BS: Hardiman the Difficult

Subject: Hardiman the Difficult
From: Osmium
Date: 02 Mar 00 - 07:24 PM

OK it's about time for a musical thread again.
It's after midnite here so I'm going to pose the question and hope like hell there are some answers when I go live again in about 20hrs time
Being extremely old it takes me time to learn a knew tune (Irish dance music); I always seem to get to the point where my head knows the tune but my fingers have a pause at ONE particular note in the tune. It then takes me a month or more to get rid of the "pause". Am I alone in this, and if not, what can I do to shorten the torture! The tune that took longest (to date)? Why the last but one bar of Hardiman the Fiddler.

Subject: RE: BS: Hardiman the Difficult
From: Amos
Date: 02 Mar 00 - 07:28 PM

I always find there's one little rest, or fillip or sequence of words, that is the last to smooth in when I am trying to practice a number. Sometimes it's totally arbitrary, so it seems, whcih note or phrase it is, too...

A

Subject: RE: BS: Hardiman the Difficult
From: Mbo
Date: 02 Mar 00 - 07:39 PM

Uh-oh! Can't wait till Praise sees this!

--Mbo

Subject: RE: BS: Hardiman the Difficult
From: Sorcha
Date: 02 Mar 00 - 08:22 PM

I had an awful time with the bridge from part A to part B in Whiskey before Breakfast, and there is still one note I can't get, so I just fake around it! also, lost the part B REDWING a while back, just completely forgot how to do it!! BAD, BAD!

Subject: RE: BS: Hardiman the Difficult
From: harpgirl
Date: 02 Mar 00 - 11:25 PM

...geez it's just like the Saturday session on this thread..too many damn fiddles!!

Subject: RE: BS: Hardiman the Difficult
From: wysiwyg
Date: 03 Mar 00 - 02:24 AM

I learned how to elimninate this problem while learning complicated 4-part choral music by ear. I sight-read better now, but back then it was hard to get all the baroque runs right and the little hesitations/holds JUST where they belonged. I found the same problem, in a much simpler fashion, in learning new Carolan tunes I've never heard. And my sight-reading daughter and hubby have the same problem, where it is technique tripping them up not the notation. What I have seen them (and others) do is reinforce their wrong learning of a passage, neurologically, by coming up to the mistake at tempo, making the mistake again, stopping to correct it, then going on. They permanently learn the mistake/shuffle/correction, and if they ever get it fixed then they have a permanent slow-down there.

People go to trying a new piece at tempo before they are really ready, so they rush up to the boo boo and slow down to make it or do it right, and then in great relief go rushing off to the next one. Stop the madness! What I learned is this-- you "rough" in your pitches to get a sense of the piece, and then play it note-for-note working out the technique (or fingering in fiddle sense), but as SLOW as the hardest passage takes you. You map the movements into your brain in the correct order that way, and the tining is correct in relation to itself. You don't speed up the easier parts till the hard ones can speed up too.

The first big help is hearing the piece, because where the accents fall once the syncopations and sustains come in, is hard to "see." These make a huge diff in how you interpret the song, how its structure hangs together. If you have never heard the song, you have to find these magic spots the hard way. The tunemaker put them where s/he did because that's how the tune came to them, that's their unique stamp on it... you can't predict them till you know someone's work well, like Carolan tunes will start to make sense after awhile--his intervals and structures that he likes to use. His devices.

Clapping or counting the rhythm without regard for pitch also helps reveal the structure. Also, most tanscriptions don't have a awy of showing how the duration of notes is fudged for emphasis and phrasing. In singing, we learn early on to borrow a moment from one note to breathe, or start a consonant do the vowel will land on the beat, etc. Fiddlers do this too, but more subtly I bet.

Then to de-goof the stuck parts that are still just not working, you xerox up that one tiny place, with the measure before and the measure after, make it BIG. Then you play that one spot till you have it. You may be playing it right but your brain refuses to recognize the tunemaker's intent or art, or you may be fingering from the wrong starting point and need to re-approach the spot by fingering differently. (For a singer, it's finding the place between head/chest voice and smoothing the transition on the right note.)

Then you go back to your piece and play from a good starting point of your choice, up to and past the sticky spot, SLOWLY. I call it "part repair." Play that little section till it clicks for you ("AHA!"), then paste that section into the whole piece by choosing an earlier starting point.

Another consideration is, has the piece actually been transcribed properly? I have some Carolan's printed differently, same tune, different note. It happens. A musical typo.

Or same tune, different part. We have two Angeline the Baker melodies and in this case they aren't variations-- one is the main part, the other the second fiddle's part, to be played together. Except the book's makers didn't know that, and in book one is tune one and in book two is tune two.... when both books should have both as fiddle part one and fiddle part two.

Or they can be multiple transcriptions of one player who didn't always play it the same way... nor must you...

Because, fiddle tunebooks are often collections of this fiddler or that fiddler's interpretation of a piece. Their ornamentation may differ from yours, and theirs may now be printed in stone so to speak. Remember even the classics are a folk art, and interpret your sense of the tune your way. Cheat like singers do-- if there is a note I can't make on a given night, I have a note in mind that'll work just as well, and you can do this too. If your pinky won't reach, or your fingers trip over each other, try an inversion or harmonization of the phrase, it will still resolve itself. Hardiman is a hard one for that because that tough spot is right at the end, so you can't alter it without losing the point of the piece.

This part-repair thing actually got written up as part of a choral singers' guidebook, now lost to antiquity, alas.

Subject: RE: BS: Hardiman the Difficult
From: Lady McMoo
Date: 03 Mar 00 - 04:13 AM

Dear Osmium,

If it's any consolation I've been playing Irish music all my life and there are still some tunes I get a mental block about after trying to play them for 25 or 30 years whereas I can often play other pieces I have just heard for the first time back virtually perfectly immediately.

The upside is that "the revelation" sometimes comes at the most unexpected moment, usually when I'm feeling quite relaxed and not thinking about the problem tune at all!

Best regards,

mcmoo

Subject: RE: BS: Hardiman the Difficult
From: bflat
Date: 03 Mar 00 - 05:56 AM

Praise, praise to you. That was a wonderful treatise for study. I've been doing some of that and thought I was just needing remedial work now I know I'm not alone.

bflat

Subject: RE: BS: Hardiman the Difficult
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 03 Mar 00 - 06:07 AM

Well Osmuim, you are doing better than me, I would be more inclined to call it Hardiman the Impossibe. It has been one of my bogey tunes since I started on tenor banjo in 1987. Mind you slip jigs never seem to go where my head tells me they should. 6/8 and 12/8 are OK but 9/8 should be banned..

Jon

Subject: RE: BS: Hardiman the Difficult
From: GUEST,Les B
Date: 03 Mar 00 - 03:04 PM

Boy was I glad to read the comments in this thread. I thought aliens were messing with my memory bank! I just discovered at a jam that a tune I thought I had down pat (Jackie Tar) had a "missing" part. It also seems lately that every tune I try to learn has a "hard" part the fingers & mind just won't grab. Since I don't read music I usually just isolate the series of notes and try to work on them slowly. I heard an interesting quote the other day from a fiddler (which I may have related somewhere else in Mudcat): "If you don't practice for one day, you can hear it. If you don't practice for two days, other fiddlers can hear it. If you don't practice for three days, the audience can hear it!" I really appreciated Praise's insight on how to deal with these problems.

Subject: RE: BS: Hardiman the Difficult
From: Osmium
Date: 03 Mar 00 - 04:20 PM

Thankyou one and all; I'll tell you in a day or two or 10 whether the tips work. The mind is a strange beast is it not?

Subject: RE: BS: Hardiman the Difficult
From: Hardiman the Fiddler
Date: 03 Mar 00 - 06:28 PM

I guess that Hardiman the Fiddler should respond to "hardiman the difficult." I agree that 9/8 time is difficult, which is why I jokingly told someone the other day, it helps to be drunk! I do best with 9/8 time if I think of the piece like a waltz with triplits. Especially when practicing, I put a little emphasis on the first of the notes and hit the other two more lightly.

I had someone advise me once that you can sometimes adapt and edit tunes to make them more playable. Sometimes it helps to leave out a note or two of someone's arrangement---after all aren't we trying to play our own arrangement of the piece. I agree with Les B's advice about practice too. Even after I've learned to play something up tempo, I will often come back, play it slow, pay attention to the bowing, and fingering, to relearn it. Hardiman the Fiddler

Subject: RE: BS: Hardiman the Difficult
From: wysiwyg
Date: 03 Mar 00 - 07:17 PM

1. Thanks for the nice feedback!!!! wow!!! I'll be glad to fix typo's an re-issue if anyone wants.

2. Fiddlers!! You also need a mandolin even if just to work out the fingering!!! If none availaable, set yourself down with yer wee fiddle an' pluck it!

3. Play WITH someone, esp. someone with great rhythm who can slow down for you and keep yer speed down

4. Only play what you love to hear. Play what has been interwoven deep in your heart.

5. Play mentally with no instrument!

6..... Remember that they call it PLAY.

Subject: RE: BS: Hardiman the Difficult
From: wysiwyg
Date: 03 Mar 00 - 07:18 PM

I'm sorry, PS-- if you didn't see the recent (Feb) thread on learning songs, must go see. Someone blue-clickie it here?