to different types of tunes to listen to, to diddle, and to play. Playing is definitely the slower variety at the moment, tunes to diddle often work best mid-tempo but listening and dancing tunes can be ferocious.

I'm keeping tabs on my learning resource material as well - I have scores, online score (like thesession.org), CDs, other recordings and online audio and video (like youtube). I'm finding my little book a useful prompt for what I need to revisit to memorise again. Normally I'd explore music by playing it but recently that's not been possible. I'm still finding that I can exceed the maximum comfortable work load of my hands very easily, so for now my little book is helping me explore music with my ears and voice instead.

Learning by ear versus score

By ear:
It takes longer to be able to play a tune by ear
It feels more difficult
Once you have it it stays for longer
You get a great sense of feel, of the vibe of the tune

By score:
It's much quicker
You can do a much greater quantity
It's instant music - just add time
Sadly though: in one ear out the other

A friend reckons that learning tunes by score puts them in a different place in your brain. I reckon that if you memorise a tune then it ends up in the same place, whatever you started with. That said, I can only memorise a tune through listening, through earwork.

As I got faster at learning tunes, I found I didn't need to work as hard to "catch" a tune by ear and play it back. The problem was it went in short term memory only (in one ear out the other...) I still need to make an effort to learn tune in your inner ear, I don't expect that to change.

I'm finding I have many many more tunes that I can join in with than I can start. Time to start thinking about how to up the number of tunes I can start...

Organising tune learning

I want to find a better way to organise what tunes I already know, what tunes I'm learning, and what tunes I want to learn. I don't have any system at present other than pieces of paper in folders, cds and sound files and the occasional list. I also want to organise my tunes such that they are easy to put into sets and so then play out (great practise - perhaps the best practise).

My score is already split into country and then vague tune type - the Irish tunes most of all. That has: old harp tunes, dance tunes that I've been taught by harpers, airs, dance tunes in general, songs. I'm collecting more and more dance tunes so I think I need a new way to separate these out. The obvious thing to do is to split them into rhythms - jigs, reels, hornpipes, etc... That's certainly ok for archival purposes, but doesn't solve the ongoing tune management.

Mmm back to the drawing board... maybe a list stuck on the wall? Can you tell organisation isn't my strong point...!

Learning tunes by ear

I love playing within the aural tradition because after a while it becomes very easy to take on new music, new tunes. Once you've got an established technique, if you can hear a tune accurately, then you can reproduce it. That said you have to be able to retain and reimagine the tune to be able to play it - until you can play with it, it's not yet your music. The nicest bit is that you can just absorb tunes passively, have the music on in the background and gradually the tune just becomes a landscape you know intimately. Bizarrely this can be just as helpful in helping you to learn tunes as really focused attention, so right now I get to learn tunes and write... wooo!

I've been up to the Edinburgh harp festival a few times now and the tune teaching method for trad stuff is as follows...

• hear tune about 4 times through
• teacher plays first phrase a few times, you have a go getting it
• few minutes practice while teacher comes and checks everyone has it
• go through rest of phrases in the same way, often taught by hand shape and certainly broken down into small easy chunks
• all the time consolidate what you know, through group playing or listening to teacher play again
• once melody is stitched together, add bass hand

Throughout the learning process you hear a bit, try it, hear it again, refine it. The teacher may slow it down for you if you've not caught a bit, or show you a tiny fragment at a time.

I don't like learning tunes from dots anymore because the dots don't give me the groove. This is my tune learning method from a recording...

• get familiar with tune, hearing it lots in whatever setting
• use an audio program to work phrase by phrase, listening and trying and listening and refining and listening again
• possibly use audio programs to slow it to hear where the ornaments are / any really tricky bits
• possibly transcribe it - very useful for setting fingering (I often transcribe tunes I've been taught by ear for this reason)
  
• if I have slowed it down at any point, listen to track at full speed again and get the groove at that pace (rhythmic emphasis changes at different tempo)

They're pretty similar methods really, just with different sources. I always prefer learning from a real person because they will spot problems with your technique, you'll get a better sense of the style (all those tiny variations...) and they'll pick up anything that you've misinterpreted. It's just nicer too!

English vs Irish styles part 1

There's so much to think about for this... there will be differences at various layers of the music. I'm going to analyse what I hear and try to take it apart. I hope that through making conscious observations I can target my attention more closely on different features. At the same time I just have to listen and listen and listen again - I will not get an instinctive ability with the different through conscious listening. It is an unconscious skill I am building.

Things that I know are different between Irish & English:

• numbers of notes within a tune
  
• length of phrases
• phrases even or irregular?
• jerky or flowing
• common modes and chords used
• rhythmic patterns - more on this below
  
• ornamentation
• mood evoked or energy summoned up
  

Things that are different just within the rhythm aspect:

• speed
• different rhythmic patterns (best thought of grouped in dances)
• "swing"
• placement of emphasis within beat - to the back or the front?
• does the rhythm sit back or push forward?
• how a tune grooves

Even now I am sure that I will remember and summon up a particular set of rhythmic patterns most easily through recalling emotive ideas - that particular rhythmic pattern will evoke this emotional response best remembered via this image. Oh the complexity of finding language tags for memories that have no words...

Recalling tunes...

In trad it is vitally important to be able to hear tunes in your inner ear at will. As music has no words attached recall becomes a little tricky unless you learn the title - words act as our labels for recall and association. You need a conscious tag for the unconscious memory.

If you can tag your tune, then you can also organise your tunes, this assists with recall too.
However there is always the great folky saying:

"If you know all the names of the tunes you know you don't know enough tunes"

Going sessioning without a harp part 2

I've been taking enjoying my break from sessioning with the harp. I have still been going out to listen and join in but it's had a different emphasis (as my harp is my job I tend to get a bit serious when I'm playing). Instead, I've been diddling or listening or playing percussion and it's been a lot of fun. I will probably still go out harpless sometimes when I'm playing again.

It's also been very interesting. As I mentioned before I realised my inner tune library was a bit poor, but even within the past few sessions it's been improving.

Various things have occurred to me:

• I really like just learning the tunes from hearing or listening
  
• Tunes I can start easily on the harp I don't necessarily have in my head to diddle
  
• If I've learnt a song with harp backing it's not so easy without.. oops!
• In a session environment, the tune is where it's at - if you want to shape the music you need to be on the tune
  
• It really feels like a struggle to be a harp in a session

Learning tunes can be conscious (note by note) or unconscious (like gradually absorbing the layout of a new building). I find the second much more fun - it gives you a much greater flavour of what and how the tune is communicating. It also allows you to absorb subtle rhythmic variations that are almost impossible to capture in score. Engaged listening seems to make this happen fastest in me. I often dance in my seat or actually get up and dance at a session. I'm interested to see if this makes the tunes go in faster!

Over the past year and a half I've tackled an almighty job and swapped from playing with my right hand melody to using my left hand for melody. I already have better resources as a player but this does mean I've been working very hard, very consciously on the movement. As a result I have a couple of tunes that I easily have in my hand but have less so in my head. I was really surprised and a bit disconcerted when I discovered this but very glad that I have and can do something about it.

In a similar vein I discovered that the first verse of songs had a habit of going walk about if I started them without harp accompaniment. It's such a different thing to sing a song unaccompanied, both in the mental recall process and also how you make space for yourself as a musician. I use the harp to hush an audience and get me the space in which to place my phrases. Unaccompanied you have to claim that space and time in a different way.

I've been sessioning with a harp for a while now, since 2004. In traditional music the main thing that changes the mood of a tune are the subtle rhythmic and gestural variations (the same tune can be agressive, calm, sweet, tragic... ). The accompaniment is there to support the tune, and I would argue that if the accompaniment becomes more important than the tune, it might not be trad anymore. Anyway, this boils down to the fact that in terms of fun interaction, the tune is most definitely the place to be. If you want maximum tune shaping options then it needs to be a sustaining instrument, like a fiddle or flute.

The other issue I find is that harps have their own special repertoire which not many people know. This combined with a general "aaahhh it's harp" factor means that you start a tune and no one joins in. Not good. I play solo professionally for events, I go the pub to have fun.

The other problem I find with harps and sessions is that while harps are loud, their sound dissolves into background noise. Unfortunately this means that other players can't hear you, so even if they would join in they and you are locked you out of fun interaction. This is way more of a problem, only solved by small sessions with people who listen carefully and have stopped being in awe of what a harp sounds like.

While I whinge about harps and sessions I love my instrument and I love being down the pub for tunes. I'm still figuring out what is most fun to do with a harp in a session but on the balance I'd rather go than not. Without a doubt sessions are a vital and important part of the trad scene, socially incredibly important as well as musically. They are our network, our place to learn and improve our music. Even if I never take a harp out again I will still be sessioning.

Sessioning and harp technique

For various reasons I spent the weekend in sessions without a harp. This proved very interesting as I realised many of my tunes were in my fingers, not so much my head. How very frustrating. This, plus various conversations, makes the mechanism of playing folk music much clearer:

tune in your ear (supported by memory, imagination)
=> tune out your fingers (supported by your technique)

as opposed to the classical

dots on the page (supported by your ability to fluently translate code i.e. score and imagine how to phrase it nicely)
=> tune out of your fingers (supported by your technique)

The last part is the same, it's just the musical intake and subsequent memory load that is different. You either have to learn to sight read or learn to memorise and develop your inner ear.

While performances allow time for preparation, sessions are fast, furious and for a harp player can be a bit of a nightmare if you don't just want to accompany. This means that your technique has got be good enough to cope with 'on-the-fly' playing - something that harpists don't naturally do. Generally, we find our tunes, figure out the version including ornamentation we want, and then finger and learn it (lots of prep). I think is because we have to think so far ahead with each tune (we have to place, then pluck) and the double action for each note gets too complicated to do on the fly.

This is where I think striking strings (one movement to get a sound) is inherently more folky than plucking (releasing the string to get a sound). Given that folk is so much more of a acquisition of technique to then be used unconsciously, striking (where you do not have to plan ahead so much) suits it much better.

As an exercise I think I might look at practising tunes in terms of building blocks, the little melodic fragments that add up to a tune. Those little blocks will be really well practised, the placing a well as the playing well rehearsed. That way I can have a rough and ready fingering at my grasp and allow my unconscious mind to take over without screwing up hand shape or creating loads of tension.

However, if I really want to play a tune for performance, that extra work to sort and assess and finger will still take place. It is through that extra conscious work and then unconscious wearing in of a tune that we make them our own.