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[Thrupenny Bit]

Frank - yes indeed it was Jimmy, I think the best fiddler I've met. His thoughts on Irish music were wonderful, as was his take on Irish stepping, pre- RiverDance. Haven't seen him in years but we did speak about a year ago. Didn't realise but he came down here to Bampton Fair a few times, and by utter coincidence, I was talking to Ed Rennie's wife Anni, who I work with, and we were both amazed that we both knew him. She said he'd been down a few times. Shame he didn't get in touch. Do you keep up with him?
His attitude to tunes was an inspiration. He did once send me a tune on a cassette, I dutifully learnt on the English concertina, found it in an odd key but perceivered. When we next met we both tried to play it but were perplexed. He'd played it in G but the slow tape recorder had dropped it down a half tone starting on F#. Both of us were utterly confused!
Q

[IanD]

Heh, I've always said that the common response of English musicians to Irish music is that "All the tunes sound the same and it's too fast", whereas the common response of Irish musicians to English music is that "All the tunes sound the same and it's too slow"

There are plenty of unmemorable tunes in all traditions including English, Irish, French, Italian, Scandinavian, often played badly by people who just don't get what they ought to be played like. The key is finding great tunes and working out how to play them so that they *do* sound good; personally I find this harder with Irish tunes than any of the others, so maybe it's just me. And quite a lot of my musical acquaintances...

[Stiamh]

... often played badly by people who just don't get what they ought to be played like...

This is really the nub of the matter. And it applies to listeners too.

[Gromit]

...personally I find this harder with Irish tunes than any of the others, so maybe it's just me. And quite a lot of my musical acquaintances...

Harder in what way?

I'm the exact opposite when comparing Irish tunes to English I find most Irish tunes generally more interesting and the same applies to most of my musical acquaintances.

It's English music played on melodeons with the overpowering alternating bass/chord playing that I'm not keen on. English tunes played on a fiddle are lovely - oom-pah bass is not for me.

[Frank Lee]

Oom - pah can sound interesting if the full potential of the left hand is exploited (one rows excepted of course!).... and it doesn't have to be oom pah anyway.  Perhaps a thread on 'how to play the melodeon' might develop from this?  Could run for a page or two eh?

[olly]

Plus some useful tips on how not to play a melodeon perhaps. An otherwise good session at Whitby was left temporarily stunned and silenced by someone playing the Canal en Octobre on a Dino Baffetti using all strength and might at the gentlemans disposal. Played with a bit of feeling it could have been so different.

[Marje]

The use of bass and chords (whether clumsily or skillfully done) is one of the things that separates Irish and non-Irish sessions. Irish music, like Irish song, relies a lot less on chords and harmonies, preferring to use ornamentation, and an Irish session is often content with a single guitarist to accompany the melody. English and Scottish music, and much continental European music, can be played that way but generally needs the chords and basses to bring the full character to the tune.

That's one reason why I don't really enjoy playing Irish music, even if I can manage most of the notes - the left hand bit is rather superfluous, and one of the things I like about the melodeon is that you can do the whole thing including chords and harmonies. Irish melodeon players often have their left hand just flapping about like a kipper while the right hand does all the work, and it seems a bit of a waste of a two-handed instrument to me.

I also like the rhythmic variation in English music. There are hundreds of tunes that can be recognised, or narrowed down to a few contenders, when the rhythm is tapped out. The same is not true of most Irish tunes, which have largely interchangeable diddly-diddly or diddle-diddle rhythms.  The English rhythms suit the melodeon, which can get stuck into them and bring out the best of them, but this isn't an option with Irish tunes, which all have similar pounding pulses with few distinctive rhythms.

I agree with what others have said re the acceptability of other traditions in Irish/English sessions - it's most often the Irish sessions (in England) that get prescriptive and insist on only Irish music. It seems daft to me when a folk music session is taking place to exclude the native music of that country and region. The "mainly English" session that I run has mainly English tunes but also the occasional Scottish, French, American or Scandinavian tune. Now and again we allow an Irish one as a special exception, or because some visitor starts one, but as the other session in the town is for purely Irish music, I like to keep ours for all the rest of the stuff that people want to play.

[Theo]

with Irish tunes, which all have similar pounding pulses with few distinctive rhythms.

I must have been listening to different Irish music!  To me there is more variety: single jigs, double jigs reels, hornpipes, polkas, mazurkas, waltzs, highlands, slides, slip jigs all have distinct rhythms, and there are probably a few more.   As has been mentioned earlier in this discussion if you just listen to Irish music as played at "Irish" sessions outside Ireland then you don't really get the full variety.  Try listening for example to Martin Hayes.

[Chris Ryall]

Just to remind everone that this is not about Irish music.

It's about respect for the music of others in a session, be that in listening to it and trying to learn/expand - or in playing it in a way that others are able to join in  )

[Lester]

Ok some of you don't like Irish music (although from these comments most of you probably have not heard the real thing) - f

From what I have read this is most peoples point, most of the Irish music heard in England is not the "real thing".

[Marje]

with Irish tunes, which all have similar pounding pulses with few distinctive rhythms.

I must have been listening to different Irish music!  To me there is more variety: single jigs, double jigs reels, hornpipes, polkas, mazurkas, waltzs, highlands, slides, slip jigs all have distinct rhythms, and there are probably a few more.   As has been mentioned earlier in this discussion if you just listen to Irish music as played at "Irish" sessions outside Ireland then you don't really get the full variety.  Try listening for example to Martin Hayes.

I agree, I love Martin Hayes's playing. I was referring  - and should have made it clearer - to the music that is played in "Irish" sessions in England. It's often wall-to-wall double jigs and reels, with dispproving looks thrown at anyone who attempts any other type of tune. (truly, I've known this happen).

[EeeJay]

... temporarily stunned and silenced by someone playing the Canal en Octobre on a Dino Baffetti using all strength and might at the gentlemans disposal.

I feel their pain...

Likewise, there's Irish sessions and Irish sessions... I frequent quite a few locally - which are mainly made up of local Irish and 2nd/3rd generation musicians just out for a tune and a bit of friendly banter - but I tend to avoid advertised 'Irish sessions' at English festivals... principally 'cos they're full of people desperate to kind of outdo each other, and it generally descends into an incoheseve thrash, topped off with too many goat bashers...

But that's not always... if you follow your nose away from the advertised stuff, that's where the good music lies...

Ed J

[Stiamh]

Leaving aside the question of Irish sessions in England (the displeasures of which I have no trouble imagining, because some truly horrible music gets played in some Irish sessions in Montreal): to my mind, Irish music is a language that needs to be learned properly, and that is something that can only done the way you learn any language - by long immersion, exposure to (and preferably hanging around with) "native speakers", and patient practice. Without that it is hardly surprising that people will have a hard time making it sound good, as some of you have professed.

And without the familiarity with the language that comes with long exposure, it's hardly surprising that tunes sound alike. I mean most of us would have trouble recognising different sentences in Mik'maq or Pitjanjara (sp?).

There's a hoary old saying that to become an Irish piper takes seven years of listening, seven years of learning or practising, and seven years of playing. While it's a cliché there is truth in it... you don't become a good Irish musician overnight.

No doubt the same applies to any tradition, but I do think that Irish music has a particular wealth of subtleties many of which only become clear when you are already some way down the road.

When I was living in Australia in the 1980s there was a wave of popular bands that tackled folk music from all over the world, literally. I used to listen to the cringe-worthy fashion they played Irish tunes and wonder whether they were making a similar hash of/failing to comprehend the basic rhythms of all the other traditions they were dabbling in.
 

[forrest]

... often played badly by people who just don't get what they ought to be played like...

This is really the nub of the matter. And it applies to listeners too.

Uh oh, now I'm scared silly that someone might reveal my most deeply buried secret: that I have been listening improperly the whole time! 

[FlatNote]

I used to listen to the cringe-worthy fashion they played Irish tunes and wonder whether they were making a similar hash of/failing to comprehend the basic rhythms of all the other traditions they were dabbling in.

No doubt making a hash of other traditions is the norm, but would you ban the sale of blended whiskey because the single malt is better?  There may be many a palate which has been led on to the more subtle but harder to acquire product from an acquaintance with the more available mass market version.

[IanD]

with Irish tunes, which all have similar pounding pulses with few distinctive rhythms.

I must have been listening to different Irish music!  To me there is more variety: single jigs, double jigs reels, hornpipes, polkas, mazurkas, waltzs, highlands, slides, slip jigs all have distinct rhythms, and there are probably a few more.   As has been mentioned earlier in this discussion if you just listen to Irish music as played at "Irish" sessions outside Ireland then you don't really get the full variety.  Try listening for example to Martin Hayes.

I agree, I love Martin Hayes's playing. I was referring  - and should have made it clearer - to the music that is played in "Irish" sessions in England. It's often wall-to-wall double jigs and reels, with dispproving looks thrown at anyone who attempts any other type of tune. (truly, I've known this happen).

My worst "Irish session" memory was an advertised -- not as Irish! -- session in the Rose and Crown at Warwick during the festival, which was "lead" by a young band who I won't name in case they've got better since. I went up there with MJ to find the band sitting in a circle in the middle hammering out relentless sets of super-fast Irish jigs and reels that none of the other musicians sitting around were joining in with -- as soon as they finished one set they started another after a few seconds pause.

Sometimes when they mistakenly left a gap a few seconds too long I jumped in and started up a couple of well-known English tunes, which everyone else in the room then joined in with gusto while the "band" set there talking and chatting amongst themselves; as soon as the tunes finished (to much applause) they leapt in with another aren't-we-brilliant-look-at-how-fast-we-can-play set while all the other musicians in the room sat holding their instruments waiting for them to stop and give someone else a chance.

After an hour or so of this we left in disgust. I don't think I've ever -- before or since - seen an example of how badly wrong you can go when running a session. I even wrote a vituperative letter to the festival organiser suggesting that said band shouldn't be given the task of running a session when they were so patently bad at it, but never got a reply.

In contrast we (Panjandrum) were asked to run the beer tent session one afternoon at Towersey last year; we lead a few sets of favourites when needed (but always "common" tunes, not "band specials" which nobody else would know), and otherwise looked round the room to spot people who looked like they had a tune bursting to get out and asked them to start a set -- or in some cases encouraged people who were obviously less experienced (but competent) who were shyly sitting there to start something, and watched them have a big grin afterwards when they realised they *could* start/lead a tune set.

We got an afternoon of what I'd call English-ish music -- with some tunes from Scotland, Italy, France, Scandinavia, even a few from Ireland! -- but aimed at being inclusive rather than exclusive. There were also some subtler tunes played by one or two people which were also well received, but the session was really about band-type playing not solos -- and there was some lovely harmonisation and ornamentation/improvisation also creeping in over the solid ground of people playing the tune.

As a band we played hardly any of our "favourite" sets, just a few which we also knew lots of other people knew and loved and would join in with. Afterwords someone came up to be while I was having dinner and said it was one of the best sessions he'd ever been to, which made me very happy indeed -- not because everyone marvelled at how brilliant *we* were, but how good *everyone* was and what a good time they'd had.

That to me is what a session is all about :-)

Ian

[Stiamh]

Good point, flatnote, but I wouldn't ban anything, myself. I would just [drink something | go somewhere] else. 

And JW, I merely meant that if you don't hear the subtleties of what is being played, a) you won't appreciate it fully, and b) you certainly won't be able to reproduce it.

Feel somewhat ambivalent about having chimed in in this thread, because I can see how my attitude can come across as musical snobbery. Ah well, guilty as charged 

Ian posted while I was typing this. I love the idea of a session being "lead" - the atmosphere certainly sounds heavy! ;-) 

[Thrupenny Bit]

With Ian's post, I think it brings this thread full circle.
Frank started off by complaining that some people were unsympathetic in sessions when others were playing, and he felt it was bad form. Ian's post to my mind shows the worst case scenario - which surprisingly many of us seem to have witnessed - followed by what it should be, an all inclusive ego supressed enjoyment of music with everyone looking, listening and including all.
It's been an interesting journey.......
Q

[IanD]

Good point, flatnote, but I wouldn't ban anything, myself. I would just [drink something | go somewhere] else. 

And JW, I merely meant that if you don't hear the subtleties of what is being played, a) you won't appreciate it fully, and b) you certainly won't be able to reproduce it.

Feel somewhat ambivalent about having chimed in in this thread, because I can see how my attitude can come across as musical snobbery. Ah well, guilty as charged 

Ian posted while I was typing this. I love the idea of a session being "lead" - the atmosphere certainly sounds heavy! ;-)

Organised sessions lead by a band are quite common at festivals and can work very well if done properly, which is why the festivals do it -- the Towersey one was a good example of a "band"-type one, the ones at the Volunteer Inn at Sidmouth are good examples of "solo"-type ones.
A brilliant informal session can be as good or better, but can also go horribly wrong if taken over by cliques or people who think they're superstars who everyone's gone to hear do a concert set -- like the Warwick one I mentioned...

[FlatNote]

Ian's post to my mind shows the worst case scenario - which surprisingly many of us seem to have witnessed - followed by what it should be, an all inclusive ego supressed enjoyment of music with everyone looking, listening and including all.

I think the suppression of ego takes a good few years of meditation tucked away somewhere quiet in the Himalayas and is not to be expected from the typical session player!  The whole problem is surely one of advertising.  What groups of consenting musicians choose to do in the privacy of their own session is surely their own affair.  If they want to play at breakneck speed or to forbid tunes from beyond the Watford Gap or outside the Pale that is their privilege.  It's only when a public session is labelled in a way that frustrates the expectations of those attending that there is a problem.