A year ago, every time I got in the car to go to work, I'd grab one of eight CD cases to provide my music selection for the commute and the workday. Today, those CD cases are collecting dust in the closet, while I carry their collected contents in a 160 gig iPod everywhere I go. I rarely use it in my office, since Grooveshark and Last.fm offer a vastly wider array of music. I know many others made this transition years ago, but I just got around to it, and I think I'm part of the masses in this transition, as opposed to the early adopters.
In any case, I've been thinking about the long-term effects of end of physical media. While reading music blogs, I've encountered a lot of discussion about this subject, but almost all of it is focused on the impact it has on the music business; surprisingly little is said about the artistic impact.
I approach music first as a listener. Deciding how to spend my music budget used to be a big deal - I carefully considered what I would most like to listen to, and I often guessed wrong. Now, the majority of music costs me nothing to hear - money is no longer a limiting factor. In fact, given the vast array of readily available music and my relatively broad tastes, there's no way I will ever get around to listening to everything I might like. I can listen to practically any artist on a whim, and I can choose to filter out all but that artists' best songs (measured imperfectly by popularity and various tagging schemes, but the technology is bound to improve, and already works tolerably well).
What I think this means to artists is that filler is dead. Let me back up, and say that the notion of "filler" is only meaningful from a listener's perspective. Generally, I don't believe artists intentionally release bad music. Most are aware that certain of their songs are better than others, but everyone tries to pick their best to publish. When I started working on my first album, the album format was still very dominant, and based on all of my past experiences as a music fan, I felt a sense of responsibility to give anyone who bought my album their "money's worth." I figured most listeners were like me, owning a limited number of albums, and listening to each multiple times. In that context, adding a decent (but not great) song to an album made it better, by extending the variety and collective play length of its owner's finite music collection. Now that everyone's library is effectively infinite, that kind of song is filler. In other words, when evaluating which of their songs to release, artists should set a higher bar for "good enough."
By extension, the concept of the album is obsolete. A lot of business-oriented articles address this, but from the angle of how to market singles versus albums. I think it's important in that it removes the need for a given number of songs to sound like parts of a whole. If, for artistic reasons, you want to release a collection of 12 songs together, you still can. But, you can just as easily release one song at a time, or three, or 85. I'm planning on taking the singles route, partly out of the desire to be more free with stylistic changes, but moreso because I have found the necessity of creating an album at a time to be paralyzing. I have a job, and other interests - the massive time required to get a set of songs ready at the same time was disruptive to everything else in my life, in a way that working on a song or two at a time is not. I have a backlog of partially finished songs, that were left unfinished at least in part because they didn't fit with the rest of what I had planned for an album. The need to wait for an album's worth of songs to be ready also served as an excuse that I used to give myself permission to finish them - now, there's no barrier.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Small Decisions
A "simple" problem in music production, for example not being able to understand what a singer is saying (in an otherwise good mix of a song), rarely has a simple solution. In this case, solving the problem might involve carving out frequencies from other instruments and extending pre-delays on reverbs to keep them from obscuring for the vocal line, adding multiple layers of dynamic compression to the vocal track(s), applying EQ to bring out consonants, adding some multi-band compression to reign in the consonants (usually S's) that are now too prominent, and manually tweaking the gain on the remaining few problem spots. This is, in fact, pretty much what I did over the past week to gain a bit of clarity on a vocal line. In my opinion, the end result is an obvious improvement, but each step along the way was a very subtle one.
In my experience, this is the way most of the creative process goes. In writing, arranging, mixing and mastering music, the vast majority of my time is spent making small, difficult judgment calls - very rare is the "eureka" moment where I happen upon the perfect chord that gives a chorus lift, or the right EQ boost to a the kick drum that makes a lackluster beat into a good groove. Those moments happen, and they're thrilling, but they're not representative of how I spend my time in the studio. Of course, those moments make the best stories, so they're what movies, "behind the music" shows, and pretty much any other entertainment-oriented depiction of the creative process is focused on.
My main point isn't that "real life isn't like the movies" - which, of course, it isn't, but most people are aware of that already. My point is that great artists aren't necessarily* great because they're able to spontaneously create fully-formed masterpieces, but because they can consistently and efficiently make many small decisions that lead to an end product - be it a song, painting, screenplay, etc. - that's great.
* I emphasize necessarily because this is precisely what a few geniuses, particularly young prodigies, are known for.
In my experience, this is the way most of the creative process goes. In writing, arranging, mixing and mastering music, the vast majority of my time is spent making small, difficult judgment calls - very rare is the "eureka" moment where I happen upon the perfect chord that gives a chorus lift, or the right EQ boost to a the kick drum that makes a lackluster beat into a good groove. Those moments happen, and they're thrilling, but they're not representative of how I spend my time in the studio. Of course, those moments make the best stories, so they're what movies, "behind the music" shows, and pretty much any other entertainment-oriented depiction of the creative process is focused on.
My main point isn't that "real life isn't like the movies" - which, of course, it isn't, but most people are aware of that already. My point is that great artists aren't necessarily* great because they're able to spontaneously create fully-formed masterpieces, but because they can consistently and efficiently make many small decisions that lead to an end product - be it a song, painting, screenplay, etc. - that's great.
* I emphasize necessarily because this is precisely what a few geniuses, particularly young prodigies, are known for.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Familiarity, Destroyer of Art
When I first heard "Try to Remember" (from The Fantasticks, a show in which I recently performed), it moved me - I got a lump in my throat and teared up when I really listened to the lyrics the first few times. Years later, I've rehearsed the show for months, performed it, and sung the song more times than I can count. I still like the song, but after so much exposure, its emotional weight is mostly an abstraction to me. In a couple of weeks, I'm going to start rehearsals for a production of Into The Woods - I've been watching a filmed production of the show, and its effect on me at the moment is very similar to The Fantasticks' in the beginning. When the run is ending in September, I'm sure I'll be looking back fondly on the experience, but I doubt I'll still be getting choked up by the closing number.
I suspect this phenomenon is common to all performers, and perhaps all artists. When writing songs, I have similar experiences. During the initial writing process, I know very clearly when I've hit upon a good idea (according to my own tastes, of course), but once I spend some time developing it into a song, with a bass line, drums, structure, etc., it no longer appeals to me like it did at first.
Perhaps this psychological application of the law of diminishing returns is fundamental to what makes great art hard to create. Most art forms take time and repetition to "polish" to finality, and this numbs the creator's ability to emotionally connect to their own creation. The upside is that time away seems to counteract the numbing effect (eventually leading to nostalgia, I suppose). It takes me months and months (sometimes over a year) to finish a song, because I like to let it sit long enough to forget, then come back to it with fresh ears. Only this process gives me sufficient perspective to really evaluate what works and what doesn't.
I suspect this phenomenon is common to all performers, and perhaps all artists. When writing songs, I have similar experiences. During the initial writing process, I know very clearly when I've hit upon a good idea (according to my own tastes, of course), but once I spend some time developing it into a song, with a bass line, drums, structure, etc., it no longer appeals to me like it did at first.
Perhaps this psychological application of the law of diminishing returns is fundamental to what makes great art hard to create. Most art forms take time and repetition to "polish" to finality, and this numbs the creator's ability to emotionally connect to their own creation. The upside is that time away seems to counteract the numbing effect (eventually leading to nostalgia, I suppose). It takes me months and months (sometimes over a year) to finish a song, because I like to let it sit long enough to forget, then come back to it with fresh ears. Only this process gives me sufficient perspective to really evaluate what works and what doesn't.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Stage Fright
Since I started taking piano lessons in the 3rd grade, I've had to perform in front of people occasionally. Recently, I've been doing four or five productions each year, so I think I could say I perform fairly often - probably somewhere between 25 and 50 times a year. Despite this, I still get anxious before nearly every performance. This past weekend, we closed a run of The Fantasticks, and a couple of hours before the show each night, I started running my lines and lyrics in my head. I didn't particularly want to - I had no major memory lapses during the whole run - and yet, I still have this lurking fear that my memory is going to completely fail, and so I compulsively run through everything I say and do, again and again, every night. The upside is, once the show has started and I've got the first song/monologue/whatever out of the way, the anxiety fades away and I can have fun.
I suspect different performers have different specific anxieties that manifest as "stage fright." Mine is specifically tied to memorization, and in the process of coping with it, I've learned one particularly valuable lesson - in order to have something (let's say a song, though this is just as applicable to dialog, choreography, etc.) "well-memorized", you don't need to be able to keep the whole song in your head at any given moment. I used to think I did, and while just starting to sing the first verse, would try to recall pieces of the later verses - if I couldn't, I would start to panic, and lose my place altogether. Fortunately, this usually happened in rehearsals, but I did it in a performance a couple of years ago (singing a duet from Phantom as part of a choir concert), and just managed to muddle through singing a mish-mash of verses. Amazingly, most of the audience members and other singers to whom I mentioned it after the performance didn't even notice, or at worst, had thought something might have gone wrong, but weren't sure what. The point is, audiences are incredibly forgiving. They frequently won't even notice minor mistakes, and are more likely to express sympathy for a performer who makes a major blunder than to heckle them. To get back around to the main topic, though, the most valuable thing I have learned is to have faith in your sequential memory. If you learn something well enough that you can do it correctly, at home and in rehearsals, in it's proper order, you know it will enough to perform it. No one cares if you can write out verse three while singing verse one, or vice versa.
I suspect different performers have different specific anxieties that manifest as "stage fright." Mine is specifically tied to memorization, and in the process of coping with it, I've learned one particularly valuable lesson - in order to have something (let's say a song, though this is just as applicable to dialog, choreography, etc.) "well-memorized", you don't need to be able to keep the whole song in your head at any given moment. I used to think I did, and while just starting to sing the first verse, would try to recall pieces of the later verses - if I couldn't, I would start to panic, and lose my place altogether. Fortunately, this usually happened in rehearsals, but I did it in a performance a couple of years ago (singing a duet from Phantom as part of a choir concert), and just managed to muddle through singing a mish-mash of verses. Amazingly, most of the audience members and other singers to whom I mentioned it after the performance didn't even notice, or at worst, had thought something might have gone wrong, but weren't sure what. The point is, audiences are incredibly forgiving. They frequently won't even notice minor mistakes, and are more likely to express sympathy for a performer who makes a major blunder than to heckle them. To get back around to the main topic, though, the most valuable thing I have learned is to have faith in your sequential memory. If you learn something well enough that you can do it correctly, at home and in rehearsals, in it's proper order, you know it will enough to perform it. No one cares if you can write out verse three while singing verse one, or vice versa.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Irish Whistle Update
A New Way to Play
I'm awful at memorizing piano music. I don't like doing it, and it takes me forever. I'm also pretty bad at memorizing lyrics, but vocal melodies (or pitches, in the case of singing harmonies in a choral work) are fairly easy - I learn them, and pretty soon, they're just embedded in my subconscious. With the whistle, I'm starting to experience this deeply-learned phenomenon on an instrument for the first time.
At O'Flaherty, it was made quite clear that the primary way tunes are learned is by ear, so I've made some effort to learn them that way. I've used written music to assist in learning most of the tunes I know so far, but I've endeavored to learn by ear as much as possible. Now, I'm having the novel experience of finding it easier to play some tunes purely from memory, with the music actually distracting me when I'm looking at. Though I sometimes don't know where my fingers should be headed next, I can "hear" the melody in my memory, and the fingers just make that melody happen. I'm sure, at some level, this is what happens when I play something on the piano repeatedly and feel like I "know" it, but the progress is so swift in this case (perhaps because harmonies aren't there to complicate the issue) that it feels like a completely different phenomenon.
The Austin Celtic Festival - Joanie Madden Workshop
I'm writing this nearly two weeks after the event, so the details are already hazy, but better late than never. There were in the range of ten to fifteen people at the workshop, so it was fairly personal. Joanie has an enormous personality, and a bit of a Brooklyn accent (which seems a bit incongrous for an All-Ireland champion). From the moment she entered the tent, all attention was unequivically on her, and not due to star power - Joanie just exudes charisma and competence. She rolled out her nigh-legendary collection and told a couple of short stories, including how she first met Pat O'Riordan (who's early playing failed to impress Joanie, but whose whistle-making was a different matter), and how she drove over her previous whistle collection. She also indulged us with a couple of tunes at the beginning and end of the workshop. Most of the session was spent learning an Air and a Reel, replete with Joanie's ornamentation. What I personally took away was a better understanding of how to execute slides (push the finger "toward" the whistle and up) and vibrato*. I asked Joanie whether you had to vary the way you executed ornaments on a low whistle, referring to "piper's grip" in the question, and she didn't know that term - there's still a lot of regional culture to this, I guess. I walked away with an autographed CD booklet and a photo - an hour and a half VERY well spent.
* Varies from note to note, but usually by trilling a half-hole, two holes down from the bottom hole you're currently fingering - for high D, you trill the entire top hole, and for E, you trill the bottom hole, on a quarter-hole or less)
I'm awful at memorizing piano music. I don't like doing it, and it takes me forever. I'm also pretty bad at memorizing lyrics, but vocal melodies (or pitches, in the case of singing harmonies in a choral work) are fairly easy - I learn them, and pretty soon, they're just embedded in my subconscious. With the whistle, I'm starting to experience this deeply-learned phenomenon on an instrument for the first time.
At O'Flaherty, it was made quite clear that the primary way tunes are learned is by ear, so I've made some effort to learn them that way. I've used written music to assist in learning most of the tunes I know so far, but I've endeavored to learn by ear as much as possible. Now, I'm having the novel experience of finding it easier to play some tunes purely from memory, with the music actually distracting me when I'm looking at. Though I sometimes don't know where my fingers should be headed next, I can "hear" the melody in my memory, and the fingers just make that melody happen. I'm sure, at some level, this is what happens when I play something on the piano repeatedly and feel like I "know" it, but the progress is so swift in this case (perhaps because harmonies aren't there to complicate the issue) that it feels like a completely different phenomenon.
The Austin Celtic Festival - Joanie Madden Workshop
I'm writing this nearly two weeks after the event, so the details are already hazy, but better late than never. There were in the range of ten to fifteen people at the workshop, so it was fairly personal. Joanie has an enormous personality, and a bit of a Brooklyn accent (which seems a bit incongrous for an All-Ireland champion). From the moment she entered the tent, all attention was unequivically on her, and not due to star power - Joanie just exudes charisma and competence. She rolled out her nigh-legendary collection and told a couple of short stories, including how she first met Pat O'Riordan (who's early playing failed to impress Joanie, but whose whistle-making was a different matter), and how she drove over her previous whistle collection. She also indulged us with a couple of tunes at the beginning and end of the workshop. Most of the session was spent learning an Air and a Reel, replete with Joanie's ornamentation. What I personally took away was a better understanding of how to execute slides (push the finger "toward" the whistle and up) and vibrato*. I asked Joanie whether you had to vary the way you executed ornaments on a low whistle, referring to "piper's grip" in the question, and she didn't know that term - there's still a lot of regional culture to this, I guess. I walked away with an autographed CD booklet and a photo - an hour and a half VERY well spent.
* Varies from note to note, but usually by trilling a half-hole, two holes down from the bottom hole you're currently fingering - for high D, you trill the entire top hole, and for E, you trill the bottom hole, on a quarter-hole or less)
Thursday, October 29, 2009
O'Flaherty in Review
I spent the last weekend, Friday through Sunday, at the O'Flaherty Irish Music Retreat, a bit south of the Dallas-Fort Worth area. I expected a relaxing vacation flavored with some musical insights and a few tunes, but I ended up with gruelling, 16 to 18-hour, action-packed days (well, musically-packed, at least). I could have opted out of some activities to have a bit of rest, but I was having far too much fun, and I couldn't let the opportunities pass me by.
Background
When physical music stores were the only source of music (i.e., pre-internet), I spent a fair amount of time exploring the New Age sections at the local Borders and Barnes & Noble. Space constraints tend to force music sellers to consolidate myriad actual genres into a few over-arching descriptors, and Celtic music tended to get lumped into the New Age section. Compounded by the fact that there actually are a number of artists that fuse Celtic and New Age styles, including Enya (probably the best-known New Age artist around, whether she likes the genre label or not), I've tended to mentally tie Celtic and New Age together throughout my adult life.
One of the older albums in my CD collection, among those I found in the New Age section, is "Song of the Irish Whistle" by Joanie Madden. Since I first heard that album, I've loved the sound of a slow tune on the whistle, and sometime around six or seven years ago I picked up a whistle of my own. Since then, I've acquired a few more whistles, which I've noodled around on and used in a few Longing for Orpheus songs. I've never put much effort into learning to play them in a proper way, by any definition of "proper." During rehearsals for the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta Iolanthe over this past summer, one of my cast-mates mentioned driving up to an Irish music retreat for a weekend later in the year; I thought it might be fun, and provide an opportunity to get a new perspective on music. So, I signed up for the beginner's Irish Whistle course...
Irish Traditional Music Culture
At some level I knew there was a community and culture based on Celtic music, but I didn't appreciate how large or serious this community was - nor did I realize that Irish Traditional Music (ITM) is a very specific thing, and not synonymous with Celtic music (are there communities dedicated to Scottish, Welsh, and other regions of music, I wonder?). I now think of the ITM community as a comporable entity to the Classical or Jazz communities. In some ways, the ITM culture is far more limited - tunes are almost universally diatonic, and in a handful of keys (those with one to three sharps, both major and minor). There are perhaps ten types of tunes, representing a few basic rhythms (jigs are 6/8, slides 6/8 with a particular syncopated feel, slipjigs 9/8, reels 4/4 or cut time, etc.), and no one really ventures into odd-time territory (no 5/4 or 7/8 experiments). These limitations place the musicians' and listeners' focus on other aspects of the music, perhaps most intensely on performance style.
ITM also has one serious leg up on the Jazz and Classical worlds, and that's the tune session. Sessions make Irish music something many people can actively participate in, rather than than just observe, and I think that's incredibly cool, and probably central to the explosion of the music's popularity over the past few decades. Still being a newbie, I could be mischaracterizing a "typical" session, but its basically a gathering of players who sits in a big circle and just play tunes. If you don't know the current tune, you typically sit it out, but it seems you can generally get away with a bit of quiet stumbling as you try to pick up on the tune yourself. The nature of these sessions puts a lot of emphasis on remembering a huge repertoire of tunes, and on learning by ear, which is a skill I desperately need to develop. At the retreat, in any case, there were a lot of beginners, or at least beginners on a particular instrument, and so there were sessions geared specifically toward us. It seems to be an axiom in this culture that you really have to listen and imitate to play this music properly, but the ability to jump-start the session experience by reading made my sessions far more enjoyable. I overheard some talk about starting a teaching and/or slow session here in Austin, and that really excites me.
Ornamentation is Everything
Okay, it's not really everything, but hyperbole is so effective... I went into this retreat already familiar with the Whistle's fingerings and breath support, but I had no idea how deeply integral style, and ornamentation in particular, are to playing Irish music. Nor did I have any idea how to play any of the ornaments correctly. Fortunately, my beginner-level class (taught be Janice Deane, in the photo there) didn't have any true beginners - everyone could read music or play an instrument already, so we were able to spend a good portion of our time focusing on whistle ornamentation, which is apparently based on Uillean Pipe ornamentation; the Pipes are among the oldest Irish instruments, and as new instruments have been integrated into the Irish music tradition, their players have typically emulated the style of the established instruments. Pipes and whistles share similar fingering, so I'm now entertaining the long-term goal of taking up the pipes someday. But, I'm not going to let myself think about that too much until I've learned a lot more about the whistle. In any case, if I learned any generally applicable musical principle during the retreat, it's the importance of paying proper attention to every little bit of a musical line - a simple melody can be just a simple, boring melody, or it can be a canvas for musical expression, depending on the performer's competence, and how much they put into it.
Mickey Dunne
I was surprised to hear that many of the instrument instructors would be doing lecture-type presentations on the history of Irish Traditional Music, both in general and as it pertained to particular instruments and regions. I said to the friend that told me about the retreat that I "didn't think of musicians and historians overlapping much," and she replied that I was dead wrong when it came to Irish Traditional musicians. I learned a tremendous amount about the background of Irish music from some of these players, but was most moved by Mickey Dunne.
It's easy to get used to phenomenal musicianship when you're surrounded by it, but I absolutely maintained my sense of awe at Mickey's piping throughout the retreat. He was among the guests presenting an enrichment lecture, and his traced the tradition of Uillean piping back as far as the written word will allow, which is unfortunately only to the mid-1800s. The pipes certainly predate that period, perhaps by centuries and possibly by millenia, but that's when the first written documentation of individual pipers starts. Mickey is passionate about preserving the knowledge and techniques of the pipers who came before him, and his passion is infectious.
But, some of Mickey's passing comments are what are really sticking with me, and those relate to the early years of his life, when his family were "travelers." That's the word he typically uses, but to clarify, he mentioned, "...or gypsies, tinkers, or whatnot" (paraphrased, not a direct quote). Shortly after, he mentioned something about the travellers' reputation as thieves and trouble-makers being unjustified, since there were some bad seeds among them, but there were some bad seeds among "settled folk" too. I think its fascinating to get a glimpse into the intricacies and tensions of another culture (it gives one a new perspective), even one that's relatively genetically homogenous - Mickey said that the travellers of Ireland really emerged from the famine of 1847, when a large portion of the population just started moving around in search of ways to survive, and maintained the lifestyle after the crisis was over. The travellers have the same set of common names as the settled population, and I'm less clear on this point, but I get the impression there's still a non-trivial subset of the Irish population that leads a nomadic lifestyle. In the 50s or so, the Irish government apparently made an effort to settle the travelling musicians, so Mickey moved into a house when he was about seven. On the one hand, it seems a little strange to me that he puts such emphasis on a lifestyle he only experienced as a young child - he implied that the experience was integral to his playing and the musical tradition as a whole - but he speaks with such passion and conviction about it, and emphasizes the connection between the traveling busker and the musical tradition, so that I absolutely cannot dismiss the idea. After all, for the first two thirds of the known history of piping (~1850-1950), the travelling life was the life most pipers led.
Wrapping It Up...
I could go on and on, but at this point, my time is probably better spent learning some tunes. The retreat is over, but my enthusiasm has remained, and I just got a ticket to participate in a Whistle workshop with Joannie Madden at the Austin Celtic Festival in a couple of weeks...
Background
When physical music stores were the only source of music (i.e., pre-internet), I spent a fair amount of time exploring the New Age sections at the local Borders and Barnes & Noble. Space constraints tend to force music sellers to consolidate myriad actual genres into a few over-arching descriptors, and Celtic music tended to get lumped into the New Age section. Compounded by the fact that there actually are a number of artists that fuse Celtic and New Age styles, including Enya (probably the best-known New Age artist around, whether she likes the genre label or not), I've tended to mentally tie Celtic and New Age together throughout my adult life.
One of the older albums in my CD collection, among those I found in the New Age section, is "Song of the Irish Whistle" by Joanie Madden. Since I first heard that album, I've loved the sound of a slow tune on the whistle, and sometime around six or seven years ago I picked up a whistle of my own. Since then, I've acquired a few more whistles, which I've noodled around on and used in a few Longing for Orpheus songs. I've never put much effort into learning to play them in a proper way, by any definition of "proper." During rehearsals for the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta Iolanthe over this past summer, one of my cast-mates mentioned driving up to an Irish music retreat for a weekend later in the year; I thought it might be fun, and provide an opportunity to get a new perspective on music. So, I signed up for the beginner's Irish Whistle course...
Irish Traditional Music Culture
At some level I knew there was a community and culture based on Celtic music, but I didn't appreciate how large or serious this community was - nor did I realize that Irish Traditional Music (ITM) is a very specific thing, and not synonymous with Celtic music (are there communities dedicated to Scottish, Welsh, and other regions of music, I wonder?). I now think of the ITM community as a comporable entity to the Classical or Jazz communities. In some ways, the ITM culture is far more limited - tunes are almost universally diatonic, and in a handful of keys (those with one to three sharps, both major and minor). There are perhaps ten types of tunes, representing a few basic rhythms (jigs are 6/8, slides 6/8 with a particular syncopated feel, slipjigs 9/8, reels 4/4 or cut time, etc.), and no one really ventures into odd-time territory (no 5/4 or 7/8 experiments). These limitations place the musicians' and listeners' focus on other aspects of the music, perhaps most intensely on performance style.
ITM also has one serious leg up on the Jazz and Classical worlds, and that's the tune session. Sessions make Irish music something many people can actively participate in, rather than than just observe, and I think that's incredibly cool, and probably central to the explosion of the music's popularity over the past few decades. Still being a newbie, I could be mischaracterizing a "typical" session, but its basically a gathering of players who sits in a big circle and just play tunes. If you don't know the current tune, you typically sit it out, but it seems you can generally get away with a bit of quiet stumbling as you try to pick up on the tune yourself. The nature of these sessions puts a lot of emphasis on remembering a huge repertoire of tunes, and on learning by ear, which is a skill I desperately need to develop. At the retreat, in any case, there were a lot of beginners, or at least beginners on a particular instrument, and so there were sessions geared specifically toward us. It seems to be an axiom in this culture that you really have to listen and imitate to play this music properly, but the ability to jump-start the session experience by reading made my sessions far more enjoyable. I overheard some talk about starting a teaching and/or slow session here in Austin, and that really excites me.
Ornamentation is Everything
Okay, it's not really everything, but hyperbole is so effective... I went into this retreat already familiar with the Whistle's fingerings and breath support, but I had no idea how deeply integral style, and ornamentation in particular, are to playing Irish music. Nor did I have any idea how to play any of the ornaments correctly. Fortunately, my beginner-level class (taught be Janice Deane, in the photo there) didn't have any true beginners - everyone could read music or play an instrument already, so we were able to spend a good portion of our time focusing on whistle ornamentation, which is apparently based on Uillean Pipe ornamentation; the Pipes are among the oldest Irish instruments, and as new instruments have been integrated into the Irish music tradition, their players have typically emulated the style of the established instruments. Pipes and whistles share similar fingering, so I'm now entertaining the long-term goal of taking up the pipes someday. But, I'm not going to let myself think about that too much until I've learned a lot more about the whistle. In any case, if I learned any generally applicable musical principle during the retreat, it's the importance of paying proper attention to every little bit of a musical line - a simple melody can be just a simple, boring melody, or it can be a canvas for musical expression, depending on the performer's competence, and how much they put into it.Mickey Dunne
I was surprised to hear that many of the instrument instructors would be doing lecture-type presentations on the history of Irish Traditional Music, both in general and as it pertained to particular instruments and regions. I said to the friend that told me about the retreat that I "didn't think of musicians and historians overlapping much," and she replied that I was dead wrong when it came to Irish Traditional musicians. I learned a tremendous amount about the background of Irish music from some of these players, but was most moved by Mickey Dunne.
Wrapping It Up...
I could go on and on, but at this point, my time is probably better spent learning some tunes. The retreat is over, but my enthusiasm has remained, and I just got a ticket to participate in a Whistle workshop with Joannie Madden at the Austin Celtic Festival in a couple of weeks...
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Compress Classical Music
It is constantly lamented in the Classical Music community that there aren't enough new fans, particularly young ones. I think the Classical recording and publishing industry could do a lot to change this by abandoning one old but deeply rooted convention.
A few relevant ideas:
In an ideal listening setting, a large dynamic range is fantastic, and I don't think the old standards should be abandoned, but in the modern world of downloadable music (i.e., where there's very little cost associated with the actual transfer of audio data), it should be easy to provide both compressed and uncompressed versions of a recordings to listeners.
*For this discussion, I'm making a tremendous generalization and dividing EVERYTHING into either Classical or Popular - frankly, though, I have no idea how Jazz fits into this discussion.
A few relevant ideas:
- An almost universal technique in Popular* music is to compress the dynamic range of finished songs. Tools called "compressors" and "limiters" are used to achieve this, and they basically make the quiet parts of a song louder. Many members of the audio engineering community feel that these tools are grossly overused by the modern music industry (including many of those engineers who are compelled to overuse them in order to keep their job), but that's a completely different rant.
- There's a tremendous divide in the approach sound engineers take to making a Classical recording versus a Popular recording. There's variation within each community, based on genre and sub-genre, performer, engineer, etc., but the Classical Music world typically attempts to capture and reproduce an original performance as accurately as possible, while the Popular Music world uses the studio as an instrument, and all sorts of heavy processing are acceptable and commonplace.
- A whole lot of people listen to music in noisy environments. College campuses and mass transit are full of music fans listening to mp3 players with earbuds. I personally listen to over an hour of music accompanied by significant road noise each workday. In these settings, music with a relatively small dynamic range is great - the listener sets the volume at one comfortable level, and the music never gets too quiet to hear or too loud to bear.
In an ideal listening setting, a large dynamic range is fantastic, and I don't think the old standards should be abandoned, but in the modern world of downloadable music (i.e., where there's very little cost associated with the actual transfer of audio data), it should be easy to provide both compressed and uncompressed versions of a recordings to listeners.
*For this discussion, I'm making a tremendous generalization and dividing EVERYTHING into either Classical or Popular - frankly, though, I have no idea how Jazz fits into this discussion.
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